Archive Collection
Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel Winners
1987–2025
The Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel is the leading honour in horror fiction, presented since 1987 by the Horror Writers Association and named for the author of Dracula. Winners include Stephen King, Robert McCammon, Joe Hill, and Stephen Graham Jones.
About the Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel
- Awarded by
- Horror Writers Association
- First awarded
- 1987
- Country
- United States
- Winner receives
- A trophy shaped like a haunted house
When it is announced
Announced at StokerCon, usually in June, for work published in the previous year. See the full announcement calendar.
How to enter
Works are recommended and then voted on by members of the association, and the award is given for superior achievement rather than for best of year.
Official prize site · Checked August 2026. Dates move year to year, so confirm on the official site before entering.
| Year | Title & Author | Historical Context |
|---|---|---|
| 2025 | The Buffalo Hunter Hunter | The Buffalo Hunter Hunter won the 2025 Nebula Award for Best Novel, and had already taken the Locus Award for Best Horror Novel and the Libby Award.… |
| 2024 | The Haunting of Velkwood | The Haunting of Velkwood won the Bram Stoker Award for 2024, Gwendolyn Kiste's second Stoker, after The Rust Maidens took the first novel award, and… |
| 2023 | The Reformatory | The Reformatory won the Bram Stoker Award for 2023 and the World Fantasy Award together, with the Shirley Jackson Award and the Los Angeles Times Ray… |
| 2022 | The Devil Takes You Home | The Devil Takes You Home won the Bram Stoker Award for 2022 and the Shirley Jackson Award with it, completing Gabino Iglesias's arrival from the… |
| 2021 | My Heart Is a Chainsaw | My Heart Is a Chainsaw won the Bram Stoker Award for 2021, giving Stephen Graham Jones consecutive novel wins, a feat previously managed only by… |
| 2020 | The Only Good Indians | The Only Good Indians won the Bram Stoker Award for 2020, with the Shirley Jackson and Ray Bradbury prizes and an Alex Award around it, the sweep… |
| 2019 | Coyote Rage | Coyote Rage won the Bram Stoker Award for 2019, and the night belonged to Owl Goingback twice over: the Horror Writers Association gave him its… |
| 2018 | The Cabin at the End of the World | The Cabin at the End of the World won the Bram Stoker Award for 2018, Paul Tremblay's second in four years, sealing his position at the head of the… |
| 2017 | Ararat | Ararat won the Bram Stoker Award for 2017, the most traditional adventure horror to take the prize in years, a make it move manifesto amid the era's… |
| 2016 | The Fisherman | The Fisherman won the Bram Stoker Award for 2016, along with This Is Horror's novel of the year, and its slow tide was the story: published by the… |
| 2015 | A Head Full of Ghosts | A Head Full of Ghosts won the Bram Stoker Award for 2015, and Stephen King's tweet, that it scared the living hell out of him, became the cover line… |
| 2014 | Blood Kin | Blood Kin won the Bram Stoker Award for 2014, and it was received as a homecoming twice over: Steve Rasnic Tem, born and raised in Lee County,… |
| 2013 | Doctor Sleep | Doctor Sleep won the Bram Stoker Award for 2013, King's sixth novel win, and its existence was itself the story: a sequel to The Shining arriving… |
| 2012 | The Drowning Girl | The Drowning Girl won the Bram Stoker Award for 2012 and the James Tiptree Jr. Award together, with Nebula and World Fantasy nominations besides, a… |
| 2011 | Flesh Eaters | Flesh Eaters won the Bram Stoker Award for 2011, the zombie boom's official arrival at the genre's top table: the third book of Joe McKinney's Dead… |
| 2010 | A Dark Matter | A Dark Matter won the Bram Stoker Award for 2010, Peter Straub's fifth novel award, drawing him level with Stephen King for the most in the category,… |
| 2009 | Audrey's Door | Audrey's Door won the Bram Stoker Award for 2009, Sarah Langan's second novel win in three years, a pace only the genre's biggest names had managed,… |
| 2008 | Duma Key | Duma Key won the Bram Stoker Award for 2008, King's fifth in the category, and reviewers read its foundations at once: the shattered right side, the… |
