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
Drag items up and down to your preferred order then select the "Save Order" button.
Halloween party murder
Meier, Leslie
Paper Book
Small town traditions are celebrated throughout Maine during the holiday season. But when it comes to Halloween, some people are more than willing to reap a harvest of murder... HALLOWEEN PARTY MURDER by LESLIE MEIER Tinker's Cove newest residents Ty and...
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 Taking readers deep into a labyrinth of dark neurosis, We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a deliciously unsettling novel about a perverse, isolated, and possibly...
Frankenstein, or, The modern Prometheus
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, 1797-1851.
Paper Book
A deluxe edition of Mary Shelley's haunting adventure about ambition and modernity run amok.Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read Now a Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition with an introduction by Elizabeth Kostova and cover art by...
And then there were none
Christie, Agatha
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. ...
A season with the witch the magic and mayhem of Halloween in Salem, Massachusetts
Ocker, J. W.
Paper Book
Edgar Award-winning travel writer spends an autumn living in one of America's spookiest tourist destinations: Salem, Massachusetts Salem, Massachusetts, may be the strangest city on the planet. A single event in its 400 years of history--the Salem Witch Trials of 1692-...
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 mother next door a novel
Laskowski, Tara
Paper Book
"A polished and entertaining homage to Big Little Lies and Desperate Housewives... The denouement is bonkers, but satisfying." --The New York Times Book Review "A witty, wicked thriller packed with hidden agendas, juicy secrets, and pitch-perfect satire of the...
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...
Dracula's guest a connoisseur's collection of victorian vampire stories
Sims, Michael, 1958-
Paper Book
BeforeTwilightandTrue Blood, even before Buffy and Anne Rice and Bela Lugosi, vampires haunted the nineteenth century, when brilliant writers everywhere indulged their bloodthirsty imaginations, culminating in Bram Stoker's legendary 1897 novel,Dracula. Michael...
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, 1941-
Paper Book
40th ANNIVERSARY EDITION * From the #1 New York Times bestselling author, "a magnificent, compulsively readable thriller...Rice begins where Bram Stoker and the Hollywood versions leave off and penetrates directly to the true fascination of the myth--the education of the vampire" (...
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...
Horror movie a novel
Tremblay, Paul
Ebook
Instant New York Times bestseller! A chilling twist on the "cursed film" genre from the bestselling author of The Pallbearers Club and The Cabin at the End of the World. In June 1993, a group of young guerilla filmmakers spent four weeks making Horror Movie, ...

Library staff! You can create and contribute to lists. Contact your catalog administrator or log in here.