Looking for a new horror book to read this spooky season? Here are 10 great options for you this Halloween, from authors like Isabel Cañas and Jade Song.
It’s that time of year again!
There’s a chill in the air, everything smells a bit like apple cider donuts and wood smoke, people have the theme from Practical Magic on repeat, the sun is setting earlier, and it’s hard to shake the feeling that something ancient and terrible is watching you from just out of sight as you’re walking home at night. That’s right, folks: Spooky season is finally upon us!
While there’s truly no hard-and-fast rule on the best time of year to read scary stories, if you’re anything like me, you like to pack in as many as possible in the days leading up to Halloween. Below you’ll find a list of 10 recent horror novels that are perfect for the month of October (and beyond). A Guest in the House by Emily Carroll
Nine years ago, Emily Carroll released a truly chilling anthology of gorgeously illustrated and grotesquely visceral horror stories titled Through the Woods. If, like me, you were a fan of this collection (I still think about the story “His Face All Red” fairly regularly), then you’ll rejoice to hear that Carroll’s recent adult graphic novel is every bit as unsettling as her early work.
A Guest in the House tells the story of Abby, a quiet and lonely young woman who, upon learning about the sudden death of her new husband’s first wife, Sheila, begins to question his innocence. Was it really natural causes that killed her, or something much more sinister? Were all of her possessions truly destroyed in a fire? Why does he live by a lake if he doesn’t swim, and why won’t he let his daughter go near the water? As Abby adjusts to married life, her obsession with Sheila continues to grow until a startling encounter with her predecessor’s ghost changes everything.
Taking inspiration from the gothic tales that have come before it, and punctuated by startling shocks of color amid black-and-white pages, A Guest in the House is a perfect blend of domestic and supernatural horror. There’s a pervasive sense of wrongness simmering just under the surface of this story that will make readers’ skin crawl from the first page.The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell
Trust me when I say that you’ll be sleeping with the lights on and listening intently to every ambient sound your house makes while you’re reading this book.
After the sudden and mysterious death of her husband, Elsie is sent to his family’s sprawling country estate, The Bridge, to see out the final months of her pregnancy away from the overwhelming hustle and bustle of London. What she discovers upon arrival is a manor house falling into disrepair and a staff that already seems to resent her very presence despite having never met her before. Worse still is the ominous wooden creation lying in wait behind a locked door — a life-size, free-standing, flat figure that has been painted in painstaking detail to look as realistically human as possible. If that isn’t terrifying enough, it bears an uncanny resemblance to Elsie herself. While the wooden figure seems harmless and stationary at first, that swiftly changes as more begin to appear and move on their own throughout the house. The Militia House by John Milas
The year is 2010, and Cpl. Loyette and his unit are counting down the days until their time in Afghanistan finally comes to an end.
Their days are spent doing little more than loading and unloading cargo from helicopters, so when they hear rumors of a haunted Soviet-era militia house near their base, they jump at the opportunity to explore it. While nothing of note happens when they enter the old building, their unease and distrust in one another begins to grow in the days after. Porcupine quills are discovered around their base, strange drawings begin to appear on the walls, and some of the men are plagued by horrendous night terrors. Loyette himself is determined to write off his company’s behavior as a combination of boredom and exhaustion, but there’s something about the old building that he cannot ignore.
