Ah, October — crisp nights, apple-picking, leaf-peeping, Halloween. To celebrate the spookiest season, The New York Times made a list of the scariest novel set in every state. Before you pick up one of these hair-raising, shiver-inducing novels, you’re going to want to close the curtains and check the locks (twice).
Of course, my favorite author, Stephen King earned two picks, one for Colorado and one for Oklahoma but surprisingly not Maine?
Stephen King, “The Shining” – Colorado
When Stanley Kubrick’s famous movie version was released in 1980, our critic Christopher Lehmann-Haupt revisited the original King novel. “It isn’t often that a book and a film relate to each other in such an intriguing way,” he wrote. “We miss in the film Mr. King’s careful development of the fact that the hotel is steadily coming ‘alive’ to a degree that the ghosts, which at first only Danny could recognize, gradually gain the power to act physically.”
Stephen King, “The Outsider” – Oklahoma
What begins as a police procedural about the murder and mutilation of a child swiftly morphs into something much more sinister. “I don’t want to spoil anything, but come on, this is Stephen King,” our reviewer, Victor LaValle, wrote in 2018. “Monsters of one kind or another are what the man does best, and ‘The Outsider’ delivers a good one.”
Check out the full list HERE.