20 of the Most Talented Horror Authors

Stephen King. Photo by Stephanie Lawton. Wikimedia Commons

20 of the Most Talented Horror Authors

There is no shortage of unique, terrifying stories when it comes to horror. Horror writers have an uncanny ability to tap into our deepest fears and insecurities and use them to tell fascinating, engaging, and horrifying stories.

These authors have penned some of history’s most terrifying stories, and some of them continue to shape the horror genre to this day.

1. Stephen King

We couldn’t talk about the best horror authors without mentioning the King of Horror! Stephen King is the prolific author of dozens of horror novels, as well as a dash of mystery, paranormal, and sci-fi for good measure.

Before the publication of his debut novel, Carrie, he began writing short stories and continues to publish short fiction to this day.

He’s best known for works like The Shining, The Stand, It, and a slew of other unforgettable stories that have spawned countless film and television adaptations.

2. Clive Barker

Clive Barker. Photo by Steven Friederich. Wikimedia Commons

Barker was born in 1952 in Liverpool. He is the best-selling author of the Books of Blood series, as well as numerous novels such as Imajica, The Great, Secret Show, Sacrament, and Galilee.

Aside from writing novels and short stories, he also illustrates, writes, directs, and produces for the stage and screen.

Clive currently resides in Beverly Hills, California, and strangely refuses to classify his work as horror. 

3. Bram Stoker

Bram Stoker. Photo from Wikimedia Commons

Abraham “Bram” Stoker, an Irish author, is best known for writing Dracula, the definitive vampire novel. Dracula, first published in 1897, paved the way for our modern interpretation of what a vampire should be.

Stoker’s work so impressed the author of Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle, that he wrote him a letter of congratulations.

Bram Stoker wrote many other books during his lifetime, including the horror novels The Lady of the Shroud and The Lair of the White Worm, in addition to this classic novel.

4. Stephen Graham Jones

Stephen Graham Jones at a book signing event. Photo by Hexeditor. Wikimedia Commons

Stephen Graham Jones is a Blackfeet Native American author best known for his horror audiobooks, but his works range from literary to pulp horror. His stories frequently reflect his background as a Native writer.

For example, Mapping the Interior is a novella about a 15-year-old boy who sees his father, who died before he and his family left the reservation.

The Last Final Girl is a horror parody that follows the last girl who survived one bloodbath and is determined to survive more horrors to come. Eric G. Dove provides narration for both.

The Only Good Indians, Jones’s most recent release, is a revenge story about four Native American men who are dealing with the fallout from a youthful elk hunting incident in which they made a life-changing decision.

5. Jonathan Maberry

Beware! There is no turning back once you enter Jonathan Maberry’s post-apocalyptic world. Nothing beats a classic when it comes to horror, and Maberry’s action-packed takes on those classic baddies—zombies—are among the best of all time.

Choose from his best-selling Joe Ledger, Dead of Night, and Rot & Ruin series, or go for something short (but definitely not sweet) with a chilling ghost story or a twisty werewolf tale. Maberry’s knack for thrills and chills keeps fans enthralled from beginning to end. 

6. Joe Hill

Joe Hill at BookCon. Photo by Rhododendrites. Wikimedia Commons

Joe Hill is Stephen King’s son, and while he isn’t as prolific as his father (yet! ), he has written an impressive array of comic books and horror novels. Early in his career, he chose the pen name Joe Hill to distinguish himself from his famous father. However, after the publication of his debut novel, 20th Century Ghosts, speculation about his family history (and his resemblance to his father) arose, prompting him to reveal the connection in 2007.

Hill is also the author of Horns and Locke & Key, an Audible Original narrated by Haley Joel Osment, Tatiana Maslany, and Kate Mulgrew, among others. Look no further if you want excellent horror narrated by a talented actress—Mulgrew narrates many of Joe Hill’s books, including the critically acclaimed NOS4A2.

7. Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Silvia Moreno-Garcia was born in Mexico and now lives in Canada; despite being a prolific writer in all genres, she has only recently become well-known for her horror. Mexican Gothic, her first horror release, is set in a decaying estate in the Mexican countryside and explores the horrors of colonialism and eugenics.

She’s also published numerous horror short stories and has edited anthologies inspired by the work of H.P. Lovecraft. 

8. H.P. Lovecraft

H.P. Lovecraft. Photo by Lucius B. Truesdell. Wikimedia Commons

H.P. Lovecraft, who was born in 1890, pioneered the weird horror genre with works such as The Call of Cthulhu, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, The Whisperer in Darkness, and The Dunwich Horror, to name a few.

Despite being written in the early twentieth century, his books are still adored by horror fans all over the world.

Lovecraft’s style led him to become the father of The Cthulhu Mythos, a shared fictional universe that uses Lovecraft’s settings, tropes, and folklore.

His contemporaries even coined a subgenre based on his work: Lovecraft horror, which focuses on the darkness of the incomprehensible and unknowable rather than the traditional guts and gore or ghouls and ghosts.

9. Dean Koontz

Dean Koontz is another modern literary giant. Although his work frequently falls into the suspense and thriller genres, the majority of his books contain strong elements of horror.

He’s had enormous success as a writer throughout his long career, publishing over 105 novels, sixteen of which reached the New York Times Best Sellers list. Demon Seed, Night Chills, Whispers, The Mask, Phantoms, and Strangers are just a few of his best-selling novels.

Koontz, like King, has written under a variety of pen names throughout his career, including David Axton, Deanna Dwyer, K.R. Dwyer, Leigh Nichols, and Brian Coffey.

10. Anne Rice

Anne Rice is well-known for her best-selling The Vampire Chronicles, which revolves around an enigmatic vampire named Lestat. Two of the collection’s most successful books, Interview with the Vampire and Queen of the Damned, went on to become blockbuster movies, further cementing Rice’s status as a horror genre queen.

In addition to her well-known works of gothic fiction, Rice has dabbled in Christian literature and erotic literature (two genres that don’t often go together!). Her books have sold over 150 million copies worldwide, making her not only a horror legend, but also one of the best-selling authors of all time.

11. Shirley Jackson

Shirley Jackson, an American author who was born in 1916, is still one of the most influential and steadfast names in the world of horror, and for good reason. Throughout her career, she wrote over 200 short stories, six novels, and two memoirs, many of which received international acclaim.

All of this occurred during a time when women were still expected to stay at home, so Shirley Jackson was a feminist icon who was far ahead of her time.

Her most influential novel was The Haunting of Hill House, which was wildly successful and continues to be hailed as the most quintessential haunted house story of all time. She’s also the author of the scary short story The Lottery, which depicts the darker side of a seemingly idyllic American town.

12. Grady Hendrix

Grady Hendrix Book Expo America 2018. Photo by Rhododendrites. Wikimedia Commons

Grady Hendrix, who was born in Charleston, South Carolina, and now lives in New York City, writes horror that will appeal to pop culture fans in particular. Horrorstör, a horror satire about a popular Nordic home goods store in the Midwest that opens each morning to find strange destruction and mayhem, and the employees who volunteer to stay overnight in the store to figure out what’s going on, was his first novel.

He’s also written My Best Friend’s Exorcism, which is narrated by Emily Woo Zeller, and The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires, which is narrated by Bahni Turpin and is set in his hometown of Charleston in the 1980s and 1990s. So far, each of his books has been widely acclaimed and optioned for film or television.

13. Victor LaValle

Victor LaValle is an essayist and novelist, and while not all of his work is in the horror genre, it is perhaps his most well-known. He won the Shirley Jackson Award for his novel Big Machine, and he followed it up with The Devil in Silver, a story about a man living in a mental institution where a monster lurks.

