Here are 74 books that You'd Look Better as a Ghost fans have personally recommended if you like
You'd Look Better as a Ghost.
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I’ve been fascinated with the paranormal since I was a little girl and used to talk to the old lady on the edge of my bed. That old lady turned out to be my grandma, who had passed when I was in my mother’s womb. My entire family is touched by the curiosity and love that comes with the paranormal, so much so my mother is a working psychic medium. For years, I have spent every birthday attending haunted houses with a paranormal team to “investigate.” For some strange reason, I love to be terrified, and I fear I will never stop chasing the thrill.
I read this within 12 hours; no one could pry this book from my hands.
There is something so truly shocking and morbid about how as women we love to read books on true crime, I personally believe it’s because we know that the possibility for this terror to become our reality is a possibility.
And with Noelle’s brilliant writing, I truly couldn’t put the book down. Three women are brutally murdered by the same serial killer, and the story follows their perspectives as they haunt their killer and become ghosts.
Steven Ramirez is a lifelong fan of the movies—especially gripping thrillers and nail-biting horror. An award-winning author, he wrote the supernatural suspense series, Sarah Greene Mysteries, and the horror-thriller series, Tell Me When I’m Dead. His latest novel is Faithless, a thriller. A former screenwriter, Steven lives in Los Angeles with his family. He enjoys Mike and Ikes with his Iced Caffè Americano, doesn’t sleep on planes, and wishes Europe were closer.
What I love best about this novel is how adept the author is at combining the traditional elements of a serial killer story with those of supernatural tales such as Peter Straub’s terrifying Ghost Story. And trust me, the combination works. If you’re in the mood to be scared, then touched by the tortured yet loyal and loving Trinity LeDoux, I suggest you stop what you’re doing and acquire The Curse She Wore.
Trinity LeDoux, homeless on the streets of New Orleans, has nothing to lose when she hands a wealthy, yet reclusive clairvoyant a cursed vintage necklace.
During one of Hayden Quinn's rare public appearances, he is unexpectedly recruited into Trinity's perilous mission-a journey back through time to the exact moment of death for two very different victims.
Hayden and Trinity, two broken people with nothing but death in common, pursue the dangerous quest to stop the murderer emulating the grisly works of a notorious serial killer. Trespassing on Fate's turf comes with a price-one they will never see coming.
As well as being an author of horror and thriller fiction, I’ve been a teacher for over a decade. Over the years, I’ve played to my strengths, selecting and teaching some of the very best in both classic and contemporary horror. The power of narratives to hold and horrify is one of the most undying features of storytelling, from Ancient Greek theatre to modern thrillers, and I’m always on the lookout for authors who achieve this in new and innovative ways. The books on this list all instill dread in very different ways, but they all have one thing in common: they’ll stick with you long after you put them down.
If there’s one thing Joe Hill does well, it’s suspense.
There are moments of this book that had me bouncing on my seat as I was reading, unable to contain the sheer tension of the moment inside my body. I remember walking around with the book in front of my face at work, not able to put it down, needing to know what would happen next.
NOS4A2 is a great example of characters you really care about being put in the most terrifying situations and the way he uses bizarre and compelling settings, as well as really memorable set pieces, to build dread is on another level.
An old Silver Wraith with a frightening history. A story about one serial killer and his lingering, unfinished business.
Anyone could be next.
We're going to Christmasland ...
NOS4R2 is an old-fashioned horror novel in the best sense. Claustrophobic, gripping and terrifying, this is a story that will have you on the edge of the seat while you read, and leaving the lights on while you sleep. With the horrific tale of Charles Manx and his Silver Wraith, Joe Hill has established himself as the premiere horror and supernatural thriller writer of his generation.
Liveaboard sailor Cass Lynch thinks her big break has finally arrived when she blags her way into skippering a Viking longship for a Hollywood film. However, this means returning to the Shetland Islands, the place she fled as a teenager. When a corpse unexpectedly appears onboard the longship, she can…
When I was five my dad had to carry me, crying, out of the Salem Witch’s Dungeon. You’d think that would put a damper on my love of spooky things, but it absolutely did not! Bela Lugosi was my first crush. I set up Haunted Houses in my garage and read every single book my local library had on the Salem Witch Trials. I made my way from Bunnicula and The Halloween Tree, to books by Stephen King and Anne Rice. Halloween and horror will always have a special place in my heart, and yet…I still don’t let my legs dangle off my bed, lest the monsters get me.
Every day is Halloween when you live in the seventh most haunted town in America, so ghosts and witches are nothing new to Evie Von Rathe. But when Aunt Des disappears, Evie knows she’ll do anything to get her back, even if it means playing a deadly game against a serial killer with a creature called The Clackity.
Watching Evie overcome her anxiety is a struggle kids will relate to and makes her an easy character to root for. The Clackity has such a perfect spooky Grimm’s Fairy tale vibe, that I was immediately sucked in. Nothing is more Halloween than a dark trip through the woods, and the twisted Alice in Wonderland feel of this book lives and breathes Halloween.
