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With Halloween right around the corner, we decided to put together a comprehensive list of horror, thriller, and sci-fi reads perfect for the spooky season. Keep the lights on and get some coffee, because you’re not going to be able to sleep after these reads. Whether you want the classics or something a bit more contemporary, we’ve got you covered.


Classic Scary Recommendations

For the classics section, we’ve added a few special editions in there to wow the avid fan.

Mary Shelley

Pictured: We’ve added this absolutely stunning collector’s edition from HarperMuse.

Shattered by grief, the unstable Victor Frankenstein conducts a bizarre experiment, using electricity to shock inanimate matter and create an enormous man-like monster. Terrified by his own actions, Victor abandons his creation to the wilderness. Years later, the intelligent and hideous Creature finds his creator and demands his right to happiness.

Check out the full list of Harper Collins Painted Classics

Bram Stoker

Pictured: Dracula is part of a special series from Harper Perennial called Olive Editions— which are exclusive small-format editions of some bestselling and celebrated titles, featuring beautiful and unique hand-drawn cover illustrations.

Originally published in 1897, Dracula is one of the most enduring and influential works of literature ever written, spawning countless adaptations and reimaginings from every generation of readers.

Stoker’s epistolary novel follows young English lawyer Jonathan Harker who arrives in Transylvania to meet with Count Dracula, one of his firm’s clients. Feared by the locals, the count is indeed a mysterious man, stranger than Harker could ever imagine—a vampire who lives on human blood. After Harker fails to kill Dracula, the vampire travels to England, where he threatens the lives of Harker’s fiancée, Mina, and her friend, Lucy.

When Harker finally returns home, he reunites with Mina, and the brave pair risk everything to destroy the fiendish monster.

Told through letters, diary entries, and newspaper articles, Dracula is ingrained in the collective imagination and remains as haunting and eerie today as when it was published more than a hundred years ago.

Robert Louis Stevenson

HarperCollins is proud to present its range of best-loved, essential classics.

I thus drew steadily nearer to that truth, by whose partial discovery I have been doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck: that man is not truly one, but truly two’

A London lawyer is drawn into a series of strange occurrences concerning his old friend Henry Jekyll and the despicable stranger Edward Hyde, a man who seems to epitomise the very meaning of evil. What is Hyde’s mysterious hold over Jekyll, and what is the reason behind Jekyll’s increasingly odd behaviour? The investigations will lead into the dark heart of Victorian London, and of human nature itself, as the shocking truth about Hyde’s true identity is finally revealed.

Published in 1886 to critical acclaim, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is a thrilling exploration of the interplay of good and evil and the terrifying duality that lies within us all. These themes held a constant fascination for Stevenson and are further explored in his short stories Markheim and The Body Snatcher, also included in this book.

Henry James

Pictured: Chiltern Publishing creates the most beautiful editions of the World’s finest literature. Your favorite classic titles in a way you have never seen them before; the tactile layers, fine details and beautiful colors of these remarkable covers make these titles feel extra special and will look striking on any shelf.

The Turn of the Screw tells the story of a young governess who is sent to Bly, a large country estate, to care for two children. She has strict instructions from their guardian never to write to him, never to ask about the history of the house, and never to abandon the children.

It isn’t long before the Governess starts to see apparitions around the grounds. When she describes the sightings, they are identified by the housekeeper as the previous governess Miss Jessel and former valet Peter Quint, who both died not long ago.

As the children’s behaviour grows increasingly strange, the Governess becomes convinced that these ghosts have returned to claim Miles & Flora and vows to protect them. …But are the phantoms real, or is it all in the Governess’ imagination?

Ira Levin

Rosemary Woodhouse and her struggling actor-husband, Guy, move into the Bramford, an old New York City apartment building with an ominous reputation and only elderly residents. Neighbours Roman and Minnie Castavet soon come nosing around to welcome them; despite Rosemary’s reservations about their eccentricity and the weird noises that she keeps hearing, her husband starts spending time with them. Shortly after Guy lands a plum Broadway role, Rosemary becomes pregnant, and the Castavets start taking a special interest in her welfare.

