It’s October! 🍂
It’s Autumn so all is good! 🎃
Today, I’m jumping straight into these 10 books in the Suspense, Horror, Gothic, and Mystery section, this post was originally posted on 2023… but now, just in time for Halloween. 👻 We go again, with extra books as bonus.
10 Suspense, Horror, Mystery Books
1. The September House
Genres: Thriller, Horror, Ghosts, Fiction, Paranormal, Mystery, Adult.
When Margaret and her husband Hal bought the large Victorian house on Hawthorn Street—for sale at a surprisingly reasonable price—they couldn’t believe they finally had a home of their own. Then they discovered the hauntings. Every September, the walls drip blood. The ghosts of former inhabitants appear, and all of them are terrified of something that lurks in the basement. Most people would flee. Margaret is not most people.
2. A Study in Drowning
Genres: Young Adult, Fantasy, Romance, Gothic, Young Adult Fantasy, Mystery, Fiction.
Effy Sayre has always believed in fairy tales. She’s had no choice. Since childhood, she’s been haunted by visions of the Fairy King. She’s found solace only in the pages of Angharad – author Emrys Myrddin’s beloved epic about a mortal girl who falls in love with the Fairy King, and then destroys him.
3. Midnight Is the Darkest Hour
In her small hometown, librarian Ruth Cornier has always felt like an outsider, even as her beloved father rains fire-and-brimstone warnings from the pulpit at Holy Fire Baptist.
Unfortunately for Ruth, the only things the townspeople fear more than the God and the Devil are the myths that haunt the area, like the story of the Low Man, a vampiric figure said to steal into sinners’ bedrooms and kill them on moonless nights.
4. There’s No Way I’d Die First
Genres: Young Adult, Halloween, Thriller, Horror, Contemporary, Mystery, Fiction.
Noelle Layne knows horror. Every trope, every warning sign, every survival tactic. She even leads a successful movie club dedicated to the genre. Thus, who better to throw the ultimate, most exclusive Halloween party on all of Long Island? And with the guest list including the coolest kids in her senior class, her popularity is bound to spike. Hopefully, enough to warrant an expansion into podcasting. Plus, the fact that attractive, singer-songwriter Archer Mitchell is coming is honestly the candy corn on top. Nothing is going to kill her party vibes.
5. Dracula
A classic for a reason, even if I haven’t read it yet.
Genres: Vampires, Fantasy, 19th Century, Fiction, Gothic, Literature, Audiobook, Paranormal.
When Jonathan Harker visits Transylvania to help Count Dracula with the purchase of a London house, he makes a series of horrific discoveries about his client. Soon afterwards, various bizarre incidents unfold in England: an apparently unmanned ship is wrecked off the coast of Whitby; a young woman discovers strange puncture marks on her neck; and the inmate of a lunatic asylum raves about the ‘Master’ and his imminent arrival.
6. It
Genres: Fiction, Thriller, Horror, Classics, Fantasy, Mystery.
To the children, the town was their whole world. To the adults, knowing better, Derry, Maine, was just their hometown: familiar, well-ordered, a good place to live. It was the children who saw – and felt – what made Derry so horribly different. In the storm drains, in the sewers, It lurked, taking on the shape of every nightmare, each person’s deepest dread. Sometimes It reached up, seizing, tearing, killing…
7. Night
I don’t know if I’d read this one, well, I feel like I’d start and stop midway.
Genres: School, Nonfiction, Classics, Memoir, Holocaust, History, Biography.
Born in the town of Sighet, Transylvania, Elie Wiesel was a teenager when he and his family were taken from their home in 1944 to Auschwitz concentration camp, and then to Buchenwald. Night is the terrifying record of Elie Wiesel’s memories of the death of his family, the death of his own innocence, and his despair as a deeply observant Jew confronting the absolute evil of man. This new translation by his wife and most frequent translator, Marion Wiesel, corrects important details and presents the most accurate rendering in English of Elie Wiesel’s testimony to what happened in the camps and of his unforgettable message that this horror must simply never be allowed to happen again.
