So, you’ve binged all the Stephen King novels you could. You’ve watched “The Shawshank Redemption” and “Stand By Me.” You’re paying mild attention to Edgar Wright’s upcoming reboot of “The Running Man,” and you know Tom Hiddleston (“Loki”) will be in “The Life of Chuck.” You even tried Max’s “Salem’s Lot” revival series. That didn’t work out too well, huh? Well, we tried to warn you that these vamps were missing their fangs.
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King has an approachable, easy-reading style that lets almost any reader rip through his imaginative horrors and his darkest fantasies at the pace of a cherry-red Plymouth Fury. Finding something that tickles that dark and terrible itch is surprisingly tricky, with many horror writers finding their own grim dark or heavy-prose niches. We’re here to help, offering you, o Constant Reader, 15 terrific novels that will either satisfy fans of some of King’s biggest and best stories, or will show you the world of monsters he grew up on, and still love.
Let’s turn the page, as we showcase 15 books to read if you love Stephen King.
Shadowland, by Peter Straub
Peter Straub was King’s partner for “The Talisman” and “Black House,” dark fantasy novels that link to the “Dark Tower” as worlds connect through time and space. But Straub is a king of horror in his own right, and fans of Jack Sawyer’s trek across America owe it to themselves to read “Shadowland.” The premise is simple: Two young private school lads have a chance to learn real magic from a secretive master over a long summer break. The truth becomes something darker, full of lessons about maturity and loss.
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There’s real magic afoot in the Shadowland, the name for the secluded mansion Del Nightingale’s stage magician uncle owns. It’s a salve, at first, as both boys have gone through a horrendous year of bullying and worse at school. But it’s a trap all its own, as Del’s friend, Tom, gradually realizes some frightening things about Del’s uncle, and the future he’s got in store for them all. Forget magical English boarding schools loaded with unpleasant treatment of those who suffer the most. Come home to “Shadowland.” You won’t forget the ride.
Swan Song, by Robert McCammon
The apocalypse has come. What remains of humanity’s future rests on a theological struggle between good and evil, where God makes his will known and a hellish figure is rallying his troops. It’s not “The Stand,” it’s “Swan Song,” a Robert McCammon novel from 1987 that’s genuinely as great as King’s epic, partially because it doesn’t play peekaboo with its religion and makes you believe in magic.
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Don’t assume that “Swan Song” is a cheap knockoff. The comparison above aside, it’s a novel that stands on its own. This apocalypse is nuclear, built on an escalation of fear and an idea of theology that’s brutally Old Testament. Its characters are more diverse, more flawed, and deeply intriguing. Most brutal of all is a mirror-pair of child characters: The titular Swan is a young girl who will often struggle with her role as a possible world-healer. The equally young boy, Roland, is a black-hearted nerd who wins a chance at power and grasps at it in the darkest ways possible. It’s a book that rides on its characters and their morals more than the Powers guiding them, and in some ways, “Swan Song” is even better than King’s take on the post-apocalyptic genre.
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Weaveworld, by Clive Barker
“Weaveworld” is the best novel for readers who might not vibe with a lot of other Clive Barker works. It’s his “Alice in Wonderland,” or a particularly Barkerish take on Charles de Lint, the go-to-guy for thoughtful urban fantasy. But for King fans, “Weaveworld” is something to try and fill the emptiness you’ll feel after “Eyes of the Dragon,” or maybe his more recent “Fairy Tale.”
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The Weaveworld itself is a magic carpet, but this one doesn’t fly. It’s a living metaphor for an entire hidden world called the Fugue, where a secret society of Seerkind — Barker’s take on the Fair Folk — live protected from a being called the Scourge, which hunts them. The goal is the erasure of all magic from the world, and naturally, a handful of once-ordinary humans who had no idea their lives were going to wildly change are stuck in the middle of it all. Like some of King’s own classics, there’s a bit of bloat about two-thirds of the way into the work, but no harm done. Strange and majestic, and completely magical.