Reminiscent of Doll Bones and Small Spaces, this "delightfully eerie" (Erin A. Craig, New York Times bestselling author of House of Salt and Sorrows) middle grade novel tells the story of a girl who must rescue her aunt by entering a world of ghosts, witches, and monsters to play a game with deadly consequences.
Evie Von Rathe lives in Blight Harbor-the seventh-most haunted town in America-with her Aunt Desdemona, the local paranormal expert. Des doesn't have many rules except one: Stay out of the abandoned slaughterhouse at the edge of town. But when her aunt disappears into the building, Evie…
I’m an October baby born during a full moon, into a small New England town notorious for their connection to the Salem Witch Trials. My house was for sure haunted growing up, I’ve had a lot of nightmares over the years, and I found solace in the horror genre. Though my true background is in comedy having studied with Second City Chicago, the experience afforded me the opportunity to explore the more pained and shadowed sides of myself as a tool to write relevant material. I learned to focus those explorations into narratives and create stories with a lot of heart that highlight my own quest to uncover inner peace.
The first full novel by Hill—who I secretly recognized as Stephen King’s son—takes his father’s traditions to a whole new level. I fell immediately in love with Hill’s twisted yet insightful storytelling.
An aging rockstar protagonist who sets out to confront his unsettling past and weird addiction to odd memorabilia? Yes, please. I’m in awe of Hill’s ability to pack more into a single sentence than most authors do in an entire chapter. He balances the pace of a face-melting guitar solo with the gentle tenderness of vulnerability as his characters struggle to understand their place in the world.
This book had me clutching the covers one moment and reaching for the tissues in the next.
He bought it, in the shape of the dead man's suit, delivered in a heart-shaped box, because he wanted it: because his fans ate up that kind of story. It was perfect for his collection: the genuine skulls and the bones, the real honest-to-God snuff movie, the occult books and all the rest of the paraphanalia that goes along with his kind of hard/goth rock.
But the rest of his collection doesn't make the house feel cold. The bones don't make the dogs bark; the movie doesn't make Jude feel…
I’ve had a passion for crime/thriller/suspense/horror novels since high school, when I truly fell in love with reading. Specifically, during my junior year, when my English teacher, after having us read Catcher in the Ryeby J.D Salinger, then announced to the class that we were reading Stephen King the rest of the year. Up until that point I hated to read, but then after reading King—we read just about all of his novellas—I fell in love with the darker side of storytelling, and the macabre in general. Now when I consider buying a book, the darker the better! I hope you enjoy these reads as much as I did!
Because Greg Iles is one of my all-time favorite writers and this book is terrifying. I’ve read it twice, and it cooked even faster the second time around. The family dynamics between Harper Cole and his wife really gripped me, but when this came out in 1997, it really hammered home how evil the internet could be, and how killers could lurk in complete disguise and hide themselves behind facades and masks and computer screens. Greg Iles has so much range in his storytelling it's scary. If you haven’t read him, start with his first and work your way through! You won’t be disappointed!
A man with a secret life risks everything to clear his name in this "ingenious suspense thriller"(The New York Times Book Review) from the bestselling author of the Penn Cage series.
By day, Harper Cole trades commodities from his isolated home in the Mississippi Delta. By night he leads quite a different life, serving as a systems operator for an exclusive, annonymous erotic online service that caters to the rich and famous. But now a stranger has penetrated the network's state-of-the-art security, brutally murdering six celebrated female clients.
Falsely accused of these horrible crimes, Harper realizes there's only one way…
Riley Masterson has moved to Greenbrier, SC, anxious to escape the chaos that has overwhelmed her life.
Questioned in a murder in Alabama, she has spent eighteen months under suspicion by a sheriff’s office, unable to make an arrest. But things in gentrifying Greenbrier are not as they seem. As…
They say your childhood shapes your life. By the time I reached thirteen, work began to teach me how to survive. After working a wide range of jobs, I ended up teaching students aged from fifteen to fifty. It was a joy. They opened my eyes. They were my inspiration. They kept me writing around the paid job. I was there to teach them, but I also learned from them. They gave me another special gift. To share their truly amazing stories with you.
Although the Jefferson Chene mysteries are not historical, I really enjoy them. I love a mystery and all the twists and turns that go with it. It feeds my imagination and I want to unpick the motive of the murderer.
Here we are with a murder, but the question is this a possible serial killer with no apparent motive? Thank goodness, honest, hardworking, and dependable, Jefferson is on the case. I thought I had the case cracked, but prayed I got it wrong. I chomped through to the end, sure I got it all worked out. Did I? No, I didn’t, not until the last possible minute. But that’s the beauty of a good mystery isn’t it?
A serial killer is on the loose in metro Detroit. Three female victims have been discovered in motel rooms in different suburban cities surrounding Motown. The only connection is that each body is found in Room 319, and the killer leaves the taunting message “Why 319?” on the bathroom mirror, written with the victim’s lipstick.
