Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together.

Today the top ten was a Halloween freebie so I have written a straightforward list of my favourite horror / supernatural novels.

1. The Silence of the Lambs – Thomas Harris (1988) The relationship between Clarice and Hannibal Lector is what makes this novel.
2. The Fog – James Herbert (1975) A mysterious fog seeps from a crack in the earth and drives people mad. A superb read.
3. The Stand – Stephen King (1978) This contains one of my favourite pieces of writing ever where King describes the spread of a virus from the first sneeze onwards. Like The Road, a post-apocalyptic scenario.
4. Rosemary’s Baby – Ira Levin (1967) Even better than the film (which follows the novel really closely.)
5. I am Legend – Richard Matheson (1954) A last man standing tale with Robert Neville fighting the vampires for his humanity and the future of the world.
6. The Road – Cormac McCarthy (2006). Perhaps not an obvious horror choice but the bleakness of the landscape and the dark violence earn it its place.
7. Frankenstein – Mary Shelley (1818) I love this book and its commentary on the way society treats outsiders. It does what all good horror should do and make you think
8. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson (1886) A great story about hypocrisy and sin. I’ve taught this any number of times and it hasn’t lost its freshness.
9. Some of Your Blood – Theodore Sturgeon (1961) A strange vampiric tale, told through letters and diaries. The pay off is definitely worth it.
10. The Invisible Man – H. G. Wells (1897) Much better than the film, this is a dark parable about not being accepted by society and the repercussions of that.