I’m a writer and a bookstore owner and a lover of all things dark and strange. I grew up reading books that I often had to put in the freezer at night so that they wouldn’t haunt my dreams and I never grew out of it. I have a book club called The Fantastic Strangelings so I am constantly reading, and always looking for new and wonderful stories to share.
As Jenny Lawson’s hundreds of thousands of fans know, she suffers from depression. In Broken, Jenny brings readers along on her mental and physical health journey, offering heartbreaking and hilarious anecdotes along the way.
A treat for Jenny Lawson’s already existing fans, and destined to convert new ones, Broken is a beacon of hope and a wellspring of laughter when we all need it most.
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I know you’re probably expecting novels on my list but this is the true story of a librarian’s investigation into the science and history of books bound in human skin (for real). More fascinating than creepy, this book sucked me in from the very beginning. If you like Mary Roach (Stiff, Spooked) or Caitlin Doughty (Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?) then you will love Megan Rosenbloom
Listen, if you like creepy books and you don’t already know Shirley Jackson then I am about to change your life. All of her books are fantastic but this one is probably the greatest haunted house story of all time. Four seekers arrive at the notoriously Hill House, including Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of a haunting. They are not prepared for what they find.
Five terrifying but lovely graphic novel stories that explore the dark, terrible woods in this sinister fairy tale of a book. These vignettes entice while also terrifying and the illustrations are the perfect mix of dark and sinister that makes me think of Tim Burton or Edward Gorey.
5,309 authors have recommended their favorite books and what they love about them. Browse their picks for the best books about haunted houses, comics, and Sherlock Holmes.
We think you will like Priory, The Elementals, and A Sudden Light if you like this list.
From Paulette's list on The best haunted house books where setting is a character.
I love a classic, gothic haunted house story with an unexpected twist, and Priory delivers. When Oliver Hardacre returns to his namesake home, located outside the gloriously atmospheric Yorkshire town of Whitby, he opens the door to his past. The narrative is told from Oliver’s modern perspective and his mother’s point of view in the 1970s, when Oliver and his brother were children at Hardacre Priory. Replete with dark, twisted secrets and multi-layered, complex characters, Wright’s sentient, menacing estate comes alive under her masterful touch. This is a short read, easily finished in one sitting. Crack it open on a foggy morning, with a spot of tea and a blanket to cut the chill.
From Charlotte's list on The best haunted house novels to scare the bejesus out of you.
This is one of those books that creeps up on you. The setting is unusual and it uses the tropes of Southern Gothic in unexpected ways. For one thing, McDowell’s novel is set at the beach during a vacation. Most of the haunted activity takes place during the day in the oppressively sunny landscape of the vacation home for a group of visitors recovering from various ills. For another, and like a lot of Southern Gothic stories, family dynamics and history are a big part of the backstory here, but there are unpredictable elements as well, including the very nature or un-nature of the setting itself.
From K.D.'s list on The best horror books about bad moving decisions.
I can never get enough ghost and haunted house stories that have social commentary themes. This is one of the books that helped inspire my own book. Trevor Riddell’s parents are separated, and Trevor and his father move to his lumber-robber-baron grandfather’s mansion in the woods of the northwest, where Trevor’s father and aunt hope to talk their ailing father into a big-money real estate deal involving the house and land.
This book has everything I love: ghosts, intrigue, mystery, history, emotionally-complex antagonists, and epistolary story-telling through letters and journals. Woven into all that, Stein manages to insert a moral about conservation and trees (and other things I’ll let you discover on your own). Ghost stories have a history of being morality tales, and this is a modern version—true to the tradition—that I really enjoyed.
