10 Best Fairy Tale Horror Books Scarier than Any Bedtime Story
Ever thought the Big Bad Wolf wasn't all that frightening? Or that Cinderella's wicked stepmother could use a touch more malice? Well, buckle up, dear readers, because the books we've got for you are a wild, eerie twist on the fairy tales you thought you knew.
Welcome to fairy tale horror, a genre that takes your favorite childhood heroes and villains and serves them up with a generous side dish of terror. Expect memorable characters with a dark twist, enchanting settings tainted with dreadful secrets, and plots that'll have you checking under your bed at night. These ten novels push the boundaries, mixing the comfortingly familiar with shockingly macabre - painting vivid pictures that are a far cry from the dulcet bedtime stories of yore.
Each story is a playful, yet unnerving dance between reality and fantasy, where nightmares come alive and the unreal becomes horribly real. They're for those who like their dreams sprinkled with a dose of cold sweat. If you're daring enough to look, you'll find enchanting lands filled with monstrosities lurking within the pages. So, grab a comforting cup of hot tea, leave the lights on, and prepare to plunge into the unknown that lies ahead. Brace yourselves – these aren’t your grandmother’s fairy tales.
『The Child Thief』
The acclaimed artist Brom brilliantly displays his multiple extraordinary talents in The Child Thief—a spellbinding re-imagining of the beloved Peter Pan story that carries readers through the perilous mist separating our world from the realm of Faerie. As Gregory Maguire did with his New York Times bestselling Wicked novels, Brom takes a classic children’s tale and turns it inside-out, painting a Neverland that, like Maguire’s Oz, is darker, richer, more complex than innocent world J.M. Barrie originally conceived. An ingeniously executed literary feat, illustrated with Brom’s sumptuous artwork, The Child Thief is contemporary fantasy at its finest—casting Peter Pan, the Lost Boys, even Captain Hook and his crew in a breathtaking new light.
Author | Brom |
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Price | $16.99 |
Publisher | Harper Collins |
Release Date | Aug 25, 2009 |
Source | Google Books |
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Price | unknown |
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Source | Google Books |
『Through the Woods』
Discover a terrifying world in the woods in this collection of five hauntingly beautiful graphic stories that includes the online webcomic sensation “His Face All Red,” in print for the first time. Journey through the woods in this sinister, compellingly spooky collection that features four brand-new stories and one phenomenally popular tale in print for the first time. These are fairy tales gone seriously wrong, where you can travel to “Our Neighbor’s House”—though coming back might be a problem. Or find yourself a young bride in a house that holds a terrible secret in “A Lady’s Hands Are Cold.” You might try to figure out what is haunting “My Friend Janna,” or discover that your brother’s fiancée may not be what she seems in “The Nesting Place.” And of course you must revisit the horror of “His Face All Red,” the breakout webcomic hit that has been gorgeously translated to the printed page. Already revered for her work online, award-winning comic creator Emily Carroll’s stunning visual style and impeccable pacing is on grand display in this entrancing anthology, her print debut.
Author | Emily Carroll |
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Price | $13.99 |
Publisher | Simon and Schuster |
Release Date | Jul 15, 2014 |
Source | Google Books |
『The Girl in Red』
From the national bestselling author of Alice comes a postapocalyptic take on the perennial classic "Little Red Riding Hood"...about a woman who isn't as defenseless as she seems. It's not safe for anyone alone in the woods. There are predators that come out at night: critters and coyotes, snakes and wolves. But the woman in the red jacket has no choice. Not since the Crisis came, decimated the population, and sent those who survived fleeing into quarantine camps that serve as breeding grounds for death, destruction, and disease. She is just a woman trying not to get killed in a world that doesn't look anything like the one she grew up in, the one that was perfectly sane and normal and boring until three months ago. There are worse threats in the woods than the things that stalk their prey at night. Sometimes, there are men. Men with dark desires, weak wills, and evil intents. Men in uniform with classified information, deadly secrets, and unforgiving orders. And sometimes, just sometimes, there's something worse than all of the horrible people and vicious beasts combined. Red doesn't like to think of herself as a killer, but she isn't about to let herself get eaten up just because she is a woman alone in the woods....
Author | Christina Henry |
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Price | unknown |
Publisher | Penguin |
Release Date | Jun 18, 2019 |
Source | Google Books |
『The Book of Lost Things』
New York Times bestselling author John Connolly's unique imagination takes readers through the end of innocence into adulthood and beyond in this dark and triumphantly creative novel of grief and loss, loyalty and love, and the redemptive power of stories. High in his attic bedroom, twelve-year-old David mourns the death of his mother, with only the books on his shelf for company. But those books have begun to whisper to him in the darkness. Angry and alone, he takes refuge in his imagination and soon finds that reality and fantasy have begun to meld. While his family falls apart around him, David is violently propelled into a world that is a strange reflection of his own—populated by heroes and monsters and ruled by a faded king who keeps his secrets in a mysterious book, The Book of Lost Things. Taking readers on a vivid journey through the loss of innocence into adulthood and beyond, New York Times bestselling author John Connolly tells a dark and compelling tale that reminds us of the enduring power of stories in our lives.
