1. My Life in Pictures (1971)
My Life in Pictures is a book of poetry.
2. Ishmael (1972)
Ishmael is a book of poetry.
3. Open Air (1972)
Open Air is a book of poetry.
4. Marriages (1973)
Marriages is a mainstream literary story about a man who cheats on his wife.
5. Under Venus (1974)
Under Venus is a mainstream society story about the relationship between a promiscuous young woman and a musician in the late 1960s.
6. Julia (1975)
Julia is a supernatural psychological horror story.
A woman leaves her marriage and tries to start a new life after the death of her daughter. In her new neighbourhood, she sees glimpses of a blond girl who brings with her a sense of evil.
Julia was adapted in 1977 into the movie The Haunting of Julia (also known as Full Circle).
“The little blond girl, about nine or ten – Kate’s age – and enough like Kate to make Julia feel dizzy, ran floating up from nowhere along Ilchester Place and, windmilling her arms at the street corner, flew into the path to Holland Park.”
7. If You Could See Me Now (1977)
If You Could See Me Now is a supernatural thriller.
In 1955, Miles and his cousin, Alison, go swimming in a rural quarry, but Alison doesn’t survive.
Twenty years later, Miles returns to the town to find it paranoid and suspicious of him, especially when another teenager girl goes missing.
“No story exists without its past, and the past of a story is what enables us to understand it (perhaps that I believe this is the reason I teach novels and not poems, where the internal history may be only a half dozen slewfoot lines), but because – precisely because – I am so aware of the past pressing in on my story, I wish to allow it to leak in when it must, and not butter it over the beginning.”
8. Ghost Story (1979)
Ghost Story is a supernatural horror story.
Four old men gather to tell each other stories. However, one story from their pasts is coming back to haunt them.
Ghost Story was adapted in 1981 into the movie by the same name: Ghost Story.
“What was the worst thing you’ve ever done? I won’t tell you that, but I’ll tell you the worst thing that ever happened to me…the most dreadful thing…”
9. Shadowland (1980)
Shadowland is a dark fantasy horror story.
Two friends apprenticed to a Master Magician learn secrets of an ancient evil.
Shadowland was nominated for the 1981 World Fantasy Award.
“What we do here is physiologically impossible. So we must train the body to accept the impossible, and then it will become possible.”
10. The General’s Wife (1982)
The General’s Wife is a novella about a lonely American woman living in London with her husband.
She takes a job writing the memoirs of an old general and falls in love with a doppelgänger of the general as a young man.
11. Floating Dragon (1983)
Floating Dragon is a supernatural horror story.
A small town is threatened simultaneously by two horrors: a man-made one and a supernatural one.
Floating Dragon won the 1984 British Fantasy Society’s August Derleth Award.
“For Stony Baxter Friedgood, her infrequent adulteries were adventures – picking up a man who thought he was picking her up gave her life a sense of drama missing since she had been twenty and a student at Scripps-Claremont.”
12. Leeson Park and Belsize Square: Poems 1970 – 1975 (1982)
Leeson Park and Belsize Square is a collection of poetry written between 1970 and 1975.
13. The Talisman (1984)
The Talisman is a dark fantasy story written in collaboration with Stephen King.
Jack is a lonely twelve-year-old. His mother is dying and his father has gone. When Jack learns about a talisman that can save his mother, he travels to a parallel world to find it.
The Talisman was nominated for the 1985 World Fantasy Awards.
“On September 15th, 1981, a boy named Jack Sawyer stood where the water and land come together, hands in the pockets of his jeans, looking out at the steady Atlantic.”
14. Koko (1988)
Koko is the first book in the psychological serial killer thriller Blue Rose Trilogy.
The story follows four Vietnam vets on their global search for a brutal serial killer.
Koko won the 1989 World Fantasy Award.
“At three o’clock in the afternoon of a grey, blowing mid-November day, a baby doctor named Michael Poole looked down through the windows of his second-floor room into the parking lot of the Sheridan Hotel.”
15. Mystery (1990)
Mystery is the second book in the psychological serial killer thriller Blue Rose Trilogy.
