Lists
by Kelsey Ford, October 20, 2023 8:48 AM
Today, we bring you ghosts and ghouls. Books that will make you feel like you just slept over in a haunted house and woke up in another dimension; books that will make the hair on your neck stand up, sure that someone’s watching you; books that will make you shiver, make your heart leap into your throat, and riddle your skin with goosebumps. Enjoy this selection of eerie, cursed delights.
by Vernon Lee
I hadn’t heard of Vernon Lee (the pseudonym of British author Violet Paget) until reading A Phantom Lover but now I’m obsessed (according to her Wikipedia page, she was probably a lesbian, she always dressed in a masculine style, and she was a pacifist. Iconic!) If you’ve been craving a Victorian gothic ghost story that reads like you’re being told the story by a crackling fire — this book will more than satisfy that itch. There’s romance, art, decadent storytelling, and beautifully rendered characters.
by Catie Disabato
This book!!! I stayed up reading U Up? until 2 am. It had me riveted and crying, unnerved and just completely compelled. Set in LA, Eve is a messy millennial — she parties and nurses hangovers, she social media’s, she languishes in anxiety, she nurses the grief over the loss of her friend, Miggy. Also: she can see ghosts. When her best friend, Ezra, disappears exactly one year after Miggy’s death, Eve finds herself digging into secrets she didn’t know existed, and questions she may not want to know the answer to. I really, really mean it when I say this book made me cry. It’s so sharp, so haunting, so beautiful. I can’t wait for Disabato’s next novel.
by V. Castro
The Haunting of Alejandra is an affecting, moving, horrifying tribute to what it takes to live as a woman today, while carrying and grappling with demons from past generations. Alejandra is a wife and a mother who feels unmoored and lost. Her mind is doing what it can to undermine and belittle her — little does she know that these cruel, inner whisperings all come from La Llorona. In order to survive, Alejandra will have to face what she’s inherited, face her heritage, and do everything she can to fight for the existence that she deserves. V. Castro never disappoints.
by Trang Thanh Tran
Jade made a deal with her dad: she’d stay with him in a French colonial home he’d recently purchased in his homeland of Vietnam and help him turn it into a bed and breakfast; in return, he’d help pay for her college. Except, she’s furious at him for abandoning her and her family, there’s a cute girl next door who won’t go away, and the house is putting up a fight. There’s a story, hiding in the walls of the house, that desperately wants out, and ghosts that are clamoring for Jade to listen. This is a creepy, satisfying read the deals with colonialism, generational trauma, and sexuality. Perfect for fans of Mexican Gothic.
by Johnny Compton
When a father, on the run with his two daughters, finds an ad to be a “paranormal documentarian” at a one of the most haunted houses in Texas, he decides, why not! They need a place to stay, need some money, and maybe it’ll give him the chance he needs to figure out what exactly has been haunting his family all this time. Unnerving and haunting, this book is a truly fun, well-drawn Southern Gothic ghost story with complex characters you’re going to be rooting for, even as you’re terrified of what might happen to them while staying at a “spite house.”
by Elizabeth Hand
A Haunting on the Hill, Elizabeth Hand’s newest (and eeriest) title, is the first officially sanctioned sequel to Shirley Jackson’s legendary The Haunting of Hill House. Those are some big shoes to fill — but Hand is up for the challenge. Our return to Hill House sees the malignant mansion facing off against a group of actors and writers as they come together to practice an original, witchy play ahead of its premiere. The house, of course, finds each of the character’s weak spots and presses, presses, presses until the boiling point hits. I’ll have many of the more horrifying sequences in this book seared in my memory for a while!!
by Liselle Sambury
Set in a haunted house in northern Ontario, two stories run parallel: Daisy moves into the house with her mom, after her family inherits it, eager to escape the memory of an abusive ex and hoping that her ability to see ghosts will be a little less suffocating outside of a ghost-heavy city; ten years later, Brittney, director of a popular web series about hauntings, is determined to find out what happened to the young woman who moved into that haunted house in northern Ontario a decade earlier. This book explores dark secrets and cycles of trauma; it’s creepy, atmospheric, and absolutely hits the haunted-house spot.
by Tananarive Due
Set during the Jim Crow years in Florida, a young black man, Robert Stephens Jr., is sent to a reform school as punishment for beating up a landowner’s son. Robert can see ghosts, and the reform school is full of them, a situation that gives him an opportunity to get an early release, if he does what the warden wants — which, of course, goes against what the ghosts in the school want. A book that’s filled with grief and trauma, The Reformatory is terrifying — because of the supernatural elements, sure, but much more so when it turns its lens on the long-lasting, insidious effects of racism, and the way those effects infect the world around them. A terrifying, beyond worthwhile read.
by Henry James
A list of ghosty books would be absolutely incomplete if it didn’t include The Turn of the Screw, a classic of the genre about a governess who moves onto an estate to take care of two motherless children, only to discover that the house is filled with tangled secrets that will continue to linger like threats, if they aren’t uncovered.
by David Mitchell
I love David Mitchell in all his David-Mitchell-ness, but Slade House, probably the shortest of his books, is also my favorite. What started as a story on twitter became a seven-part novel about a home that’s only occasionally accessible once every nine years through a small iron door down a British alleyway, around the corner from a homey pub. The titular home is my platonic ideal of a hidden, haunted home: an overgrown, untended garden; hallways filled with maybe-recognizable portraits; rooms with dimensions that don’t make sense; secrets that seem carved into the woodwork. The chapters take place over five decades, as people enter through that door, not knowing the dark and curious truths they’ll find on the other side, and definitely not expecting anything they find to be parasitic. The story is sinister and intricate and, genuinely, so much fun. A quote from the book — “Tonight feels like a board game co-designed by M. C. Escher on a bender and Stephen King in a fever.” — describes how the book feels better than I possibly can.
by Cassandra Khaw
My body still remembers what it felt like to read this book. I was so completely unnerved, so compelled, and so bowled over by the beautiful lyricism of the language. Set in a crumbling mansion in Japan, a group of friends show up to celebrate some impending nuptials, but what starts as a drug- and alcohol-fueled night of fun, quickly descends into bone-breaking terror as the house reveals its darkened innards to the group of friends. The fact that this is a novella is just an added bonus — it packs a punch that you can easily read in one evening (good luck not finishing it immediately, once you’ve started).
by Scott Thomas
What starts as a publicity stunt (four authors stay in a notorious haunted house on Halloween night to do an interview for a all-things-horror website) turns into a bloody, mind-bending affair when the house turns out to be the kind of haunted that infects the brain and body, changes perceptions, messes with the world, and does everything it can to undo any inhabitants. This one still chills my bones just thinking about it.
by Carissa Orlando
A beautiful Victorian home (with a turret!!!), for sale for a wildly reasonable price? Margaret and Hal can’t say no to their dream home, but of course, the house is so reasonably priced for a reason: every September, the walls bleed and ghosts come out to play. After four years, Hal can’t take it anymore and leaves, but in his absence, things only get worse. This book is such a treat for fans of haunted houses — creepy and fun, twisty and elbow-deep in bloody secrets.
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