13 Halloween Book Recs From Your Favorite Horror Authors
by Haley Newlin
It’s officially October and readers, myself included, are eagerly assembling their spooky season TBR. I scrolled Goodreads, Instagram, the usual, looking for recommendations but then thought, why not ask authors who have written some of the most terrifying and memorable horror stories I’ve ever read? So, dear readers, with your cravings for wickedry and menace, ghosts and vampires, grab a pen, because these recommendations, from the likes of Tananarive Due (author of Mazywood and The Reformatory), Daphne Fama (author of House of Monstrous Women), Nat Cassidy (author of When the Wolf Comes Home), Isabel Cañas (author of The Possession of Alba Díaz), and more, are not to be missed.
#1: Lone Women by Victor LaValle
“No one can get me to shut up about Lone Women by Victor LaValle. I was lucky enough to read an ARC in early 2023 and it has lived rent-free in my head ever since. In this book, the Venn Diagram of things I love in a horror novel is a perfect circle: a woman, alone, with a trunk full of monstrous secrets; a Western that is a critical look at the American West; scenes that made me gasp aloud (not an easy thing to make a horror writer do!); and most of all, an absolute banger of an ending. Lone Women is the Platonic ideal of a Halloween read. I cannot recommend it enough.” – Isabel Cañas, author of The Possession of Alba Díaz
#2: The Reluctant Dead by Nuzo Onoh
“These stories are so creepy and each time I read them is like the first time. Perfect yearly read—may be too scary for every day!” – R.J. Joseph, Bram Stoker Award-Winning author of My Monsters Ain’t Like Yours
#3: The October Country by Ray Bradbury
“Ray Bradbury remains one of my very favorite authors, and it’s the stories in his landmark collection, The October Country, that truly cemented his legacy for me. From “The Jar” and “The Emissary” to “The Small Assassin” and my personal favorite, “The Lake,” these tales are by turns haunting and heartbreaking, eerie and unsettling, and always autumn personified. You’ve got boardwalks boarded up after summer and carnivals that boast some truly strange exhibits and a loyal dog that can bring back scents from beyond the grave. I’m so happy that I can revisit these spooky tales every Halloween season–or any other time of year for that matter.” – Gwendolyn Kiste, Four-Time Bram Stoker Award-Winning Author of The Haunting of Velkwood and Everything Looks Better in Red
#4: The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow
“Look. Harrow could write a novel about how to watch water boil and I’d buy it, read it giddily, and make a post about it on Instagram including far too many fire emojis. I love all of her work (hello, 10,000 Doors of January), but Witches is a particularly quintessential pick for October, due it’s hypnotic witchy vibe. What could be better than an alt-history about three sisters reuniting under the forces of feminism and magic, written like a dream and alluding to the Salem Witch Trials, the suffragette movement, and the Underground Railroad. And it’s fun as hell.” – Erika T. Wurth, author of White Horse and The Haunting of Room 904
#5: Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman
“Medieval horror rightfully grows in its armored influence and this book catapulted my own obsession with the sub-genre. Beyond this cover you’ll find elegant yet exacting descriptions, characters worth rooting for, and horrors beyond human comprehension. I can’t think of a better book to sit with on a dark, Halloween night, keeping company with the many demons that will crawl out of the pages to lurk in the shadows. If you’ve ever pondered the horrors of the dark ages, now’s the time to begin your journey, brave knight.” – Mona Kabbani, author of The Color of Blood
#6: The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe by Edgar Allan Poe
“The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe offers a variety of horror, suspense, mystery, terror, and paranoia that’s perfect to fill the spooky season with a daily dose from the master of the macabre. Poe revered the one-sitting experience, holding the art of the short story in higher regard than longer fiction. So, sit back, get comfortable, and take a deep dive into the maelstrom of madness.” – Nick Roberts, author of The Exorcist’s House
#7: The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones
“The Buffalo Hunter Hunter is in the running as the Great American Novel. An ingenious damnation of Indigenous genocide through a horror/fantasy lens that forces us to re-examine the meaning of the word ‘monster.’ An unforgettable read.” – Tananarive Due, Bram Stoker Award-Winning author of The Reformatory and Mazywood
#8: The Girl With All the Gifts by M.R. Carey 