As the sickened Rosemary becomes increasingly isolated, she begins to suspect that the Castavets’ circle is not what it seems…

Richard Matheson

An acclaimed SF novel about vampires. The last man on earth is not alone . . .

Robert Neville is the last living man on Earth . . . but he is not alone. Every other man, woman and child on the planet has become a vampire, and they are hungry for Neville’s blood.

By day he is the hunter, stalking the undead through the ruins of civilisation. By night, he barricades himself in his home and prays for the dawn.

How long can one man survive like this?

Winner of the Bram Stoker Prize for Vampire Novel of the Century, I Am Legend is a stunning blend of science fiction and horror.

Stephen King

Pictured: A beautiful anniversary edition of King’s first published work as it approaches it’s 50th anniversary

Carrie White is no ordinary girl.

Carrie White has the gift of telekinesis.

To be invited to Prom Night by Tommy Ross is a dream come true for Carrie – the first step towards social acceptance by her high school colleagues.

But events will take a decidedly macabre turn on that horrifying and endless night as she is forced to exercise her terrible gift on the town that mocks and loathes her . . .

Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury’s extraordinary tale of childhood dreams and supernatural agency in smalltown America.

It’s the week before Hallowe’en, and Cooger and Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show has come to Green Town, Illinois. The siren song of the calliope entices all with promises of youth regained and dreams fulfilled . . .

And as two boys trembling on the brink of manhood set out to explore the mysteries of the dark carnival’s smoke, mazes and mirrors, they will also discover the true price of innermost wishes…

Washington Irving

HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics.

‘There was a contagion in the very air that blew from that haunted region; it breathed forth an atmosphere of dreams and fancies infecting all the land.

Featuring ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’ and ‘Rip Van Winkle’, this collection of inspired essays, stories and sketches established Washington Irving’s reputation as one of America’s foremost authors. Irving’s timeless characters, including Ichabod Crane, Rip Van Winkle and the headless Hessian trooper, jostle for space alongside 31 equally atmospheric and lyrical works in this haunting anthology from one of America’s most distinctive literary voices.

Sheridan Le Fanu

Pictured: A beautiful gift edition of this cult classic female vampire
story, which predated and greatly influenced Dracula.

In an isolated castle deep in the Austrian forest, Laura leads a solitary life with only her ailing father for company. Until one moonlit night, a horse-drawn carriage crashes into view, carrying an unexpected guest – the beautiful Carmilla.

So begins a feverish friendship between Laura and her mysterious, entrancing companion. But as Carmilla becomes increasingly strange and volatile, prone to eerie nocturnal wanderings, Laura finds herself tormented by nightmares and growing weaker by the day…

Carmilla is the original vampire story, steeped in sexual tension and gothic romance

Contemporary Scary Recommendations

Marjorie Liu & Sana Takeda

The first volume in a new graphic novel horror trilogy from Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda – the creative team behind the New York Times bestselling series Monstress!

Chinese American twins, Milly and Billy, are having a tough time. Forced to help clean up the house next door–a hellish and run-down ruin that was the scene of a grisly murder–the twins are in for a nasty surprise. A night of terror, gore, and supernatural mayhem reveals that there is much more than meets the eye.

Chinese American twins, Milly and Billy, are having a tough time. On top of the multiple failures in their personal and professional lives, they’re struggling to keep their restaurant afloat. Luckily their parents, Ipo and Keon, are in town for their annual visit. Having immigrated from Hong Kong before the twins were born, Ipo and Keon have supported their children through thick and thin and are ready to lend a hand–but they’re starting to wonder, has their support made Milly and Billy incapable of standing on their own?

