Across a career that spans nearly 50 years, best-selling author has published a staggering amount of work, from gripping crime thrillers to epic fantasy series, winning prestigious awards. Yet King’s varied writing is united by common themes, styles, characters, and settings. King fans will recognize a book by him for elements ranging from child characters to atmospheric settings, from eerie psychological horror to New England locations.
Undeniably, King’s influence is evident in many of the horror genre’s leading and emerging authors. This article spotlights 11 authors like Stephen King who build on King’s work to create equally sinister and pause-resistant tales, melding their own unique point of view with King’s trademark qualities.
South African novelist Lauren Beukes writes high-concept literary horror novels that deal with major themes like time, violence, and ambition. Like Stephen King, Beukes also frequently incorporates a mystery element into her writing, as in , which features a detective who gets pulled into the case of a frightful killer who thrives on city streets.
Why King fans will love their work: Beukes’s work is thoroughly atmospheric and uses elements of both alternate history and psychological horror.
Must listen: For a riveting story similar to King’s , try , a Beukes novel that also incorporates a time travel element.
Spanish author Edgar Cantero definitely draws similarities to Stephen King. For instance, Cantero’s , like King's , melds horror with the noir genre.
Why King fans will love their work: Cantero wields child characters, atmospheric small-town settings, and supernatural creatures to craft unforgettable tales.
Must listen: Add a nostalgic story with a campy spirit to your feed with Cantero’s , about kid detectives turned dysfunctional adults who must join forces to defeat an evil foe from their past once and for all, which recalls King's .
Narrated by Khristine Hvam, Peter Ganim, Jay Snyder, Joshua Boone, Dani Cervone, Jenna Hellmuth
0:00:
The Shining Girls
The Shining Girls is a masterful twist on the serial killer tale: a violent quantum leap featuring a memorable and appealing heroine in pursuit of a deadly criminal....
With raucous humor and brilliantly orchestrated mayhem, Meddling Kids subverts teen detective archetypes....
Accomplished novelist Tananarive Due blends elements of Afrofuturism, horror, and the supernatural in her stories, especially her four-part African Immortals series, which kicks off with . Similar to Stephen King, Due writes of the past affecting the present in otherworldly ways, as with her novel about a young woman who seems to be a channel for Ragtime-age musician Scott Joplin.
Why King fans will love their work: Due’s writing features family stories, atmospheric settings, elements of psychological horror, and supernatural creatures.
Must listen: Like King, Due pens frightful tales of evil that families can’t seem to shake, a theme Due engages in with its echoes of . Narrator Robin Miles wrests each and every twist and turn in this gripping listen.
Tananarive Due, author of
The Living Blood won the American Book Award and is praised as Stephen King's equal by
Publishers Weekly....
Mira Grant, the pen name of author Seanan McGuire, follows King’s lead and experiments with a range of horror tropes as a genre-bending novelist. Over the course of her career, Grant has written horror novels about King-like creatures like , , and .
Why King fans will love their work: Grant nails the atmospheric tone with the chills of psychological horror and a cast of terrifying supernatural creatures.
Must listen: Listen in to Grant’s , a high-adrenaline dystopian medical thriller that recalls King's and will not let you go till the shocking end.
A list of writers like Stephen King would be incomplete without the horror master’s son, Joe Hill, who draws on his father’s influence while distinguishing himself as a leading horror author in his own right. Already a prolific writer, Hill has tackled everything from short stories to novella collections to full-length novels after his breakout hit, , which won the Bram Stoker Award for Best First Novel.
A decade in the future, humanity thrives in the absence of sickness and disease....
Why King fans will love their work: Like his father, Hill’s work is packed with atmospheric storytelling, small-town settings (New England included!), psychological horror, and a multitude of supernatural creatures.
Must listen: Hill’s writing features characters who are relatable, average people who get caught into confrontations with a wicked antagonist, as in Hill's , a blood-curdling listen that builds minute-by-minute with staggering suspense.
Blackfeet Native American author Stephen Graham Jones draws several comparisons to King, including a prolific output of more than 20 books. Like King, Jones conjures stories that pursue big themes intricately connected to America’s spirit and soul. Jones’s fiction confronts the country’s complicated past with stories that engage with Native history, tradition, and culture. Similar to King, Jones has dabbled in stories about supernatural creatures like werewolves in and zombies in .
The spine-tingling, bone-chilling novel of supernatural suspense from the number one New York Times best-selling author of The Fireman and Horns - now an AMC original series starring Zachary Quinto, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, and Ashleigh Cummings.
"A masterwork of horror." (Time)
Victoria McQueen has an uncanny knack for finding things: a misplaced bracelet, a missing photograph, answers to unanswerable questions. When she rides her bicycle over the rickety old covered bridge in the woods near her house, she always emerges in the places she needs to be.
Charles Talent Manx has a gift of his own. He likes to take children for rides in his 1938 Rolls-Royce Wraith with the vanity plate NOS4A2. In the Wraith, he and his innocent guests can slip out of the everyday world and onto hidden roads that lead to an astonishing playground of amusements he calls Christmasland.
