Spooky Reads for Adults!

Wondering what to read to get into the super spooky mood for Halloween this year? Witches, ghosts, vampires and werewolves, oh my! Some people like to put on their favorite spooky costumes and tell tales of witches and ghosts. However, many of us crave some dark, Gothic and spooky reads to make their Halloween much more enjoyable. Some of these Halloween books are spine-tingling fun, while others are extremely creepy spook-tacular reads.

Updated September 28, 2023
S
St. Lucie County Library System
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We have always lived in the castle
Jackson, Shirley
Paper Book
Shirley Jackson's beloved gothic tale of a peculiar girl named Merricat and her family's dark secret, with an afterword by Jonathan Lethem. A Penguin Vitae Edition Merricat Blackwood lives on the family estate with her sister Constance and her uncle Julian....
Frankenstein, or, The modern Prometheus
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft
Paper Book
  No-one in the grip of Mary Shelley's FRANKENSTEIN, with its mythic-minded hero and its highly sympathetic monster who reads Goethe and longs to be at peace with himself, can fail to notice how much more excellent the original is than all the adaptations, imitations and outright...
And then there were none
Christie, Agatha, 1890-1976
Paper Book
"If you're one of the few who haven't experienced the genius of Agatha Christie, this novel is a stellar starting point." -- DAVID BALDACCI, #1 New York Times Bestselling Author An exclusive authorized edition of the most famous and beloved stories from the Queen of Mystery. ...
All hallows
Golden, Christopher
Paper Book
New York Times bestselling, Bram Stoker Award-winning author Christopher Golden is best known for his supernatural thrillers set in deadly, distant locales...but in this suburban Halloween drama, Golden brings the horror home. It's Halloween night, 1984, in...
The haunting season eight ghostly tales for long winter nights.
Collins, Bridget. A study in black and white.
Paper Book
Eight bestselling, award-winning writers return to the time-honored tradition of the seasonal ghost story in this spellbinding collection of new and original haunted tales. Long before Charles Dickens and Henry James popularized the tradition of supernatural horror, the shadowy...
Abraham Lincoln vampire hunter
Grahame-Smith, Seth.
Paper Book
Indiana. Moonlight falls through the dense woods that surround a one-room cabin, where a nine-year-old Abraham Lincoln kneels at his suffering mother's bedside. She's been stricken with something the old-timers call "Milk Sickness." "My baby boy..." she whispers before dying. ...
Interview with the vampire
Rice, Anne
Paper Book
The spellbinding classic that started it all, from the #1 New York Times bestselling author--the inspiration for the hit television series "A magnificent, compulsively readable thriller . . . Rice begins where Bram Stoker and the Hollywood versions leave off and...
The September house
Orlando, Carissa
Ebook
"Why run from a haunted house when you can stay and ignore the ghosts? Just when you thought you'd seen everything a haunted house novel could do, The September House comes along and delivers an eerie, darkly funny, and emotionally grounded book about the ghosts that haunt houses and...
The spite house
Compton, Johnny
Paper Book
A Best Horror Book of the Year (Esquire)! * A Bram Stoker Award Nominee! * A 2024 Legacy Awards Nominee! * A Finalist for the Reading the West Book Awards! A terrifying Gothic thriller about grief and...
Black tide
Jones, K. C. (Kevin Charles), 1983- author.
Paper Book
A character-driven science fiction/horror blend, KC Jones' Black Tide is Stephen King's The Mist meets A Quiet Place. A BRAM STOKER AWARD FINALIST! It was just another day at the beach. Then the world ended. Mike and Beth...
The lost village
Sten, Camilla, 1992- author.
Paper Book
*BEST MYSTERY/THRILLER FOR THE YEAR* for NPR "Come for the mounting horror and scares, but stay for a devastating examination of the nature of family secrets." - New York Times book review "[A] scary, highly entertaining debut...that pays homage to...
How to make a horror movie and survive
DiLouie, Craig, 1967- author.
Paper Book
From Bram Stoker Award‑nominated author Craig DiLouie comes a darkly humorous horror novel that sees a famous 80s slasher director set out to shoot the most terrifying horror movie ever made using an occult camera that might be (and probably is) demonic. Horror...
Bad dreams in the night horror stories
Ellis, Adam
Paper Book
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * A USA TODAY BESTSELLER Like a graphic novel version of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, this thrilling collection of original horror tales is packed with urban legends, terrifying twists, and delightfully...
Horror movie a novel
Tremblay, Paul
Paper Book
Instant New York Times Bestseller! PLEASE NOTE: the limited edition with red stained edges is sold out, but we invite you to purchase an unstained one -- same haunting story, same chilling twists! A chilling twist on the "cursed film" genre from the bestselling author of The...

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