A dark thriller set mainly in GLASGOW
Ten Great HORROR Books to Shock You
5th August 2025
Ten great horror books to shock you. Horror books, a genre dedicated to evoking fear, unease, and dread, have captivated readers for centuries. These narratives tap into our deepest anxieties and societal fears, exploring the unknown, the monstrous, and the psychological darkness within us all. Horror authors use various techniques to create suspense, including building a chilling atmosphere, developing relatable characters facing unimaginable threats, and employing shocking plot twists. Whether it’s supernatural entities, slasher villains, or the terrifying reality of human depravity, horror fiction serves as a safe space to confront our fears, offering a cathartic experience while providing a thrilling and unforgettable escape.
Here are ten of our favourites titles.
Lockdown by Peter May – LONDON
‘They said that twenty-five percent of the population would catch the flu. Between seventy and eighty percent of them would die. He had been directly exposed to it, and the odds weren’t good.’
A CITY IN QUARANTINE
London, the epicenter of a global pandemic, is a city in lockdown. Violence and civil disorder simmer. Martial law has been imposed. No-one is safe from the deadly virus that has already claimed thousands of victims. Health and emergency services are overwhelmed.
A MURDERED CHILD
At a building site for a temporary hospital, construction workers find a bag containing the rendered bones of a murdered child. A remorseless killer has been unleashed on the city; his mission is to take all measures necessary to prevent the bones from being identified.
A POWERFUL CONSPIRACY
D.I. Jack MacNeil, counting down the hours on his final day with the Met, is sent to investigate. His career is in ruins, his marriage over and his own family touched by the virus. Sinister forces are tracking his every move, prepared to kill again to conceal the truth. Which will stop him first – the virus or the killers?
Where I End by Sophie White – IRELAND
My Mother.
At night my mother creaks, the house creaks along with her …’
Aoileann has never left the island. Her silent bed-bound mother is the survivor of a private disaster no one will speak about.
Aoileann desperately wants a family, and when artist Rachel and her baby move to the island, Aoileann finds a focus for her relentless love
Carrie by Stephen King – MAINE
An exciting reissue of Stephen King’s debut novel about an outcast teenager with a frightening power which put him on the map and set him on his journey as a household name.
Carrie White is no ordinary girl.
Carrie White has the gift of telekinesis.
To be invited to Prom Night by Tommy Ross is a dream come true for Carrie – the first step towards social acceptance by her high school colleagues.
But events will take a decidedly macabre turn on that horrifying and endless night as she is forced to exercise her terrible gift on the town that mocks and loathes her.
Demon by Matt Wesolowski – NORTH YORK MOORS
In 1995, the picture-perfect village of Ussalthwaite was the site of one of the most heinous crimes imaginable, in a case that shocked the world.
Twelve-year-old Sidney Parsons was savagely murdered by two boys his own age. No reason was ever given for this terrible crime, and the ‘Demonic Duo’ who killed him were imprisoned until their release in 2002, when they were given new identities and lifetime anonymity.
Elusive online journalist Scott King investigates the lead-up and aftermath of the killing, uncovering dark stories of demonic possession, and encountering a village torn apart by this unspeakable act.
And, as episodes of his Six Stories podcast begin to air, and King himself becomes a target of media scrutiny and the public’s ire, it becomes clear that whatever drove those two boys to kill is still there, lurking, and the campaign of horror has just begun…
I Am Dust by Louise Beech – HULL
The Dean Wilson Theatre is believed to be haunted by a long-dead actress, singing her last song, waiting for her final cue, looking for her killer…
Now Dust, the iconic musical, is returning after twenty years. But who will be brave enough to take on the role of ghostly goddess Esme Black, last played by Morgan Miller, who was murdered in her dressing room?
Theatre usher Chloe Dee is caught up in the spectacle. As the new actors arrive, including an unexpected face from her past, everything changes. Are the eerie sounds and sightings backstage real or just her imagination? Is someone playing games?
Is the role of Esme Black cursed? Could witchcrat be at the heart of the tragedy? And are dark deeds from Chloe’s past about to catch up with her?
Not all the drama takes place onstage. Sometimes murder, magic, obsession and the biggest of betrayals are real life. When you’re in the theatre shadows, you see everything.
And Chloe has been watching…
Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby Jr – BROOKLYN
Last Exit to Brooklyn remains undiminished in its awesome power and magnitude as the novel that first showed us the fierce, primal rage seething in America’s cities. Selby brings out the dope addicts, hoodlums, prostitutes, workers, and thieves brawling in the back alleys of Brooklyn. This explosive best-seller has come to be regarded as a classic of modern American writing.
Simon Sixsmith: A Ghost Story by Daniel Pembrey – SOUTH CAROLINA
When London-based obituaries writer Simon Sixsmith receives a letter out of the blue telling him he’s inherited a property in the Southern US, he can’t but help fly out and investigate. Yet when Simon arrives in the marshy South Carolina Lowcountry, all is not as it first seemed. As he is drawn deeper into his ancestors’ plantation-owning history, his problematic personal life and the horrifying events around the property combine into a macabre conclusion.
The House Of A Hundred Whispers by Graham Masterton – DARTMOOR
On a windswept moor, an old house guards its secrets…
All Hallows Hall is a rambling Tudor mansion on the edge of the bleak and misty Dartmoor. It is not a place many would choose to live. Yet the former Governor of Dartmoor Prison did just that. Now he’s dead, and his children – long estranged – are set to inherit his estate.
But when the dead man’s family come to stay, the atmosphere of the moors seems to drift into every room. Floorboards creak, secret passageways echo, and wind whistles in the house’s famous priest hole. And then, on the same morning the family decide to leave All Hallows Hall and never come back, their young son Timmy disappears – from inside the house.
Does evil linger in the walls? Or is evil only ever found inside the minds of men?
American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis – NEW YORK CITY
In American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis imaginatively explores the incomprehensible depths of madness and captures the insanity of violence in our time or any other. Patrick Bateman moves among the young and trendy in 1980s Manhattan. Young, handsome, and well educated, Bateman earns his fortune on Wall Street by day while spending his nights in ways we cannot begin to fathom. Expressing his true self through torture and murder, Bateman prefigures an apocalyptic horror that no society could bear to confront.
Creatures of the Pool by Ramsey Campbell – LIVERPOOL
Gavin Meadows is a tour guide in Liverpool, and enjoys taking his tourist clientele through the darker sides of his home town. His life, however, is thrown off kilter when his Father disappears without a trace – shortly after his Father had shared some research ideas with him. Ancient secrets of mystery abound below the terrain of Liverpool. His Mother, too, disappears Gavin is forced to explore territories that may contain dark evil…
We hope you enjoy our selection of Horror stories!
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