Here are 100 books that The Rats fans have personally recommended if you like
The Rats.
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I have been writing for more than 40 years, and while I don’t normally write gothic literature, it is a genre that has fascinated me since my early youth. While I have written a couple of gothic or horror short stories, I tend to write other types of literature. However, I was pulled into this novel by something I saw on the TV news, and so I put away the novel I was originally working on and set to work on this one instead. The setting and the characters immediately pulled me in. I hope that it’s mystery and unusual characters will do the same for you.
I love this book so much, I have read it at least three times. It is a classic gothic novel with an eerie setting and interesting characters, including those with psychosis that add to the mystery of he novel.
While the film version is undoubtedly a classic, the novel is by far better.
31
authors picked
Dracula
as one of their favorite books, and they share
why you should read it.
This book is for kids age
17.
What is this book about?
'The very best story of diablerie which I have read for many years' Arthur Conan Doyle
A masterpiece of the horror genre, Dracula also probes identity, sanity and the dark corners of Victorian sexuality and desire. It begins when Jonathan Harker visits Transylvania to help Count Dracula purchase a London house, and makes horrifying discoveries in his client's castle. Soon afterwards, disturbing incidents unfold in England - an unmanned ship is wrecked; strange puncture marks appear on a young woman's neck; a lunatic asylum inmate raves about the imminent arrival of his 'Master' - and a determined group of adversaries…
Killing me Softly is the beginning of a fast-paced new series featuring Detective Chief Inspector Allison and Sergeant Mark Stringer who have the chilling task of tracking down a serial killer who is to terrify a city with his bizarre and cold-blooded murders of innocent women.
I live in sight of an extremely busy highway. On the rare days when I wake up to an empty house, I go look at the cars to confirm that I’m not the last person on Earth. There’s always been this part of me that assumes an unprecedented disaster is coming. The best way to soothe that fear, is to read (and write) books about it. Understanding how people survive, or not, feels like a great way to prepare for the unknown. Plagues are particularly bad, especially those of the biblical sense. Water turning to blood, swarms of insects, prolonged darkness, all of these are lethal under the right circumstances.
As if a plague of memory loss that eventually makes you forget how to breathe isn’t scary enough, Cutter takes us deep under the ocean, to a lab where something has gone terribly wrong with our potential saviors. This is the most claustrophobic book I’ve ever read. You can feel the crushing weight of the water and the dark just outside the lab’s walls. There’s a wonderful sort of madness to the whole thing, and one scene, in particular, continues to haunt me.
Afraid of the dark? You should be ... Part horror, part psychological nightmare, The Deep by Nick Cutter is a novel fans of Stephen King and Clive Barker won't want to miss.
A plague is destroying the world's population. The 'Gets makes people forget. First it's the small things, like where you left your keys ... then the not-so-small things, like how to drive. And finally your body forgets how to live.
But now an unknown substance with extraordinary power to heal has been discovered in the depths of the Pacific Ocean. Nicknamed ambrosia, it might just be the miracle…
My name is Lee Andrew Taylor. I write novels and screenplays, mostly in the horror genre, with a few signed by Producers since 2021. I write what I see. It’s worked for me so far, with many discussions with producers in the past few years. If I can see a movie when I read someone’s story then there’s a great chance other people will see the same thing. I am always creating new worlds inside my mind, new stories to write, and new paths to take.
I’m recommending this book because of its subject matter. A virus. After what’s happened in the world recently with Covid, why not believe this could happen? A disease that makes you think someone is trying to kill you, so you have to kill them first. It’s similar to being paranoid. The author of this book has written a few sequels that follow the main character’s journey. A journey that took the person from working a normal day to thinking people were now the enemy.
REMAIN CALM DO NOT PANIC TAKE SHELTER WAIT FOR FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS THE SITUATION IS UNDER CONTROL Society is rocked by a sudden increase in the number of violent assaults on individuals. Christened 'Haters' by the media, the attackers strike without warning. The assaults are brutal, remorseless and extreme: within seconds, normally rational, self-controlled people are becoming maddened, vicious killers. There are no apparent links as a hundred random attacks become a thousand, and then thousands, right across the country. Everyone, irrespective of gender, age, race, sexuality or any other difference, has the potential to become a victim - or a…
Killing me Softly is the beginning of a fast-paced new series featuring Detective Chief Inspector Allison and Sergeant Mark Stringer who have the chilling task of tracking down a serial killer who is to terrify a city with his bizarre and cold-blooded murders of innocent women.
