TWO MORE DAYS LEFT to win a copy of THE BARTER by Siobhan Adcock. What was the scariest book you’ve ever read and why? Giving away first, second and third prizes. 
Filed under: Authors, Client, Fame! Celebrity! Riches!, fiction | Tagged: ghost story, haunted, Siobhan Adcock |
Betsy Lerner 
scariest book? Probably In Cold Blood, because it was all true. And so very, very well written. Spooky!
Scariest book for me: Portrait of a Lady by Henry James…an intricate psychological non-thriller about the objectification and capture of a bright young woman by a cold-hearted collector and his pimp, the unforgettable Madame Merle. The walls of a gilded cage inexorably moving inward, having grown spikes. Light’s out: nightmares.
The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson. Creepy, and she understood that it’s not necessary to be explicit to be terrifying. Quite the opposite. Leaving it to the reader’s imagination allows one to access one’s own deepest anxieties.
The Fountainhead, when I was fourteen — because it forced me to think more critically about everything!
Hands down The Bible. Best marketing job ever. Written by God? WTF
Carrie by Stephen King. Because there’s few things more scary than mean teenagers and high school.
The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein
It wasn’t particularly scary when I read it as a kid but now that I’m a mother, it terrifies me. The boy was a selfish, egomaniac and I swore I’d never resemble him. I never would have guessed I’d turn out to be the tree.
And in the end, all the boy really needed was a place to rest his ass.
Pet Sematary, wherein a man goes mad after watching his two year-old get run down by a semi, because there is nothing as genuinely horrifying to me as grief.