Stephen King – IT
The perfect horror novel. I must confess to not being a huge fan of the most recent adaptation, simply because the whole point of the book is that you're revisiting your childhood from an adult perspective. That's very important and it's what the book is about. If you're just seeing the childhood side of it there's so much that's lost I think. We'll see what happens with the second one.
He's probably the novelist I read most growing up. I remember dipping into James Herbert as well and I found him less fun to read, simply because his stuff seemed a lot nastier. It was much more adult horror fiction whereas King, because he writes about children so much and writes about childhood so well, you felt that there was someone speaking to you even though you were very young when you read them.