Horror Books I Love: J.F. Penn's Recommended Reading

Old books by candlelight in a gothic crypt

I love reading horror novels, and specifically, I love supernatural horror with a high body count, some seriously evil characters (maybe some monsters or demons!), and plenty of bad things happening. I also want good to triumph, eventually, and a glimmer of hope at the end.

Good versus evil on a supernatural level runs through my own books, and it's the theme of the books I remember most as a reader.

Here are some of the horror books I love, with a few that shaped my own writing, and I recommend new ones on my email newsletter every month. You can sign up for that and a free ebook at JFPenn.com/free.

For thrillers, dark fantasy and crime, see my other book recommendations.

Jump to:

Links on this page go to Amazon (affiliate) or to my own store, and open in a new tab.

Supernatural horror and the battle between good and evil

This is the heart of what I read. Something ancient and evil, the people who stand against it, a price to pay, a ray of hope, and often an open question about the future.

Stephen King: The Stand. Probably my favourite book in terms of good versus evil. The plague that wipes out most of humanity is almost a side note next to the supernatural battle that follows.

Christopher Golden: Ararat, Carry Me to My Grave. Ararat is one of my all-time favourite horror novels, and Carry Me to My Grave is satisfying in the same way. Ancient evil, a race against time, and a triumph in the dawn. Great fun and lots of monsters!

Michaelbrent Collings: The Deep, This Darkness Light. The Deep is an underwater supernatural horror novel and a perfect example of a stand-alone, with the kind of satisfying ending I want from the genre. This Darkness Light spirals from thriller into post-apocalyptic horror. Great fun.

John Connolly: Every Dead Thing (Charlie Parker book 1), and the whole Charlie Parker series, which sits at the cross section of crime thriller and supernatural horror. A huge influence on my Brooke and Daniel books, because it blends a detective and those he loves with a supernatural element in real world mysteries. Good versus evil, and the war goes on.

Stephen King: The Shining, IT. The Shining is a winter book, the Overlook Hotel cut off by snow. IT is a doorstopper of a sprawling, coming-of-age, epic horror novel.

James Herbert: Sepulchre, The Dark, Ash. I love a lot of Herbert's books, and Sepulchre is one I keep going back to. There isn't much of a line between supernatural thriller and horror, and Herbert walks it.

J.A. Konrath: Origin. What do you expect if you keep Beelzebub in a bunker?

Rebecca Cantrell: It Wants Us Alive. Demons don't care about hot flashes, aching joints, or the ghosts that haunt Hazel Byrne. They only care about blood. And she has plenty left to spill. I also love Cantrell's series with James Rollins, The Order of the Sanguines, which is thriller with religious horror elements.

Greig Beck: The Devil's Peak. A fast-paced horror thriller inspired by a missing page of the first Bible, said to be written by the Devil himself. Built around Dante's Inferno, which also inspired my own A Thousand Fiendish Angels.

Kosoko Jackson: The Macabre. A picture is worth a thousand nightmares. Art history meets horror across generations. I loved this!

From my own shelf:

A Thousand Fiendish Angels by J.F. PennA Thousand Fiendish Angels: Three Short Stories Inspired by Dante's Inferno

Three dark stories linked by a book of human skin passed down through generations. On the edge of horror, thriller and the occult.

Buy direct from my store | Ebook on Amazon

Zombies, monsters and the things that hunt us

I'm not usually one for zombie books, and then Jonathan Maberry and Max Brooks changed my mind. These are the books where the monster is real and the people have to win.

Max Brooks: World War Z. This is the book that got me into zombies. It's incredibly well written, closer to alternate history than a monster book, and nothing like the film. The multi-cast audiobook is also excellent.

Jonathan Maberry: Rot & Ruin, Ghost Road Blues (Pine Deep book 1), Ink. I love many of Jonathan Maberry's books! Rot & Ruin is a YA crossover zombie series and part of how he got me reading zombies at all, and the Pine Deep trilogy starts with Ghost Road Blues.

Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan: The Strain. Vampires as a parasitic infection, spreading through the subway tunnels and sewers of New York. I love this series because it's so different from every other vampire book.

C.J. Tudor: The Gathering. A small town in Alaska, a boy found drained of blood, and a colony of vampyrs in the old mine settlement beyond the woods.

Jonathan Janz: Veil. People vanish from parks and city streets, then in broad daylight they're dragged screaming into the woods, into the water, into the sky. Nothing can save you from what you can't see.

Laura Elliott: Awakened. Science took sleep from humanity to make us more productive, and sleeplessness turned people into feral monsters. Quiet horror, and a different take on zombies.

Mira Grant: Overgrowth. An unusual alien-plant invasion story that's really about what it means to be human.

Scott Sigler: Infected. Michael Crichton-esque but with more horror, as the world copes with an alien invasion that turns humans into all kinds of weird. Contagious and Pandemic follow.

Jeremy Robinson: Island 731, The Sentinel: The Complete Jane Harper Trilogy, Artifact. Non-stop action with all kinds of monsters. Jeremy Robinson I like a lot.

Robert Masello: Blood and Ice. A journalist at the South Pole finds two bodies chained together and sealed in a block of ice. Then the ice is brought inside.

From my own shelf:

Catacomb by J.F. PennCatacomb: An Adventure Horror Novel

Walker Kane didn't believe in monsters, until they took his daughter. A thousand-year-old sacrifice beneath the streets of Edinburgh, and a father who is coming down to get her.

