Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Marriages | 1973 | Peter Straub | Buy |
| 2 | Julia / Full Circle | 1975 | Peter Straub | Buy |
| 3 | If You Could See Me Now | 1977 | Peter Straub | Buy |
| 4 | Ghost Story | 1979 | Peter Straub | Buy |
| 5 | Shadowland | 1980 | Peter Straub | Buy |
| 6 | Floating Dragon | 1982 | Peter Straub | Buy |
| 7 | The General’s Wife | 1982 | Peter Straub | Buy |
| 8 | Under Venus | 1985 | Peter Straub | Buy |
| 9 | The Hellfire Club | 1996 | Peter Straub | Buy |
| 10 | Mr. X | 1999 | Peter Straub | Buy |
| 11 | Lost Boy Lost Girl | 2003 | Peter Straub | Buy |
| 12 | In The Night Room | 2003 | Peter Straub | Buy |
| 13 | The Skylark | 2010 | Peter Straub | Buy |
| 14 | A Dark Matter | 2010 | Peter Straub | Buy |
| 15 | The Skylarkis an earlier, much longer version ofA Dark Matter. | - | Peter Straub | N/A |
Peter Straub’s standalone novels cover a wider range than the label suggests. His first two books, Marriages and Julia, are closer to literary fiction and domestic horror respectively, the latter following a grieving mother haunted by the ghost of a malevolent child. If You Could See Me Now and Ghost Story lean more explicitly into supernatural territory, with Ghost Story becoming his breakout success and one of the defining haunted-house novels of its era.
The 1980s and early 1990s brought Shadowland, a novel about magic and performance set at a Vermont boarding school, and Floating Dragon, a sprawling novel about a New England town under supernatural siege that also involves a government chemical leak. After a quieter mid-period with The Hellfire Club and Mr. X, Straub returned to strong form with Lost Boy Lost Girl, which won the Bram Stoker Award for best novel in 2003 and revisited themes of childhood, memory, and violence he had explored throughout his career.
A Dark Matter, his final standalone (2010), follows a group of former friends who participated in a mysterious occult ritual in the 1960s and are still being shaped by it decades later. The Skylark, listed separately, is an extended earlier draft of the same story, published in limited edition form for readers interested in how Straub developed the material.