Books like The Mask

A cold-open mass-death mystery in an emptied mountain town escalates into creature-driven dread, propelled by short scenes and an ensemble investigation.

A chase thriller with a soulful genetically-engineered dog at its center, pursued by shadowy government forces and a monstrous counterpart — commercial suspense with a sentimental streak.

Four midnight-hour novellas where ordinary lives crack open into the uncanny — vintage King, chatty and vernacular on the surface, escalating into genuine dread underneath.

A dark stalker-romance built on obsession, revenge, and possession — the foster-brother antagonist is the love interest, and the menace never really eases.

A campus romantic-suspense with escalating gruesome murders and a folklore-tinged web of suspects closing around the heroine — pulpy, propulsive, and menacing.

A creeping, procedural dread as characters race against a countdown to survive a curse whose logic unfolds like a mystery — tense and propulsive rather than gory.

A creeping small-town haunting where the horror lies less in the muzzled witch herself than in the community's desperate systems built to contain her — until the teenagers crack it open.