Horror

New and recommended scary books

Updated October 6, 2025
Rochester Public Library RPL Staff
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Horror

New and recommended scary books

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Coup de gr?e
Ajram, Sofia
Paper Book
Vicken has a plan: throw himself into the Saint Lawrence River in Montreal and end it all for good, believing it to be the only way out for him after a lifetime of depression and pain. But, stepping off the subway, he finds himself in an endless, looping station. Determined to find a...
The stars are not yet bells
Assadi, Hannah Lillith
Paper Book
'A heartbreaking and profoundly visionary book.' Emily Fridlund, author of History of Wolves 'The poetic beauty of the writing and a certain swirling Gothic passion and drama bowl the reader along... An unusual, intense, experimental novel' Daily Mail
Rouge : a novel
Awad, Mona
Paper Book
From the critically acclaimed author of Bunny comes a horror-tinted, gothic fairy tale about a lonely dress shop clerk whose mother's unexpected death sends her down a treacherous path in pursuit of youth and beauty. Can she escape her mother's...
Cutting teeth
Baker, Chandler
Paper Book
ISN'T PARENTHOOD ALL ABOUT SACRIFICE? 'Sharp, original, wickedly astute' Ashley Audrain, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Push 'Deliciously dark, Baker's novel exposes all the little horrors of motherhood.' Kirsten Miller, author of...
The witch in the well
Bruce, Camilla
Paper Book
Over a hundred years ago, the citizens of F- did something rather bad. And local school teacher Catherine Evans has made writing the definitive account of what happened when Ilsbeth Clark drowned in the well her life's work. The town's people may not want their past raked up, but...
The haunting of Alejandra : a novel
Castro, V.
Paper Book
Alejandra no longer knows who she is. To her husband, she is a wife, and to her children, a mother. But Alejandra is struggling and times of despair, a ghostly vision appears to her, a crying woman in a ragged white gown. When Alejandra begins exploring her family's history, she learns that tragedy...
Vampires of El Norte
Cañas, Isabel
Vampires and vaqueros face off on the Texas-Mexico border in this supernatural western from the author of The Hacienda. Nena knows a thing or two about monsters--as the daughter of a rancher in Mexico, her home has long been threatened by tensions with Anglo settlers from...
What kind of mother : a novel
Chapman, Clay McLeod
Paper Book
After striking out on her own as a teen mother, Madi Price is forced to return to her hometown of Brandywine, Virginia, with her seventeen-year-old daughter. With nothing to her name, she scrapes together a living as a palm reader at the local farmer's market. It's at the market that...
Memorials : a novel /
Chizmar, Richard,
Paper Book
Don't venture into the Appalachian woods after dark. Never leave the marked trail. And if you hear voices . . . Run. 1983: Three students from a small college embark on a week-long road trip to film a documentary on roadside memorials for their American Studies...
A good house for children : a novel
Collins, Kate
Paper Book
A scintillatingly sinister folk horror debut.
The hollow kind
Davidson, Andy
Paper Book
Nellie Gardner is looking for a way out of an abusive marriage when she learns that her long lost grandfather, August Redfern, has willed her his turpentine estate. She throws everything she can think of into a bag and flees to Georgia with her eleven-year-old son, Max, in tow. The...
The reformatory : a novel
Due, Tananarive
Paper Book
Jim Crow Florida, 1950. Twelve-year-old Robert Stephens Jr., who for a trivial scuffle with a white boy is sent to The Gracetown School for Boys. But the segregated reformatory is a chamber of horrors, haunted by the boys that have died there. In order to survive the school...
And then she fell : a novel
Elliott, Alicia
Paper Book
A sunny place for shady people : stories
Enriquez, Mariana
Paper Book
A delicious, diabolical collection of short stories, from the International Booker Prize-shortlisted author of The Dangers of Smoking in Bed and Our Share of Night
Luckenbooth
Fagan, Jenni
Paper Book
Featured in Damian Barr''s picks for 2021 Shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize 2021 Chosen as one of the Best Books of 2021 in the Telegraph ''If this addictive slice of Edinburgh Gothic isn''t on all prize lists, there is no justice.<...
Cuckoo
Felker-Martin, Gretchen
Paper Book
Something evil is buried deep in the desert. It wants your body. It wears your skin. In the summer of 1995, seven queer kids abandoned by their parents at a remote conversion camp came face to face with it. They survived--but at Camp Resolution, everybody...
