10 of the Best Spooky Books you should read this Fall
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This post is about 10 of the best spooky books that you should read this Fall (and they are FRIGHTfully good!)
The best spooky books give us an experience that you either love or hate. It’s a moment of chills from a good ghost story. Or the thrills of the slasher books, you just can’t get enough. To be a horror fan in 2022 is to find yourself at the edge of a book scared at every turn. Nowadays you’re just limited to writers named King, Rice, or Gaiman anymore. Horror fiction has become extremely popular, especially around the spooky season.
The Best Spooky Books Begin with Vampires?
Woman, Eating
by Claire Kohda
A young, vampire must find a way to balance her desire to live amongst humans with her incessant hunger in this stunning debut novel.
Lydia is always hungry. But her body doesn’t work like those of other people. The only thing she can digest is blood. She’s always wanted to try Japanese food. Sashimi, ramen, onigiri with sour plum stuffed inside – the food her Japanese father liked to eat.
And then there is bubble tea and iced coffee. Ice cream and cake. Foraged herbs plants, and vegetables. Items are grown by the other young artists at the London studio space she is secretly squatting in. But, Lydia can’t eat any of these things. It turns out that sourcing fresh pigs’ blood in London. Where she is living away from her vampire mother for the first time – is much more difficult than she’d anticipated.
Nettle & Bone
by T. Kingfisher
After years of seeing her sisters suffer at the hands of an abusive prince. Marra has finally realized that no one is coming to their rescue. Marra is going to have to save herself— and her sisters.
She seeks help from a powerful grave witch and is offered the tools to kill a prince. But, only if she can complete three impossible tasks.
Can we admit the best spooky books have spooky houses?
The Hacienda
by Isabel Cañas
What more do I have to say other than Mexican Gothic meets Rebecca?
This debut supernatural suspense novel. Set in the aftermath of the Mexican War of Independence, a remote house, a sinister haunting, and the woman pulled into their clutches…
The Children on the Hill
by Jennifer McMahon
The Children on the Hill takes us on a breathless journey. Facing the primal fears that lurk within us all.
1978: at her renowned treatment center in a picturesque town in Vermont. Psychiatrist, Dr. Helen Hildreth, is acclaimed for her work with the mentally ill.
But when she’s home with her cherished grandchildren, Vi and Eric, she’s just Gran. Teaching them how to take care of their pets, preparing them home-cooked meals, and providing them with care and attention. And don’t forget love.
Gran brings home a child to stay with the family. Iris—silent, hollow-eyed, skittish, and feral—does not behave like a normal girl.
Violet is thrilled to have a new playmate. She and Eric invite Iris to join their Monster Club, where they catalog all kinds of monsters and dream up ways to defeat them. Before long, Iris begins to come out of her shell. They do everything together: ride their bicycles, go to the drive-in, and meet at their clubhouse in secret. Hunting monsters.
2019: Lizzy Shelley, the host of the popular podcast Monsters Among Us, is traveling to Vermont, where a young girl has been abducted, and a monster sighting has the town in an uproar. She’s determined to hunt it down because Lizzy knows better than anyone that monsters are real—and one of them is her very own sister.
Just Like Home
by Sarah Gailey
Coming home is hard for Vera, and to make things worse, she and her mother aren’t alone. A parasitic artist has moved into the guest house out back and is slowly stripping Vera’s childhood for spare parts. He insists that he isn’t the one leaving notes around the house in her father’s handwriting… but who else could it possibly be?
Undiscovered secrets are the foundations of the notorious Crowder House. Vera must face them and find out for herself just how deep the rot goes.
The best spooky books are devilishly good?
The Devil Takes You Home
by Gabino Iglesias
Buried in debt due to his young daughter’s illness, and his marriage at the brink of divorce, Mario reluctantly takes a job as a hitman, surprising himself with the violence he causes. After a tragedy destroys the life he knew, Mario agrees to one final job: hijack a cartel’s cash shipment before it reaches Mexico.
Along with an old friend and a cartel insider named Juanca, Mario sets off on a near-suicidal mission, which will leave him with either a cool $200,000 or a bullet in the skull. But the path to reward or ruin is never as straightforward as it seems. One thing is certain: even if Mario makes it out alive, he won’t return the same.
The Resting Place
by Camilla Sten
When Eleanor walked in on the scene of her grandmother, Vivianne’s, murder, she came face to face with the killer—a maddening expression that meant nothing to someone like her. With each passing day, her anxiety mounts. The dark feelings of having been brushed by a killer, yet not knowing who could do this—or if they’d be back—overtake both her dreams and her waking moments, thwarting her perception of reality.
Death Visits in The Best Spooky Books
Belladonna
by Adalyn Grace
Orphaned as a baby, Signa has been raised by a string of guardians, guardians that are always more interested in her wealth than her well-being—and each has met an untimely end. Her remaining relatives are the elusive Hawthornes, an eccentric family living at Thorn Grove, an estate both glittering and gloomy.
Its patriarch mourns his late wife through wild parties, his son grapples for control of the family’s waning reputation, and his daughter suffers from a mysterious illness. But when their mother’s restless spirit appears claiming she was poisoned, Signa realizes that the family she depends on could be in grave danger and enlists the help of a surly stable boy to hunt down the killer.
All the White Spaces
by Ally Wilkes
Something deadly and mysterious stalks the members of an isolated polar expedition in this haunting and spellbinding historical horror novel.
In the wake of the First World War, Jonathan Morgan stows away on an Antarctic expedition, determined to find his rightful place in the world of men.
Aboard the expeditionary ship of his hero, the world-famous explorer James “Australis” Randall, Jonathan may live as his true self—and true gender—and have the adventures he has always been denied.
But not all is smooth sailing: the war casts its long shadow over them all, and grief, guilt, and mistrust skulk among the explorers.
We Are All the Same in the Dark
by Julia Heaberlin
The discovery of a girl abandoned by the side of the road threatens to unearth the long-buried secrets of a Texas town’s legendary cold case in a superb.
It’s been a decade since Trumanell Branson disappeared, leaving only a bloody handprint behind. Her pretty face still hangs like a watchful queen on the posters on the walls of the town’s Baptist church, the police station, and the high school.
They all promise the same thing: We will find you. Meanwhile, her brother, Wyatt, lives as a pariah in the desolation of the old family house, cleared of wrongdoing by the police but tried and sentenced in the court of public opinion and in a new documentary about the crime.
Are you a horror fan? What are some of your favorite releases of this year? Let’s talk books in the comments below!
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