Some people conflate Halloween with all-out, skin-animating horror, especially if they’re into grindhouse slasher flicks. However, everything has shades. All Hallow’s Eve has a more cunning side, and one of the best ways to experience the holiday’s more seductive face is to crack open a “spooky” book.
“Spooky” describes a feeling too elusive for any other word. To me, a spooky book chills my spine without burning away the intrigue that drew me to it. Reading a spooky book is like walking home down that quiet, moonlit sidewalk next to the graveyard, excited and afraid of what the night might send your way.
Here are ten of the best spooky books to read this Halloween for al🥀l the autumn-loving book fans hung♏ry for some slow-burn, quiet dread.
Haunted houses are a defining symbol of Halloween, and they’re fantastic places to set a pulse-pounding book in. Books about houses and the phantoms roaming their halls number in the thousands, but Shirley Jackson’s set the standard most try to live up to.
The premise is simple: overworked and underappreciated Eleanor Lance volunteers to stay in a supposedly haunted house as part of an eccentric doctor’s♒ research into the supernatural. Soon enough, strange phenomena unfold all around her, but no one else seems to notice any of it. As , Jackson never gives us a straight answer, leaving us to wonder if an evil presence haunts Hill House or if Elinor is losing her sanity.
Picture this: a troubled teenage boy, let’s call him Seth, tumbles into the Pacific and gets bashed to death against the rocks. Then he wakes up in his desolate hometown, alone and stalked by an ominous black van. This is the inciting incident of Patrick Ness’s , and things only get more unnerving from here.
As you can probably guess, the world Seth finds himself in isn’t what you’d call normal. Soon he’s joined by other teens who also ended up in this abandoned suburb after meeting a violent end, and every question they ask adds another layer of mystery to their situation. More Than This is a disquieting thriller, told with a wounded yet confidant voice that captures 💙the feelings so many teenagers have about the world they’re inheriting.
Have you ever been on a long road trip, passing by towns, highway hikers, and roadside attractions so fast it’s hard to tell if they were even there? Joseph Fink’s takes you on one such road trip, only now th📖e strange things you see in your rearview mirrorꦡ aren’t something you’d want to stop and snap a photo of.
We follow Kiesha, an amateur truck driver who takes to the road to search for her missing wife, the titular Alice. Written with the same casual, matter-of-fact approach to the macabre that defined Fink’s work on Welcome to Night Vale, Alice Isn’t Dead is a tribute 🌸to the American roadway that, somehow, balances blood-freezing horror and cozy rom🌳ance.
Many of the best horror stories are also about coming home and facing the demons of your past. by Stephen Graha♑m Jones follows this tradition by bringing a group of estranged childhood friends back together to face a supernatural threat. However, Jones adds another layer to this time-honored tradition by grounding his story in the Native American experience.
The Only Good Indians is a story about something that hunts and eats in the shadows. It’s also an exciting dive into the agonizing disconnect many Native Ameri🐎cans feel toward their culture and an empowering story about reclaiming one’s identity fr𒁃om those who’ve objectified it.
Growing up on the LTGHTQ+ spectrum isn’t easy, especially when you don’t share the space you occupy with people who accept your identity. by Andrew Joseph White makes the apocalyptic metaphors often associated with queer experience literal, telling a tragic yet triumpജhant transition story set against the backdrop of Armageddon.
Benji, a sixteen-year-old trans boy, is on the run from the people who raised him: a fundamentꩵa🌃list cult who infected him with a bio-weapon capable of finishing the apocalypse they helped start. Finding shelter and solace in a commune of LGBTQ+ youth, Benji struggles to accept himself and find salvation for his new friends before the ticking biological time bomb inside him turns into the monster his former “family” wants him to be.
by Derek Landry is that one-in-a-million fantasy book that appeals to children and adults. When her eccentric uncle leaꦰves her his estate and fortune after his death, Stephanie Edgely uncovers a secret that sends her on a dangerous journey through a hidden world of mages a✨nd monsters. Luckily, she’s got a wise-cracking, fireball-flinging skeleton detective on her side.
Skulduggery Pleasant’s premise will feel familiar to YA fantasy buffs, but it’s willing to embrace magic’s darker side more than makes up for it. People die a lot in this book, but Landry’s humorous prose keeps you glued to the pages. If you’re looking for a good creepy book to recommend to yo🏅ur kids this Halloween, I’d 🍸recommend this one.
Gas stations are weird: linoleum tile wastelands where stacks of glittering snack food loom and odd characters come and go like the tide. Jack Townsend’s takes full advantage of𒉰 its setting, weaving a tale of surreal horror and absurdist comedy.
Formatted as a series of blog posts penned by a fictionalized version of Townsend, Tales from the Gas Station is one of the funniest trips to the pumps you’ll ever have. Written with a deadpan bluntness that screams, “I’m not paid enough for this,” Tales somehow ဣweaves small-town politics, ancient cults, and garden gnomes into a hilarious supernatural mystery you won’t w🌌ant to put down.
I love cosmic horror, but that’s only one of the many reasons I recommend by Jason Pargin. The titular soon-to-be-cadaver and his best friend David are self-styled paranormal investigators who discover they’re the only things𝔉 standing between Earth and an eldritch invasion after tak🐻ing a less-than-legal magical drug at a party.
John Dies at the End combines the unknowable dread of the Cthulhu Mythos and mixes it with the down-to-earth comedy of Edgar Wright’s Cornetto Trilogy. The result is a book I can recommend to Lovecraft lovers, Supernatural fans, and anyone looking for a book t🅘hat will make you laugh,🤡 jump, and cry.
I spent a good chunk of the time it took me to write this list kicking around ways to introduce Mark Z. Daneiewski’s . This epistolary novel is a locked-and-coded puz♕zle box that any fan of off-putting literature will have a fantastic ti▨me unraveling.
Presented as a transcription of a screenplay, House of Leaves tells the story of a family who discovers their house’s interior design doesn’t conform to the laws of physics. Written in a way that forces the reader to turn the book on its head more than once, House of Leaves constantly leaves you guessing where one character’s descent into madness bﷺegins and when yours will end.
It would’ve felt wrong to end this list with a book that isn’t by Neil ✅Gaiman. The titular youth discove𝓰rs a hidden door in her family’s new home and finds herself in a wondrous realm ruled by a stranger named the Other Mother. Unfortunately, what looks like paradise soon becomes a gilded cage, one Coraline has to escape from before it’s too late.
Coraline is the textbook definition of spooky. Gaiman’s prose elegantly describes a world as whimsical as it is terrifying, and you feel 𒀰the excitement that drives Coraline to delve deeper into this secret world.
Published: Oct 29, 2024 05:59 am