Stephen KING usually dominates the conversation when it comes to horror novels, but there are plenty of alternatives to keep readers shivering delightfully.

The Death of Grass and The Day of the Triffids are both post-apocalyptic offerings that scrutinise in a realistic world-setting, and with an air of quietly-dawning dismay, the impact of a world where plants really do dictate how we survive and live.

Published in 1956 and 1951 respectively, both novels feel like something we could be reading about in these very pages, very soon.

You won’t walk past a field of corn quite so easily again.

For those that like their horror a little more animalistic, James Herbert’s The Rats will have your toes curled throughout the reading experience.

Not for the faint-hearted, this pulp novel will at least have everyone in the household a bit more careful about keeping the bins closed and with an unforgettable closing scene, you won’t look at a derelict building the same way again.

Another pulpy novel not to be overlooked, is the marvellous 1974 novel Jaws.

Imperfect and shlocky, it’s just as much fun as the movie and as guaranteed to keep you out of the water.

For those in search of something a little more subtle, The Yellow Wallpaper is a very short novella, exploring the realm of a woman’s so-called hysteria, and her subsequent (or continuing?) descent into true madness.

For more sunlit horror, see Shirley Jackson’s  inimatable The Lottery, an essay more than a book and widely available for free online.

For those seeking something a little more uncanny than horrific, revisit the short stories of Roald Dahl’s Tales of the Unexepcted, or the stories of Arthur C. Clarke.

Sleep well. Don’t mind that scratching noise.