ComScore

23 Halloween Books for Adults to Read During Spooky Season

PureWow editors select every item that appears on this page, and the company may earn compensation through affiliate links within the story. All prices are accurate upon date of publish. You can learn more about the affiliate process here.

The best Halloween books for adults are terrifying, creepy, sometimes funny and ideally enjoyed now through October 31. From classic horror staples like Frankenstein and Dracula to more contemporary—but equally spine-chilling—thrillers like Final Girls and A Stranger in the House, here are 23 of the best Halloween books to creep yourself out with this spooky season.

11 Books We Can’t Wait to Read in October


halloween books for adults jackson

1. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

Even if you’ve already binged the Netflix series, the original 1959 gothic horror novel by Shirley Jackson (The Witch) is more than worth a read—especially because the two differ in more ways than one. The book concerns four people who arrive at a notoriously unfriendly, likely haunted property. They’re led by Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of a haunting. At first, their stay seems destined to be merely a spooky encounter with some inexplicable phenomena, but Hill House is gathering its powers and none of the four know just how terrifying things will soon get.

halloween books for adults harris

2. The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris

Good evening, Clarice. Before it was a pee-your-pants scary movie with an all-star cast of Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster, The Silence of the Lambs was an equally terrifying novel. First published in 1988, it’s the sequel to Harris's 1981 novel Red Dragon. Both novels feature the cannibalistic serial killer Dr. Hannibal Lecter, though the latter sees him pitted against FBI Special Agent Clarice Starling.

halloween books for adults sager

3. Final Girls by Riley Sager

In a classic horror movie, the "final girl" is the one young woman who makes it out alive--but barely, and usually not with all her clothes. In Sager's more subversive novel, Quincy, who survived a mass murder, refuses to play into the "final girl" trope. Instead, she creates a fulfilling life in New York City. Then, a woman like her dies of an apparent suicide, and Quincy's well-crafted facade begins to unravel. This one will keep you guessing until the very last page.

halloween books for adults hendrix

4. The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix

In a similar vein, Hendrix’s (My Best Friend's Exorcism) 2021 thriller is about Lynnette, a real-life final girl who survived a massacre. For more than a decade, she's been meeting with five other final girls and their therapist in a support group to put their lives back together. But when one woman misses a meeting, their worst fears are realized. Someone knows about the group and is determined to rip their lives apart again, piece by piece.

halloween books for adults st james

5. The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James

In 1982, Viv wants to move from upstate New York to Manhattan. To help pay for the move, she takes a job as the night clerk at the Sun Down Motel in Fell, New York. Then she disappears. In 2017, Viv’s niece Carly moves to Fell and visits the motel, desperate for answers about her aunt’s life. There, she quickly learns that nothing has changed since 1982, and she soon finds herself ensnared in the same mysteries that claimed her aunt.

halloween books for adults hoffman

6. Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman

For more than 200 years, the Owens women have been blamed for everything that has gone wrong in their Massachusetts town. Gillian and Sally have endured that fate as well: As children, the sisters were taunted, talked about and pointed at. After they escape their hometown, the bonds they share will bring them back—almost as if by magic. Oh, and after you finish the book you should absolutely watch (or rewatch) the movie version with Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock.

halloween books for adults stoker

7. Dracula by Bram Stoker

It wouldn’t be Halloween without at least one vampire, right? Irish author Bram Stoker published Dracula in 1897 as an epistolary novel told through letters, diary entries and newspaper articles. It’s the story of a vampire, Count Dracula, and his move from his native Transylvania to England in the search for victims of his undead curse. At the same time a group of people led by Professor Abraham Van Helsing are determined to stop him.

halloween books for adults michaelides

8. The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides

There’s no whodunit in this perfectly plotted thriller. We know from the start that the killer is Alicia Berenson, a famous photographer who, one night, shoots her husband five times in the face in their posh London home. What we don’t know—what no one knows—is why. Since the shooting, Alicia hasn’t spoken a single word. But as she sits silently in a psychiatric hospital, one therapist is determined to break through, even if it leads to his own demise.

halloween books for adults blatty

9. The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty

The book isn’t too far from the movie (projectile vomiting, anyone?), but you get more background information on some of the supporting characters that makes the whole thing just a little more unsettling—if that’s possible.

halloween books for adults foley

10. The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley

In need of a fresh start, Jess asks if she can crash with her half-brother, Ben, who lives in Paris and doesn’t sound thrilled about the arrangement. When she shows up to Ben’s address, Jess find a very nice apartment—one that she’s not sure how Ben can afford—and he’s not there. The longer Ben stays missing, the more Jess starts to dig into her brother's situation and the more questions she has. Ben's neighbors are an eclectic bunch, not particularly friendly, and Jess suspects they all know things they’re not sharing. Jess might have come to Paris to escape her past, but it’s looking more and more like it's Ben's future that's in question.