A ten-year-old becomes obsessed with an unsolved murder. He teams up with his neighbour, a retired detective, to solve a past and a present murder.
“One June day in the mid-fifties Tom Passmore, a ten-year-old boy with skin as golden as if he had been born with a good fourth-day suntan, jumped down from a milk cart and found himself in a part of Mill Walk he had never seen before.”
16. Mrs. God (1990)
Mrs. God is a ghost story novella.
A professor has the rare honour of a Fellowship and the chance to study the private manuscripts of the Seneschal family. But something feels wrong at Esswood House. He hears faint laughter in the halls, small feet in the night, and sees strange faces in the windows.
Mrs. God is included in the House Without Doors collection.
17. The Buffalo Hunter (1990)
The Buffalo Hunter is a novella about a 35-year-old man who deals with isolation and his fear of women in unusual ways.
The Buffalo Hunter is included in the Houses Without Doorscollection.
18. Houses Without Doors (1991)
Houses Without Doors is a collection of thirteen short horror stories, including Mrs. God and The Buffalo Hunter.
19. The Throat (1993)
The Throat is the third book in the psychological serial killer thriller Blue Rose Trilogy.
A novelist teams up with an old friend to investigate a possible copycat killer mimicking the Blue Rose murders from decades ago.
The Throat won the 1993 Bram Stoker Award and was nominated for the 1994 World Fantasy Awards.
“An alcoholic homicide detective in my hometown of Millhaven, Illinois, William Damrosch, died to ensure, you might say, that this book would never be written. But you write what comes back to you, and then afterward it comes back to you all over again.”
20. The Ghost Village (1993)
The Ghost Village is a novella included in the Magic Terror collection.
The Ghost Village won the 1993 Novella World Fantasy Award.
21. Bunny is Good Bread (1993)
Bunny Is Good Bread is a novella included in the Magic Terror collection.
The story shows how a small boy trapped in grotesque circumstances becomes a serial killer.
22. The Hellfire Club (1995)
The Hellfire Club is a serial killer thriller.
Wealthy middle-aged women are being murdered and Nora fears she may be next. Her husband, a publishing heir, tells her a story about an obsessed fan from years before. Things then spin out of control and Nora has to defend herself against accusations as well as a madman.
The Hellfire Club won the 1996 Bram Stoker and was nominated for the 1997 British Fantasy Society’s August Derleth Award.
“At three o’clock in the morning, a woman named Nora Chancel, soon to be lost, woke up from the usual nightmares with the usual shudder and began for the thousandth time to check her perimeter.”
23. Mr. Clubb and Mr. Cuff (1997)
Mr. Clubb and Mr. Cuff is a black comedy novella about revenge and is included in the Magic Terror collection and the Interior Darkness collection.
24. Mr. X (1999)
Mr. X is a supernatural thriller.
Every year on his birthday, Ned is forced to witness scenes of ruthless slaughter by a figure in black he calls Mr. X. This year, Ned returns home believing his mother is dying. When he becomes the lead suspect in three violent murders, he realises that he’s not the only one who has come home.
Mr. X won the 1999 Bram Stoker Award and was nominated for the 1999 British Fantasy Society’s August Derleth Award.
“Stupid me – I fell into the old pattern and spent a week pretending I was a moving target. All along, a part of me knew that I was hitching toward southern Illinois because my mother was passing. When your mother’s checking out, you get yourself back home.”
25. Pork Pie Hat (1999)
Pork Pie Hat is a mystery novella that tells the story of a jazz saxophonist and what happened on Halloween when he was 11 years old.
This novella is also included in the Magic Terror collection.
“It struck me that his innate elegance, the product of his character & bearing much more than of the handsome suit and the suede shoes, had been paid for by the surviving of a thousand unimaginable difficulties, each painful to a varying degree.”
26. Magic Terror (2000)
Magic Terror is a collection of seven short horror stories, including The Ghost Village, Bunny is Good Bread, Mr. Clubb and Mr. Cuff, Pork Pie Hat.
27. Black House (2001)
Black House is a sequel to The Talisman. Both books are dark fantasy novels written in collaboration with Stephen King.
