I grew up reading Stephen King and Michael Crichton. That combination of horror and techno-thriller greatly impacted my writing style and genre. I love a page-turner and chapters that end with a cliffhanger. I love that creepy feeling of dread that washes over you when engrossed in a scary scene. I love when you put a book down for the night, turn off the light, and then wince when you hear a strange noise in the other room. I love a story that's so believable that you can't help but wonder, "Could this happen...maybe even to me?" If you do, too, you may enjoy my books.
I could easily pick five Stephen King novels to put on this list. But if I had to pick my favorite, it would be Firestarter.
The main reason is that, out of all of King's stories, I felt this one perfectly nailed the ending. How many books have you read, and you reach the end and think, "Really? You made me read hundreds of pages for that?" Not Firestarter.
Ever since writing my first novel, I've strived to leave the reader completely satisfied or desperate for more.
Master storyteller Stephen King presents the classic #1 New York Timesbestsellerânow a major motion picture!
Andy McGee and Vicky Tomlinson were once college students looking to make some extra cash, volunteering as test subjects for an experiment orchestrated by the clandestine government organization known as The Shop. But the outcome unlocked exceptional latent psychic talents for the two of themâmanifesting in even more terrifying ways when they fell in love and had a child. Their daughter, Charlie, has been gifted with the most extraordinary and uncontrollable power ever seenâpyrokinesis, the ability to create fire with her mind. Now the mercilessâŚ
Jurassic Park was the first Michael Crichton novel I read. And yes, I read this way before they made the book into a movie.
There are two things Crichton does incredibly well. First, he researches the hell out of his stories. The golden rule of writing is never to write about what you don't know. Second, he takes a theoretical concept and makes you believe it could happen. He's able to do this because he followed rule number one.
The best stories, in my opinion, are the ones that you believe could truly happen. Crichton convinces you that dinosaurs are alive and carries that terror throughout the story. I do my best to inject this level of believability into all my books.
'Crichton's most compulsive novel' Sunday Telegraph 'Crichton's dinosaurs are genuinely frightening' Chicago Sun-Times 'Breathtaking adventure. . . a book that is as hard to put down as it is to forget' Time Out
-------------------------------
The international bestseller that inspired the Jurassic Park film franchise.
On a remote jungle island, genetic engineers have created a dinosaur game park.
An astonishing technique for recovering and cloning dinosaur DNA has been discovered. Now one of mankind's most thrilling fantasies has come true and the first dinosaurs that the Earth has seen in the time of man emerge.
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to runâŚ
Growing up in Rhode Island, I can't tell you how many times I told someone where I was from, and they would respond with, "Oh, Long Island, New York." Ugh.
Naturally, a haunted house story set in Long Island caught my eye. I can honestly say this book gave me nightmares. Oddly enough, I'm not easily sucked into supernatural thrillers because they often require too big of a leap of faith. The Amityville Horror was different.
My sisters and I all read the book and regularly tried to scare the crap out of each other with scenes from the story. We had a planter shaped like a pig and would carry it into a room, screaming, "Jodie is here!" The book is terrifying and well done.
âA fascinating and frightening bookâ (Los Angeles Times)âthe bestselling true story about a house possessed by evil spirits, haunted by psychic phenomena almost too terrible to describe.
In December 1975, the Lutz family moved into their new home on suburban Long Island. George and Kathleen Lutz knew that, one year earlier, Ronald DeFeo had murdered his parents, brothers, and sisters in the house, but the propertyâcomplete with boathouse and swimming poolâand the price had been too good to pass up.
Twenty-eight days later, the entire Lutz family fled in terror.
This is the spellbinding, shocking true story that gripped theâŚ
A friend insisted I borrow The Hot Zone from him. I explained I wasn't fond of nonfiction books, but he told me to trust him and that the book read like a real-life thriller. I gave it a try and couldn't put the story down.
I read this 25 years before Covid. When the pandemic hit in 2020, I remember thinking, "Oh my God, the Hot Zone has gone global." With every turn of the page, I kept telling myself, "This can't be real." Not only was it all true, but it was exciting. And terrifying. That icky feeling stuck with me.
When I write, I do my best to use the five senses to create the perfect atmosphere.
The bestselling landmark account of the first emergence of the Ebola virus.
Now a mini-series drama starring Julianna Margulies, Topher Grace, Liam Cunningham, James D'Arcy, and Noah Emmerich on National Geographic.
A highly infectious, deadly virus from the central African rain forest suddenly appears in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. There is no cure. In a few days 90 percent of its victims are dead. A secret military SWAT team of soldiers and scientists is mobilized to stop the outbreak of this exotic "hot" virus. The Hot Zone tells this dramatic story, giving a hair-raising account of the appearance ofâŚ
âRowdyâ Randy Cox, a woman staring down the barrel of retirement, is a curmudgeonly blue-collar butch lesbian who has been single for twenty years and is trying to date again.
At the end of a long, exhausting shift, Randy finds her supervisor, Bryant, pinned and near death at the warehouseâŚ
What's a Dan Brown thriller doing on my list of recommended "scary" books?
I believe that scary doesn't have to mean supernatural, horror, or gore. A scary story is a tale that disturbs you, where each turn of the page brings a sense of impending doom or dread and fills you with unease. Brown's classic thriller also contains some epic world-building.
Most of all, Langdon and Neveu are constantly looking over their shoulder, desperately trying to stay one step ahead as they try to solve the puzzle. That's what injects a scare factor into this story. Brown brilliantly weaves the cliffhanger chapters together to keep the reader unable to put the book down.
And, similar to King's Firestarter, I absolutely loved the ending.
Harvard professor Robert Langdon receives an urgent late-night phone call while on business in Paris: the elderly curator of the Louvre has been brutally murdered inside the museum. Alongside the body, police have found a series of baffling codes.
As Langdon and a gifted French cryptologist, Sophie Neveu, begin to sort through the bizarre riddles, they are stunned to find a trail that leads to the works of Leonardo Da Vinci - and suggests the answer to a mystery that stretches deep into the vault of history.
Unless Langdon and Neveu can decipher the labyrinthine code and quickly assemble theâŚ
Dawn Easton should be happy. Heiress to a fashion empire, and with a gorgeous boyfriend, thereâs almost nothing she canât have. Despite her wealth and power, thereâs one thing thatâs remained out of reach her entire lifeâgiving birth. As her 40th birthday inches closer, Dawn finds herself consumed with becoming a mother. Her desperation leads her to form an unlikely bond with a mysterious doll. As Dawn delves into the dollâs past, their connection soon threatens to derail not only Dawnâs relationships but also her sanity. Who can she trust? Her boyfriend? Her therapist? Her doll? Is Dawn obsessed...or possessed?
Dawn of Eveis a psychological thriller with an ending that will leave readers forever debating what happened to Dawn...and her doll.
"Is this supposed to help? Christ, you've heard it a hundred times. You know the story as well as I do, and it's my story!" "Yeah, but right now it only has a middle. You can't remember how it begins, and no-one knows how it ends."
It began with a dying husband, and it ended in a dynasty.
It took away her husbandâs pain on his deathbed, kept her from losing the family farm, gave her the power to build a thriving business, but itâs illegal to grow in every state in the country in 1978.âŚ