I've been writing dark thrillers since 2003 and am fascinated by the whole "what would I do" premise of the genre. There's nothing like taking an ordinary character and throwing them into the most harrowing situation my imagination can conjure. Then, I picture myself in that situation, and the goosebumps arrive immediately. The scariest books are those rooted in reality, the kind where these terrible things could happen to us with just one wrong turn in our car, just one decision to engage with a stranger's question. A truly scary book features you as the protagonist. What would you do?
There's that moment in any thriller where you happily suspend all disbelief because outright fear insists upon it. That's the case with The Ruins, a bizarre man-versus-nature tale where poisonous vines kill anyone who dares come close to them.
I remember reading this, thinking, "What the hell is happening?" Then I just accepted the premise and blazed through the book with my stomach in my throat the entire time.
Craving an adventure to wake them from their lethargic Mexican holiday before they return home, four friends set off in search of one of their own who has travelled to the interior to investigate an archaeological dig in the Mayan ruins. After a long journey into the jungle, the group come across a partly camouflaged trail and a captivating hillside covered with red flowers. Lured by these, the group move closer until they happen across a gun-toting Mayan horseman who orders them away. In the midst of the confrontation, one of the group steps inadvertently backwards into the flowering vine.…
As well as being a novelist, I am also a script editor for film and TV. I specialise in thriller narratives and big themes in screenwriting, so it's no accident I am drawn to them in fiction too. Dystopian worlds offer such a rich backdrop for the BIG questions and observations. By putting new societies and threats under the microscope in stories, it can hold a mirror up to what's going on in real life. I think of dystopian novels as being akin to the canaries in the coal mine: they are not only cathartic, they sound the warning bell on where we are going as a society ourselves.
This pandemic thriller might just be my favourite post-apocalyptic story of all time. The premise is so original, the world-building so visual and rich, and the lead character Harper is a real badass and pregnant (super unusual in ANY story, never mind a thriller like this).
Nobody knew where the virus came from. FOX News said it had been set loose by ISIS, using spores that had been invented by the Russians in the 1980s. MSNBC said sources indicated it might've been created by engineers at Halliburton and stolen by culty Christian types fixated on the Book of Revelation. CNN reported both sides. While every TV station debated the cause, the world burnt.
Pregnant school nurse, HARPER GRAYSON, had seen lots of people burn on TV, but the first person she saw burn for real was in the…
I have loved horror since my early teens, when I first discovered The Rats and Lair and other horror stories by James Herbert. The thing I like about horror, in particular, is that there are no holds barred, no censorship, as to what can be written. I grew up on movies like The Exorcist, Friday the 13th, Jaws, Alien, The Thing, etc., but horror writing takes you deeper and gives a more visceral experience than anything any film can do.
This was one of the hardest books to "get into," but a friend of mine told me to stick with it because the rewards of getting through the first quarter would be so great. I'm glad I did. It is an astounding piece of work, quite different from anything I've ever read before or since, and remains one of my top five books.
The tangents the book takes, and the blasé attributes of the leading character are superbly crafted. It was suggested it was "unfilmable," and there's one scene in particular I thought they'd never get away with, but if you look at the movie version carefully, it's in there.
I grew up hearing Scottish folklore told as truth, stories of spirits, warnings, and strange kindnesses passed off as everyday fact. I have always been fascinated by the idea that there is something more, something hidden just out of sight. As a child I was scared of everything, so I forced myself to watch old Hammer horror films to toughen up. It worked a bit too well and left me with a lifelong love of the dark underside of things. Now, as a stand-up comedian and writer, I have learned there can be humour in anything, and sometimes the best way to make something real is to laugh at the awful.
This isn’t fantasy or supernatural, but the book really delves into the strangeness of people.
It starts as something mundane and ordinary until you scratch the surface. Full twists that genuinely caught me completely unaware, this book is a horror masterpiece that isn’t technically a horror.
And it has one scene that made me feel physically ill—that is amazing writing.
The polarizing literary debut by Scottish author Ian Banks, The Wasp Factory is the bizarre, imaginative, disturbing, and darkly comic look into the mind of a child psychopath.
Meet Frank Cauldhame. Just sixteen, and unconventional to say the least:
Two years after I killed Blyth I murdered my young brother Paul, for quite different and more fundamental reasons than I'd disposed of Blyth, and then a year after that I did for my young cousin Esmerelda, more or less on a whim.
