He Is Legend: 10 of the Best Books by Richard Matheson

Named the best vampire novel of the century by the Bram Stoker Estate, I Am Legend is Richard Matheson’s most famous work, an unforgettable apocalyptic novel that has been officially adapted three times to film, with stars including Vincent Price, Charlton Heston, and Will Smith. In some ways, however, I Am Legend’s greatest legacy is unofficial, where it helped to inspire the creation of George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead—and with it, the modern zombie film as we know it. Every bit as gripping today as when it was first published, I Am Legend tells the story of Robert Neville, the last human survivor of a world of vampires. But in a world overrun by monsters, who is the real monster?

Adapted to film in 1973 as The Legend of Hell House, Richard Matheson’s classic haunted house novel joins Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House as one of the most respected entries into the genre, leading Stephen King to declare that, “Hell House is the scariest haunted house novel ever written. It looms over the rest the way the mountains loom over the foothills.” 

A wealthy tycoon has hired a handful of experts to explore the “Mount Everest of haunted houses,” the Belasco House. Among them is the only survivor of the last group to attempt such an expedition. Their goal? To finally answer the question of whether there is life after death. But will they survive to reveal their answers?

While Richard Matheson wrote dozens of novels, it was his short stories that helped to make him a household name, especially when several of them were adapted into episodes of classic TV series. Among those, perhaps none is more famous than the title story of this collection, which follows a man who spots a terrifying gremlin on the wing of his plane, memorably played by William Shatner in the Twilight Zone episode. 

Along with that unforgettable classic, this selection of short stories hand-chosen by Matheson himself includes several of his best-loved works, among them “Prey,” which was iconically adapted into one of the segments of the 1975 TV movie Trilogy of Terror.

Filmed in 1957 as The Incredible Shrinking Man—with a Hugo Award-winning screenplay by Matheson himself—The Shrinking Man is probably Matheson’s best-known novel of science fiction, hailed by Dean Koontz as, “A classic of suspense as poignant as it is frightening—a mix that only Richard Matheson could pull off.” When ordinary family man Scott Carey is exposed to a radioactive cloud, he finds himself shrinking bit by bit, day by day. Soon, he is so small that ordinary life has left him behind, and even the humble family housecat becomes a deadly menace. 

Richard Matheson’s work is most closely identified with horror, but he wrote across a wide variety of genres—even winning a Spur Award for Best Western Novel in 1991—and the New York Times bestselling What Dreams May Come is one example of the author’s considerable versatility. Telling an epic tale of life after death, it follows one man for whom death is not the end. 

After Chris Nielsen dies and finds himself in “Summerland,” he must journey into Hell to rescue his wife, who has taken her own life in his absence. A story of love that transcends life and death, What Dreams May Come was adapted into the Academy Award-winning 1998 movie of the same name, starring Robin Williams.

“Matheson expertly builds a mood of horror and terror” (Galaxy) in this classic “ghost story with psi trimmings” (If) that was later adapted into the 1999 film starring Kevin Bacon. When ordinary man Tom Wallace finds himself suddenly in possession of newly awakened psychic abilities, his life spirals into a waking nightmare as he begins to receive messages from beyond the grave that may help him to discover a terrifying secret hidden in his own neighborhood. But he will find that some secrets are better left buried…

“Matheson is the master of paranoia,” raves the San Jose Mercury News, “pitting a single man against unknown horrors and examining his every slow twist in the wind.” That man is government mathematician Chris Barton, whose life is shattered one day when he comes home to find a stranger living in his home, claiming to be him. Suddenly on the run, Barton is pursued by shadowy assassins while he tries to puzzle out what happened to his life in this compelling work.

Before Jaws, before E.T., before Jurassic Park, before Schindler’s List, Steven Spielberg’s first film was the made-for-TV movie Duel, adapted by Matheson himself from his 1971 short story of the same name. “Duel” is only one of several familiar tales that make up this unforgettable collection of short stories from the master, however, including several that were adapted into memorable episodes of the original Twilight Zone, such as “Little Girl Lost” and “Steel,” which was also adapted into the 2011 film Real Steel, starring Hugh Jackman.

In “one of his strongest efforts” (Dean Koontz), Richard Matheson turns his attention to the classic whodunit in “a fascinating variation on the locked-room mystery… with more hairpin turns than a mountain road” (Washington Post Book World). 

Once a legendary stage magician, the Great Delacorte suffered a paralyzing stroke that left him able to move only his eyes. He becomes our narrator and point-of-view character as he watches an unlikely murder mystery unfold from his vantage point in the Magic Room of his sprawling country estate in “one of the most fun novels of the year” (Rocky Mountain News).

What if there was a button that, every time you pushed it, you received a large sum of money, but someone you didn’t know died? What would you do? That’s the question asked in one of Richard Matheson’s most memorable short stories, adapted to an episode of the original Twilight Zone and to the 2009 Richard Kelly film The Box, starring Cameron Diaz, James Marsden, and Frank Langella. 

That story is just one of several contained in this mind-bending collection, alongside other classics such as “Dying Room Only,” “No Such Thing as a Vampire,” “Mute,” “Pattern of Survival,” and others.