Lisa Unger is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author. With books published in twenty-nine languages and millions of copies sold worldwide, she is widely regarded as a master of suspense.
Her latest release is Confessions on the 7:45.
At CrimeReads Unger tagged five great horror novels that terrified her. One title on the list:
Rosemary’s Baby, by Ira LevinRead about the other entries on the list.
Guy Woodhouse is a struggling actor and Rosemary is his young wife. We like them right away because they’re just like us. Guy is smart and adoring. Rosemary is aspirational and sweet. They’ve already signed a lease on a place when they get the big news that an apartment in their dreambuilding The Bramford has come available. They fall in love with it, and at Rosemary’s behest Guy gets them out of their just-signed lease and into The Bramford. When good pal Hutch tries to talk them out of it, they scoff. He claims that The Bramford is in the “danger zone” and warns of a history of cannibalism, satanism, and a rash of suicides. It’s Levin’s first master stroke; we’re worried about the lovely couple before the first sign of trouble. As Guy’s acting dreams come true, and Rosemary’s pregnancy seems to leave her ever weaker, Levin ratchets up the tension subtly, moment by moment, scene by scene until we are as completely in the thrall of The Bramford’s horrors as poor Rosemary.
Rosemary's Baby is among Alice Blanchard's ten chilling thrillers to get you through a winter storm, Ania Ahlborn's ten scariest books of all time, Jeff Somers's twenty-one books that will give you an idea of how the horror genre has evolved and "twenty-five books that might not necessarily be the best horror novels, but are certainly the scariest," Christopher Shultz's top ten literary chillers, and Kat Rosenfield's top seven scary autumnal stories.
--Marshal Zeringue
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