By Horror Haunted: Stories
Don’t Go to Sleep in the Dark
These new editions of short stories, with striking covers, is part of a series of new releases of Celia Fremlin’s work.
Don’t Go to Sleep in the Dark is a Gothic story collection from the great writer of spine-chilling mysteries. The Spectator observed that this book ‘[g]rips like grim death’. Don’t Go to Sleep in the Dark was first published in 1970.
By Horror Haunted: Stories is second serving of spine-chilling Halloween tales from Fremlin, ‘Britain’s Patricia Highsmith’ (Sunday Times). First published in 1974, this collection is ‘Her Number On It, a compelling portrait of kleptomania.
Little Sister Death
The late William Gay’s final novel is a superb haunted house story, inspired by Tennessee’s Bell Witch hauntings (which will in itself have you googling frantically). William Gay’s earlier novel Twilight was, incidentally, picked by Stephen King in Entertainment Weekly as his novel of the year for 2007.
Stallo
Looking for an old-fashioned irony-free brick of a supernatural thriller in the vein of classic ’70s Stephen King? Look no further that this novel of trolls and shapeshifters set in the northern wilds of Sweden.
The Hours Before Dawn
This 1960s Edgar winner was Fremlin’s first novel, a terrifyingly tense first person account of a sleep-deprived mother’s growing paranoia, or is it something else? Beware the novel’s central set-piece, in which our narrator takes her baby and pram to the park at 3 am . . .
Through the Woods
Carroll’s astonishing graphic debut of Gothic, feminist driven, fairy-tale like stories will, as with Peter Swanson’s Her Every Fear, have you checking under your bed and afraid to turn out your light . . .
The Inner Room (Faber Stories)
The Wine-Dark Sea
Robert Aickman’s horror volumes – what he called his ‘strange stories’ – are classics of the genre. ‘Written with real psychological depth, these enigmatic tales rise far beyond straightforward ghost stories,’ said the Guardian, in a 2015 profile.
The Inner Room is one of a series of short stories published by Faber for our 90th anniversary in 2019. In perhaps the most magnificent of the ‘strange stories’, Aickman blurs the lines between memory, premonition and the hallucinated life.
First published in 1988, The Wine-Dark Sea contains eight stories that build towards disturbing yet enigmatic endings, including the classic story ‘Your Tiny Hand is Frozen.’
The Hunted
‘It’s bloody exciting. Heart-in-mouth pacing. The action does not stop,’ was one blogger’s verdict on this debut novel from Gabriel Bergmoser. Set in the Australian outback and featuring a service station on a little-used highway (a bad sign if there was one), this is a ‘high octane roller-coaster of a novel’ (reader quote).
Her Every Fear
More of a thriller, but this murderous tale of a disastrous apartment swap – with its superb switching points of view – is so suspenseful that you won’t want to read it if you’re home alone.
And finally . . .
Feeding the Monster: Why horror has a hold on us
By Anna Bogutskaya
All the horror, but in non-fiction form: in Feeding the Monster Anna Bogutskaya explores the relationship between popular culture and the Horror genre, and psychological insights into why people love Horror and what that means.
This reading list was originally published on 26 October 2017, written by Publishing Director Angus Cargill. Now updated for 2025.
Browse more Horror books published by Faber.
Title Image: from the movie It (2017), adapted from Stephen King’s 1986 novel.