Black River Orchard, by Chuck Wendig
Castle Rock is one of Stephen King’s curious little towns, a place where anything can happen — except eldritch demon clowns. You have to go up the road to Derry for that. But a Castle Rock story is its own shuddery joy; a hymn to the towns some Americans grew up with, where we know the corpses are buried. For Chuck Wendig, this mythic corner of America is alive and well, lurking at the fringes of Dutch country Pennsylvania.
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Like King, Wendig lives and works in his territory, and to go from remote farm country where the Amish still live quiet lives to suddenly finding yourself in a suburban hell is normal life. “Black River Orchard” relies on this reality, where a modern apple farmer who’s on the cusp of losing it all if the next few farmer’s markets don’t pan out is a story you can find in my local newspaper a few times a year. But this apple farmer finds a breed of apple so special that few can resist taking another bite. And another. Until they’re fully bewitched. Along the way, Wendig unveils rural secret societies and small town bigotries, all of which combine as the real power of these magical apples begin to wreak havoc.
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Summer of Night, by Dan Simmons
Dan Simmons is best known by science fiction fans for his “Hyperion” saga and by historical horror fans for “The Terror,” and both showcase his penchant for gradually adding dashes of horror to pretty much everything he writes. “Summer of Night” is one of his most encapsulated stories, mostly taking place in the small town of Elm Haven, where a handful of children get to unravel the terrors gradually revealing themselves. This one’s not just for “It” fans, but there’s a taste of “The Shining,” and even devotees of King heir Joe Hill’s “Locke & Key” series will find something to love in Elm Haven.
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Some beats are familiar; lost children, unsettling stalkers, outright ghosts and spooky scares. But on the whole, the tone is fresh, and if you loved the way “It” explored the inner lives of kids, you’ll find a lot to enjoy here. The revelations of the great evil haunting rural Illinois won’t be as deep as Pennywise’s predations, but they’re Lovecraftian in their own right. Simmons is a stellar writer in general, and hopefully this familiar taste will lead you on to more of his works.
Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury
The corruption and secret terrors that can haunt our youthful years are a theme King never seems to stray too far from. It’s a theme that comes from some of the best books he would’ve grown up on, and that includes the works of the legendary author Ray Bradbury. King discusses Bradbury in “Danse Macabre,” his non-fiction essay on the movies that made him, and “Something Wicked This Way Comes” earns particular attention. It’s a conversation that returns in King’s “Fairy Tale,” and once you’ve read this classic novel, you won’t wonder why.
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Mr. Dark is a carnival’s mysterious recruiter (played by Jonathan Pryce in the 1983 adaptation, shown above), and in his shadow you’ll find not just the beginnings of Pennywise and King’s vampire lord, Barlow, but perhaps Randall Flagg himself. Dark seduces people to the carnival by feeding their dreams and offering misery in return, turning most of his victims into things worse than Bradley Cooper’s fate as a geek in “Nightmare Alley.” The only way to win is joy. “Something Wicked This Way Comes” is one of Bradbury’s best works. King himself knows why.
Watchers, by Dean Koontz
It’s no secret King and Koontz aren’t friends. King has made a few derogatory comments about Koontz’ quality as a writer in the past, and Koontz, politely, keeps his mouth shut. Beyond that, their work is a matter of taste. In the ’80s and ’90s, if you were jonesing for another King, you couldn’t go too far wrong with Koontz. For animal lovers who want more Oy or a happier ending for Cujo, “Watchers” is the novel that gave Koontz a little more sway in the horror community.
