If you have watched a Twilight Zone episode about a gremlin on an airplane wing, or a film about the last man alive in a city of vampires, you already know Richard Matheson's work, even if you have never read a word of it. Matheson (1926–2013) wrote novels, short stories and screenplays for half a century. He took horror out of the Gothic castle and set it in ordinary houses, highways and airplanes, which is one reason Stephen King has named him as a major influence.
He is also unusually easy to start with. His novels are short, his stories even shorter, and almost everything he wrote has a hook you can explain in one sentence: a man who keeps shrinking, a truck that will not stop following a driver, a box with a button that pays well and kills a stranger. This guide covers the books worth reading first, the short story collections behind his television work, his novels outside horror, and a tribute anthology by the writers he inspired.
Start here: the three essential books
1. I Am Legend and Other Stories — Richard Matheson
Matheson's 1954 novel about Robert Neville, the last uninfected man in a world where a plague has turned everyone else into vampires. Neville spends his days hunting and his nights barricaded in his house, and the novel asks what "monster" means when you are the only one of your kind left. It has been filmed three times, including The Omega Man and the 2007 film with Will Smith, but only the novel's final pages fully explain its title. This Tor Nightfire edition pairs the novel with a selection of his short stories, which makes it the best single introduction to Matheson.
2. Hell House — Richard Matheson
The haunted house novel that later writers keep measuring themselves against. A physicist, his wife and two mediums are paid to spend a week in the Belasco house, the most haunted building in the world, to settle once and for all whether survival after death is real. It is more explicit and more violent than Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, which it is often compared with. We wrote a full review of it here; the Tor Nightfire paperback is the edition we stock.
3. Nightmare at 20,000 Feet: Horror Stories — Richard Matheson
Matheson's short fiction is where his reputation was made, and this collection gathers twenty of his horror stories, including the title story he adapted for The Twilight Zone: a man recovering from a breakdown sees something on the wing of his plane that no one else can. If you like your horror in short, sharp doses, this volume is where to begin.
The horror novels to read next
4. A Stir of Echoes — Richard Matheson
An ordinary man is hypnotized at a neighborhood party and wakes up able to hear the thoughts of everyone around him, which is how he learns what his neighbors are hiding and that something in his own house wants his attention. Published in 1958 and filmed with Kevin Bacon in 1999, A Stir of Echoes is suburban horror before the term existed.
5. The Incredible Shrinking Man — Richard Matheson
Scott Carey starts shrinking and cannot stop. What begins as a medical curiosity becomes a fight to survive in his own basement, against a spider and against his own despair. Matheson wrote the screenplay for the 1957 film himself. The novel is darker and stranger than the film, and it reads as fast as a thriller.
6. Earthbound — Richard Matheson
A couple rent a lonely beach cottage to save their marriage, and a woman who should not be there begins visiting the husband. Earthbound is an erotic ghost story, and Matheson's most adult novel; readers who liked the ghosts of Hell House but wanted something quieter tend to like it.
7. Hunted Past Reason — Richard Matheson
Two old friends go hiking in the woods of northern California, and the trip turns into a hunt. There is nothing supernatural in Hunted Past Reason; it is a late-career survival thriller, and a good pick for readers who prefer psychological horror to ghosts.
The short story collections
8. The Best of Richard Matheson — Richard Matheson
If you want one book that covers his whole career, this is it. Novelist Victor LaValle selected the stories for this Penguin Classics volume, and it is the edition most likely to be assigned in a course on American horror.
9. Duel: Terror Stories by Richard Matheson — Richard Matheson
The title story is the one Steven Spielberg turned into his first feature-length film in 1971: a motorist on a desert highway is pursued by a truck whose driver he never sees. Duel collects it alongside other early terror stories.
10. Button, Button: Uncanny Stories — Richard Matheson
A stranger offers a couple a box with a button: press it, and they receive a fortune, and someone they don't know dies. The title story became a Twilight Zone episode and later the film The Box. This collection gathers twelve of his uncanny stories.
11. Offbeat: Uncollected Stories — Richard Matheson
For readers who have finished the famous collections. Valancourt's Offbeat gathers thirteen stories that never appeared in his earlier books, and Valancourt's editions are carefully made.
Beyond horror
12. What Dreams May Come — Richard Matheson
A man dies and searches the afterlife for his wife. Matheson researched the novel extensively and treated it as a serious account of what might follow death; it became the 1998 film with Robin Williams. What Dreams May Come is not horror, but it is the book many readers name as his most moving.
Matheson's influence
13. He Is Legend: An Anthology Celebrating Richard Matheson — Christopher Conlon
A 2009 anthology in which writers he influenced return to his stories and themes. It is best known for "Throttle", a story written jointly by Stephen King and Joe Hill as a tribute to Duel. He Is Legend is the natural last stop once you have read the originals.
How to choose
New to Matheson? Read I Am Legend and Other Stories first: it gives you his most influential novel and a sample of the short fiction in one book. If you came for haunted houses, go straight to Hell House, then A Stir of Echoes. If you prefer short stories, Nightmare at 20,000 Feet or The Best of Richard Matheson will show you why so many of his ideas ended up on television.
Most of his books are short and inexpensive, usually under $20, so it is easy to read several. And once you have, you will start noticing how much of modern horror, from zombie films to Stephen King's novels, still runs on ideas Matheson had first.