“I never imagined reading a novel about a post-apocalyptic world and coming out the other side thinking that I’d finished a heartwarming story that just so happened to have zombies in it. M.R. Carey is one of my favorite authors because he makes me care deeply about his characters, and Melanie is one of my favorites. The Girl With All the Gifts is full of horror, but it also has hope and heart.” – Del Sandeen, author of This Cursed House and These Walls Remember
#9: A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny
“Why settle for just a spooky season book recommendation when you can make a game out of it? Zelazny’s delightfully weird and gruesome tale (his final book, in fact) is all about games – or, rather, The Game. There’s no quick way to do this bananas story justice, but suffice it to say, it’s a diary written by a dog named Snuff who belongs to a certain Victorian-era Englishman known as Jack (who happens to be rather talented with a knife, if you follow me). Snuff is conversant with the animal familiars of other recognizable figures of the era, including the Count, the Great Detective, the Good Doctor, and more, all of whom are gathered together to take part in a ritualistic challenge which will determine whether or not things get a little less Victorian and a little more . . . Lovecraftian. It’s as smart and silly as you might suspect. But best of all, the book is broken up into 31 chapters, one for each day of the month of October, so you can, in essence, play the Game alongside the characters. Read one chapter a day: I highly recommend the experience. Alternating this book with Bradbury’s October Country is one of my favorite spooky season traditions.” – USA Today-bestselling author of When the Wolf Comes Home
#10: The Trees by Percival Everett
“Percival Everett is brilliant, and if you’ve read his 2001 satire Erasure or have seen its film adaptation, American Fiction, you are aware of that brilliance. It’s his foray into satirical horror that I’d like to highlight here.
Everett’s 2021 Booker Prize shortlisted, The Trees, is set in rural Money, Mississippi, where a string of murders leaves a puzzle for a pair of Mississippi Bureau of Investigation detectives when they discover that at each crime scene a second dead body appears, resembling that of Emmett Till, the fourteen-year-old boy who was lynched in real life in 1955 in—you guessed it—Money, Mississippi.
The horror in this edge-of-your-seat mystery echoes the brutality done to Till. With propulsive dialogue and unforgettable characters, like a local root doctor who’s spent a lifetime documenting American lynchings, the text works as mystery, crime, social critique, horror, and satire, and the pages are both devastating and haunting.” – Tamika Thompson, author of The Curse of Hester Gardens
#11: Wake Up and Open Your Eyes by Clay McLeod Chapman
“Wake Up And Open Your Eyes by Clay McLeod Chapman is perhaps the most timely book ever written, completely unhinged, and terrifying because it’s far too close to reality.” – Markus Redmond, author of Blood Slaves and Blood Rising
#12: Hour of the Witch by Chris Bohjalian
“My immediate reaction after reading Chris Bohjalian’s Hour of the Witch: relentless, beautiful, frustrating, brilliant. Living in 1662 Boston, Mary Deerfield, a young Puritan desperate to escape her abusive husband, suffers torment in and outside her home when suspicions about her and witchcraft begin to spread. Echoing with whispers about hexes and the Devil’s tines, Hour of the Witch overflows with spooky suspense and dread, perfect for a Halloween read.” – Nick Medina, author of The Whistler and Savage Lake
“God, I love Junji Ito, and I envy anyone who gets to experience Uzumaki for the first time. It’s a story about a town that becomes infested—almost possessed—by spirals, in all the ways they might manifest: the spirals hidden in your ears, the shape of a snail’s flesh in its shell, the winding staircase that ascends toward the melting, alien eye of an ever-watching lighthouse. Whenever I write something I truly love, I always leave tiny little homages to Uzumaki, as a love note for all it’s done for me. So why not read it? Let it contaminate you with spirals… Yes, winding… until you, too, get wound up.” – Daphne Fama, author of House of Monstrous Women
About the Authors
Isabel Cañas is a Mexican American speculative fiction writer. After having lived in Mexico, Scotland, Egypt, Turkey, and New York City, among other places, she has settled in the Pacific Northwest. She holds a doctorate in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and writes fiction inspired by her research and her heritage.
R.J. Joseph is a Stoker Award™ winning, Shirley Jackson award nominated Texas based writer/speaker/editor. Her creative and academic work examines the intersections of race, gender, and class in the horror genre and popular culture. Her next short story collection, My Monsters Ain’t Like Yours, was released in summer 2026 by Quill & Crow Publishing. Her nonfiction book, Mothers, Lovers, and Others: An Examination of Black Women in Horror Films, will be released in fall 2027 by Creature Publishing.
