1.) Night of the Claw by Ramsey Campbell - I know, the book has an amazingly lame, B horror movie type name, but that's what makes it so great. Ramsey Campbell has the skill to take something so mundane, something many of us would consider lame, like the concept of THE CLAW and make it one of the most suspenseful and terrifying books I've ever read. He's the master of putting the element of fear into something readers never knew they could be afraid of. After being given a cursed clawed glove in a package that simply won't let itself be delivered, a father finds himself the victim of the uncontrollable urge to kill his daughter. The curse ravages the family until a breaking point when the father realizes he must go into the jungle and face the cannibalistic spirits of the totem he holds in order to save his daughter from himself. Riveting stuff that will keep you on the edge of your seat, hoping the girl lives, right until the very end.

2.) The Dreams in the Witch House: And Other Weird Stories by H.P. Lovecraft - With help from S.T. Joshi, the premier expert on H.P. Lovecraft, Penguin Group has put out a 3 volume collection of H.P. Lovecraft's short stories, of which this is the third one. The reason I recommend this particular version to you all is because of the amazing footnotes that go into great detail about the things that inspired Lovecraft as he wrote. It's really interesting to get so deep into an author's head and begin to know what made someone so great write something so great. The Dreams in the Witch House is one of Lovecraft's better known tales, but unfortunately, it isn't the best. However, there are are plenty of others that are amazing right here in this collection! Here's a list of what you'll find inside:
Polaris
The Doom That Came to Sarnath
The Terrible Old Man
The Tree
The Cats of Ulthar
From Beyond
The Nameless City
The Moon-Bog
The Other Gods
Hypnos
The Lurking Fear
The Unnamable
The Shunned House
The Horror at Red-Hook
In the Vault
The Strange High House in the Mist
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath
The Silver Key
Through the Gates of the Silver Key
The Dreams in the Witch House
The Shadow Out of Time

3.) The House by Bentley Little - Okay, I've read this book, and while the story isn't amazing and I'm honestly not even sure about it, I'm going to recommend it to you. Why? Because it is something to be seen and read for the sake of seeing and reading. People have called Bentley Little original and suggested that this is the book to read to really get a feel for his style, and I agree on both counts. There is nothing like him. But is he good? Some people must think so, because this book won a Bram Stoker Award. He has a skill for words, but I think what really grabs readers and keeps them reading this book is how completely and totally fucked up it is. It is shock horror to the point of deviating greatly from the main plot to allow for more shock scenes, with a thousand scenarios to make your jaw drop in disgust. There are simply a lot, A LOT, of just plain weird, disturbing images in this book that might elicit a powerful emotional response in readers. Some that I recall are the ghost of the little girl asking to be fucked in the ass and a character's dead mother being a bald harpy sitting on an egg in an alternate dimension. 'Nuff said.

4.) Pet Sematary by Stephen King - Of course I'm going to recommend something by the master, Stephen King! While I know a lot of you have seen the movies for the classics like Cujo and Pet Sematary, how many of you have actually stopped to read these amazing books? The Creeds, an ideal family unit with a daughter, a son, and a rascally cat, move to a new house in the country near a notoriously dangerous road and an ancient secret. Their neighbor is full of friendly warnings and cautionary tales about staying away from the land beyond the dead-fall, the endless wilderness behind the Pet Sematary, but he all that only pushes Mr. Creed to do something unthinkable when his son falls victim to the dangers of the highway nearby. Sometimes dead is better, because when things come back from the spoiled ground, they come back different. Pet Sematary is a little thick for the casual reader, like many of King's books, but I like his books that way personally. Why? Because they're so good, I hardly want them to end. Not many things have ever creeped me out the way Mrs. Creed's dying sister or resurrected Gage lurking in the shadows, more dangerous than someone several times his toddler size, has. Few books truly put fear in me, but this is one I had to read during the day.

5.) Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin - Nothing is more frightening than being helpless. Rosemary's Baby presents the portrait of a young housewife who is deceived by everyone around her and trapped on all sides by the only people in the world she trusts. She wakes up one morning to find herself pregnant, a helpless condition in itself, and when she begins to suspect evil doings with Satan going on behind her back and even that her unborn child might have been conceived only to be sacrificed to the Devil, she has nowhere to run. The mother-to-be's heightened pain, fear that her husband has sold her soul to the Devil, and suspicions that her neighbor is pushing her to nurture the child inside her with strange poisons frighten her to the point of hysteria, but there is no escape. It's a story that will make you think and leave you disturbed, even if you put it down days ago. There's just something about the complete violation of all avenues of trust that leaves a very lasting impression and makes you thankful for the security of knowing you have someone to go to if something frightening is happening.