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If you wanted to argue that Stephen King is his own genre, sure, maybe you could. He does have his own multiverse, for what that’s worth, with The Dark Tower being the series that ties so many of his different stories together, and then his brand of horror is also distinctive. Further, most of his books try to be some kind of scary, to the extent that when King writes something without any horror whatsoever, it feels like a pretty big deal.
To focus on one kind of horror, though, here are some of the best psychological horror books Stephen King has ever written. Only novels will be counted below, and sure, some of these dip into other kinds of horror (like, you can have something work as a psychological horror story while also doing a supernatural horror thing at the same time). But if “psychological horror” is a descriptor that applies, in one way or another, then such a book’s up for being includable below.
'The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon' (1999)
For now, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon is one of those Stephen King books you have to read, since it’s without a movie or TV adaptation, but it’s probably not going to stay that way for long. It feels extra surprising that this one hasn’t been adapted, since it’s not like a Dark Tower sort of thing where one would get overwhelmed by everything going on. The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon is honestly pretty straightforward, and far from epic in length, too.
Basically, it’s about a young girl who gets lost in a forest, and she has to survive and hopefully find her way out. The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon is pretty light on horror, by King’s standards, but it is psychological in nature, with its focus on one character and how she handles the whole situation emotionally/mentally, alongside what she has to do physically, of course.
'Rage' (1977)
There is less horror, in the traditional sense, to be found in Rage, compared to The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, but it is more horrifying because of its subject matter. Rage involves a disillusioned teenager who goes to school one day with a gun, which represents an escalation in his already violent and antisocial behavior. He ends up shooting a teacher, and then holds some of his fellow class members hostage.
It’s about a tense situation, to put it mildly, and there is also something particularly uncomfortable about reading Rage in more recent decades, though it would've likely been disquieting back in the late 1970s, too. Because of what it deals with, Rage has also notably gone out of print (which Stephen King is more than okay with), so finding a digital or second-hand copy is the only way to really read it, if you genuinely want to.
'Gerald's Game' (1992)
Stephen King had two books of his published in 1992, and both can be defined as psychological horror/thriller ones. Gerald’s Game was published earlier in the year, and it’s the slightly weaker book of the two, so it’s doubly convenient to talk about it first. It’s still a decent read, and it’s also difficult to deny how ambitious it is, since it takes place largely inside one room, and mostly just features one character.
There's a lot to be admired here regarding just what King did while imposing so many restrictions on himself.
She’s a woman named Jessie, and the titular Gerald handcuffs her to a bed before dying of a heart attack. She has to try to work out a way to escape, all the while confronting memories of both Gerald and other traumatic things from her past (so, with things taking place inside her head, you do get exposure to other characters in that way, through her thoughts and memories and stuff). The execution does leave a little to be desired, with Gerald’s Game, but there’s a lot to be admired here regarding just what King did while imposing so many restrictions on himself, as a writer.
'Dolores Claiborne' (1992)
The other 1992 novel is Dolores Claiborne, which has some ties to Gerald’s Game thematically, and there’s a woman with a violent and upsetting past at the center of this story, too. The titular Dolores is someone who, in her old age, is being interviewed by the police regarding two murders, one of which she does acknowledge involvement with (though for a reason she does explain), and the other of which she denies having anything to do with.
She covers these events – and others from her life – in one long statement given to the police, and reading the whole of Dolores Claiborne is to, quite simply, read that statement. In that sense, it’s another creative restriction King placed on himself, but he makes that whole thing more compelling than he did with the “one-woman-show” book (or one-woman-book?) thing found with Gerald’s Game.
'Later' (2021)
Later puts its protagonist through a kind of hell, and it also features a more unpredictable narrative (and ending) than a good many Stephen King stories, so it feels worth including here. After all, psychological horror/thriller stories tend to have unexpected things in them, and there are some admirably weird places Later proves willing to go to, all the while exploring a fairly wild premise.
