About This Cursed House: In this Southern gothic horror debut, a young Black woman abandons her life in 1960s Chicago for a position with a mysterious family in New Orleans, only to discover the dark truth: They’re under a curse, and they think she can break it.

Fall reading can be cozy and cute, but I prefer creepy. What better time of year to sink into a good, chilling story than this one, when October ends with the spookiest night of the year? Compiling this list of scary tales wasn’t easy, but there’s something here for every fright fan – from straight slasher to alt history to Southern Gothic, and much more. If you’re looking for your next terrifying read, any of these 13 horror novels may have you sleeping with the lights on.

I Was a Teenage Slasher by Stephen Graham Jones

Horror master Stephen Graham Jones includes all the slasher elements this movie genre’s fans are familiar with (particularly if their favorites include household names like Freddy, Michael, and Jason). The title alone tells you what this novel is about. But there’s more to it than slashing. The friendship between Tolly and Amber drives this story forward. In spite of the murder and mayhem, it’s their relationship that will keep you invested, right to the shocking conclusion.

Gallows Hill by Darcy Coates

What happens when a woman inherits not only the family business but the haunted land on which it sits? The past plagues the present in this spooky tale by Darcy Coates. This novel has things that go bump in the night and things that won’t rest until they’re satisfied.

The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle

Victor LaValle turns a Lovecraftian work on its head with this novella. LaValle uses H.P. Lovecraft’s racist The Horror at Red Hook as inspiration for a story featuring a Black protagonist who hustles to survive. This is a wonderfully dark cosmic horror tale that uses its source as a starting point into an uncanny journey that cannot end well.

The Girl With All the Gifts by Mike Carey

This take on a zombie apocalypse is frightening and heartbreaking in equal measure. Melanie is one of the most memorable characters in scary fiction. She’s equal parts innocent and deadly, and yet you can’t help but root for her and the people who care for her. In her world, survival is a priority, but there’s still room for friendship and love.

The Year of the Witching by Alexis Henderson

Alexis Henderson’s debut is a creepily atmospheric story of one young woman’s discovery of her true self. Set in a fictional world that has echoes of Puritan New England mixed with A Handmaid’s Tale, this witchy book is bloody and shocking. But it’s perhaps the similarities with real women’s issues (both past and present) that make The Year of the Witching so chilling. 

The Elementals by Michael McDowell

At the heart of many Southern gothic stories is family. Bizarre and weird, but family. That’s what makes this horror novel by the late Michael McDowell so fantastic. Set on sandy Alabama shores in a remote locale, there’s a lot to unpack with the Savages. And as events progress and the sand rises, things get stranger and then downright terrifying.

The Girl From the Well by Rin Chupeco

A vengeful ghost and a haunted teenage boy whose tattoos are much more than ink on skin captivate in this horror book from Rin Chupeco. The title may call to mind Japanese movies like Ring (U.S. version the Ring) and Ju-On (The Grudge in the U.S.). The story is based on Japanese folklore, and this Young Adult novel has a tension that only increases in its terror.

Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark

In this alt history novel, P. Djèlí Clark uses real-life terrorist group KKK as devilish inspiration. The characters who fight back against the terrors of racism in Prohibition-era Georgia are an eclectic mix of badasses who give the “Ku Kluxes” just some of what they deserve.

The Ritual by Adam Nevill

This book about four friends getting lost in the woods is like Blair Witch Scandinavia – and is about 100 times scarier. Although the story takes place in a forest, there’s a claustrophobic vibe that permeates and gets under the skin. Adam Nevill’s descriptions of mangled bodies and ancient rites make this one of the scariest books I’ve ever read.

The Good House by Tananarive Due

Spoiler alert: The home at the heart of The Good House isn’t really good. Instead, there are some dark forces at work here. Add in voodoo, a sinister atmosphere, and memorable characters, and this is one of Tananarive Due’s books that’s a solid can’t-miss.

Bag of Bones by Stephen King

He’s the King of Horror for a reason. While much of Stephen King’s repertoire falls somewhere on the frightening spectrum, this ghost story is one of the most terrifying he’s ever written. However, the scares from the ghost pale in comparison to the tragic events that took place in the past. This one is equally scary and sad.

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Morena-Garcia

What appears to start as a visit to a family member, perhaps to rescue her, soon turns into a creepy trip that quickly goes downhill. Silvia Morena-Garcia’s protagonist Noemí isn’t your typical 1950s young woman looking for a husband – but that doesn’t mean the weird Doyle family at the heart of the story isn’t looking to make her a wife, for the worst reasons ever.

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

No horror story listicle would be complete without mentioning this menacing gem from Shirley Jackson. Widely considered the best haunted house novel ever, the scares are more subtle, so if that’s more your speed vs. being clobbered over the head, this is the book for you. It’s a great introduction to one of the best authors to ever write in the genre.

