đŸ‘» Horror movies and scary TV shows reign over October, but there’s something uniquely powerful about horror on the page that even the best films can’t replicate. Books let fear unfold, building dread in the quiet spaces between words. They invite you into the minds of characters in ways visual media simply cannot, making you complicit in their terror.

A book doesn’t need cheap jumpscares and sudden sound effects — it plants seeds of unease that bloom into full-blown dread as you turn each page, often in the middle of the night when you should absolutely be sleeping. So this spooky season, put down the remote and pick up a book.

đŸ©ž PURE HORROR-

These books are designed to terrify. Expect supernatural dread, visceral scares, and sleepless nights.

#1- The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones is a chilling 2025 historicalhorror following a vampire who haunts the Blackfeet reservation in 1912, seeking justice. Jones weaves Indigenous experience with vampire mythology in ways that will ultimately prove devastating.

#2- The Reformatory by Tananarive Due is a harrowing 2023 story set in a Jim Crow-era reform school where supernatural terror mirrors real-world horror. Due masterfully blends ghost stories with brutal historical truths.

#3- The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson is now known for its Netflix adaptation by horror aficionado Mike Flanagan, but the 1959 novel is the gold standard of psychological horror. Jackson’s exploration of a possibly haunted house and a definitely haunted mind remains unmatched in its ability to unsettle.

😰 UNSETTLING AND DISTURBING-

These books will leave you with a lingering unease rather than have you quaking in your (fuzzy) boots. They’ll make you question reality and disturb your thoughts long after you’ve closed the covers.

#1- House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewsky is bigger on the inside than the outside. This Y2K experimental novel is told through footnotes, appendices, and text that spirals across pages. It is horror as a literary experiment — disorienting, obsessive, and genuinely unsettling. The form mirrors the content as you descend into madness alongside the characters.

#2- The Vegetarian by Han Kang is a fever dream — a woman’s decision to stop eating meat spirals into something far darker, taking those around her down with it. Kang’s 2007 novel was translated into English in 2015, her sparse prose keeping psychological skewing straight to the point.

#3- We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson — yes, Jackson again, because she’s the queen of unease. A family is isolated after a poisoning in this 1962 story, told by an increasingly unreliable narrator. Every page drips with wrongness.

đŸ”Ș THRILLERS-

These are page-turners that keep your heart racing with tension, plot twists, and mounting danger.

#1- The Housemaid by Frieda McFadden is a US thriller that became a massive sensation. This 2022 book is about the desperate caretaker of a beautiful house with ugly secrets.

#2- None of This Is True by Lisa Jewell is believable. In the 2023 novel, podcaster Alix Summer meets Josie Fair — they share the same birthday in the same hospital. Josie asking to be featured on Alix’s show is a catalyst for a takeover that is hard to predict.

#3- Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier is as heart-pumping now as it was in 1938. The story follows a young woman who marries a wealthy widower, moving into his estate only to find herself haunted by the memory and influence of his first wife, Rebecca. Atmospheric and tense, it defined the domestic thriller genre.

đŸ•”ïž MURDER MYSTERIES-

#1- One by One by Ruth Ware is set at a corporate retreat at a luxury ski chalet in the French Alps. But the 2020 novel derails when an avalanche cuts off all escape routes, someone takes advantage of the situation and starts picking the employees off one by one.

#2- The 7 Âœ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton is part Agatha Christie, part Groundhog Day. The 2018 book follows Aiden Bishop, who wakes up at a country house party and must solve Evelyn Hardcastle’s murder. The catch? The day repeats each time he fails, and he inhabits a different guest’s body each time. This ingenious puzzle box requires solving the mystery to escape.

#3- And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie, because we can’t mention whodunnits without the genre’s spokesperson. Her 1939 mystery follows 10 strangers lured to an island, each accused of past crimes they escaped punishment for. One by one, they’re murdered according to a nursery rhyme. Christie’s masterpiece remains the blueprint for locked-room mysteries.

🧛 CREATURE FEATURES-

It’s not Halloween without the monster mash. These books are for when you want something other than a human doing the scaring.

#1- Hungerstone by Kat Dunn is a 2025 retelling of the 1872 novel Carmilla, set against the violent wilderness of the Yorkshire moors and the industrial revolution. Vampiric desire meets Victorian society’s constraints in this compulsive tale of appetite and hunger.

#2- The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw is a continuation of a tale we all know well. Yes, the mermaid comes to shore and gets the prince. But in this 2023 novel, the aftermath of their union sees the mermaid and a plague doctor flee a massacre and stumble upon a village of feral children and haunting saints in a lyrical, visceral body horror that’s darkly beautiful.

#3- Dracula by Bram Stoker, because how many of us have actually read the 1897 genre-defining work? This epistolary novel is told through letters and diary entries, following Jonathan Harker’s journey to Transylvania and Count Dracula’s arrival in England. Still powerful in its exploration of Victorian anxieties about sexuality, immigration, and modernity.

📚 SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS-

Perfect for when you want variety or shorter commitments without compromising on goosebumps.

#1- North American Lake Monsters by Nathan Ballingrud finds terror in dive bars, failing marriages, and desperate choices. This visceral and heartbreaking 2013 collection features The Monsters of Heaven, which earned that year’s (and the inaugural) Shirley Jackson Award.

#2- Out There Screaming edited by Jordan Peele is a 2023 anthology of horror that features stories from NK Jemisin, Tananarive Due, Nnedi Okorafor, and other Black writers exploring supernatural terrors alongside the chilling reality of injustice. Curated by the legendary filmmaker, this collection earned that year’s Bram Stoker Award.

#3- Beyond the Natural (Ma Wara’ al Tabee‘a) by Ahmed Khaled Tawfiq is a horror encyclopedia that has been brilliantly crafted by the late Egyptian writer. The collection — which has been adapted to a Netflix series starring Ahmed Amin — revolves around Refaat Ismail, a doctor who encounters a series of supernatural phenomena and terrifying worlds, drawing its horror from traditional legends and western horror stories.

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