Buy direct from my store | Ebook on Amazon

Underground and deep-sea creature horror

I write in this space myself, with Catacomb and Bones of the Deep, and I've read a lot of it. Caves, trenches, tunnels, and something waiting in the dark.

Nick Cutter: The Deep. Lovecraft crossed with body horror, eight miles down in the Mariana Trench. Not to be confused with the Michaelbrent Collings book of the same name.

Nick Cutter: The Dorians. On a remote island in the Canadian wilderness, five elderly volunteers are offered the chance to stall their biological clocks, or even reverse them. The chance to put death on pause, forever, perhaps.

Horror from the deep: merfolk and the drowned

I love merfolk fiction. The sea is the last true wilderness on Earth, and these books are part of why I wrote Bones of the Deep.

Mira Grant: Into the Drowning Deep. Mermaids as apex predators, and a research ship that sails into their territory. Excellent.

A.G. Slatter: All the Murmuring Bones. Long ago the O'Malley family prospered through a deal with the mer: safety for their ships in return for a child of each generation. Dark, Gothic and excellent.

Hannah Whitten: Reliquary. A remote island, an aristocratic family with a bloody secret, and a young woman ready to fight back before she's offered to the dark god beneath the waves.

From my own shelf:

The Buried and the Drowned by J.F. PennThe Buried and the Drowned: A Short Story Collection

Dark short stories from the volcanic shores of Iceland to the silent depths of the Pacific. What happens when the buried and the drowned break free?

Buy direct from my store | Ebook on Amazon

From my own shelf:

Bones of the Deep by J.F. PennBones of the Deep: A Thriller

Some graves are meant to stay underwater. A marine archaeologist, a stolen non-human skeleton, and a tall ship two thousand miles out in the Pacific when something begins to move beneath the keel.

Buy direct from my store | Ebook on Amazon

Folk horror

I live in Bath, a short drive from Glastonbury, and the old ways run deep around me in Somerset. My English folk horror novel Blood Vintage came out of this landscape and was influenced by these books.

Adam Nevill: The Reddening, Monumental. Adam Nevill is one of my favourite horror authors, and The Reddening is one of the three influences I name in the Author's Note of Blood Vintage, along with The Wicker Man and Midsommar. Monumental is English folk horror in a hidden Devon valley, not far from me.

David Barnett: Scuttler's Cove, Scratch Moss, Twisted Pike. If you enjoyed Blood Vintage, you will enjoy these British novels of ancient rural customs, from a Cornish fishing village to an English mining community that claims a sacrifice every year.

L.V. Russell: The Bone Drenched Woods. Hyacinth Turning knows the terrors beyond her village, but she just wants a life, and a death, of her choosing. Atmospheric folk horror. Excellent if you turn towards the dark sometimes.

Adam Nevill: The Ritual. If you want The Wicker Man feeling in a Swedish forest instead of a Scottish island, this is the one.

Thomas Tryon: Harvest Home. Published in 1973, the same year as The Wicker Man, and practically the film's literary twin. The corn harvest wants blood.

John Langan: The Fisherman. Dutchman's Creek offers the promise of fine fishing, and of something more, something darker. This is not a book about fishing!

From my own shelf:

Blood Vintage by J.F. PennBlood Vintage: A Folk Horror Novel

The perfect wine requires the darkest sacrifice. Folk horror in a Somerset vineyard, where the community keeps an older calendar and the vintage is nourished by more than rain and sun.

Buy direct from my store | Ebook on Amazon

Weird, dark and literary

Horror often sits closer to literary fiction than most genres, and these are the strange ones that stuck.

Hailey Piper: Queen of Teeth. Weird cosmic horror at its best, and a well-deserved Bram Stoker Award winner.

Catriona Ward: Sundial. Rob is afraid of her daughter, who collects tiny bones and whispers to imaginary friends. Super dark.

Chuck Grossart: The Gemini Effect. The spawn of perverse wartime genetic research is unleashed on a modern city. Tech-horror fun.

A. Rushby: Slashed Beauties. I'm fascinated by Anatomical Venuses, the wax models of beautiful women made to teach anatomy, and this mystery explores how some of them might have been created. If you enjoy darker stories inspired by anatomy, try my thriller Desecration which has aspects of this kind of horror.

Scott Hawkins: The Library at Mount Char. A mysterious library contains the secrets to the universe.

Chuck Wendig: Blackbirds and the Miriam Black series. When Miriam touches someone, she can tell how and when they will die.

Martin Lastrapes: Inside the Outside. One girl copes with leaving a cannibal cult.

H.P. Lovecraft: The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories. The desecrated church in A Thousand Fiendish Angels came from reading Lovecraft, and there's a Liber Ivonis callback in Blood Vintage.

Various authors, edited by Dan Coxon: Unearthed: New Horror of Ancient Ruins. A short story anthology of horror in ancient ruins, with Josh Malerman, Jonathan Maberry, A.G. Slatter, Tim Lebbon and more. I love the atmospheric stories.

From my own shelf:

The Black Church by J.F. PennThe Black Church: A Short Story

A week alone in Iceland's most isolated church, a grief too heavy to carry, and an ancient darkness stirring beneath the foundations.

Buy direct from my store | Ebook on Amazon

Buy my horror direct

My own horror books are in the sections above. You can buy them direct from my store, where ebooks arrive by BookFunnel and paperbacks ship worldwide, or find them on Amazon. I recommend new horror books on my email newsletter every month: sign up for that and a free ebook at JFPenn.com/free.