halloween books for adults du maurier

11. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

Suspense, mystery and romance—what else would you expect from a novel that takes place in an English estate run by a creepily stubborn housekeeper? It’s like a spooky Downton Abbey.

halloween books for adults shelley

12. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Though the name Frankenstein has become more associated with the creature itself, it’s actually the name of the mad scientist who created the creature in Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel.  A combination of gothic horror story and science fiction, it centers on Victor Frankenstein, a Swiss student of natural science who brings an artificial man to life. Though it initially seeks affection, the monster eventually turns on its creator.

halloween books for adults thompson

13. Love in the Time of Serial Killers by Alicia Thompson

If creepy, scary Halloween books aren’t your thing, try this lighter take on a spooky novel. Phoebe is a PhD candidate who’s always been obsessed with true crime. While spending a summer in Florida cleaning out her childhood home and grappling with the complicated feelings of mourning a father she hadn't had a relationship with for years, she starts to think the new neighbor, Sam, is a serial killer. But it's not long before Phoebe realizes that Sam might be something much scarier—a genuinely nice guy who wants her to give him a chance.

halloween books for adults king

14. Pet Sematary by Stephen King

Any number of King’s books deserve a spot on this list, but we’re partial to Pet Sematary, his 1983 novel about the Creed family, recent Maine transports who encounter endless horrors in their new neighborhood, not limited to freak accidents, murder and more than a few dead animals.

halloween books for adults dawson

15. Death in the Air by Kate Winkler Dawson

In the winter of 1952, London was struck by two killers: One, the Great Smog that killed thousands, and the other, John Reginald Christie, who murdered at least six women. Drawing on extensive interviews and archival research, Dawson recounts the intersection of these two brutal forces and their lasting impact on modern history.

halloween books for adults locke

16. The Cutting Season by Attica Locke

Locke was a writer and producer on Fox’s Empire, and her second novel (after Black Water Rising) is part murder mystery, part historical fiction. The Cutting Season is a heart-pounding thriller that interweaves two murder mysteries—one on Belle Vie, a historic landmark in the middle of Lousiana’s Sugar Cane country, and one involving a slave gone missing more than one hundred years earlier.

halloween books for adults highsmith

17. Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith

If your favorite thing about The Girl on the Train was the train, you’re in luck. This classic is the original railway murder mystery, telling the story of passengers on the same train who somehow agree to commit each other’s murders. Read it, then invite your book club over to watch the Hitchcock film.

halloween books for adults french

18. The Trespasser by Tana French

Antoinette Conway is a newbie detective looking for an interesting case. What she gets is an open-and-shut lovers' quarrel. That is, until her colleagues start acting strangely, and someone shadowy is lurking outside her house…

halloween books for adults poe

19. The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe

This one is super short, but super scary. Set in Italy during carnival season, this terrifying tale concerns revenge and being buried alive. Told from the perspective of the murderer, it’s cold and vengeful and will make you pray you never piss anyone off as much as the story’s victim did.

halloween books for adults lapena

20. A Stranger in the House by Shari Lapena

Get ready for some serious twists and turns. In this 2018 thriller, a woman who is making dinner and waiting for her husband to come home gets a disturbing phone call, then abruptly wakes up in the hospital, with no memory of what happened next. The police suspect she was up to something, her husband doesn't believe it and the rest of the people in her life aren't so sure. Lapena's smart and suspenseful novel will have you believing so many different points of view, you'll never see the ending coming.

halloween books for adults berendt

21. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt

Another true crime masterpiece, this one about a mysterious stranger, a secret love affair and a dead body—all set against Savannah, Georgia’s high-society in the early 1980s. All in all, a Southern Gothic epic that Berendt unravels with rich, obsessively researched detail.

halloween books for adults james

22. The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

A gothic novella about two young, possessed children. James wrote this spooky story in 1898 and it’s just as horrifying today. It’s sinister and weird and blurs the lines between sanity and insanity a little too well.

halloween books for adults mackintosh

23. The Water Cure by Sophie Mackintosh

If ever there was a good time for a feminist revenge fantasy, we’re pretty sure this is it. Three sisters—Grace, Lia, and Sky—have been raised in total isolation on an island and taught that men are the enemy. In fact, they’ve only ever seen one—their father, King. But one day, King disappears and two men and a boy wash up on the island, and the girls are caught up in an intense psychological game. It’s a strange, dystopian tale, but we promise that you’ll get deeply invested in their fate.



sarah stiefvater

Wellness Director

Sarah Stiefvater is PureWow's Wellness Director. She's been at PureWow for ten years, and in that time has written and edited stories across all categories, but currently focuses...