Prepare for thrills, chills, tales of terror and a growing “to be read” list with “Click if you Dare: 100 Favorite Horror Stories”
In honor of the 200th anniversary of Mary Shelley’s horror classic Frankenstein, Petra Mayer at NPR conducted a summer reading poll to gather the top 100 horror books and stories. They then assembled a panel of experts- Grady Hendrix, Stephen Graham Jones, Ruthanna Emrys, and Tananarive Due – to curate the voter’s almost 7000 responses into an epic list of the terrifying and the macabre (including some selections for the littlest horror readers).
NPR’s “resident nerd” (and one of my favorite guests on the NPR Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast), Petra Mayer guides us through the list that includes 2 books featured on the Scariest Things Book report.
Just a note, none of the panel’s work is included in the list out of professional modesty. While I have not read anything by 3 of the authors (see what I meant about that growing TBR list), Grady Hendrix’s Horrorstöre, a novel about a haunted Ikea like store, was a book that I nominated for this poll and one that you, reader, should seek out.
See all the stories that made the cut on the NPR Books website, here!
cover image by Angela Hsieh/NPR