The Long Walk was great, I also liked Dolans' Cadillac and Jerusalem's Lot. Dolans Cadillac is a revenge story with no supernatural or otherworldly influences, it feels like something that could actually happen. Jerusalem's Lot is interesting because the whole story is told through a series of letters the main character is writing and sending home. I don't know why but the concept of telling a story in this way really drew me in.

I definitely think Kings short Stories are his best. Otherwise he just goes on and on, forgetting what book he's working on and bringing in characters from other books until finally getting to an anti-climactic ending.

The Portrait of Dorian Gray is quite good. I liked the Victorian feel and language, the story is also somewhat horrific but more in an atmospheric sense or hindsight rather than right now, you are dying/going mad-type yet positively interesting as well.

I've read the 3 first novels in Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles, they are superb. The 6th and 8th book as well due to the characters they focus on, I plan to read the 12th I think because yet another focus on one character. If you only want to read one I highly recommend The Vampire Lestat, it's the best in the series in terms of tone, gothic atmosphere, language, pace, self-contained story and interesting characters.

I was thinking of reading some Clive Barker novels but I got stuck in Imajica, I suspended his books for now. I've still Lovecraft on my readlist but I've been entering a phase of classics in fantasy and science-fiction.

Has anyone read House of Leaves? It's supposed to be bizarre horror, it sounded interesting when I read a few non-spoiler reviews. After reading Thomas Ligottis non-fiction, I'm really interested in his Teatro Grottesco too.

The horror movie adaptations by Alan Dean Foster aren't bad reads. I've read his novel versions of Alien and The Thing. Both are pretty damn decent. I've also heard that John Steakley's Vampire$ is pretty good. And of course you can't go wrong with early Stephen King. Pet Cemetery, The Shining, It, and Misery are all excellent.

Not before. He did it after he already got sufficiently popular as King (having published three novels and been nominated for two awards), but not popular enough for his publisher to accept and promote more than one book per year per author.

Anyway, the scariest horror novel is Let the Right One In. The scariest non-horror novel is Permutation City. However, I think neither is really in the spirit of Halloween. Halloween is about getting spooked by fictional monsters for fun; supernatural elements should be based on irrational fears. Poverty, hopelessness, and depression are scary IRL.

The Shining is a great book, Carrie I've got but not read yet.
The Green Mile, a good book, but not spooky.
Just others I've read by him have been meh (& worthy of a relish jar ;p)

One book I'm both looking forward to & dreading reading is Doctor Sleep, the sequel to The Shining. Same goes for the prequel (film being made, so assume book is out?)

I just bought Doctor Sleep, but haven't started it yet. It's literally sitting right here on the counter next to me. ;P

I had no idea it existed until a couple of months ago, when a woman (regular customer) mentioned the book. She said it's sat waiting for her to read too lol. So, I'd been keeping eyes out for it in other shops.
Low & behold, shop was empty few weeks later, was stood chatting to another volunteer whilst staring into space, eyes flashed over books donated on the shelves & the title jumped out at me...as did the volunteer when I yelped "Oh shit, hang on!!" ;)

Any other ideas?

Beh. Lots of King talks already. Should I mention that I consider "it" and "pet semetary" as his best (in the horror genre) ?

Ramsay Campbell's "hungry moon" had disappointed me when I had read it long ago (it had been much hyped by a friend), but, in retrospect, I find its ideas and atmosphere quite nice.

"Throat sprockets", by Tim Lucas, is a lovely little disturbing book, but it's more a twisted social end-of-the world tale than pure horror.

The Strougatski bros' "Roadside picnic" also have neat horror elements, though it's more on the scifi side.

Topor's "Tenant" is a wonderful book, but again, maybe more poetically surreal than horrifying.

And I am not sure if Jean Ray's short tales have been translated in english. He's the best when it comes to classic ghost stories.

Of course, the most horrifying books are nonfiction. But that's not exactly halloween's spirit...

Oh. I forgot :

Absolutely anything from Matheson. Especially short stories.

I'm about to embark on Bruce Campbell's autobiography If Chins Could Kill: Confessions Of A B Movie Actor. Considering his career, I suppose that might count as fitting into the theme of this thread.

Not sure it counts but Kafka's Metamorphosis can be quite disturbing. And there's always the classics like Bram's Stoker's Dracula and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

Matheson... Thanks for this gem of a recommendation! And the rest.

My favorite and standard Halloween read is this:

http://www.psupress.org/books/titles/0-271-01750-3.html

LOVE THAT BOOK!

The movie isn't bad (and follows the book very closely minus Fischer being played WAY too seriously by Roddy McDowall) but I got frustrated with all of the things they could have done better and as much as I hate remakes, I think a great one could be done.