If you’re looking for a classic haunted house novel, look no further than Burnt Offerings. Given that Burnt Offerings was written in 1973, it offers up many of the conventional social roles of its time for a modern audience to both reflect upon and criticize.

While King’s main character is a father, Jack Torrence, Marasco’s is Marian Rolfe, a mother. Though Marasco’s work is a tight read (the most recent paperback edition clocks in at 218 pages), he aims for quality over quantity, creating a consistently heightened sense of dread with each turn of a page. This novel famously influenced Stephen King’s The Shining, but the two stories are very different, so don’t skip Marasco just because you’ve read King’s novel or watched Kubrick’s adaptation.

Robert Marasco’s Burnt Offerings is a standout horror novel that utilizes the haunted house setting to great effect. In a novel where a house is the sinister antagonist, all of its residents are doomed, and we’re just along for the ride. The reader knows they aren’t to get too attached to any particular character. One thing’s for sure: each person will be uniquely challenged during their stay, and their secrets will be uncovered and used against them. The group that moves in, temporarily or permanently, is typically a family, although sometimes it’s a loose bunch of acquaintances. It sits on a lonely piece of land, it’s usually quite large, and always a few generations old. By Lindsey Ragsdale house is always innocuous at first appearance.

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