Recommend me some good horror books

[Henry Hankovitch]

Aside from a whole lot of Stephen King, I haven't read much horror in my life.  A year or so ago I got around to reading some Lovecraft, which is a really mixed bag--a lot of his story construction tends to irritate me.

So I'd like to hear some examples of what you guys consider to be really good horror novels/collections.  "Lovecraftian" horror would be cool, but I'm casting a wide net here.

I'm also rather interested in the Dreamlands/Hastur mythos stuff for gaming purposes, so works with an interesting take on that would be appreciated.

[Cthuluzord]

House of Leaves is by far the scariest thing I've every read.

If you want Lovecraft but rated R, you might try Thomas Ligotti.

Clive Barker is okay for a book or so, but he gets to be a one trick pony.

Jeff Long's The Descent or Patient Zero is scary shit too, but I've not read his more recent stuff.

[Klivian]

House of Leaves is by far the scariest thing I've every read.

The best book you'll never read again.

[clockworkjoe]

The King in Yellow is good and public domain http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_King_in_Yellow

If you don't like Lovecraft's style  but still want to see what all the fuss is about the Cthulhu Mythos - try The Book of Cthulhu   Than Curse the Darkness by David Drake is in there and it's quite horrifying. Lots of other good short stories. There's also a series of Cthulhu Mythos stories written by Japanese authors translated into English - Night Voices, Night Journeys is one of them. Good read.

[clockworkjoe]

Cities under Siege: the scariest book of the 21st century http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/city-under-siege/

[SageNytell]

Relic by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Childs is excellent, but avoid the movie, it's awful.
They have an entire chain of investigative thrillers, but Relic and probably Riptide are the scariest of the bunch. Relic actually starts the series and Riptide is a side book.

[Setherick]

The King in Yellow is good and public domain http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_King_in_Yellow

This is an absolute must for any horror fan. If you can't stomach reading L19C prose, you can also download a good version of it on Librivox.

[Boyos]

Its an old one, but scarey as hell.

The Bible.

[crawlkill]

I dunno if I've ever read a horror book that really got to me for more than a couple lines at a time, but the collaborative fiction project over at http://www.scp-wiki.net/ gives me the creeping horrors on a regular basis and is actually making me afraid of the fucking dark, if you haven't explored it. I recommend http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-1193, http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-1425 (the excerpts from the book oh FUCK) and the eternal http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-173 as starting points.