Horror Novels

‘House of Leaves’ (2000) as fleeting as, well, a house of leaves

Mark Z. Danielewski’s “House of Leaves” (2000) is a weird novel, but it’s not so weird you can’t enjoy a smooth reading experience (you just

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‘The Birds’ (1952) flies higher as a short story than as a movie

“Rebecca” (1938 novel, 1940 movie) is a pure example of Alfred Hitchcock taking a Daphne du Maurier story and adapting it for the screen. Interestingly,

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‘Jurassic Park’-style concepts don’t face ‘Extinction’ yet

Douglas Preston has ended some of his novels in crazy fashion, and he starts “Extinction” (April, hardcover) in crazy fashion on page one. People are

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The moor the merrier in ‘Hound of the Baskervilles’ (1902)

In his second-most-famous Sherlock Holmes novel, “A Study in Scarlet” (1887), Arthur Conan Doyle branches into a Western for a while. And in his most

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‘Insomnia’ (1994) is long but not sleep-inducing

If a 787-page epic that Stephen King spent three years writing can be underrated and overlooked, “Insomnia” (1994) is it. Long enough to be an

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Pessl wades into delicious darkness in ‘Night Film’ (2013)

In “Night Film” (2013), Marisha Pessl blends the economical prose of old-school hardboiled mysteries with poetic bursts of insight into the human condition. The novel

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‘Omen IV: Armageddon 2000’ (1983) continues horror saga in novel form

After the “Omen” trilogy capper “The Final Conflict” (1981), the franchise sat in that middle ground between popular and unpopular that meant the story would

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‘Night Theater’ (2020) mixes body horror, spiritual questions

Vikram Paralkar’s “Night Theater” (2020) is a one-setting, small-cast novella of a little over 200 pages that raises big questions. It’s easy to read in

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‘John Dies at the End’ (2009) a passion project, despite myriad influences

Like Joss Whedon loves penning dialog and Shane Black enjoys dodging action-movie cliches, David Wong (real name Jason Pargin) clearly has a blast writing insane

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‘The Ruins’ (2006, 2008) a creepy exercise in fatalism

On this re-read, I often flashed back to my first experience of Scott Smith’s “The Ruins” (2006). I vividly recalled details such as a dog

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