10 Scariest Summer-Based Horror Novels Ever

Not content with just telling a haunting story, author and sometime King collaborator Peter Straub decided to go the whole hog and construct a novel that celebrates the art form of a ghost story. The gambit paid off and, along with putting him on the map when this was first published in 1979, it stands as one of the best ghost novels of all time.

The premise follows a group of old New York school chums - known as The Chowder Society – who meet up annually to scare each other senseless with a supernatural tale or two, all conducted in an atmospheric drawing room, dressed in their finest clobber. But what starts out as a series of seemingly disconnected tales takes form into something altogether more creepy.

This premise gave Straub the perfect opportunity to unleash a series of hallucinatory-like scenarios where images that sear themselves into your consciousness float across the pages – the demonic and twisted Gregory Bate walking through the snow is a standout – as an aura of doom whips up around the book’s protagonists. Although recited at night, the tales play out in daylight which makes the story all the more palpable.