33 Best Halloween Books for a Spooky Night In

Book list · 20 titles Intense scares

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About this

This Oprah Daily list rounds up spooky reads for adults to enjoy on a Halloween night in, spanning jaw-dropping thrillers, blood-racing mysteries, true crime, YA fantasy, and classics. Picks range from Stephen King's The Shining and Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Jennifer Finney Boylan's haunted-house memoir. Each entry includes a short blurb on what makes it frighteningly entertaining.

The list

Tiny Nightmares: Very Short Stories of Horror

Anthology of very short horror fiction; bite-sized tales you can read in one sitting.

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark

Legendary trilogy scaring young readers since the late '80s; ghostly black-and-white illustrations haunt adults too.

The Ancestor

Atmospheric gothic tale; Bert Monte inherits a remote Northern Italy house she can't escape.

Afterland

Fast-paced novel set in a world ravaged by a virus affecting only men; a mother protects her son.

I'm Looking Through You: Growing Up Haunted

Memoir of growing up in a haunted Pennsylvania mansion; Boylan investigates and reflects on being a trans woman.

Rebecca

Unnamed narrator marries a widower and returns to Manderley, haunted by Rebecca de Winter's memory.

The Hunger

Nail-biting retelling of the doomed Donner party, who resorted to cannibalism while trapped heading West.

The Shining 1977

Jack Torrance tends the Overlook Hotel; his psychic son Danny sees its ghosts as Jack unravels.

The House Next Door 1978

Stephen King-beloved novel about a toxic home that ruins its inhabitants and its neighbors.

Her Body and Other Parties

National Book Award finalist short stories blurring realism, sci-fi, fantasy, comedy, and horror.

House of Leaves

Notoriously hard-to-explain novel about a documentary on a haunted house, with strange formatting and footnotes.

Bleeding Edge

Detective story set against 9/11 New York and the Internet age, following fraud investigator Maxine Tarnow.

Frankenstein

Told through Captain Walton's letters; Victor Frankenstein's experiment to create life produces a monster.

NOS4A2

Vic McQueen finds lost things and faces Charlie Manx, who captures children; rewrites the Nosferatu myth.

Get in Trouble: Stories

Short stories taking readers off-kilter; not technically scary but fueled by relentless imagination.

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

Set in eighteenth-century Paris; Jean-Baptiste Grenouille's obsession with scent leads him to murder.

The Year of the Witching

YA page-turner; Immanuelle Moore learns her birthright involves witches, runes, and power in Bethel.

The Good House

Angela Toussaint inherits her grandmother's rural Washington State home and learns she isn't alone.

The Uninvited: The True Story of the Union Screaming House

True account of a family driven from their Union, Missouri home by supposedly supernatural forces.

Edgar Allan Poe: The Complete Short Story Collection

Collection including 'The Tell-Tale Heart,' told by a narrator describing a murder while asserting his sanity.