That's my score to date. Three. I haven't killed anybody for years, and don't intend to ever again.…
I’ve been fascinated by how people behave and how in-group bias can change who they are. That interest led me into computational sociology (I study human behavior for a living), with my work appearing in The New York Times, USA Today, WIRED, and more. But my deepest fascination has always been with people’s propensity for the horrific. I LOVE the liminal space where fear, secrecy, and belonging collide. Being neurodivergent, living in a small Virginia town with my wife and our neurodivergent, queer son, I see how communities can both shelter and suffocate. That tension is why I’m drawn to stories saturated in dread, beauty, and what lives in the shadows.
This is the book that taught me how powerful loneliness can be.
Every time I return to it, I feel one character’s ache settle into me, that desperate want to belong somewhere, even if it’s a house that doesn’t love you back. I recommend it because it still feels as if I’m attempting to figure out what is happening alongside the characters, the way only great writing can.
Jackson makes you realize that the scariest hauntings aren’t in the walls, they’re the ones we carry within us.
Part of a new six-volume series of the best in classic horror, selected by Academy Award-winning director of The Shape of Water Guillermo del Toro
Filmmaker and longtime horror literature fan Guillermo del Toro serves as the curator for the Penguin Horror series, a new collection of classic tales and poems by masters of the genre. Included here are some of del Toro's favorites, from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Ray Russell's short story "Sardonicus," considered by Stephen King to be "perhaps the finest example of the modern Gothic ever written," to Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House and stories…
I’ve always been fascinated by the darker corners of the human mind, such as what drives people to commit unspeakable acts and how others find the strength to face them. As both a neuropsychologist and a thriller author, I explore those questions on the page, weaving together my background in psychology with my love of twisty, character-driven stories. Books where the crimes are as twisted as the minds behind them have shaped my own writing, including my latest novel, Heavy Are the Stones. I read them not just for the suspense, but for the unsettling and raw truths they reveal about us all as humans.
Hannibal Lecter’s silky smooth menace still chills me like no other villain on my shelf.
Silence of the Lambs taught me how to write a terrifying villain with more than enough charisma to start a devoted cult. Every reread of this book hooks me with that hypnotic voice. Hannibal’s character is so persuasive and razor-sharp, I catch myself sympathizing before the dread slams back in.
I love how Thomas Harris forces me to straddle the line between fascination and horror, then shoves me into Clarice Starling’s head for that heart-hammering showdown with Buffalo Bill.
Decades later, for me, no thriller matches its psychological intrigue. It’s a timeless classic that keeps my lights blazing and my imagination deliciously unsettled.
As part of the search for a serial murderer nicknames "Buffalo Bill," FBI trainee Clarice Starling is given an assignment. She must visit a man confined to a high-security facility for the criminally insane and interview him.
That man, Dr. Hannibal Lecter, is a former psychiatrist with unusual tastes and an intense curiosity about the darker corners of the mind. His intimate understanding of the killer and of Clarice herself form the core of Thomas Harris' The Silence of the Lambs--an unforgettable classic of suspense fiction.
The reason why I love horror fiction so much, and the reason why I decided to become a horror writer myself, is that horror is my No.1 genre. Ever since I saw Boris Karloff portraying, so brilliantly, the monster in Universal’s Frankenstein when I was a kid, I became a lifelong horror fan. I love both reading and writing horror fiction. I also enjoy collecting horror films, and review them regularly on my YouTube channel. I have studied the world of horror all my life, and think I have accrued a fairly broad knowledge on the subject. I have published my horror fiction books and my true paranormal books.
This book is an absolute classic, and spawned an equally classic movie directed by Alfred Hitchcock. The reason why I love Psycho so much is that it brought horror away from the traditional Gothic haunted house and castle settings right into the modern world. And if you add the aspect of mental illness in the chilling form of the Norman Bates character, then you have a horror story that becomes all too real, all too unsettling. We are not dealing with ghoulies and ghosties here, but with a deranged killer harbouring a split personality, whose warped mentality has often been mirrored in real-life crime cases. For example, Bloch based Norman Bates on an actual killer, Ed Gein. Psycho is a novel that every horror fan must read.
Mary Crane believes she has found shelter from the storm when she checks into the Bates Motel, but the knife-wielding owner, Norman Bates, soon rips her piece of mind to shreds and the nightmare begins.