When Ipo forces them to help her clean up the house next door–a hellish and run-down ruin that was the scene of a grisly murder–the twins are in for a nasty surprise. A night of terror, gore, and supernatural mayhem reveals that there is much more to Ipo and her children than meets the eye.

Eisner Award-winning and bestselling author Marjorie Liu and illustrator Sana Takeda have crafted a wild and wicked tale that will leave readers hungry for more. She Eats the Night is the perfect start to The Night Eaters trilogy, which is a combination of Monsters by Barry Windsor-Smith and Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan.

Silvia Moreno-Garcia

A glamourous young socialite discovers the haunting secrets of a mysterious mansion in 1950s Mexico in this gorgeous new edition of Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s mesmerising feminist Gothic fantasy

He is trying to poison me. You must come for me, Noemí. You have to save me.

After receiving a frantic letter from her newlywed cousin begging for someone to save her from a mysterious doom, socialite Noemí Taboada heads to High Place, a distant house in the Mexican countryside. She’s not sure what she will find – her cousin’s husband, a handsome Englishman, is a stranger, and Noemí knows little about the region.

Noemí is more suited for cocktail parties than amateur sleuthing. But she’s also tough and smart, with an indomitable will, and she is not afraid: not of her cousin’s new alluring, menacing husband; not of his father; and not even of the house itself, which begins to invade Noemi’s dreams with dark visions.

For there are many secrets behind the walls of High Place. The family’s once colossal wealth and faded mining empire keeps them safe from prying eyes, but as Noemí digs deeper, she unearths stories of violence and madness.

And Noemí, mesmerized by the terrifying yet seductive world of High Place, may find it impossible to escape.

Grady Hendrix

Ever wonder what happens to those Final Girls? After the cops eliminate them as suspects, after the press releases their brace faced, bad-hair-day photos.

For Lynette Tarkington, it’s been a support group with five other final girls. Close to twenty years. Today’s the last day for group, and maybe the final day for all of them, because someone’s been planning a nasty surprise for a long time.

Cassandra Khaw

Cat joins her old friends, who are in search of the perfect wedding venue, to spend the night in a Heian-era manor in Japan. Trapped in webs of love, responsibility and yesterdays, they walk into a haunted house with their hearts full of ghosts.

This mansion is long abandoned, but it is hungry for new guests, and welcomes them all – welcomes the demons inside them – because it is built on foundations of sacrifice and bone.

Their night of food, drinks, and games quickly spirals into a nightmare as the house draws them into its embrace. For lurking in the shadows is the ghost bride with a black smile and a hungry heart.

And she gets lonely down there in the dirt.

Stephen Graham Jones

Ricky, Gabe, Lewis and Cassidy are men bound to their heritage, bound by society, and trapped in the endless expanses of the landscape.

Now, ten years after a fateful elk hunt, which remains a closely guarded secret between them, these men – and their children – must face a ferocious spirit that is coming for them, one at a time. A spirit which wears the faces of the ones they love, tearing a path into their homes, their families and their most sacred moments of faith.

Riley Sager

Recently widowed actress Casey Fletcher has escaped to her family’s lake house for peace and quiet. She’s been happily losing herself in her thoughts and several bottles of bourbon, until the glamorous couple across the lake catch her attention. They look so perfect – just like Casey and her husband used to be. But is anyone what they seem?

Casey has a detective sat at her kitchen table.

She has a man bound and gagged upstairs.

Casey will uncover dark truths so life-changing that nothing will ever be the same again.

International bestselling sensation Riley Sager is back with his most ambitious thriller yet. With his trademark blend of sharp characters, psychological suspense and gasp-worthy twists, The House Across the Lake will shock readers from the first page to the last.

Paul Tremblay

Paul Tremblay’s terrifying twist to the home invasion novel inspiration for the 2023 major motion picture from Universal Pictures

Seven-year-old Wen and her parents, Eric and Andrew, are vacationing at a remote cabin on a quiet New Hampshire lake. Their closest neighbors are more than two miles in either direction along a rutted dirt road.

