Ok so recommend me a very scary, deeply unsettling (translate that as you will) fictional book to read…. please.

American Psycho. You'll want to burn the book after you've finished it.

Not scary or deeply unsettling but very funny and a bit dark, 'Kill your friends' that someone recommended on here is great. I seriously enjoyed that book.

oh, and clockwork orange is quite dark too.

Already read "American Psycho": One of the most sickening things I have ever read….good book though.

I was Dora Suarez, by Derek Raymond, very unsettling noirish crime novel.

Possibly some classic HP Lovecraft too.

the bible -more murders and horific child killings than any other work of fiction. Even scarier when you think that some freaks believe it all.

on a more serious note "the entity" is pretty bloody distrubing and all the old shaun hutson horrors are pretty dark as well

We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver. 2 of the people I lent it to couldn't finish it and the barmaid in my local kept telling me where she was and asking what happens next. Deeply, deeply unsettling amd I probably wouldn't recommend it if you have kids

Nineteen Eighty Four
Stasiland – Anna Funder (OK not fiction – sorry)

"The Woman in Black" by Susan Hill.

Not a book for late nights.

American Psycho. You'll want to burn the book after you've finished it.

Lunar Park is scarier than American Psycho

Terrifying

American Psycho was a bit dull. Seemed like a short story that got dragged on past the point where the concept could sustain it. Fairly detailed descriptions of violence of a fairly extreme nature but shocking doesn't mean story or scary.

the acid house by Irvine Welsh, gets a bit scary but mostly just splatter gore fun and games.

The Trial or The Castle by Franz Kafka.

The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks

Anything By Chuck Palahniuk.

None of them really scary but definately all a little disturbing

Try here for one of Chucks more disturbing short stories

Jude the Obscure

Handmaid's Tale,

Never let Me Go

Last exit to Brooklyn.

As above, just about anything by Brett Easton Ellis.

try working in a mortuary/histology lab, ruins gore books and films completely, it's never as bad as real life and you become desensitized

Second the Lovecraft; personally I found the Road quite unsettling, too…

Clive Barker's "Books of Blood". Six volumes of pretty disturbing stuff. 'Bloody' good though!

House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski

And Lovecraft, At The Mountains of Madness or The Case of Charles Dexter Ward

I found Pet Semetary by Stephen King to be disturbing.

House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski

That is the only book to have given me nightmares – absolutely brilliant.

Already read loads of H.P. Lovecraft: I have two or three compliations.

yup really creeped me out, especially being anywhere dark with lots of doors

brrrrrrrr

Stephen King Cujo,

such a simple idea for a story, but told very well.

"Sheepshagger" by Niall Griffiths

This is the story of Ianto: the feral, inarticulate, inbred, ignoble savage; haunter of mountains, killer of innocents. Ianto is a sheepshagger — a yokel, a Welsh redneck. But Ianto is also a seer, a visionary — the genius loci — who comprehends nature with a Blakean intensity, and is at one with the world he lives in: the moss and lichen, the lamb and the raven, the summit and the scree.

Robbed of his ancestral home — a near-derelict hovel in the mountains of west Wales — Ianto pledges revenge not only on the English yuppies who have turned his grandmother's cottage into a weekenders' barbecue party but on all those who have violated him and the land that is his. The oppression and abuse that Ianto has faced triggers his lurid imagination into unspeakable savagery — embodying the most primal fears of physical threat and a world beyond his control.

An extraordinary prose amalgam of Old Testament prophecy and demotic slang, of Faulkner and Cormac McCarthy, Sheepshagger is written in a language charged to the highest level: lyrical and hieratic, saturated — like nature — in beauty and violence. And the spirit of its place, Ianto, at once both Caliban and Prospero, will hang in the memory of all who read his story like a devil or a god.

I found pet semetry by stephen king quite disturbing. Also, I Am Legend by Richard Matheson, is brilliant. It is very very different to the film (I am Will Smith).

Never let me go and The handmaids Tale, are both brilliant, Never let me go is my favourite book. But they are more shocking, than scaey. You should still read them though.

Ah yeah, just saw someone reccomended Books of Blood, by clive barker, that is another good book, and i remember reading a book called 'doll's eyes', by Bari Wood. WHich was good

The Bible…

+1 on The Road (Cormac McCarthy (SP?!)) Very quick read, but very unsettling.

If you want deeply unsettling, then this is the most disturbing book I have ever read. I read it from cover to cover, and since then have never picked it up again and probably never will.

Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account by Dr. Miklos Nyiszli

Oh, and definitely Lucifer's Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle – absolutely riveting end-of-the-world scenario. One of the best books I've read in recent years.

I can thoroughly recommend the daddy of all ghost story writers – M.R.James . Classic Victorian horror at its finest. And cheap too!

'Heart shaped box' by Joe Hill (Stephen King's son).

When I was in my 20's I borrowed Emlyn Williams' 'Beyond Belief', the story of the moors murderers Brady and Hindley, and their victims.

I was warned by several people who had read the book that it would seriously upset me, cause nightmares, etc.
Being big and tough I ignored them, and read on. Result – a couple of months worth of awful nightmares and an abiding wish that I'd never picked the damn thing up in the first place.

You have been warned!

Clive Barker? You're having a laugh, right?

Pet Semetary is one of the best descriptions of grief and the awful places it can take you I've ever read – a superb, if depressing book by an underrated author.

I was going to suggest M.R. James but it just didn't fit with;

very scary, deeply unsettling fictional book

.

One of my favourite writers but more for the feel good factor than for scariness – it's more crumpets in the study and a slightly disturbing apparition than it is scary….

user-removed, maybe I'm just a big

but I find M R James really, really unsettling.

Whistle and I'll come to you my lad, The Mezzotint and A warning to the curoius, especially.

real life is the most scary so scott_mcavennie2 is going to win with the hitler clause

but if it's stephen king it has to be the shining

and +1 for acid house

Here's another classic – The Woman In Black.. I saw it on stage on London a few years ago, and it scared the willies out of me. I was seeing the Woman in Black around the house for days. I think it's still running now – well recommended!!