books

You’ll want to add ‘The Deep,’ My Heart Is a Chainsaw,’ ‘Our Share of Night,’ and ‘The Between’ to your reading list.

If you want to expand your horror reading beyond Stephen King, look no further than this list, which features everyone from Mariana Enriquez to Stephen Graham Jones and beyond.

Victor Hugo, Anne Rice, and Thomas Hardy were all believers.

Some, like Harriet Beecher Stowe and Victor Hugo, believed they had communicated with spirits directly; others, like Nathaniel Hawthorne and Thomas Hardy, had ghostly encounters they couldn’t explain.

The cover of Robert Louis Stevenson’s ‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.’

The true facts surrounding the classic work are as mysterious and intriguing as the novel itself.

The cover of Emily Wilson’s translation of ‘The Iliad.’

This all-new translation of the Homer epic is six years in the making.

Parents and politicians are trying to pull books off shelves at a record-setting pace.

The cover of Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’ by Ruben Toledo.

In true undead style, Dracula holds up well: He’s as creepy today as he was when Bram Stoker invented him in 1897.

Karl Aspelin, Public Domain // Wikimedia Commons

As is often the case when you look back into history, there’s more than one possible answer. But one of the leading contenders has a fairly predictable culprit: the Puritans.

From famous authors to a Roman emperor, these spirits sure had a lot to share.

The Dollar Baby contract is Stephen King’s way of helping film students adapt his stories without financial barriers.

You can play Dr. Seuss ‘Scrabble’ here or there—you can play it anywhere!

The cover of Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein.’

Here are the nuts and bolts about Mary Shelley's 200-year-old tale about what can go wrong when people play God.

These spooky tales will have you thankful you live in modern times.

These stories need no contrivances to create places that are lonely and old, a place where bad things are kept hushed up instead of dealt with.

Charles Dickens gifted us with plenty of new words and phrases—including ‘not to put too fine a point on it.’

Clichés are viewed as a sign of lazy writing, but they didn’t develop that reputation over night.

Precursors to the story about the girl with the green ribbon were written by Washington Irving, Alexandre Dumas, and more famous authors.

Before John Polidori’s ‘The Vampyre,’ the creatures were far from suave, sexy aristocrats.

‘The Vampyre’ is largely forgotten today, but it upended centuries of vampiric lore 80 years before Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’—and from its spooky beginnings to its scandalous misattribution, its history was as dramatic as fiction.

The cover of Henry James’s ‘The Turn of the Screw.’

Learn about Henry James’s ‘The Turn of the Screw’—the classic ghost story that inspired (among many other things) Netflix’s ‘The Haunting of Bly Manor.’

Here are all the new jawns in the dictionary.

Non-Philadelphians can finally look up the meaning of ‘jawn’ in the dictionary.

The cover of Shirley Jackson’s ‘The Haunting of Hill House.’

Shirley Jackson's classic novel ‘The Haunting of Hill House’ was inspired by real-life paranormal investigators—and so scary her husband was afraid to read it.

The cover of L. Frank Baum’s ‘The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.’

‘The Wonderful Wizard of Oz’ was the Harry Potter of its day: There was merchandising, a Broadway musical, a silent film, and a whopping 13 sequels.

These offenses include everything from historical forgeries to audacious heists to cold-blooded murder—all with a bookish twist.

The Actual '73 Giving Tree Movie Spoken By Shel Silverstein

The controversial 1964 children's book about a codependent tree was adapted into a 1972 animated short.

Shirley Jackson’s ‘We Have Always Lived in the Castle.’

Shirley Jackson is best remembered for “The Lottery” and 'The Haunting of Hill House,' but her gothic mystery 'We Have Always Lived in the Castle' is regarded as her greatest literary achievement.

The cover of John Steinbeck‘s ‘The Grapes of Wrath.’

John Steinbeck’s 1939 book ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ humanized the “Okies,” captured history as it was happening, and earned its author so much personal trouble that he started carrying a gun for protection.

The cover of 'My Brilliant Friend' by Elena Ferrante.

'My Brilliant Friend' kicked of Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan series and inspired an HBO adaptation.

11 Contemporary Horror Authors to Read (Who Aren’t Stephen King)

9 Authors Who Believed in Ghosts

11 Strange Facts About ‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde’

A New Translation of ’The Iliad’ Is Bringing a Truer Ancient Greece to Modern Readers

The 10 Most Challenged Books of 2022

10 Blood-Curdling Facts About ‘Dracula’

What Was the First Banned Book in History?

Guided by Voices: 7 Books Supposedly Written by Ghosts

Dollar Baby: Why Stephen King Sells the Rights to His Work to Up-and-Coming Filmmakers for Just $1

Rhyming Is Encouraged in the New Dr. Seuss Edition of ’Scrabble’

11 Surprising Facts About Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’

6 Creepy Victorian Ghost Stories to Read Right Now

The Origins of 8 Literary Clichés

The Girl With the Green Ribbon: A Grisly History of ‘Headless Woman’ Stories

The Wild History of the Tale That Created the Modern Vampire (And No, It's Not ‘Dracula’)

10 Frightening Facts about Henry James’s ‘The Turn of the Screw’

Jawns and Shower Oranges: See 30 of Dictionary.com’s Newly Added Terms

13 Chilling Facts About Shirley Jackson’s ‘The Haunting of Hill House’

13 Facts About L. Frank Baum’s ‘Wonderful Wizard of Oz’

9 Crimes Linked to Books

Watch: An Animated Version of ‘The Giving Tree,’ Narrated by Shel Silverstein

10 Frightening Facts About Shirley Jackson’s ‘We Have Always Lived in the Castle’

11 Facts About John Steinbeck’s ‘The Grapes of Wrath’

10 Facts About ‘My Brilliant Friend’