Books like “The Shining”

What to read after “The Shining” by Stephen King: a list matched by tropes, mood and atmosphere. Under each book you will see what it has in common.

About “The Shining”

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1
House of Leaves
Mark Z. Danielewski · 2000
Similar atmosphere: “Psychological Thriller” and “Creeping Dread”
A tattoo artist assembles the scattered notes of a blind old man who wrote a study of a film. The film records a family discovering that their house is larger inside than out, with a hallway that opens onto darkness where the rules of space break down.
2
The Haunting of Hill House
Shirley Jackson · 1959
Similar atmosphere: “Psychological Thriller” and “Creeping Dread”
An investigator of psychic phenomena invites several people to stay at Hill House, a building with a long history of death and madness. Among them is the fragile Eleanor, and as the house begins to single her out, the group's stay becomes a struggle to keep hold of sanity.
3
Heart-Shaped Box
Joe Hill · 2007
Similar atmosphere: “Psychological Thriller” and “Creeping Dread”
Aging rock star Judas Coyne collects macabre curiosities. When he buys a haunted suit online, the dead man tied to it begins to stalk him and the women in his life. To survive, Jude must confront the violence in his own past. A supernatural horror about guilt and revenge.
4
Hell House
Richard Matheson · 1971
Similar atmosphere: “Psychological Thriller” and “Creeping Dread”
A dying millionaire funds an expedition to the notorious Belasco House, a mansion in Maine where every previous attempt to study its hauntings ended badly. The group includes a physicist, a medium and two survivors, and the house begins to work on their most private fears.
5
The Spite House
Johnny Compton · 2023
Similar atmosphere: “Creeping Dread”
Eric Ross is on the run with his two daughters, taking whatever work he can find. He answers an ad offering a large sum to anyone who will stay in the Masson House, a spite house in Texas said to be the state's most haunted, and record what happens there. The house may also hold answers about his family.
6
The Woman in Black
Susan Hill · 1983
Similar atmosphere: “Creeping Dread”
A young London lawyer is sent to a remote house to sort the papers of a dead client. In the town nearby he meets an unfriendly silence, a sea mist that cuts him off, and a woman dressed in black whose appearances are followed by the deaths of children.
7
A Head Full of Ghosts
Paul Tremblay · 2015
Similar atmosphere: “Psychological Thriller” and “Creeping Dread”
Fourteen-year-old Marjorie Barrett begins to act strangely, and her family turns first to a priest and then to a reality-television crew. Years later her younger sister tells the story of what happened in the house, though her memory is not entirely trustworthy.
8
The Yellow Wallpaper
Charlotte Perkins Gilman · 1892
Similar atmosphere: “Psychological Thriller” and “Creeping Dread”
A woman is confined to an upstairs room by her physician husband and told to rest. Cut off from work and company, she becomes fixated on the yellow wallpaper, convinced that a figure is trapped behind its pattern and that she must set it free.
9
Ghost Story
Peter Straub · 1979
Similar atmosphere: “Creeping Dread”
- Ghost Story
- Creeping Dread
Four elderly friends in a small New York town have spent a lifetime telling each other ghost stories at their club. Now something from a winter forty years earlier, a death they all helped to hide, has returned to collect the debt.
10
The Only Good Indians
Stephen Graham Jones · 2020
Similar atmosphere: “Creeping Dread”
- Ghost Story
- Creeping Dread
Years ago four Blackfeet men shot an elk on land they had no right to hunt. Now something is stalking them across the reservation, taking them one by one, in a story about grief, guilt and the debts that follow a person home.
11
The House Next Door
Anne Rivers Siddons · 1978
Similar atmosphere: “Creeping Dread”
- Haunted House
- Creeping Dread
A new house is built beside the Kennedys in their quiet Atlanta neighbourhood. Over two years the families who move in are destroyed by scandal and violence, and even visitors are touched. Colquitt begins to believe the house itself is malevolent, and decides to warn the world.
12
The Turn of the Screw
Henry James · 1898
Similar atmosphere: “Creeping Dread”
A young governess takes charge of two children at a remote country house and soon notices figures watching from the grounds and the tower. She becomes convinced the children are being influenced by something from beyond the grave, though no one else confirms what she sees.