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Full of cornball ’80s science that won’t land if you’re a Crichton fan — to be fair, King sucks at science, too — “Watchers” puts most of its charm on Einstein’s back. Einstein is a brilliant golden retriever, genetically engineered for intelligence. He’s also engineered to counteract another horrific lab experiment, a thing known only as the Outsider. Thrills and chills ensue, and it’s all handled deftly enough that Hollywood swept in to make a few bucks. As pictured above, Corey Haim becomes a teenage version of the novel’s middle-aged veteran, Travis, and the results are… well, we recommend the book highly. The film? Not so much.
Rosemary’s Baby, by Ira Levin
“Rosemary’s Baby” is another story King explores in “Danse Macabre,” although he mostly focuses on the fantastic film adaptation, which was directed and scripted by the controversial Roman Polanski. Blackly comic from beginning to end, “Rosemary’s Baby” became the keystone of the religious horror movie genre, an irony that never stopped being funny as hell to writer Ira Levin, who also wrote the equally black “The Boys from Brazil” from his Jewish perspective.
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Fans of King’s female heroes, from “Dolores Claiborne” to “Gerald’s Game” will get a kick out of Levin’s tale of the deliberately sheltered and increasingly gaslit Rosemary Woodhouse (played by Mia Farrow, as pictured in the film above). There are a few rough spots for the modern reader, as there’s no way around the fact that the plot requires Rosemary’s assault to create Rosemary’s baby, but it’s not designed to be a comfortable ride. Stick with it and you’ll find one of the best thrillers in modern fiction, with an ending so fiendishly twisted that little else can compare.
Silence of the Lambs, by Thomas Harris
Not everything King writes is supernatural horror, but in all his works, there’s always a good chance that humanity can create its own biggest evils. For fans of Holly Gibney or King’s oddball experiments with crime noir, like his Hard Case Crime trilogy, it’s a safe recommendation to try out some of the best crime thrillers on your bookstore’s shelf, and none is more infamous or as horror-adjacent as “Silence of the Lambs.”
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Nominally, the second in a loose series that completely falls apart once Harris fixates on Hannibal Lecter’s origins (“Hannibal Rising” is, quite simply, bad), young FBI trainee Clarice Starling (depicted in the controversial Academy Award-winning film by Jodie Foster above) spends a lot of the novel as an unwitting carrot to draw Dr. Lecter out enough to help solve the Buffalo Bill murders. Both the novel and the film don’t leave her as some lost bird, however, while Clarice’s childhood lambs may scream, Starling becomes a preserving figure against some of the worst horror a human being can inflict on another.
I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson
“Cell” is not one of King’s best, featuring hijacked people moving in a flock and being hunted by the surviving “normal” people, but it’s a great platform to go read a classic novel that does it all better. “I Am Legend” is one of Richard Matheson’s most well-known works, a twist on the vampire novel that, infamously, Hollywood can never bother to get right.
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From an enthusiastic but still inaccurate Vincent Price adaptation to an absolutely absurd Will Smith vehicle (as shown above) that whiffs the novel’s thematically important ending, we’re comfortable telling you to stick with the book. Matheson is a master of imagination and wit, using it to create classic “Twilight Zone” episodes and explorations of love and mortality. “I Am Legend” sees Matheson become one of the first to add biology to the lore of vampires and zombies, setting the platform for later works like “28 Days Later.” At its core it’s a novel about loneliness and ego, with a lone man adrift in a world that he can’t understand is no longer his to master. The results are tragic — just not for him.
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Watership Down, by Richard Adams
“Watership Down” gets namechecked the first time we meet Stu Redman in “The Stand,” but King’s affection for the novel goes deeper than just a throwaway line. The infamously not-for-children novel (with its equally intense animated adaptation, shown above) is one of King’s favorite novels of all time. Pretty good for a bunch of rabbits looking for a new warren, but as you might guess, a story worth the attention goes a lot deeper than bunnies running amok.
