Who doesn't like a good scare? From ghost stories to slasher stories, from powerful supernatural beings to the inhumanity that can lurk in the human heart, from the price of trying to be more than we are to the knowledge that everything we can be is never enough in the face of the boundless and incomprehensible, horror has always fascinated us. These are stories for when the night is dark and the wind is high, when the moon is full or barely there, when the seasons turn... or when we just want to engage in a bit of carefully controlled fear - a little something for (almost) all ages.
Old enough for the public domain, continually reinvented and shaped, Frankenstein is one of the great horror classics. People have adapted the story, tweaking the genre, borrowing the character, pulling from different viewpoints, and even creating alternate versions of its original inception, enough to make it worth giving it its own place of honor in this guide. To fully understand it, we need to keep track of three different things, all referred to as "Frankenstein".
Frankenstein, the book: created by Mary Shelley, wife of Percy Bysse Shelley. It began with a party in 1816, thrown by Lord Byron, where guests - including the Shelleys - were challenged to tell scary stories. At the time, Mary was unable to contribute, but it sparked the idea that would become Frankenstein, arguably the first true science fiction novel. Due to the monster's crossover appeal with horror fantasy legends such as Dracula, and to developments in science since the book's creation, it's easy for people raised on movies to forget about the science fiction aspect; even some of the books below, such as The Apprenticeship of Victor Frankenstein, more closely mirror dark fantasy than any sort of science fiction.
"Frankenstein", the monster: originally a disturbingly handsome man (albeit made of stitched-together corpse parts) animated by lightning. The creature was never specifically named, so people called him Frankenstein's monster - and when he started sharing screentime with a number of other literary horror icons whose books were all named after them, continuing the pattern by calling him Frankenstein caught on.
Frankenstein, the man: a college dropout who decided that creating life was more interesting than extra credit. Arguably just as much of a monster as his creation, between playing God to create the creature in the first place and then panicking and casting the thing adrift the moment it wasn't exactly what he expected. There are reasons why "Frankenstein was the monster" is a sentence guaranteed to both start and maintain arguments in literary circles.
Below are several variations on a theme of Frankenstein, including the original. Enjoy!
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley by 
The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein by 
Strange Star by 
Such Wicked Intent by If any author on these subject table rates his own list, it would be Stephen King. Highly prolific, with numerous books that have been adapted into horror classics (The Shining, Carrie and It being the most generally memorable), King is one of the biggest names in the horror genre. More, many of his stories within the horror genre defy further classification. Psychological? Supernatural? All of the above? The only thing they truly have in common is their author.
The Outsider by 
Sleeping Beauties by 
Gwendy's Button Box by 
Mr. Mercedes by 
Full Dark, No Stars by 
Cell by 
Everything's Eventual by 
Nightmares and Dreamscapes by 
The Stand by 
Skeleton Crew by 