Just like home
Gailey, Sarah
Paper Book
***Winner of the August Derleth Award for Best Horror Novel*** 'Come home.' Vera's mother called and Vera obeyed. In spite of their long estrangement, in spite of the memories - she's come back to the home of a serial killer. Back to face the love she had for her father...
The house of last resort : a novel
Golden, Christopher
Paper Book
Across Italy there are many half-empty towns, nearly abandoned by those who migrate to the coast or to cities. The beautiful, crumbling hilltop town of Becchina is among them, but its mayor has taken drastic measures to rebuild―selling abandoned homes to anyone in the world for a single Euro,...
A haunting on the hill
Hand, Elizabeth
Paper Book
**Named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker, The Washington Post, and Harper's Bazaar** SIXTY YEARS LATER, HILL HOUSE IS OCCUPIED AGAIN . . . 'Scary and beautifully written, imbued with the same sense of dread and inevitability as...
So thirsty
Harrison, Rachel
Paper Book
Sloane Parker is dreading her birthday. She doesn't need a reminder she's getting older, or that she's feeling indifferent about her own life. Her husband surprises her with a birthday-weekend getaway--not with him, but with Sloane's longtime best friend, troublemaker extraordinaire Naomi. Sloane...
Starling house
Harrow, Alix E.
Paper Book
A Reese Witherspoon Book Club Pick 'Alix E. Harrow is an exceptional, undeniable talent' - Olivie Blake, author of The Atlas Six Step into Starling House - if you dare. Alix E. Harrow reimagines Beauty and the Beast in this...
How to sell a haunted house
Hendrix, Grady
Paper Book
When Louise finds out her parents have died, she dreads going home. She doesn't want to leave her daughter with her ex and fly to Charleston. She doesn't want to deal with her family home, stuffed to the rafters with the remnants of her father's academic career and her mother's lifelong obsession...
House of Bone and Rain
Iglesias, Gabino
The book of witching
Jess-Cooke, Carolyn
Paper Book
⭐A BBC Radio 2 Book Club Pick⭐ 'Chilling and beautifully written ... C.J. Cooke's finest novel yet' Emilia Hart 'A spellbinding thriller' Scots Magazine Four hundred years separate them. One book binds them. Glasgow 2024: Clem waits...
I was a teenage slasher
Jones, Stephen Graham
Paper Book
1989, Lamesa, Texas. A community driven by oil and cotton - a town where everyone knows everyone else's business. Tolly Driver, seventeen, a good kid with more potential than application, exists on the outskirts with his best friend, Amber. They navigate the hellscape of the teenage...
The fervor : a novel
Katsu, Alma
Paper Book
As World War II rages, Meiko shares eerie childhood stories, of yokai and malevolent demons, with her daughter, Aiko. These stories hold them together as they must confront the horror of being shipped to an internment camp in the Midwest. Never mind that Aiko is American, that her father is in the...
The Djinn waits a hundred years
Khan, Shubnum
Paper Book
  'Grand and gorgeous and brave.' New York Times 'Lively, beautiful... A richly imagined coming of age treat.' Daily Mail REBECCA MEETS THE ISLAND OF MISSING TREES IN THIS GORGEOUSLY ATMOSPHERIC NOVEL SET ON SOUTH AFRICA'S EASTERN COAST Endlessly playful and...
The eyes are the best part
Kim, Monika
Paper Book
'I was enticed from the first line' OYINKAN BRAITHWAITE, author of My Sister, the Serial Killer This feminist howl-of-a-debut is going to crawl right under your skin 'An outstanding debut' NEW YORK TIMES ...
You like it darker : stories
King, Stephen
Paper Book
'You like it darker? Fine, so do I', writes Stephen King in the afterword to this magnificent new collection of twelve stories that delve into the darker part of life - both metaphorical and literal. King has, for half a century, been a master of the form, and these stories, about fate,...
A house with good bones
Kingfisher, T.
Paper Book
In this ordinary North Carolina suburb, family secrets are always in bloom. Samantha Montgomery pulls into the driveway of her family home to find a massive black vulture perched on the mailbox, staring at the house. Inside, everything has changed. Gone is the eclectic...
We used to live here
Kliewer, Marcus
Paper Book
You let them back in. You shouldn't have... Young couple Charlie and Eve can't believe the killer deal they got on an old house deep in the mountains. One day, a man knocks on the door. He says he lived there years before and asks if he can show his family around.
This skin was once mine and other disturbances
LaRocca, Eric
Paper Book
