Every once in a while in this life, and more so since the advent of social media, we find ourselves asked to name our favorites: our favorite color, our favorite food, our favorite book, our favorite movie. The answers we produce are almost always fictions, or rote repetitions, because our likes are malleable. But your friendly columnist does have a permanent answer for favorite horror story, an outing by a writer who earns several places on his life list of favorite stories, period: “The Renegade,” by Shirley Jackson.

Terence Taylor brings Nightmare the first installment of his new review column: “Read This!” This month, he reviews Powers of Darkness: The Lost Version of Dracula, an unusual Icelandic translation of Bram Stoker’s classic, and Paul La Farge’s The Night Ocean.