“Just remember this,” he said in a deep voice that cut neatly through the confusion. “Whatever I’ve done, you’ve let me do.”
If you’re looking for your next scary read but feel like you’ve already clawed through all the biggest names in horror, you’re not alone. Some of the most chilling, creative, and unforgettable stories in the genre often fly totally under the radar. That’s where these underrated horror books come in. This list of underrated horror novels that deserve more hype is all about uncovering hidden gems, overlooked horror novels, and lesser-known horror stories that deliver just as much fear, atmosphere, and tension as the classics – if not more. From psychological horror that gets under your skin to supernatural stories that linger long after you’ve finished, these are the kind of books that prove horror is at its best when it surprises you. Whether you’re looking for horror book recommendations beyond Stephen King or simply want scary books that deserve more attention, this collection of hidden gem horror books deserves to be on your TBR pile!
The Ceremonies – T.E.D. Klein
First up on our list of underrated horror books is T.E.D. Klein’s weird fiction release, The Ceremonies. Jeremy Freirs is a graduate student and teacher who decides to spend his summer working on his dissertation and preparing for the class he will be teaching in the fall on Gothic Literature; he thinks he has found the perfect place, Gilead, New Jersey. Moving into a former storage building on the farm of Sarr and Deborah Poroth, he expects to spend a productive summer free from all distractions – he is quite wrong in this assumption.
Meanwhile, in New York, the reserved Carol Conklin goes about trying to survive in the big city. She meets Jeremy just before he leaves for the summer, and a connection is made which will find the couple developing a romantic relationship on somewhat strange terms. What they do not know is that they are about to become the pawns for someone known as the Old One, working to bring his master back after a very long absence.
The Auctioneer – Joan Samson
Harrowing tensions explode in a series of events that could happen anywhere, to anyone, just as they do to John Moore, whose days of freedom run out, who is stripped of his possessions, his courage, and his hopes, by the ominous presence of an insidious stranger impossible to resist.
Published to huge acclaim in 1976 but almost neglected in the years since, The Auctioneer is one of the all-time classic American horror novels. The tale of John Moore, his wife Mim, and his mother, it is a gripping tale of greed in a small town being quietly overrun by auctioneer Perly Dunsmore.
The Elementals – Michael McDowell
On a split of land cut off by the Gulf, three Victorian summer houses stand against the encroaching sand. Two of the houses at Beldame are still used. The third house, filling with sand, is empty… except for the vicious horror which is shaping nightmares from the nothingness that hangs in the dank, fetid air.
The McCrays and Savages, two fine Mobile families allied by marriage, have been coming to Beldame for years. This summer, with a terrible funeral behind them and a messy divorce coming up, even Luker McCray and little India, down from New York, are looking forward to being alone at Beldame. But they won’t be alone. For something there, something they don’t like to think about, is thinking about them… and about all the ways to make them die.
Come Closer – Sara Gran
A recurrent, unidentifiable noise in her apartment. A memo to her boss that’s replaced by obscene insults. Amanda – a successful architect in a happy marriage – finds her life going off kilter by degrees. She starts smoking again, and one night, for no reason, without even the knowledge that she’s doing it, she burns her husband with a cigarette. At night, she dreams of a beautiful woman with pointed teeth on the shore of a blood-red sea.
The new voice in Amanda’s head, the one that tells her to steal things and talk to strange men in bars, is strange and frightening, and Amanda struggles to wrest back control of her life. Is she possessed by a demon, or is she simply insane?
The Good House – Tananarive Due
Angela hoped her grandmother’s famous “healing magic” could save her failing marriage while she and her family lived in the old house in the summer of 2001. Instead, an unexpected tragedy ripped Angela’s family apart. Two years on, Angela is back in Sacajawea and discovers she isn’t the only one to suffer a shocking loss. Since she left, there have been other senseless tragedies, and Angela wonders whether they are all related somehow.
With the help of Myles Fisher, her high school boyfriend, and clues from beyond the grave, Angela races to solve a deadly puzzle that has followed her family for generations. She must summon her own hidden gifts to face the timeless adversary stalking her in her grandmother’s home – and in the Washington woods beyond in this underrated horror novel by Tananarive Due.
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The Grip Of It – Jac Jemc
Julie and James settle into a house in a small town outside the city where they met. The move – prompted by James’ penchant for gambling, his inability to keep his impulses in check – is quick and seamless. But this house has plans for this unsuspecting couple. Together, the couple soon find themselves embarking on a panicked search for the source of their mutual torment, a journey which mires them in the history of their peculiar neighbours, and the mysterious residents who lived in the house before Julia and James.