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I firmly believe that art has the unlimited potential to transform and redeem, and that applies to previous works of art as much as anything else. Here are books and authors who took on the project of transformation and reclamation of cosmic horror, of doing Lovecraft without Lovecraft.

The Drowning Girl by Caitlin R. Kiernan

Kiernan has long been a Lovecraftian and cosmic horror writer, and really any of her books will show you space-, time-, and mind-breaking phenomena. The Drowning Girl is one of her best, featuring a queer woman who may be experiencing symptoms of her mental illness or may be haunted by a woman (or entity) with vast and terrible secrets. Lovecraft, as a consequence of his time, had an imperfect understanding of mental illness and “madness.” Kiernan gives us a far more nuanced exploration of the inconsistencies and possibilities of the mind.

The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle

This is a direct and explicit critique of Lovecraft’s racism and the gatekeeping of SFF/Horror as well. Tom is a musician drawn into a conspiracy of white men, and what he discovers is both unsettlingly alien but also exhaustingly familiar. The ending is dark and bleak and amazing in a way that even Lovecraft never managed, and I still think about it years later.

Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff

Matt Ruff always finds incisive ways to take current political narratives and turn them on their head. He challenged 9/11 narratives with Mirage, and challenges racism and the horrors of the Jim Crow South with this novel about badass veteran Atticus Turner. This will be a series on HBO produced by Jordan Peele very soon, so get reading!

A Lush and Seething Hell by John Hornor Jacobs

These two novellas are both pointed ripostes to Lovecraft’s racism and xenophobia. One features a Latina woman who must return home fight foreign threats–and here “foreign” means both interdimensional horrors and US black ops in a scathingly apt reminder of how the CIA interfered in Latin America. The other features a journey into the American South, and one very dark folk tradition. Both are genuinely scary, and I was sublimely creeped out the whole way through reading both of them. John Hornor Jacobs is way underappreciated in general, but ignoring this particular book verges on criminal.

Catfish Lullaby by A. C. Wise

A. C. Wise’s debut novel features a queer black protagonist trying to unravel the terrible mysteries of a local family and what they get up to in their isolated house in the woods. His compassion and bravery is the counterbalance to horrors both cosmic and depressingly human.

She Walks in Shadows by ed. Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Paula R. Stiles

This collection of Lovecraftian fiction by and featuring women is edited by and filled with all-stars all writing about strange beings whom Lovecraft rarely ventured to describe: women. Yeah, not many women in Lovecraft’s works, but these authors go a long way toward fixing that.

Dreams from the Witch House: Female Voices of Lovecraftian Horror by ed. Joyce Carol Oates

This book offers additional female and feminist takes on Lovecraft’s worlds and ideas. There’s an early work from Tamsyn Muir now of Gideon the Ninth fame, as well as from mainstays of cosmic horror like Caitlin R. Kiernan, Gemma Files, Sonya Taaffe, and more.

American Elsewhere by Robert Jackson Bennett

Think Pleasantville meets Lovecraft in this tale about the dread perils of suburbia and nostalgia. What if cosmic horrors found us as fascinating and strange as we found them? What if they wanted to stay and enact our human foibles, and force humans to join in? Sounds funny, and part of it are, but it’s also smart and scary.

Uzumaki by Junji Ito

This is, in my opinion, Japanese horror master Junji Ito’s most magnificently unsettling work. Inexplicable compulsions and transformations begin to take hold of a small Japanese town, gradually making the residents obsessed with replicating spiral patterns. Vignettes about the townspeople are tied together by Shuichi and Kirie, who observe the phenomena and are eventually dragged into the collective hysteria. You’ll never look at snails the same way again.

Innsmouth by Megan James

Have you ever wished that you could have a wee little shoggoth for a pet, keeping it in a cat carrier and letting it out to make its cute little “gibber, gibber” noises? No? Well, you will. This adorably irreverent take on Lovecraft’s whole mythos is just starting, but promises to be an ongoing delight.

Death Sentences by Kawamata Chiaki

Six interconnected stories tell a single overarching narrative of one man’s disturbing success in using art to break time and space. It’s fitting, then, that the novel spans from the early twentieth century to the distant future, and from Japan to France to colonies on Mars. Mysterious surrealist Who May is behind it all, but was his work an accident or an act of genius—or malice? People have compared this to The Ring, which is fair in terms of some of its themes, but it’s also definitely pure cosmic horror. 

The Dream Quest of Vellitt Boe by Kij Johnson

What’s it like to live in a universe where the physics are fickle and the gods even more so? Vellitt Boe knows, and she doesn’t have time for bombastic Kadath or any other such Daring Adventure. She has a world to save and a girl to find, a young woman who was formerly her student, but has since disappeared and disturbed a god by her absence.

This list is by no means complete, so let me know your favourite works of cosmic horror in the comments!

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