The journey across the highway of Charlie's twisted imagination transforms his precious passengers, leaving them as terrifying and unstoppable as their benefactor.
Then comes the day when Vic goes looking for trouble...and finds her way to Charlie. That was a lifetime ago. Now, the only kid ever to escape Charlie's evil is all grown up and desperate to forget. But Charlie Manx hasn't stopped thinking about Victoria McQueen. On the road again, he won't slow down until he's taken his revenge. He's after something very special - something Vic can never replace.
As a life-and-death battle of wills builds, Vic McQueen prepares to destroy Charlie once and for all - or die trying.
Why King fans will love their work: Jones uses small-town settings, the shiver-inducing thrills of psychological horror, and spooky supernatural creatures to craft stories that you won’t want to listen to with the lights off.
Must listen: King fans who love his stories about the past catching up with the present will want to listen to . This novel about a group of friends stalked by a sinister force is enhanced by Shaun Taylor-Corbett's performance that captures every breathtaking moment of dread.
Fans who embrace Stephen King's experiments with different genres will find much to love about Caitlín R. Kiernan’s writing. Kiernan’s work represents a wide range of formats and subgenres, including dark fantasy, weird fiction, and cosmic horror. Across short stories, comics, novels, and more, Kiernan explores King-like worlds where humanity confronts the darkest evil.
Why King fans will love their work: Atmospheric setting? Check. Psychological horrors? Check. Supernatural creatures? Check. Kiernan’s work has it all.
Seamlessly blending classic horror and a dramatic narrative with sharp social commentary, The Only Good Indians follows four American Indian men after a disturbing event from their youth puts them in a desperate struggle for their lives....
Must listen: Listeners who want Kiernan’s most King-influenced work should begin with the Bram Stoker Award-winning whose unreliable narrator bends reality — perfectly captured in Suzy Jackson's suspenseful performance.
With, Stephen King imagined an alternate history where the assassination of John F. Kennedy could have possibly been thwarted with a little help from time travel. Similarly, author Alma Katsu pens bold fiction that twists major historical events with a taste of terror. In , for instance, Katsu imagines that the Titanic could have been haunted by a supernatural force.
Why King fans will love their work: Katsu’s storytelling is atmospheric, with elements of alternate history, psychological horror, and the supernatural woven throughout.
Must listen: King readers won’t be able to pause a listen like Katsu’s , which supposes that the doomed Donner Party of westward-bound settlers was cursed and plagued by doom into starvation and the horrors of cannibalism.
India Morgan Phelps - Imp to her friends - is schizophrenic. Struggling with her perceptions of reality, Imp must uncover the truth....
Victor LaValle’s work shares many traits with Stephen King's. Like King, LaValle builds worlds so intricate they feel fully alive and real, such as in . And like King, LaValle isn’t afraid to break new ground and challenge the horror genre’s problematic past, such as in .
Why King fans will love their work: LaValle’s writing expertly balances the atmospheric with psychological horror and supernatural creatures.
Must listen: King fans should listen to , narrated by LaValle himself, a diabolical novel of psychological horror set in a mental institution where the devil himself walks the halls, tormenting patients—until they decide to fight back.
Tamsen Donner must be a witch. That is the only way to explain the series of misfortunes that have plagued the wagon train known as the Donner Party. Depleted rations, bitter quarrels, and the mysterious death of a little boy have driven the pioneers to the brink of madness....
Pepper is a rambunctious big man, and, suddenly, the surprised inmate of a budget-strapped mental institution in Queens, New York....
Author Jennifer McMahon infuses her horror novels with the palpable dread of Stephen King. McMahon also sets many of her novels, like and , in the small New England towns that King fans will recognize. While King favors Maine, McMahon’s books often find a home in Vermont settings. McMahon’s novels are often concerned with ghosts and hauntings that she brings vividly to life in stories that inspire up-all-night marathon listening sessions.
Why King fans will love their work: McMahon knows how to mix family tales with atmospheric small-town settings in New England to create the perfect scary story.
Must listen: Start with McMahon’s for a spine-tingling tale. Dually narrated, this slow-build audio experience brings its characters—alive and dead—to life.
In just a little more than a decade, Paul Tremblay has fast become one of the leading authors in the horror genre. Through short story collections like and full-length novels, such as , Tremblay has racked up awards and honors.
Why King fans will love their work: Tremblay has many similarities to Stephen King. Most notably, he often includes child characters, and his books also often take place in New England settings.
Must listen: Narrator Joy Osmanski reads Tremblay's Bram Stoker Award-winning with a quiet intimacy that perfectly captures the heroine's ambiguity and childlike wonder.
A freelance librarian, Sarah S. Davis, MLIS, writes about books on Book Riot, Electric Literature, PsychCentral, and others. She has published the bestselling quote collections Brave Brain and A Reader’s Library of Book Quotes. Currently, she is an MFA candidate at VCFA.
The lives of the Barretts, a normal suburban New England family, are torn apart when 14-year-old Marjorie begins to display signs of acute schizophrenia....