8. None of This Is True
Genres: Thriller, Mystery Thriller, Fiction, Mystery, Audiobook, Suspense, Crime
Lisa Jewell returns with a scintillating new psychological thriller about a woman who finds herself the subject of her own popular true crime podcast.
Celebrating her forty-fifth birthday at her local pub, popular podcaster Alix Summers crosses paths with an unassuming woman called Josie Fair. Josie, it turns out, is also celebrating her forty-fifth birthday. They are, in fact, birthday twins.
A few days later, Alix and Josie bump into each other again, this time outside Alix’s children’s school. Josie has been listening to Alix’s podcasts and thinks she might be an interesting subject for her series. She is, she tells Alix, on the cusp of great changes in her life.
9. On the Beach
According to the description, this isn’t exactly horror, but it still looks suspense-filled enough that I included it here.
Genres: Fiction, Science Fiction, Classics, Post Apocalyptic, Dystopia, Apocalyptic, Australia
After a nuclear World War III has destroyed most of the globe, the few remaining survivors in southern Australia await the radioactive cloud that is heading their way and bringing certain death to everyone in its path. Among them is an American submarine captain struggling to resist the knowledge that his wife and children in the United States must be dead. Then a faint Morse code signal is picked up, transmitting from somewhere near Seattle, and Captain Towers must lead his submarine crew on a bleak tour of the ruined world in a desperate search for signs of life. On the Beach is a remarkably convincing portrait of how ordinary people might face the most unimaginable nightmare.
10. Let the Right One In
Genres: Horror, Thriller, Supernatural, Fiction, Vampires, Fantasy, Paranormal
It is autumn 1981 when the inconceivable comes to Blackeberg, a suburb in Sweden. The body of a teenage boy is found, emptied of blood, the murder rumored to be part of a ritual killing. Twelve-year-old Oskar is personally hoping that revenge has come at long last—revenge for the bullying he endures at school, day after day.
And that’s all for these 10 books, dearies. I hope you found one that you’ll enjoy this Halloween, for me, I’m curious about half of them and mildly interested in the others.
You can check out other listings in the miscellaneous section here on the blog.
Thank you for stopping by, and don’t forget to share, like, and follow for more.
Happy reading!
😎🎃
2025 Bonus Add-On
- The Little Ghost Quilt’s Winter Surprise
Actually, this is a children’s holiday, more friendly book kind, but I saw it was quite new so had to share it. Here’s the description:
When you’re a quilt instead of a sheet, being a ghost is hard! But it does mean you can float around in cold weather . . . an adorable picture book about a ghost who wants to share the magic of the season with his chilly sheet friends.
- Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix
I’m not so sure about this one, but I still saw it and added to the list, maybe it’s me and others do like it.
They call them wayward girls. Loose girls. Girls who grew up too fast. And they’re sent to the Wellwood Home in St. Augustine, Florida, where unwed mothers are hidden by their families to have their babies in secret, give them up for adoption, and most important of all, to forget any of it ever happened.
Fifteen-year-old Fern arrives at the home in the sweltering summer of 1970, pregnant, terrified and alone. Under the watchful eye of the stern Miss Wellwood, she meets a dozen other girls in the same predicament. There’s Rose, a hippie who insists she’s going to find a way to keep her baby and escape to a commune. And Zinnia, a budding musician who knows she’s going to go home and marry her baby’s father. And Holly, a wisp of a girl, barely fourteen, mute and pregnant by no-one-knows-who.
- The Staircase in the Woods by Chuck Wendig
Now, this one, does sound like I could be interested in the reason behind that staircase, the book cover is interesting for sure.
A group of friends investigates the mystery of a strange staircase in the woods.
While on a camping trip, five high-schoolers bound by an oath to always protect one another discover something in the middle of the forest: a mysterious staircase to nowhere. One friend climbs up but does not come back down. Then the staircase disappears. Twenty years later it reappears, and the friends return to find the lost boy—and what lies beyond the staircase.
EachPage 