Detective Jefferson Chene heads up an elite squad of detectives assigned to the case. With no home life, he devotes every waking moment to catching killers. But this one is more elusive than most. With no clues and no apparent link between the victims, Chene…
I’ve always had an inquisitive mind and was constantly asking questions as a child. I’ve kept this passion and following a mid-life career change from corporate, became a psychologist, psychotherapist, and eventually past life regression therapist. I founded the international Past Life Regression Academy in 2002 to teach others to heal the soul, and the Academy has trained more than 700 past life regression therapists throughout the world. I’ve written extensively in this area and know most of the pioneers, and I hope you enjoy the books on this list as much as I have!
I’ve been a colleague of both Peter and Toni for many years.
Toni is a clear spiritual channel and Peter asked the questions for this book and published it. What many people may not know is Toni used to be a state attorney and as her channeling developed she did the one thing attorneys should never do and that is to ask questions of a witness without knowing what the answer would be. Yet the intuitive questions she asked resolved cases in a dramatic way.
In this book 25 souls share what happened at their moment of death and shortly afterwards.
This includes someone who died in the twin towers, a Vietnamese diplomat is tortured and shot, a serial killer who suffered the torment of a self-induced hell and two little Italian girls were too frightened to believe they had died and spent time as ghosts. A great read that…
"Doubts and misgivings about life after death can be set aside with the gift of this special book." (Dr. Austin Ritterspach, Religious Studies, Indiana University) In How I Died (and what I did next), an office worker dies in the North Tower on 9/11. A little girl is drowned in the 2004 Indonesian tsunami. A Canadian man is run over by a bus. A Vietnamese diplomat is tortured and shot. A Chinese woman dies having a back-street abortion, a drunken Brazilian playboy drives his car over a cliff. Twenty-five such stories are told by souls from all over the globe.…
I’ve been obsessed with murder mysteries and psychological thrillers for as long as I can remember. My father’s bookshelves were full of anthologies on serial killers, which piqued my curiosity at a very early age (probably too early, but we’re not here to judge my dad’s parenting skills, okay?). As I familiarized myself with the likes of Ed Gein, Jeffrey Dahmer, Charles Manson, and John Wayne Gacy, I became enthralled by the psychology behind what makes people commit heinous acts. Now as an author myself, these same stories fuel my inspiration and keep me motivated to write books that further explore the darker side of human nature.
From the very first pages describing one of the most brutal killings I’ve ever read about, I was hooked on this story.
I love how the author effortlessly weaves together different perspectives, giving me a holistic view of the story from multiple angles. What I found most intriguing were the subtle elements of the paranormal interspersed throughout, adding layers of unreliability to the narrative that made this book simply unputdownable.
This is a great read for anyone who loves psychological thrillers with a hint of horror and the supernatural.
When David Mallory confesses to murder, no one assumes the body is two hundred years old. Clinical psychologist, Newton Flanigan, is subsequently drawn into a sinister path unravelling a series of murders spanning two centuries. David is hiding secrets of death and betrayal, triggering a journey that could be Newton's last.
Told from the protagonist and antagonist viewpoints, Beyond the Veil uncovers the mind of a deranged serial killer that has seemingly existed throughout history.
Miranda falls in love with her dream house but soon discovers it's an affair with complications. A lot of them. Rosewood is a centuries old, tumble-down, gambrel roofed charmer located in an isolated, coastal corner of Virginia referred to as "strange". Known for long-standing and antiquated customs, an almost indecipherable…
I am a big fan of romance books with thrilling plots. It’s partly how I remember the stories years later. When I wrote Flowers for Kate in theRainbow Desireanthology, it started as a pure romance, but I added a supernatural thrill. One reader admitted checking over her shoulder in case a spectral being was there while reading the story. I love writing stories with twists and turns, and surprising readers. Maybe it comes from my childhood days of being a Scooby-Doo fan—I loved the thrill of guessing the mysteries behind each character and the villain being unmasked. I’m an ex-journalist who has published romance stories from erotic to sweet.
A sexy romance, a strong female lead, a hot hero…and a psychopathic serial killer. What more can a romance reader with a craving for thriller plots want? Patrick, book one in the Risking Love series by Callie Carmen, covers all the above elements that make a great thrilling romance. I’m a huge fan of strong women, and though Jaq, the protagonist, is being pursued by a serial killer, she never lets her guard down. She is a woman with a strong voice, which does not falter, and Patrick makes a great love interest—he’s a protective man who gives us plenty of sizzle. The author did a great job at giving readers a spine-chilling view into the mind of a serial killer.
Jaq had no interest in a serious relationship because life at an early age had taught her that men weren't to be trusted. But she met Patrick who soon had her thinking about risking her heart. For Patrick the time for Jaq dating other men had ended. He wanted her all to himself. But would she stay if she knew the secrets of his past? Patrick wasn't the only man who wanted Jaq, and the other man was willing to kill to have her. Patrick is the first novel in the Risking Love series. The stories chart a group of…
