Stephen King’s scariest books, ranked

Over a nearly 50-year career, Stephen King has done plenty to earn his title as the American master of horror — but his 60-plus novels to date also spend a lot of time in the arenas of fantasy, suspense, crime, and drama. Not all Stephen King novels are scary, really, which isn’t at all a complaint: Plenty of them are breathlessly and compulsively readable without being the kind of book that pushes you to sleep with the lights on after you put it down for the night.

King has moved more and more toward suspense as he’s gotten further into his career. King’s 2023 novel HollyThis is an example of a ColumboIt’s a murder mystery in which the reader knows the outcome of one crime upfront and waits to read the next page. Mr. Mercedes The book is about how the heroine will be able to solve this crime, and then what will follow. It’s compelling, tense, and thrilling, and the details of that crime are memorably grotesque — but it isn’t a The following are some examples of how to avoid being a fool? book.

Some of King’s purer horror novels, on the other hand, are designed to keep readers up at night. So don’t mistake the following for a rundown of the The best way to get in touch with us is by calling (08) 987-0909. Stephen King novels — that would be a completely different list. It’s a list of the scariest Stephen King books. The ones that make you feel like you are waking up in a nightmare.

Honorable mention: Revival (2014)

Picture: Pocket Books

There are a lot of Revival isn’t scary. King fans might even wonder what he’s doing with this book, which seems oddly casual and methodical for most of its run — a series of check-ins between a musician and a significantly older preacher, running from the musician’s childhood to the preacher’s deathbed. But then there’s the ending, which finally pays off what’s mostly seemed like a strange literary exercise throughout. Suddenly, King goes from an almost clinical study of an odd obsession to one of the most terrifying short sequences he’s ever written, a sequence with chilling, stomach-churning implications that tap into the darkest corners of Lovecraftian cosmic dread. This isn’t a nerve-wracking novel, for the most part, but that ending almost feels like a jump scare in the way it comes after a long and comparatively mild buildup, then hits as hard as possible.

10. Bag of Bones (1998, 1998)

Longtime King readers will be well aware of how often he puts familiar little bits of himself into his work, whether he’s setting stories in his home state of Maine, addressing the kind of substance abuse and dependency he worked through earlier in his career, or writing about writers trying to write. Bones bag is the latter, but unlike other King books about writers, it barely has a foot set in the real and plausible — this is a purely supernatural book. This story has a similar feel to his version of The Ring, not in terms of the mechanics of hauntings, but in terms of a protagonist tracking the lore of a spirit who’s powerful, malevolent, and coming from a justified place of fury. It’s a rapidly building novel that keeps piling on the threat, and one where every new revelation just makes the scope and intensity of the haunting more unnerving.

9. Cujo (1981)

The opposite end of reality from Bones bag, Cujo is a mostly plausible book that’s just about a rabid Saint Bernard turning on a few members of its local community. While the threat may be small, it is localized in comparison to other books. CujoUses a lot foreshadowing as well as some nicely drawn characters to give the feeling of danger. Visceral writing adds to the terror of what is basically a true-life creature feature. Cujo, and the clear-eyed way King lays out how even a small threat is very large to the people trying to survive it — or keep their children safe from it.

8. ’Salem’s Lot (1975)

Anchor Books

King’s primal vampire book has been adapted several times at this point, but none of the screen versions really get at the purity of the novel, one of King’s more memorable uses of the “threat people handle poorly, making the problem worse” trope. One of King’s simpler and more straightforward horror novels when it comes to familiar monsters with familiar abilities, ’Salem’s Lot still stands out for its grotesque details, and the way King weaponizes horror fans’ knowledge of vampire tropes, making it obvious what’s likely to happen to the more hapless human protagonists, then making things even worse for them than the foreshadowing suggested.

7. Needful Things (2001)

You Need to Know About These Things is hampered by a fairly silly ending, but in the long lead-up, it’s one of King’s most indelibly crafted novels, a series of perfectly executed escalations that dives into the depths of human nature and finds us all wanting. More or less a deal-with-the-devil book that doubles as a “mysterious store where everything on the shelves is a monkey’s paw” story, this one centers on a charming newcomer to King’s beloved Castle Rock, Maine, setting — an elderly gentleman with a notions store that has whatever people need. The short-term price is very affordable. His long-term prices, on the other hand… You Need to Know About These Things has one of King’s best blends of “scary” and “suspenseful,” as the antagonist’s designs slowly become clear, and some of King’s more sympathetic and winning characters become more and more compromised, even though they can’t let go of their “purchases.” It’s a thrill ride right up to that odd ending.