One afternoon, as Wen catches grasshoppers in the front yard, a stranger unexpectedly appears in the driveway. Leonard is the largest man Wen has ever seen, but he is young, friendly, and he wins her over almost instantly. Leonard and Wen talk and play until Leonard abruptly apologizes and tells Wen, “None of what’s going to happen is your fault.” Three more strangers then arrive at the cabin carrying unidentifiable, menacing objects. As Wen sprints inside to warn her parents, Leonard calls out: “Your dads won’t want to let us in, Wen. But they have to. We need your help to save the world.”

Thus begins an unbearably tense, gripping tale of paranoia, sacrifice, apocalypse, and survival that escalates to a shattering conclusion, one in which the fate of a loving family and quite possibly all of humanity are entwined. The Cabin at the End of the World is a masterpiece of terror and suspense from the fantastically fertile imagination of Paul Tremblay.

Agustina Bazterrica

Everyone’s eating human meat. Would you? A vivid, shocking dystopian novel from an Argentinian rising star.

It all happened so quickly. First, animals became infected with the virus and their meat became poisonous. Then governments initiated the Transition. Now, ‘special meat’ – human meat – is legal.

Marcos is in the business of slaughtering humans – only no one calls them that. He works with numbers, consignments, processing. One day, he’s given a gift to seal a deal: a specimen of the finest quality. He leaves her in his barn, tied up, a problem to be disposed of later.

But she haunts Marcos. Her trembling body, her eyes that watch him, seem to understand. And soon, he becomes tortured by what has been lost – and what might still be saved.

Eric LaRocca

A whirlpool of darkness churns at the heart of a macabre ballet between two lonely young women in an internet chat room in the early 2000s—a darkness that threatens to forever transform them once they finally succumb to their most horrific desires.

A couple isolate themselves on a remote island in an attempt to recover from their teenage son’s death, when a mysterious young man knocks on their door during a storm…

And a man confronts his neighbour when he discovers a strange object in his back yard, only to be drawn into an ever-more dangerous game.

From Bram Stoker Award finalist Eric LaRocca, this is devastating, beautifully written horror from one of the genre’s most cutting edge voices.

What have you done today to deserve your eyes?

Sara Gran

Discover this cult classic, available for the first time in many years, and step into a world of the dark, bizarre, and unexplained . . .

There was no reason to assume anything out of the ordinary was going on.

Strange noises in the apartment.
Impulsive behaviour.
Intense dreams.

It wasn’t like everything went wrong all at once.

Shoplifting.
Fighting.
Blackouts.

There must be a reasonable explanation for all this.

‘It will scare the pants off you. It is a perfect horror novel.’ Paul Tremblay

Catriona Ward

Eve and Dinah are everything to one another, never parted day or night. They are raised among the Children, a commune of strays and orphans ruled by Uncle, the mysterious patriarch. All they know is the grey Isle of Altnaharra which sits in the black sea off the wildest coast of Scotland.

Eve loves the free, savage life of the Isle and longs to inherit Uncle’s vision. She is untroubled save by her dreams; of soft arms and a woman singing. Dinah longs for something other.

But the world is at war and cannot be kept at bay. As the solitude of Altnaharra is broken, Eve’s faith and sanity fracture. In a great storm, in the depths of winter, as the old year dies, the locals discover a devastating scene.

Eve and Dinah’s stories of what really happened that night contradict and intertwine. As past and present converge, only one woman can be telling the truth. Who is guilty, who innocent?

Isabel Cañas

Hacienda San Isidro was meant to be Beatriz’s haven, her salvation from an oppressive life with her uncle and his vicious wife. When Don Rodolfo Solórzano proposed, Beatriz dreamed only of the security his estate in the countryside would provide, ignoring the rumors surrounding his first wife’s demise and his sinister allegiances. She will have her own home again, no matter the price.