Author | John Connolly |
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Price | $9.99 |
Publisher | Simon and Schuster |
Release Date | Nov 07, 2006 |
Source | Google Books |
『Fairy Tale』
A #1 New York Times Bestseller and New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice! Legendary storyteller Stephen King goes into the deepest well of his imagination in this spellbinding novel about a seventeen-year-old boy who inherits the keys to a parallel world where good and evil are at war, and the stakes could not be higher—for that world or ours. Charlie Reade looks like a regular high school kid, great at baseball and football, a decent student. But he carries a heavy load. His mom was killed in a horrific accident when he was seven, and grief drove his dad to drink. Charlie learned how to take care of himself—and his dad. When Charlie is seventeen, he meets a dog named Radar and her aging master, Howard Bowditch, a recluse in a big house at the top of a big hill, with a locked shed in the backyard. Sometimes strange sounds emerge from it. Charlie starts doing jobs for Mr. Bowditch and loses his heart to Radar. Then, when Bowditch dies, he leaves Charlie a cassette tape telling a story no one would believe. What Bowditch knows, and has kept secret all his long life, is that inside the shed is a portal to another world. Magnificent, terrifying, and “spellbinding…packed with glorious flights of imagination and characteristic tenderness about childhood, Fairy Tale is vintage King at his finest” (Esquire). “Good, evil, a kingdom to save, monsters to slay—these are the stuff that page-turners are made from.” —Laura Miller, Slate
Author | Stephen King |
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Price | $9.99 |
Publisher | Simon and Schuster |
Release Date | Sep 06, 2022 |
Source | Google Books |
『The Hazel Wood』
Welcome to Melissa Albert's The Hazel Wood—the fiercely stunning New York Times bestseller everyone is raving about! Seventeen-year-old Alice and her mother have spent most of Alice’s life on the road, always a step ahead of the uncanny bad luck biting at their heels. But when Alice’s grandmother, the reclusive author of a cult-classic book of pitch-dark fairy tales, dies alone on her estate, the Hazel Wood, Alice learns how bad her luck can really get: Her mother is stolen away—by a figure who claims to come from the Hinterland, the cruel supernatural world where her grandmother's stories are set. Alice's only lead is the message her mother left behind: “Stay away from the Hazel Wood.” Alice has long steered clear of her grandmother’s cultish fans. But now she has no choice but to ally with classmate Ellery Finch, a Hinterland superfan who may have his own reasons for wanting to help her. To retrieve her mother, Alice must venture first to the Hazel Wood, then into the world where her grandmother's tales began—and where she might find out how her own story went so wrong. Don’t miss the bestselling sequel to The Hazel Wood, The Night Country or the illustrated collection of twelve fairy tales, Tales from the Hinterland!
Author | Melissa Albert |
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Price | unknown |
Publisher | Flatiron Books |
Release Date | Mar 26, 2019 |
Source | Google Books |
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Price | unknown |
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Source | Google Books |
『The Shining』
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • ONE OF TIME MAGAZINE'S 100 BEST MYSTERY AND THRILLER BOOKS OF ALL TIME • Before Doctor Sleep, there was The Shining, a classic of modern American horror. Jack Torrance takes a job as the caretaker of the remote Overlook Hotel. As the brutal winter sets in, the hotel's dark secrets begin to unravel. “An undisputed master of suspense and terror.” —The Washington Post Jack Torrance’s new job at the Overlook Hotel is the perfect chance for a fresh start. As the off-season caretaker at the atmospheric old hotel, he’ll have plenty of time to spend reconnecting with his family and working on his writing. But as the harsh winter weather sets in, the idyllic location feels ever more remote . . . and more sinister. And the only one to notice the strange and terrible forces gathering around the Overlook is Danny Torrance, a uniquely gifted five-year-old.
Author | Stephen King |
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Price | $9.99 |
Publisher | Vintage |
Release Date | Jun 24, 2008 |
Source | Google Books |
『Doctor Sleep』
Soon to be a major motion picture starring Ewan McGregor! From master storyteller Stephen King, his unforgettable and terrifying sequel to The Shining—an instant #1 New York Times bestseller that is “[a] vivid frightscape” (The New York Times). Years ago, the haunting of the Overlook Hotel nearly broke young Dan Torrance’s sanity, as his paranormal gift known as “the shining” opened a door straight into hell. And even though Dan is all grown up, the ghosts of the Overlook—and his father’s legacy of alcoholism and violence—kept him drifting aimlessly for most of his life. Now, Dan has finally found some order in the chaos by working in a local hospice, earning the nickname “Doctor Sleep” by secretly using his special abilities to comfort the dying and prepare them for the afterlife. But when he unexpectedly meets twelve-year-old Abra Stone—who possesses an even more powerful manifestation of the shining—the two find their lives in sudden jeopardy at the hands of the ageless and murderous nomadic tribe known as the True Knot, reigniting Dan’s own demons and summoning him to battle for this young girl’s soul and survival...
Author | Stephen King |
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Price | unknown |
Publisher | Pocket Books |
Release Date | Sep 24, 2019 |
Source | Google Books |
Alright, you guys, there you have it! Those were your spooktacular reads that certainly put a dark spin on your beloved childhood fairy tales. We guarantee these tales are nothing like the bedtime stories you were used to - they're far more sinister, full of creepy creatures, twisted plots and eerie settings. They'll make your heart race, chill your bones, and blast your quirky dreams of fairyland right out of the water. But hey, that's the beauty of horror, right? It's meant to jolt us out of our comfort zones, and these books do exactly that, but with a gnarly twist of the familiar. Just a friendly reminder - don't forget to leave a light on when you delve into these shiver-inducing pages. Sweet dreams, or perhaps, scary dreams!
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