Winner of the Spatterpunk Award for Best Collection, four intense, claustrophobic and terrifying horror tales from the Bram Stoker Award® finalist and author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke. THIS SKIN WAS ONCE MINE When her father dies under mysterious...
The book of love : a novel
Link, Kelly
Paper Book
'A dizzying dream ride you will never forget' LEIGH BARDUGO 'An astonishing, gorgeous novel' HOLLY BLACK 'An incredible achievement' CASSANDRA CLARE FROM PULITZER-PRIZE FINALIST KELLY LINK *Time Magazine's 100 Must-Reads of 2024* ...
Incidents around the house : a novel
Malerman, Josh
'This book is the monster that lives inside your closet' - Grady Hendrix, New York Times bestselling author of How to Sell a Haunted House From the New York Times bestselling author of Bird Box, Incidents Around the House by Josh Malerman...
Our hideous progeny : a novel
McGill, C. E.
Paper Book
'Compelling and utterly absorbing... an artfully crafted debut' SUSAN STOKES-CHAPMAN, author of PANDORA 'A gripping Gothic tale of grief and ambition, passion and intrigue' JESS KIDD, author of THE NIGHT SHIP 'A wonderful book; dark, passionate, multi-layered' JOANNE...
Silver nitrate
Moreno-Garcia, Silvia
Paper Book
'Like its namesake, Silver Nitrate catches fire and doesn't stop burning until the end' The Washington Post 'Perfection. No one punctures the skin of reality to reveal the lurking, sinister magic beneath better than Silvia Moreno-Garcia' Kiersten White, author of...
Blood like mine
Neville, Stuart
Paper Book
THE BOOK EVERYONE IS DEVOURING . . .  'Stuart Neville at his considerable best . . . This is a book you will not forget in a hurry and which will leave you hungry for the next instalment' Mark Billingham 'Thrilling, heartbreaking, and completely compelling....
Middle of the night : a novel
Sager, Riley
Paper Book
'Full of tension, urgency, atmosphere and feeling - this is Riley Sager at his very best' LEE CHILD THE BRAND NEW HEART-STOPPING THRILLER FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR The worst thing ever to happen on Hemlock Circle occurred in Ethan...
This cursed house
Sandeen, Del
Paper Book
In the fall of 1962, Jemma Barker is desperate to escape her life in Chicago--and the spirits she has always been able to see. When she receives an unexpected job offer from the Duchon family in New Orleans . . . But Jemma discovers that this family isn't what they seem. Their tenuous...
Murder road
St. James, Simone
Paper Book
April and Eddie have taken a wrong turn. They're on a long dark road, late at night, and they see a woman up ahead, clearly in trouble. They stop and pick her up. It's only once she's in the car that they see the blood. And then they see the headlights - far in...
The cliffs
Sullivan, J. Courtney
Paper Book
A REESE'S BOOK CLUB JULY PICK A deeply satisfying and enjoyable novel about family, secrets, ghosts and homecoming 'Entrancing ... filled with mystery' Reese Witherspoon, Reese's Book Club July Picks 'I could not put this book down'...
Bury your gays
Tingle, Chuck
Paper Book
Misha knows that chasing success in Hollywood can be hell. But finally, after years of trying to make it, his big moment is here: an Oscar nomination. And the executives at the studio for his long-running streaming series know just the thing to kick his career to the next level: kill...
Horror movie : a novel
Tremblay, Paul
"Slasher movies are seen by some as kitschy fun, but this is a seriously disturbing novel, delving into the sacrifices art demands, psychological trauma and how monsters are made. Sometimes painful reading, it's also incredibly gripping, smart and scary." The Guardian ...
Black river orchard : a novel
Wendig, Chuck
Paper Book
A small town is transformed by dark magic when strange apple trees begin bearing fruit in this new masterpiece of horror from the bestselling author of Wanderers and The Book of Accidents. It's autumn in Harrow, but something is changing in the town besides the...
Mister Magic : a novel
White, Kiersten
Paper Book
Who is Mister Magic? Former child stars reunite to uncover the tragedy that ended their show - and discover the secret of its enigmatic host - in this dark supernatural thriller from the No. 1 New York Times bestselling author of Hide. Thirty years after a tragic...
Where the dead wait
Wilkes, Ally
Paper Book
William Day should be an acclaimed Arctic explorer. But after a failed expedition to find the fabled Open Polar Sea, in which his men only survived by eating their comrades, he returned in disgrace. A cannibal. A murderer. Thirteen years later, his second-in-command, Jesse Stevens, has...
Find this list online: https://librarian.syndetics.com/syndeticsunbound/lp/786.1149/list/1868

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