Twenty years after the events of The Talisman, Jack is a retired police officer with no recollection of travelling to a parallel universe to save his mother. When a series of gruesome murders occur similar to those of twenty years ago, Jack’s friend, the local police chief, asks him to help find the murderer.
Black House was nominated for the 2001 Bram Stoker Award.
“Right here and now, as an old friend used to say, we are in the fluid present, where clear-sightedness never guarantees perfect vision.”
28. Lost Boy, Lost Girl (2003)
Lost Boy, Lost Girl is a supernatural thriller.
A novelist investigates his sister’s suicide and the disappearance of his nephew. He discovers a murderer on the loose, a strange house with an unspeakable history, and a lost ghostly girl.
Lost Boy, Lost Girl won the 2003 Bram Stoker Award and was nominated for the 2004 British Fantasy Society’s August Derleth Award.
“Nancy Underhill’s death had been unexpected, abrupt – a death like a slap in the face.”
29. In the Night Room (2004)
In the Night Room is a supernatural thriller.
A children’s book author believes her dead daughter is being held in a warehouse and that she needs to save her. Another struggling author is confronted by the ghost of his nine-year-old sister, then starts to receive strange emails from people he knows are dead. The two authors have to work together to confront the evils around them.
In the Night Room won the 2004 Bram Stoker Award.
“About 9:45 on a Wednesday morning early in a rain-drenched September, a novelist named Timothy Underhill gave up, in more distress than he cared to acknowledge, on his ruined breakfast and the New York Times crossword puzzle and returned, far behind schedule, to his third-floor loft at 5 Grand Street.”
30. 5 Stories (2007)
5 Stories is a collection of five short horror stories: Little Red’s Tango, Lapland, or Film Noir, The Geezers, Donald Duck, Mr. Aickman’s Air Rifle.
5 Stories was nominated for the 2007 Bram Stoker Award.
31. Sides (2007)
Sides is a collection of non-fiction articles written between 1985 and 2006.
32. A Dark Matter (2010)
A Dark Matter is a supernatural thriller.
As a group of friends tries to come to grips with a terrifying incident in their past, they find themselves face-to-face with the evil that was triggered all those years ago.
A Dark Matter won the 2010 Bram Stoker Award.
“The great revelations of my adult life began with the shouts of a lost soul in my neighborhood breakfast joint.”
33. The Skylark (2010)
The Skylark is an earlier, longer draft of A Dark Matter.
Peter Straub said, “This is a much looser, sloppier, more wild-eyed version of the book, with blind alleys, red herrings, and false trails.”
34. A Special Place: The Heart of a Dark Matter (2010)
A Special Place: The Heart of a Dark Matter is a novella outtake from A Dark Matter.
As a boy, Keith is fascinated with death. His uncle recognises his nature and teaches him the art of taking life without being caught.
“You’re going to need a special place only you know about,” Uncle till told Keith Hayward. They were seated on a broad tree stump in the backyard of the Hayward family home, where Uncle Till was a temporary guest. Keith was twelve years old.”
35. The Juniper Tree and Other Blue Rose Stories (2010)
The Juniper Tree and other Blue Rose Stories is a collection of four disturbing standalone short stories set in the Blue Rose universe.
36. The Ballad of Ballard and Sandrine (2011)
The Ballad of Ballard and Sandrine is a combination horror and love story novella about two lovers travelling down a remote river in the Amazon on a luxurious yacht, indulging in a common erotic obsession.
The Ballad of Ballard and Sandrine won the 2011 Bram Stoker Award for Long Fiction and is included in the Interior Darkness collection.
37. Perdido: A Fragment (2015)
Perdido: A Fragment is a novella from a never-completed longer story.
At an isolated Norwegian resort, a troubled family discovers that reality is malleable.
38. Interior Darkness (2016)
Interior Darkness is a collection of sixteen short horror stories, including: Mr. Clubb and Mr. Cuff and The Ballad of Ballard and Sandrine.
39. The Process (is a Process All Its Own) (2017)
The Process (is a Process All Its Own) is a novella that tells the story of a serial killer in the American Midwest in the 1950s.