But the house has ideas of its own. Visions and voices claw at Beatriz, stealing her sleep, and the weight of invisible eyes follows her every move. Deep in her bones, Beatriz knows—something is wrong with San Isidro.

Desperate for help, she turns to the young priest, Padre Andrés. Handsome and sympathetic, he seems like Beatriz’s only hope. But as their passions rise and the walls close in around Beatriz, the weight of secrets everyone is carrying may lead them all to their doom.

Joyce Carol Oates

From one of our most accomplished storytellers, an extraordinary and arresting novel about a women’s asylum in the nineteenth century, and a terrifying doctor who wants to change the world.

In this harrowing story based on authentic historical documents, we follow the career of Dr. Silas Weir, “Father of Gyno-Psychiatry,” as he ascends from professional anonymity to national renown. Humiliated by a procedure gone terribly wrong, Weir is forced to take a position at the New Jersey Asylum for Female Lunatics, where he reigns. There, he is allowed to continue his practice, unchecked for decades, making a name for himself by focusing on women who have been neglected by the state—women he subjects to the most grotesque modes of experimentation.

As he begins to establish himself as a pioneer of nineteenth century surgery, Weir’s ambition is fueled by his obsessive fascination with a young Irish indentured servant named Brigit, who becomes not only Weir’s primary experimental subject, but also the agent of his destruction.

Narrated by Silas Weir’s eldest son, who has repudiated his father’s brutal legacy, Butcher is a unique blend of fiction and fact, a nightmare voyage through the darkest regions of the American psyche conjoined, in its startling conclusion, with unexpected romance. Once again, Joyce Carol Oates has written a spellbinding novel confirming her position as one of our celebrated American visionaries of the imagination.

Mason Coile

William is a devour in up-all-night thriller which is Black Mirror meets Frankenstein with a dash of Stephen King

Henry, a brilliant but reclusive engineer, has achieved the crowning discovery of his career: he’s created an artificially intelligent consciousness. He names the half-formed robot William.

But there’s something strange about William.

It’s not that his skin feels like balloon rubber and is the colour of curdled milk, nor is it his thick gurgling laugh or the way his tongue curls towards his crooked top teeth. It is the way he looks at Henry’s wife, Lily.

Henry created William but he is starting to lose control of him. As William’s fixation with Lily grows and threatens to bring harm to their house, Henry has no choice but to destroy William.

But William isn’t gone. Filled with jealousy for humanity, for its capacity to love and create life, William starts to haunt the house.

He lurks behind each locked door. You can hear him muttering in the eaves of the attic. He is whispering in Henry’s head. And he will be the one to take control . . .

William is a new kind of ghost story, where the haunting is not from another world, but from inside your home. Inside your head . . .

Sarai Walker

The reclusive Sylvia Wren, one of the most important American artists of the past century, has been running from her past for sixty years. Born Iris Chapel, of the Chapel munitions dynasty, second youngest of six sisters, she grew up in a palatial Victorian ‘Wedding Cake House’ in New England, neglected by her distant father and troubled, haunted mother.

The sisters longed to escape, but the only way out was marriage. Not long after the first Chapel sister walks down the aisle, she dies of mysterious causes, a tragedy that repeats with the second sister, leaving the rest to navigate the wreckage, with heart-wrenching consequences.

The Cherry Robbers is a wonderfully atmospheric, propulsive novel about sisterhood, mortality and forging one’s own path.

Junji Ito

A best-of story selection by the master of horror manga.

This volume includes nine of Junji Ito’s best short stories, as selected by the author himself and presented with accompanying notes and commentary. An arm peppered with tiny holes dangles from a sick girl’s window… After an idol hangs herself, balloons bearing faces appear in the sky, some even featuring your own face… An amateur film crew hires an extremely individualistic fashion model and faces a real bloody ending… An offering of nine fresh nightmares for the delectation of horror fans.

An exciting addition to VIZ’s Junji Ito library, containing Ito’s best short stories as selected by the author himself.