| 2007 | The Missing | The Missing won the Bram Stoker Award for 2007, confirming the fastest arrival of the decade: Sarah Langan's debut The Keeper had been a Stoker… |
| 2006 | Lisey's Story | Lisey's Story won the Bram Stoker Award for 2006 and drew a World Fantasy nomination, and it holds a singular place in the King canon by the author's… |
| 2005 | Dread in the Beast | Dread in the Beast tied with David Morrell's Creepers for the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Novel for 2005, a shared result that… |
| 2005 | Creepers | Creepers won the Bram Stoker Award for 2005 in a tie with Charlee Jacob's Dread in the Beast, one of the odder pairings in the award's history: the… |
| 2004 | In the Night Room | In the Night Room won the Bram Stoker Award for 2004, giving Peter Straub consecutive wins, the first since McCammon took 1990 and 1991, and pairing… |
| 2003 | Lost Boy, Lost Girl | lost boy lost girl, styled in lowercase on its first edition, won the Bram Stoker Award for 2003 and drew an International Horror Guild award… |
| 2002 | The Night Class | The Night Class won the Bram Stoker Award for 2002, the breakout moment for Tom Piccirilli, who had been publishing in the small presses for a decade… |
| 2001 | American Gods | American Gods won the 2002 Hugo Award for Best Novel, the Nebula Award, the Bram Stoker Award, the Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel and the SFX… |
| 2000 | The Traveling Vampire Show | The Traveling Vampire Show won the Bram Stoker Award for 2000, and the win turned memorial before it could even be handed over: Richard Laymon died… |
| 1999 | Mr. X | Mr. X won the Bram Stoker Award for 1999, Straub's second of the decade, announcing itself as Straub's return to the supernatural after the Blue Rose… |
| 1998 | Bag of Bones | Bag of Bones won the Bram Stoker Award for 1998, along with the British Fantasy and Locus horror awards, sweeping the genre's honours in the year… |
| 1997 | Children of the Dusk | Children of the Dusk won the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Novel for 1997, closing out the Madagascar Manifesto trilogy that Janet… |
| 1996 | The Green Mile | The Green Mile won the Bram Stoker Award for 1996, and its publication was itself the story: King released it as six slim paperbacks, one a month… |
| 1995 | Zombie | Zombie won the Bram Stoker Award for 1995, and the sight of Joyce Carol Oates, National Book Award winner and perennial Nobel candidate, collecting… |
| 1994 | Dead in the Water | Dead in the Water won the Bram Stoker Award for 1994, and it carries a piece of the genre's institutional history on its spine: the book appeared… |
| 1993 | The Throat | The Throat won the Bram Stoker Award for 1993 and a World Fantasy nomination, completing the Blue Rose trilogy that Koko began and Mystery continued,… |
| 1992 | Blood of the Lamb | The Blood of the Lamb won the Bram Stoker Award for 1992, the prize catching the decade's appetite for apocalyptic religious horror ahead of the Left… |
| 1991 | Boy's Life | Boy's Life won the Bram Stoker Award for 1991 and the World Fantasy Award for best novel, a double that measured how far past genre walls it… |
| 1990 | Mine | Mine won the Bram Stoker Award for 1990, McCammon's second win in four years, and marked the genre's turn, visible across the early nineties awards… |
| 1989 | Carrion Comfort | Carrion Comfort won the Bram Stoker Award for 1989, along with the Locus poll for best horror novel, in the middle of the most astonishing two years… |
| 1988 | The Silence of the Lambs | The Silence of the Lambs won the Bram Stoker Award for 1988 and the Anthony for best novel, honoured by horror and crime writers alike, which located… |
| 1987 | Swan Song | Swan Song shared the first Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel with Misery, a tie that reads in hindsight like the genre anointing its next generation… |
| 1987 | Misery | Misery shared the very first Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel, for 1987, with Robert McCammon's Swan Song, the Horror Writers Association opening its… |