10 Scariest Stephen King Novels

While the bulk of King's most-read fiction has a strong supernatural element, the author hasn't spent too much time with the genre's most traditional monsters. However, his second published novel - 1975's Salem's Lot - took on arguably the best-loved monsters of them all.

In many respects, Salem's Lot is where the Stephen King we all know today really took shape. For starters, it's a novel in which the main character is a writer, a trope which King would re-use in a great many of his novels (some of which will come up later in this list).

Our hero Ben Mears returns to his childhood hometown Jerusalem's Lot for the first time in decades, and much of the early part of the novel is devoted to building a sense of the place, its history and character; and so, once it becomes clear that the town is full of vampires, there's an eerie plausibility to it all.

Wonderfully atmospheric and compelling, King himself has in the past declared Salem's Lot to be his personal favourite of all the books he's written, and it certainly stands up alongside the likes of Bram Stoker's Dracula and Richard Matheson's I Am Legend as one of the very best vampire novels of all time.