Ainslie Hogarth

A darkly funny domestic horror novel about a woman who must take drastic measures to save her husband and herself from the vengeful ghost of her mother-in-law.

When Ralph and Abby Lamb move in with Ralph’s mother, Laura, Abby hopes it’s just what she and her mother-in-law need to finally connect. After a traumatic childhood, Abby is desperate for a mother figure, especially now that she and Ralph are trying to become parents themselves. Abby just has so much love to give—to Ralph, to Laura, and to Mrs. Bondy, her favorite resident at the long-term care home where she works. But Laura isn’t interested in bonding with her daughter-in-law. She’s venomous and cruel, especially to Abby, and life with her is hellish.

When Laura takes her own life, her ghost haunts Abby and Ralph in very different ways: Ralph is plunged into depression, and Abby is terrorized by a force intent on destroying everything she loves. To make matters worse, Mrs. Bondy’s daughter is threatening to move Mrs. Bondy from the home, leaving Abby totally alone. With everything on the line, Abby comes up with a chilling plan that will allow her to keep Mrs. Bondy, rescue Ralph from his tortured mind, and break Laura’s hold on the family for good. All it requires is a little ingenuity, a lot of determination, and a unique recipe for chicken à la king…

Mariana Enriquez

A damaged father battles to save his son from the sinister cult he is destined to serve – from cult sensation Mariana Enriquez, author of the International Booker Prize-shortlisted The Dangers of Smoking in Bed.

From cult sensation Mariana Enriquez, author of the international Booker Prize-shortlisted The Dangers of Smoking in Bed

His father could find what was lost. His father knew when someone was going to die. His father had talked to him about the dead who rode in on the wind. The dead travel fast.

Gaspar is six years old when the Order first come for him.

For years, they have exploited his father’s ability to commune with the dead and the demonic, presiding over macabre rituals where the unwanted and the disappeared are tortured and executed, sacrificed to the Darkness. Now they want a successor.

Nothing will stop the Order, nothing is beyond them. Surrounded by horrors, can Gaspar break free?

Spanning the brutal decades of Argentina’s military dictatorship and its aftermath, Our Share of Night is a haunting, thrilling novel of broken families, cursed inheritances, and the sacrifices a father will make to help his son escape his destiny.

Emily Carroll

A contemporary gothic horror and comics classic, perfect for fans of Neil Gaiman, Joe Hill, Stranger Things and The Haunting of Hill House

I used to dream of Dragons…

Abby is settling into married life: making coffee, cooking for David and her stepdaughter Crystal, spending evenings curled up together in front of the TV. For a quiet woman without many friends, she’s proud of the life she has built, and desperately wants to believe they will all be happy.

But what really happened to Crystal’s mother, the artist who no one speaks of? What secrets does their strange house by the water harbour, and what of Abby’s old dreams and fears, of Lady Grey, the Knight and the Dragons?

In her chilling return – a story of grief, ghosts, and the struggle to be true to oneself – Emily Carroll casts another unforgettable spell.

Jessica Johns

A haunting debut novel where dreams, family, and spirits collide.

Night after night, Mackenzie – a young Cree woman living in Vancouver – has dreams that return her to a memory from before her sister Sabrina’s untimely death. But when the waking world starts closing in, too – crows stalk her every move around the city; she gets threatening text messages from someone claiming to be Sabrina – Mackenzie knows this is more than she can handle alone.

Desperate for help, she returns to her mother, sister, cousin, and aunties in her small Alberta hometown. Together, they try to uncover what is haunting Mackenzie before it’s too late.

Christopher Golden

Siberia’s Kolyma Highway is 1200 miles of gravel packed permafrost in a snow-covered wilderness. Known as the Road of Bones, it is a massive graveyard for the former Soviet Union’s gulag prisoners. Hundreds of thousands of people worked to death and were left where their bodies fell, consumed by the frozen elements and plowed beneath the permafrost road.