That premise involves a boy who can see and talk to ghosts, with Later being about some of the things one could do with such an ability, all the while also unpacking some of the misery that would be caused by having said ability. It’s a more compelling read than its reputation might suggest, and one of the better Stephen King books published in the last decade or so for sure.
'The Dark Half' (1989)
People might be turned off The Dark Half because, on paper, it sounds a bit silly, but it sees Stephen King committing to a kind of goofy premise and honestly making it work so much better than you might expect. The story here involves a writer killing off his pseudonym in an over-the-top and self-deprecating kind of way, but he hopes the act of doing so will be liberating, and eventually lead to better writing in the future.
The high-concept parts of the story come in when that pseudonym comes back to life or, more accurately, comes to life at all, and then goes rampaging about, making the actual author’s life a living hell. The Dark Half might've been even better if it had leaned into psychological horror even more, doing a bit of an American Psycho thing by casting doubt on whether the person said to be doing the murders is actually doing the murders, but then it probably wouldn’t be as pulpy. At least it’s still a good deal of fun, and overall entertaining, just the way it is.
'The Dead Zone' (1979)
A bit like with Later, the main character of The Dead Zone has some pretty wild powers that enable him to assist with the solving of crimes, but they're also very different sorts of abilities. Here, the protagonist (generically named Johnny Smith) can get uncanny amounts of information through touching objects or people, and this extends to seeing glimpses of the future. When he comes into contact with someone who wants to be president one day, he sees visions of the world ending, and decides to do something about it.
There is a good deal more to The Dead Zone than that, but that is where the story ends up going. All the way, though, it’s exciting as a psychological thriller/horror book, and then it also stands as one of King’s very best efforts within the sci-fi genre, too. It gets a lot of things right, and there’s probably only one sci-fi/psychological horror book King wrote that’s even better…
'The Long Walk' (1979)
…And somehow, that one Stephen King sci-fi/psychological horror book superior to The Dead Zone also happened to come out in 1979: The Long Walk. This one’s more dystopian than science fiction in the more conventional sense, with it being about a deadly competition that has young men walking on and on, all for the chance to be the last one left standing.
Doing so is said to win the final contestant a good deal of riches, but anyone who has to drop out of the competition is also shot, so the stakes really couldn’t be much higher. The Long Walk succeeds (and then some) at feeling genuinely quite hard to read, owing to just how visceral King manages to make it all feel. It’s gripping and definitely compelling stuff, even with all that intensity, but the level of pain in this story – and how pained you might feel reading some of it – proves undeniable.
'The Shining' (1977)
The Shining is about a man going to serve as a caretaker for a rather unsettling hotel during its offseason, bringing his wife and son along with him. He’s a writer, and views the opportunity as one that’ll provide some steady work, and a potentially peaceful environment to do some more writing in, but then his personal demons get the better of him, slowly but surely, with the hotel also providing horrors of a more supernatural nature.
There’s a supernatural element here, undeniably, and it’s paired well with the psychological horror regarding the protagonist and his two family members. The Shining is undoubtedly scary on both those fronts, and it blends everything perfectly. If there was one early horror book that proved without a doubt that Stephen King had what it took to thrive in the genre, then it was probably this one that did so (or, maybe it inspires that kind of confidence further when you look at it alongside the already incredibly good Carrie and ‘Salem’s Lot, which were the first two King novels published before The Shining, his third).
'Misery' (1987)
You can look at previously mentioned books like The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon and Gerald’s Game as ones that potentially tried to scratch a similar itch to Misery, but neither proved to be anywhere near as great. Misery has a restricted and simple premise that’s executed pretty much flawlessly, with an author who’s held captive by an obsessed fan, and the fan makes him continue a series he’d wanted to be over and done with.
That makes it one of many Stephen King stories about writing, in line with The Dark Half and The Shining, plus countless other books where one of the main characters is a writer. Misery also benefits from having an all-time great villain in the form of Annie Wilkes, with her and the protagonist, Paul Sheldon, easily being great enough to sustain a whole story’s worth of suspense and excitement through their dynamic and conflict alone.