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Richard Adams gives his rabbits a world of their own, flavored with mysticism and prophecy. These bunnies, from the empathetic leader Hazel to his seer brother, Fiver, are touched by our world, but they live bound by their own wheel of fate. There’s a lot to unpack in their journey, from a dangerous warren that’s watched over by the terrifying General Woundwort to the friendly corvid Kehaar, and all of it will make you understand the allure of “The Dark Tower.” Adams’ work is so central to King that another novel, “Shardik,” gets its due as one of King’s protectors of the beams.
Camp Damascus, by Chuck Tingle
Not only are Chuck Tingle’s hilarious “tingler” novellas art, but the secretive Tingle is also one of our new horror masters. Like King does with novels like “Later” and “It,” Tingle takes on the tropes of the lonely outsider, putting his troubled characters on a journey for their own identity that’ll put their soul at hazard. “Camp Damascus” is wrapped in a top layer of all too real and relevant horror, as our narrator, Rose, realizes how much she’s been gaslit about who she is by the family that’s supposed to unconditionally love her.
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Unconditional love doesn’t send gay children to conversion camps with mysterious and unethical methods, and like “The Exorcist” and its hospital scenes, the tragic reality of these camps are sometimes worse than the supernatural horrors that gradually unveil themselves. Tingle makes his characters work for their happy ending, but these are characters that deserve them and have been deprived of that in far too many other horror novels.
Last Days, by Adam Neville
Finding something like the cults of “Revival” or the monstrous True Knot of “Doctor Sleep” is tough, but British horror novelist Adam Neville has a terrific, sprawling novel about a documentary crew that become their own nightmarish story as they investigate the fall of the apocalyptic Last Days cult. “Last Days” blends not quite true medieval history together with familiar but well handled scares into something that’s worth an occasionally bumpy ride.
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Neville is also the author behind “The Ritual,” which was adapted into a terrific condemnation of camping in the woods in 2018, and “Last Days” plays harder with some similar themes. The Nordic paganism of Moder is set aside for an exploration of something like fallen Catholicism, where demonic forces that feel straight out of a Bosch painting cajole their followers into black rites that mock everything the Vatican has to offer. It’s also a terrific look at the psyche of the cult leader, people who are charismatic, controlling, and contain a dangerous emptiness inside them that lets them to take everything from others in order to satisfy themselves.
Boy’s Life, by Robert McCammon
“The Body,” adapted into a terrific movie as “Stand by Me,” is King’s most autobiographical novella. There’s something earnest about it, true to the period it takes place, and touched with a kid’s real fascination with horror and death. Robert McCammon is an equal master of this gift, but “Boy’s Life” adds layers of strange and supernatural things to its own version of bucolic American life. It also adds some horrors that stay true today.
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Cory Mackenson is an all American kid, with dreams of being a writer, a dog he loves, and a rural town he’s known his whole life. Or at least he thought he did, until one summer, the world he’s known begins to unravel in a mix of close to home mortalities, murder mysteries, and the realization that hate and bigotry will always try to worm its way into polite society. While there’s some similarities to “It,” most of “Boy’s Life” dances with that nostalgic vision of our own pasts, which eventually contrast with the darker stuff a lot of us try to forget.
What Moves the Dead, by T. Kingfisher
Stephen King makes no bones about his love for the classic horror writers that built today’s foundations. Edgar Allen Poe, along with Chambers and Bierce, flavor King’s throwback-style stories like “N,” but he’s not the only writer out to help new audiences find a way to the classics. T. Kingfisher (a pseudonym for artist Ursula Vernon) revamps “The Fall of the House of Usher” into a dark fantasy “Eyes of the Dragon” fans should love.
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“What Moves the Dead” follows most of Poe’s original story beats, but the tragic curse that lurks inside the Usher family is explored in rich and sometimes biological terms. Kingfisher has a fascination for the natural world that seeps into all of her works, and this novel will have you questioning the mysterious and often inexplicable world of fungi more than “The Last of Us” did. Dark, romantic, and tragic, it’s a book worth tasting for any classic horror fan. Just remember to be careful around bogs.