Felix “Teig” Teigland is in Russia to drive the highway collecting ghost stories and local legends along the way. Only, when Teig and his team reach their destination, they find an abandoned town, and a pack of predatory wolves, faster and smarter than any wild animals should be.

Nuzo Onoh

A powerful Nigeria-set horror tale of possession, malevolent ghosts, family tensions, secrets and murder from the recipient of the Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement and ‘Queen of African Horror’. For readers of Octavia Butler, Ben Okri and Koji Suzuki.

Bata, an 11-year-old girl tormented by nightmares, wakes up one night to find herself standing sentinel before her cousin’s door. Her cousin is to get married the next morning, but only if she can escape the murderous attack of a ghost-bride, who used to be engaged to her groom.

A supernatural possession helps Bata battle and vanquish the vengeful ghost bride, and following a botched exorcism, she is transported to Ibaja-La, the realm of dead brides. There, she receives secret powers to fight malevolent ghost-brides before being sent back to the human realm, where she must learn to harness her new abilities as she strives to protect those whom she loves.

By turns touching and terrifying, this is vivid supernatural horror story of family drama, long-held secrets, possession, death – and what lies beyond.

John Ajvide Lindqvist

A shipping container is mysteriously dumped in the Swedish port town of Norrtalje. Due to their ignorance of its ownership it isn’t until a week has passed that the authorities can have it forced open. There the remains of twenty eight refugees are found, a situation of unrelenting horror. Not only that; a black sludge pours out which contaminates the river and is the cause of a new, sickening dread that affects Norrtalje’s inhabitants, causing a lack of trust, aggression, violence. It seems like an end to Kindness.

Six characters are at the centre of this extraordinary novel, six people in search of love and connection, whose extraordinary qualities will confront the metaphysical illness consuming their town.

Richard Chizmar

The acclaimed NEW YORK TIMES and USA TODAY bestselling novel of smalltown evil that ‘is genuinely chilling and something brand-new and exciting’ (Stephen King) and ‘unforgettable’ (Harlan Coben).

Summer 1988: the mutilated bodies of several missing girls are discovered in a small Maryland town.

Rumour spreads that the evil stalking local teens is not entirely human. But law enforcement and members of the FBI are sure a serial killer is playing games with them.

Now recent college graduate Richard Chizmar returns to his hometown to write a personal account of the killer’s reign. And what he discovers will haunt him for years to come . . .

Stephen Chbosky

An epic literary event twenty years in the making: the new novel from Stephen Chbosky – author of multi-million copy sensation The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

Kate Reese is a single mother fleeing an abusive relationship by starting over in a new town, with her young son Christopher. But Mill Grove, Pennsylvania, is not the safe place they thought it would be…

Their world begins to unravel after Christopher vanishes into the Mission Street Woods – where 50 years earlier an eerily similar disappearance occurred. When he emerges six days later, unharmed but not unchanged, he brings with him a secret: a voice only he can hear and a warning of tragedy to come.

What follows is a moving, thrilling, chilling modern masterpiece – a work of towering imagination and emotional depth which unfolds on an epic canvas.

Louise Welsh

A special reissue from Head of Zeus’s bestselling anthology collection of 100 scary stories to read with the lights on, selected and introduced by award-winning author Louise Welsh.

Haunted houses, mysterious counts, weeping widows and restless souls, here is the definitive anthology of all that goes bump in the night. Hand-picked by award-winning author Louise Welsh, this beautiful collection of 100 ghost stories will delight, unnerve, and entertain any fiction lover brave enough…

Here are gothic classics, modern masters, Booker Prize-winners, ancient folk tales and stylish noirs, proving that every writer has a skeleton or two in their closet.