6. The Tommyknockers (1997)

One of King’s lesser-loved and more fairly overlooked novels, TommyknockersIt is a strangely bad book for one with such beautiful sequences, and a slowly growing horror. It’s a bit like an alien invasion tale mixed with a story about body-snatchers. Tommyknockers It’s a book that is long and slow-moving, with plenty of things to say about alcoholism as well as power. The book’s central character is in the bottle, and its other one falls under a creeping alien corruption. TommyknockersIt builds with an especially unnerving, sense of human degeneration. And a story of more power being placed in the hands of less and lesser humane people with each page.

5. The Outsider (2018)

Images: Gallery Books

One of King’s few recent books that go for the jugular as often as his older work — and the only one of the Holly Gibney novels that’s more horror than crime procedural, even though it does have plenty of the latter —The OutsiderHolly spends a lot of time unraveling the mystery of who is responsible for the crime, before trying to determine what she can do.

This story is nominally in the category of body-snatchers. The Outsider The heavy implications that King puts into this scenario make it particularly terrifying. There are many horror books that rely heavily on physical isolation in order to create tension for the protagonist. The Outsider Holly is isolated because no one believes her when she uncovers terrifying secrets in the heart of a large city. The Outsider The terror is on several levels: first, the knowledge that something hungry for pain and vulnerable, out hunting, exists. Second, knowing it’s impossible to get most people to believe in it. Not knowing what to do about it. With plenty of creepy details and shocking encounters, King uses all three levels to produce a book that is among his finest in terms of horror and start.

4. The Year of It (1986).

Many people complain about You can also find out more about the following:’s length — fair enough, it tops 1,000 pages in most printings — but the complaints feel pretty odd to King’s biggest fans, because all that length just makes this one of King’s biggest banquets in terms of setting and structure. Essentially two massive novels in one — one about a group of outcast kids fighting the horror preying on their town (Derry, Maine, this time), the other about those same kids as adults, learning that the horror has returned —The following are some of the ways to get in touch with us. It also contains several short stories, novellas or other pieces about the horror itself and its hunting methods. It’s more or less a franchise packed into one story.

Sure, that scope and sprawl can get exhausting for those who can only read so many stories about a shape-changing creature worming its way into young people’s fears and finding terrible ways to kill them. The book is a page-by-page, You can also find out more about the following: still has some of King’s most gloriously under-the-skin writing, packed with menace and hunger in the form of something that literally turns into whatever its victims fear.

3. Pet Sematary (1983)

One of King’s most personal and close-to-home novels, Pet Sematary is heavy with portent and grief, the kind of book where you can feel a father’s anxieties seeping through every graphic, spooky page. King says he first wrote the book and then put it on hold for a time, fearing it might be too horrific to publish. It’s a good thing he finally relented. The story of a hidden burial ground that revives the dead is one of King’s grabbiest and most breathless books, and one that both plays fair with the audience in terms of forecasting its horrors upfront and that packs the story with shuddering twists. Be careful, new parents.

2. Misery (1987)

Image: Simon & Schuster

King went back to the “writer protagonist trying to write” well with this one. It’s another book that’s particularly shivery because it’s so plausible, without a hint of the supernatural to be seen, and because it’s so close to the bone for its author. When King began writing this novel about an author who finds himself in the grip of a predatory, agenda-driven fan, he had experience with entitled and demanding fans. The problem of entitled, demanding fans has become more visible with the growth of social media. Misery Today, it seems more credible than ever. King’s novels are a different story. TommyknockersThe following are some examples of how to get started: You can also find out more about the following: Stretch out and touch all aspects of the community MiseryIt is also one of the most compelling and lean books he has written. This one’s both terrifying and extremely hard to put down.

1. The Shining (1997)

Ask 20 King fans to name his scariest three books, and you’ll get 20 different lists — but The ShiningIt’s likely that all of them will have it. The various adaptations and King’s feelings about them have started a lot of arguments and obsessions over the years, but leaving them all aside, the book that started them is pure poisonous adrenaline. Here’s King working through his own grief and shame over his own alcoholism, in the form of a story about a writer fighting his addictions, slowly losing his mind, and becoming a growing threat to his wife and their vulnerable young son. Here’s a ghost story with a genteel and aristocratic twist, until it descends into gibbering, violent mayhem. And what’s in Room 237 is one of the most famous images in horror novels. It’s the definition of a “read with the lights on” horror novel, with so much personal emotion, angst, and self-recrimination built into it that every page feels personal.