The Ballad of Black Tom is a retelling of the short story “The Horror at Red Hook” by H.P. Lovecraft, but with an African American protagonist. His dark horror fantasy The Changeling, which explores the fears associated with becoming a new parent, won the World Fantasy Award and is currently being adapted for the screen.

14. Alma Katsu

Alma Katsu at Gaithersburg book festival, 2018. Photo by Avery Jensen. Wikimedia Commons

Alma Katsu was born in Alaska and worked as a federal government analyst before turning to fiction. Her books frequently incorporate historical events, supernatural occurrences, and horror elements. The Taker, Katsu’s first novel, is about a woman who walks into a small-town ER as a murder suspect and tells a fantastical story about immorality and darkness.

She followed up The Taker trilogy with The Hunger, a dark, supernatural retelling of the tragic events surrounding the infamous Donner Party. The Deep, her most recent listen, is about the evil that lurked on the Titanic—and two survivors who meet years later on a WWI hospital ship.

15. Ramsey Campbell

Campbell at the 2015 Liverpool Horror Festival. Photo by Jamiespilsbury. Wikimedia Commons

Ramsey Campbell, one of the English-speaking world’s premier horror writers, is 76 years old and has just entered his seventh decade as a published author. This is literally correct. His first book, “The Inhabitant of the Lake,” a collection of Lovecraft-inspired stories, was published in 1964, when he was still in his teens.

Since then, he has published a steady stream of novels, novellas, and short stories. Taken together, they represent one of the most significant achievements in modern popular fiction.

Campbell has published 37 novels and hundreds of short stories, which have been collected in over two dozen volumes. He has also written and published one volume of poetry, two massive collections of nonfiction, and edited over 20 volumes of new and classic horror fiction. His career has been remarkable in terms of both quality and productivity, and it shows no signs of slowing down. 

16. Peter Straub

Peter Francis Straub was a novelist and poet from the United States. He co-wrote The Talisman with Stephen King and wrote a number of horror and supernatural fiction novels, including Julia and Ghost Story. Straub’s literary achievements include the Bram Stoker Award, World Fantasy Award, and International Horror Guild Award.

17. Catriona Ward

Catriona Ward was born in Washington, DC, and grew up in Kenya, Madagascar, Yemen, and Morocco. She studied English at Oxford and later earned a Creative Writing Masters at the University of East Anglia.

Ward was the first woman to win the August Derleth Award for Best Horror Novel twice, once for The Girl from Rawblood and again for Little Eve. Ward is the best-selling author of The Last House on Needless Street.

18. Yoko Ogawa

Yoko Ogawa is a Japanese author who has widely published both fiction and nonfiction. Although her first book to be translated into English and published in the United States is not a horror novel, her other works include Revenge, a collection of 11 dark and disturbing stories, and The Memory Police, a National Book Award finalist.

The Memory Police, narrated by Traci Kato-Kiriyama, is an Orwellian nightmare about an island where objects disappear—and those who dare to remember them are hunted down by the titular Memory Police.

19. Tananarive Due

Tananarive Due is a Bram Stoker Award finalist and the author of numerous books in the speculative and supernatural genres. She is a film historian with a focus on Black horror, as well as an educator who has taught at an MFA program.

Her novels include The Good House, narrated by Robin Miles, about a young woman returning home to her grandmother’s mansion only to be confronted by demonic forces, and Joplin’s Ghost, about a young singer haunted by the past.

20. Christopher Buehlman

Christopher Buehlman is one of the most intriguing multi-hyphenates in modern horror. A novelist, poet, performer, and Ren Faire icon known as “Christopher the Insulter” in his spare time, he also writes acclaimed horror and fantasy brimming with literary prose and wild imagination.

Buehlman’s medieval knowledge informs an epic 14th-century saga framed by religion and the Black Death in Between Two Fires, while his self-narrated novels, such as the sinister vampire tales The Lesser Dead and The Suicide Motor Club, rank among the best author performances of all time.