The all-star cast of authors inlude: Hilary Mantel, William Faulkner, Kate Atkinson, Henry James, Kazuo Ishiguro, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Franz Kafka, Ruth Rendell, Edgar Allan Poe, William Trevor, Helen Simpson, Haruki Murakami, Dylan Thomas, Bram Stoker, H.P. Lovecraft, Lydia Davis, Sir Walter Scott, Annie Proulx, Bram Stoker, Angela Carter and Stephen King.

Alma Katsu

A 1944, in remote Idaho, Meiko Briggs and her daughter are sent to an internment camp. It doesn’t matter that Aiko is American born: They are Japanese, and therefore a threat to the American government. They cling to elements of their own life, as a mysterious disease spreads through the camp causing paranoia, violence, and death.

When a team of secretive doctors arrive, they must team up with a newspaper reporter and widowed missionary to uncover the truth.

Inspired by the Japanese yokai and the jorogumo spider demon, witness the danger of demonization and xenophobia.

Jennifer Hillier

An atmospheric and edgy thriller that combines Heartsick with Please See Us, this novel from the author of the “truly frightening” (Suspense MagazineCreep follows a police officer investigating a string of disappearances at a mysterious amusement park.

By day, Wonderland is a magical amusement park boasting a certain retro charm. Excited children, hands sticky with cotton candy, run frenetically from ride to ride while the tinkling music of the oldest Ferris wheel in the Pacific Northwest fills the air. But behind the scenes, the rides need repairs, and the clown museum is filled with a lot more than just wax figures. Someone is working hard to keep the park’s dark secrets hidden beneath its weathered attractions.

Vanessa Castro’s first day as deputy police chief of Seaside, Washington, is off to a bang. The unidentifiable homeless man rotting inside the tiny town’s main tourist attraction is strange enough, but now a teenage employee is missing. Clues lead Vanessa into a mysterious web of missing persons cases that goes back decades. She moved to Seaside to escape her own scandalous past, but has she brought her family to the center of an insidious killer’s twisted game?

Filled with fast-paced chills and a shocking, bloody finale, Wonderland is “top of the line thriller writing…You better call in sick, because you’re not going anywhere until you finish reading it. Oh, and you might want to lock the door, too. Just to be safe” (Jeffrey Deaver, New York Times bestselling author).

T. Kingfisher

Award-winning author Ursula Vernon, writing as T. Kingfisher, presents a terrifying tale of hidden worlds and monstrous creations…

When Mouse’s dad asks her to clean out her dead grandmother’s house, she says yes. After all, how bad could it be?

Answer: pretty bad. Grandma was a hoarder, and her house is stuffed with useless rubbish. That would be horrific enough, but there’s more – Mouse stumbles across her step-grandfather’s journal, which at first seems to be filled with nonsensical rants… until Mouse encounters some of the terrifying things he described for herself.

Alone in the woods with her dog, Mouse finds herself face to face with a series of impossible terrors – because sometimes the things that go bump in the night are real, and they’re looking for you. And if she doesn’t face them head on, she might not survive to tell the tale.

Ronald Malfi

Maybe this is a ghost story…

Andrew Larimer has left his past behind. Rising up the ranks in a New York law firm, and with a heavily pregnant wife, he is settling into a new life far from Kingsport, the town in which he grew up. But when he receives a late-night phone call from an old friend, he has no choice but to return home.

Coming home means returning to his late father’s house, which has seen better days. It means lying to his wife. But it also means reuniting with his friends: Eric, now the town’s deputy sheriff; Dale, a real-estate mogul living in the shadow of a failed career; his childhood sweetheart Tig who never could escape town; and poor Meach, whose ravings about a curse upon the group have driven him to drugs and alcohol.

Together, the five friends will have to confront the memories—and the horror—of a night, years ago, that changed everything for them.

Because Andrew and his friends have a secret. A thing they have kept to themselves for twenty years. Something no one else should know. But the past is not dead, and Kingsport is a town with secrets of its own.

One dark secret…
One small-town horror…

Want more spooky recommendations? Check out our list of Friday the 13th Horror Recommendations

 

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