Horror Titles for the Halloween Season

By Coll Rowe | October 16 2024 | Literature

In celebration of the Halloween season, we are sharing horror books that are aligned with the themes of the holiday: the sometimes unknown and scary creatures and witches. From classic ghost stories and popular novels that are celebrated today, in literature courses and beyond, to contemporary stories about the monsters that hide in the dark, our list ranges in its stories and subject matter.

Find a full collection of titles here.

The Penguin Book of Witches
The Penguin Book of Witches
9780143106180
Chilling real-life accounts of witches, from medieval Europe through colonial America, compiled by the New York Times bestselling author of The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane and The Daughters of Temperance Hobbs.
$18.00 US
Sep 30, 2014
Paperback
320 Pages
Penguin Classics
Never Whistle at Night
Never Whistle at Night
An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology
9780593468463
Many Indigenous people believe that one should never whistle at night. This belief takes many forms: for instance, Native Hawaiians believe it summons the Hukai’po, the spirits of ancient warriors, and Native Mexicans say it calls Lechuza, a witch that can transform into an owl. But what all these legends hold in common is the certainty that whistling at night can cause evil spirits to appear—and even follow you home.
$17.00 US
Sep 19, 2023
Paperback
416 Pages
Vintage
Out There Screaming
Out There Screaming
An Anthology of New Black Horror
9780593243800
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The visionary writer and director of Get Out, Us, and Nope, and founder of Monkeypaw Productions, curates this groundbreaking anthology of all-new stories of Black horror, exploring not only the terrors of the supernatural but the chilling reality of injustice that haunts our nation.
$20.00 US
Sep 24, 2024
Paperback
400 Pages
Random House Trade Paperbacks
Ghosts
Ghosts
Edith Wharton
9781681375724

Brilliantly entertaining and eerie ghost stories, regarded as major classics in Japan, by the Irish writer and Japanophile Lafcadio Hearn.

$16.95 US
Oct 26, 2021
Paperback
288 Pages
NYRB Classics
Japanese Ghost Stories
Japanese Ghost Stories
Lafcadio Hearn
9780241381274
Brilliantly entertaining and eerie ghost stories, regarded as major classics in Japan, by the Irish writer and Japanophile Lafcadio Hearn--whose life inspired bestselling writer Monique Truong's novel The Sweetest FruitsA Penguin Classic
$16.00 US
Sep 24, 2019
Paperback
272 Pages
Penguin Classics
Motherthing
Motherthing
Ainslie Hogarth
9780593467022
Here is a darkly funny domestic horror novel about a woman who must take drastic measures to save her husband and herself from the vengeful ghost of her mother-in-law.
$17.00 US
Sep 27, 2022
Paperback
288 Pages
Vintage
The Black Spider
The Black Spider
Jeremias Gotthelf
9781590176689

The Black Spider can be seen as a parable of evil in the heart or of evil at large in society (Thomas Mann saw it as foretelling the advent of Nazism), or as a vision, anticipating H. P. Lovecraft, of cosmic horror.

$15.95 US
Oct 08, 2013
Paperback
120 Pages
NYRB Classics
The Haunting of Hill House
The Haunting of Hill House
(Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
Shirley Jackson
9780143129370

First published in 1959, Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House has been hailed as a perfect work of unnerving terror.

$18.00 US
Sep 27, 2016
Paperback
272 Pages
Penguin Classics

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