8 Literary Horror Novels That I Love
The Divinity Student Michael Cisco
126 pages
Published: 1999
A divinity student is struck by lightning and dies and is resurrected by… well, he doesn’t know what. The student finds work as a word-finder, locating lost or hidden words by disemboweling human corpses. Like Ligotti, Cisco sits on that delicious line between fantasy.
Cisco also wrote an incredible book called Weird Fiction: A Genre Study, which offers a comprehensive dive into all things weird horror. He’s also got quite a few other fantastic novels.
The Events at Poroth Farm by T.E.D. Klein
Pages: 40
Published: 1972
Told in an epistolary format, the story is narrated by a college lecturer named Jeremy who rents a room on a New Jersey farm, documenting his strange interactions with the home-owners and disturbing occurances in the surrounding woods. The story, according to the author, takes place in the Lovecraft mythos.
This is among one of my favorite novellas ever written. There are a lot of interpretations, making it a story that rewards reflection and second or third readings. It was turned into a novel later on, called Ceremonies, but I haven’t read it.
Teatro Grottesco by Thomas Ligotti
Pages: 280
Published: 1997
This is a collection of thirteen short stories by one of the best voices in weird horror. Ligotti, unlike most other literary horror writers, understands how to inject his fiction with philosophical substance while retaining the actual ‘horror’. Be warned: this author gets very dark; his bleak fiction (and non-fiction) has earned him a spot on more than a few ‘nihilistic/pessimistic philosophers’ lists, so I’d suggest reading him on a day where you have some happiness to spare.
The Red Tower is the best-known story from this collection, exploring a ruined factory in a desolate wasteland that used to produce strange novelty goods. The Town Manager is another one of his more famous stories, which focuses on an eerie small town whose so-called ‘town manager’ disappears, and his replacement arrives with strange new rules.
The Double by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Pages: 120
Published: 1846
The story follows a man named Golyadkin, a painfully ineffectual and awkward civil servant who encounters a doppelganger while working. Creeping further and deeper into the victim’s life, the doppelganger eventually takes control of his social circle and job, proving himself superior to Golyadkin in every way. As a result, our main character’s identity and sense of self dissolves. From there, the story descends into one of the most disturbing character studies I’ve ever read.
The Double is a crushing portrayal of self-doubt that maintains Dostoevsky’s usual contemplative depth. Despite its’ short length, it still took me a week to finish because it was so acutely unsettling, and I quite literally had to stare into the void for an hour afterward just to process it.
The Red Tree by Caitlin R. Kiernan
Pages: 385
Published: 2009
A writer from Atlanta named Sarah Crowe rents a Rhode Island farmhouse after her girlfriend’s suicide. In the cellar, she finds an anthropologist’s unfinished manuscript about a red oak tree on the property, and this becomes a novel-within-a-novel situation. The tree starts to infect Sarah’s mind, and we follow her through the ensuing confoundment.
Kiernan is adept at creating eerie surrealist environments that slither back into your mind after you put the book down. Her prose isn’t the best on this list, but it sits far above the average.
Immobility by Brian Evenson
Pages: 224 pages
Pubished: 2012
Horkai wakes up paralyzed inside a bunker with no memory of who he is, what happened to the society he used to know, or why the strangers in the bunker don’t trust him. He is then strapped to the backs of two mute carriers and sent on a retrieval mission through an eerie and punishing landscape. What he’s retrieving, for whom, or whether any explanation he receives is true is uncertain.
Evenson’s prose is minimalist and temperate, allowing the reader’s mind to wander… which is why I love his stories so much. I’ve never been disappointed by anything he’s written.
The Empusium by Olga Tokarczuk
Pages: 287 pages
Published: 2022
The year is 1913. Mieczyslaw Wojnicz, a young Polish student, travels to somewhat ritzy health resort for men in the Sudeten mountains to recover from tuberculosis. While the guests spend their idle time talking and drinking, something is watching them.
The author’s patience and restraint in this work is admirable; she takes the time to build real relationships between patients before she creeps into the horror, which makes it just as heartwrenching as it is terrifying. I also love that it was written in third person, which is a bit uncommon in contemporary fiction.
Piercing by Ryu Murakami
Pages: 192
Published: 2007
Kawashima Masayuki lives in Tokyo with his wife and infant daughter, he’s a successful graphic designer, and everything is exactly as it should be. However… each night, Kawashima goes into his daughter’s room and fights the primal need to stab her with the ice pick in his hand. To avoid acting on this strange impulse, he constructs a plan that drives him into further darkness.
No, the author is not related to Haruki Murakami, but I would consider this the better of the two. He has another notable novel called Miso Soup, which is just as good.