Written in creepy, potent prose, The Grip of It is an overlooked horror book that is enthralling and psychologically intense, raising questions around home: how we make it and how it in turn makes us, mapping itself onto bodies and the relationships we cherish.
Experimental Film – Gemma Files
Gemma Files’ Experimental Film is a contemporary ghost story in which former Canadian film history teacher Lois Cairns – jobless and depressed in the wake of her son’s autism diagnosis – accidentally discovers the existence of lost early twentieth century Ontario filmmaker Mrs A. Macalla Whitcomb.
By deciding to investigate how Mrs Whitcomb’s obsessions may have led to her mysterious disappearance, Lois unwittingly invites the forces which literally haunt Mrs Whitcomb’s films into her life, eventually putting her son, her husband, and herself in grave danger. Experimental Film is one of the best horror books that blends painful character detail with a creeping aura of dread to produce a fictionalised “memoir” designed to play on the audience’s narrative expectations and pack an existentialist punch.
The Rust Maidens – Gwendolyn Kiste
It’s the summer of 1980 in Cleveland, Ohio, and Phoebe Shaw and her best friend, Jacqueline, have just graduated from high school, only to confront an ugly, uncertain future. Across the city, abandoned factories populate the skyline. The girls Phoebe and Jacqueline grew up with are changing. It starts with footprints of dark water on the sidewalk. Then, one by one, the girls’ bodies wither away, their fingernails turning to broken glass, and their bones exposed like corroded metal beneath their flesh.
As rumours swirl about the grotesque transformations, soon everyone from nosy tourists to clinic doctors and government officials begins arriving on Denton Street, eager to catch sight of the “Rust Maidens” in metamorphosis. Yet no one knows what’s happening or why. Alternating between past and present, Phoebe struggles to uncover the mystery of the Rust Maidens – and her own unwitting role in the transformations – before she loses everything she holds dear in this inventive gothic horror novel by Gwendolyn Kiste.
The Boatman’s Daughter – Andy Davidson
Ever since her father was killed when she was just a child, Miranda Crabtree has kept her head down and her eyes up, ferrying contraband for a mad preacher and his declining band of followers to make ends meet and to protect an old witch and a secret child from harm.
But dark forces are at work in the bayou. And when the preacher makes an unthinkable demand, it sets Miranda on a desperate, dangerous path, forcing her to consider what she is willing to sacrifice to keep her loved ones safe.
The Cipher – Kathe Koja
Nicholas is a would-be poet and video-store clerk with a weeping hole in his hand – weeping not blood, but a plasma of tears. It began with Nakota and her crooked friend. She had to see the dark hole in the storage room down the hall. She had to make love to Nicholas beside it, and stare into its secretive, promising depths. Then Nakota began her experiments: First, she put an insect into the hole. Then a mouse…
Now, from down the hall, the black hole calls out to Nicholas each day and every night. And he will go to it. Because it has already seared his flesh, infected his soul, and started him on a journey of obsession – through its soothing, blank darkness into the blinding core of terror…
Thin Air – Michelle Paver
The Himalayas, 1935. Kangchenjunga. The third-highest peak on Earth. Greatest killer of them all. Five Englishmen set off from Darjeeling, determined to tackle the sacred summit. But courage can only lead them so far – and the mountain is not their only foe. As mountain sickness and the horrors of extreme altitude set in, the past refuses to stay buried. And, sometimes, the truth won’t set you free…
Starve Acre – Andrew Michael Hurley
The worst thing possible has happened. Richard and Juliette Willoughby’s son, Ewan, has died suddenly at the age of five. Starve Acre, their house by the moors, was meant to be full of life, but is now a hunted place. Convinced Ewan still lives there in some form, Juliette seeks the help of the Beacons, a seemingly benevolent group of occultists.
Richard, to try and keep the boy out of his mind, has turned his attention to the field opposite the house, where he patiently digs the barren dirt in search of a legendary oak tree. But, as they delve further into their grief, both uncover more than they set out to. One of the best underrated horror books, Starve Acre is a novel about the way in which grief splits the world in two, and how, in searching for hope, we can so easily uncover horror.
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Part-time reader, part-time rambler, and full-time Horror enthusiast, James has been writing for What We Reading since 2022. His earliest reading memories involved Historical Fiction, Fantasy and Horror tales, which he has continued to take with him to this day. James’ favourite books include The Last (Hanna Jameson), The Troop (Nick Cutter) and Chasing The Boogeyman (Richard Chizmar).
