9 Spine-Chilling Indian Horror Novels
All of India thinks these are some spine-chilling Indian books. If you're into horror novels, check out these works by Indian authors.
BookTuber Manpreet started the Indian Booktuber channel in 2015 to share her love for books and to highlight Indian books and authors. Fast forward to 2022, she makes videos about books every Sunday. She’s been featured in Times of India, The Hindu, and Indian Express, as well as Social Samosa, Harper Broadcast, and even the BBC.
Featured Authors
Nidhi Upadhyay is an engineer-turned-headhunter. For years, Nidhi spent her days matchmaking senior executives to their dream jobs and her nights reading thrillers, until her husband borderline bullied her into writing one. She lives in Singapore with her doting husband and two exceptionally loving but polar-opposite boys. That Night is her debut novel.
Neil D'Silva, with several bestselling books to his credit, is a known name in the Indian literary world. His unique stories have struck a chord with a wide range of readers, eliciting praise from various quarters. He has signed book deals with leading publishers such as Penguin Random House, Rupa Publications, and Hachette among others. He has also won screen adaptation deals on his books. He has been named as one of the Top 7 Indian horror writers to be read by UK’s DESIblitz magazine. Considered as one of the forerunners of contemporary Indian horror literature, he is the President of the India Chapter of the Horror Writers Association.
Anita Krishan, born in Shimla in 1955, spent the initial twenty-two years of her life in this pristine Himalayan town, earning her master’s degree in English literature from Himachal University, and moving on to a career of introducing delights of the language to her young learners. In her long tenure as an educator, she has enriched the lives of countless students with the mystery of the narrative, before moving on to a full-time career in writing. A versatile writer, each of her literary works appertains to a different genre . . . from the joys and travails of life to terrorism that has brought the world to its tenterhooks, to now the paranormal.
K. Hari Kumar, AKA ‘Horror Kumar,’ is an Indian screenwriter and bestselling author of horror and psychological thriller novels. Hari was the first Indian writer to be listed on Amazon.com's global bestsellers list in the horror category. He has also written 50 horror short stories that were published in his 2019 book India’s Most Haunted (HarperCollins India), which The Times of India deemed a “must-read horror book” and which was listed among HarperCollins’s 100 best books (all-time) written by Indian writers.
Ruskin Bond is the author of several bestselling novels and collections of short stories, essays and poems. These include The Room on the Roof (winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize), A Flight of Pigeons, The Night Train at Deoli, Time Stops at Shamli, Our Trees Still Grow in Dehra (winner of the Sahitya Akademi Award), Angry River, The Blue Umbrella, Rain in the Mountains, Roads to Mussoorie, A Little Night Music, Tigers for Dinner, Tales of Fosterganj, and A Gathering of Friends. Ruskin Bond was awarded the Padma Shri by the Government of India in 1999, a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Delhi government in 2012, and the Padma Bhushan in 2014.
Alisha ‘Priti’ Kirpalani lives in Mumbai along with her husband, two daughters, one cat and over a hundred board games. Her journey with words started after she won a creative writing contest in college, an undisclosed number of decades ago. This was followed by a degree in English Literature, a short stint as a reporter and later as a copywriter. From full- length novels to blogging to micro-fiction, she is known for the impeccable language and insightful nature of her writing. Her latest book, Ghosts in Our Backyard: The Ramsay’s real-life encounters with the supernatural, has been published by Harper Collins in April 2021. She is also the author of Out With Lanterns and A Smattering of Darkness.
Mayur Didolkar—wealth manager by profession, runner by passion and author by persistence—began writing at age 12. He switched to English fiction in his late teens and for about 10 years spent time writing, reading, and throwing what he wrote in the shredder. Then Kumbhpur Rising happened. Now Mayur spends his spare time in training for marathons, writing his latest novels, and offending people through his Facebook posts.
Jessica Faleiro writes fiction, poetry, essays and travel pieces. Her poems, stories and non-fiction have appeared in Asia Literary Review, Forbes, Indian Quarterly, IndiaCurrents, Coldnoon, Joao Roque Literary Journal, Rockland Lit, Mascara Literary Review, Muse India and the Times of India. Her first novel, Afterlife: Ghost stories from Goa, was published in 2012. Her latest novel, The Delicate Balance of Little Lives, was published in 2018. Jessica has an MA in Creative Writing from Kingston University, UK and lives in Goa where she teaches creative writing and travel writing workshops.
