I like to say cats raised me, and I grew up among ghosts, but in all truth, my greatest influence was my mother, who took me to the library. Books have always been a part of me, and so have haunted houses. Old places have always felt charged to me. Because of this, I love great ghost stories. The books on my list all feature haunted dwellings of one sort or another, with spirits that range from inspiring and uplifting to fun and magical, spooky to downright terrifying. Enjoy!
This book is not a traditional ghost story. It is magical and heartwarming literature centered on a house and its many spirited residents across the centuries. I read this book as slowly as I could because I never wanted it to end.
Each inhabitant of the yellow cabin in the north woods made my heart swell with love, laughter, and a little sadness. As each new occupant intersects with the past in one form or another, many times unaware, the connectedness of all things gave me goosebumps.
The hills of western Massachusetts are also close to my heart, and this story is ripe with regionalism. I wanted to curl up in a moss-covered nook and be absorbed into this book for eternity.
A sweeping novel about a single house in the woods of New England, told through the lives of those who inhabit it across the centuries—“a time-spanning, genre-blurring work of storytelling magic” (The Washington Post) from the Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of The Piano Tuner and The Winter Soldier.
“With the expansiveness and immersive feeling of two-time Booker Prize nominee David Mitchell’s fiction (Cloud Atlas), the wicked creepiness of Edgar Allan Poe, and Mason’s bone-deep knowledge of and appreciation for the natural world that’s on par with that of Thoreau, North Woods fires on all cylinders.”—San Francisco Chronicle
Psychological fiction at its best; this book enthralled me and kept me guessing till the last minute. It led me down a twisty and winding path until I realized everything I thought I knew was not what it had seemed.
The pre-war England setting really hit on my love of historical pieces soaked in atmosphere and tension. It definitely influenced me as a writer. I loved this book because it delivered the creepiness of a haunting so well that it kept me up at night. What I liked best, however, is that it validated my sense that the past is never truly behind us.
After her award-winning trilogy of Victorian novels, Sarah Waters turned to the 1940s and wrote THE NIGHT WATCH, a tender and tragic novel set against the backdrop of wartime Britain. Shortlisted for both the Orange and the Man Booker, it went straight to number one in the bestseller chart. In a dusty post-war summer in rural Warwickshire, a doctor is called to a patient at Hundreds Hall. Home to the Ayres family for over two centuries, the Georgian house, once grand and handsome, is now in decline, its masonry crumbling, its gardens choked with weeds, the clock in its stable…
Bad Blood is paranormal suspense in First Person Snark, so if you like sarcastic, strong female characters set in a world where the preternatural is run amok (i.e., legal citizens in the United States), then this book and series are for you.
Follow Sadie Stanton–"poster girl for the preternatural"–as she…
This book is the book that made me take the leap into writing my own novel-length fiction. I grew up with family stories about witchy women, and I had a broken heart when I came to this novel.
What could be a better charm to cure it than a team of magical ladies standing up to a ghost for the sake of love, family, and friends? I adored the beautiful and enchanted Victorian house in this book. I devoured the magical lore and homegrown spells.
All that, plus the mixture of light and dark moods and a small-town New England setting, made it a fun and inspiring read for me and one of my favorite books of all time.
*25th Anniversary Edition*-with an Introduction by the Author!
The Owens sisters confront the challenges of life and love in this bewitching novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Rules of Magic, Magic Lessons, and The Book of Magic.
For more than two hundred years, the Owens women have been blamed for everything that has gone wrong in their Massachusetts town. Gillian and Sally have endured that fate as well: as children, the sisters were forever outsiders, taunted, talked about, pointed at. Their elderly aunts almost seemed to encourage the whispers of witchery, with their musty house and…
This book is the scariest book I have ever read. Most people know the film, but the book is scarier. I was shocked to find that topiaries are, in fact, terrifying. They still make me uncomfortable.
It took me a while to recognize that, at its core, this is a haunted house story, and it is very haunted, with what I think are magnificently crafted ghosts. I also love this book because it is a story about a writer trying to write. I relate to it.
Steven King is a writer’s writer. Being holed up, lost in another world, and spending long hours alone can make me a little bit crazy, too.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Before Doctor Sleep, there was The Shining, a classic of modern American horror from the undisputed master, Stephen King.
Jack Torrance’s new job at the Overlook Hotel is the perfect chance for a fresh start. As the off-season caretaker at the atmospheric old hotel, he’ll have plenty of time to spend reconnecting with his family and working on his writing. But as the harsh winter weather sets in, the idyllic location feels ever more remote . . . and more sinister. And the only one to notice the strange and terrible forces gathering around…
Embark on a riveting journey into Washington State’s untamed Olympic Peninsula, where the threads of folklore legends and historical icons are woven into a complex ecological tapestry.
Follow the enigmatic Petr as he fearlessly employs his pirate radio transmitter to broadcast the forgotten and untamed voices that echo through the…
This is the 1986 middle grades book that got me hooked on haunted house stories. I loved it because it was about a family recently moving to a house near a spooky pond and a lonely girl who finds something in the woods.
I, too, had just moved to a new house, on a pond, in the woods, when I read it. I, too, felt energies in the wild places I explored, especially when I discovered historical remains of a time past, which I often did. I read this book again recently, and it was still a page-turner that gave me the creeps.
Twelve-year-old Molly and her ten-year-old brother, Michael, have never liked their seven-year-old stepsister, Heather. Ever since their parents got married, she's made Molly and Michael's life miserable. Now their parents have moved them all to the country to live in a house that used to be a church, with a cemetery in the backyard. If that's not bad enough, Heather starts talking to a ghost named Helen and warning Molly and Michael that Helen is coming for them. Molly feels certain Heather is in some kind of danger, but every time she tries to help, Heather twists things around to…
Someone has been waiting a long time for Alice Towne to arrive in Hawthorne—two hundred years, in fact.
Alice Towne can smell the memories of the dead. Struggling to come to terms with who she is, she escapes to the hills of western Massachusetts. Here, she discovers that one can’t hide from the past and that facing the darkness that lies beneath can sometimes bring us home. With its colorful characters, rich atmosphere, and steamy romance, my book is a supernatural and historical mystery that will make you believe in destiny.
After solving her first case, private eye Siobhan O’Brien is hired by Phillip Ahn, an octogenarian billionaire with his own personal island in the Pacific Northwest. Ahn, a genius in artificial intelligence, swears that Duke, his youngest child and only son, is an impostor. Is Ahn crazy, or is Duke…
Trapped in her enormous, devout Catholic family in 1963, Annie creates a hilarious campaign of lies when the pope dies and their family friend, Cardinal Stefanucci, is unexpectedly on the shortlist to be elected the first American pope.
Driven to elevate her family to the holiest of holy rollers in…