Gwendolyn Kiste is the four-time Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Rust Maidens, Reluctant Immortals, The Haunted Houses She Calls Her Own, Pretty Marys All in a Row, In These Gilded, Ghostly Hearts, and The Haunting of Velkwood. She’s a Lambda Literary Award winner, and her fiction has also received the This Is Horror Award for Novel of the Year as well as nominations for the Shirley Jackson, Premios Kelvin, Ignotus, Dragon, and Ohio Book Awards. Originally from Ohio, she now resides on an abandoned horse farm outside of Pittsburgh with her husband, their excitable calico cat, and not nearly enough ghosts. Find her online at gwendolynkiste.com
Erika T. Wurth is the author of White Horse and The Haunting of Room 904. She’s a New York Times editors pick, a Good Morning America buzz pick, and an Indie Next, Targetbook of the Month, and BOTM Pick. She is both a Kenyon and Sewanee fellow, has published in The Kenyon Review, Buzzfeed, and The Writer’s Chronicle, and is a narrative artist for the Meow Wolf Denver installation. She is an urban Native of Apache/Chickasaw/Cherokee descent. She’s a professor at Western Illinois University. Find her: Insta | Goodreads| TikTok Native Voices | Medium. Representation: Mark Gottlieb at Trident.
Mona Kabbani is a horror fan, writer, and reviewer obsessed with psychology and the human condition. She emulates the conflict of the good versus the bad and all of the in between in her work while providing an entertainingly horrifying experience. She is the author of The Bell Chime, which won the award for Best Horror Novella of 2020 from LoHF, Vanilla, and The Color of Blood. She is a Lebanese immigrant living the dream in New York City where much of her writing is inspired.
Nick Roberts is a native West Virginian and a doctoral graduate of Marshall University. He is an active member of the Horror Writers Association and the Horror Authors Guild. His works include Anathema, The Exorcist’s House, It Haunts the Mind & Other Stories, and Mean Spirited. He currently resides in South Carolina with his family and is an advocate for people in recovery from substance use disorder.
Tananarive Due is an award-winning author who teaches Black Horror and Afrofuturism at UCLA.
A leading voice in Black speculative fiction for more than 20 years, Due has won an American Book Award, an NAACP Image Award, and a British Fantasy Award, and her writing has been included in best-of-the-year anthologies. Her books include Mazywood, The Reformatory (winner of a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Chautauqua Prize, Bram Stoker Award, Shirley Jackson Award, World Fantasy Award, and a New York Times Notable Book), The Wishing Pool and Other Stories, Ghost Summer: Stories, My Soul to Keep, and The Good House. She and her late mother, civil rights activist Patricia Stephens Due, co-authored Freedom in the Family: A Mother-Daughter Memoir of the Fight for Civil Rights.
She was an executive producer on Shudder’s groundbreaking documentary Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror. She and her husband/collaborator, Steven Barnes, wrote “A Small Town” for Season 2 of Jordan Peele’s “The Twilight Zone” on Paramount Plus, and two segments of Shudder’s anthology film Horror Noire. They also co-wrote their Black Horror graphic novel The Keeper, illustrated by Marco Finnegan. Due and Barnes co-host a podcast, “Lifewriting: Write for Your Life!” She and her husband live with their son, Jason.
Del Sandeen lives in Northeast Florida, where she works as a writer and copy editor. She also writes speculative and horror fiction. Her work has appeared in FIYAH: Speculative Literary Magazine, Uncanny Magazine, Nightlight Podcast, and Gay magazine. She is the author of This Cursed House and These Walls Remember. She can be found on Twitter and Instagram @DelSandeen.
Nat Cassidy writes horror for the pages, stage, and screen. He’s the author of the acclaimed novels Mary: An Awakening of Terror and Nestlings. His books have been featured in best-of lists from Esquire, Harper’s Bazaar, NPR, the Chicago Review of Books, the NY Public Library, and more, and he was named one of the “writers shaping horror’s next golden age” by Esquire.
Tamika Thompson is author of The Curse at Hester Gardens. A former journalist and producer, she is also author of Unshod, Cackling, and Naked, which is the 2024 Next Generation Indie Book Awards Winner for Horror, as well as author of Salamander Justice. Her work has appeared in several speculative fiction anthologies as well as in Interzone, Prairie Schooner, The New York Times, and Los Angeles Review of Books, among others. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she hosts her own blog and newsletter, Tamika Talks Terror. Visit her online at tamikathompson.com or on social media @tamikadthompson.
Markus Redmond is an actor, director, screenwriter, and author of Blood Slaves. Known for his roles on Doogie Howser, MD, NYPD Blue, Murder One, Mad About You, Angel, and Fight Club, he wrote and starred alongside Whoopi Goldberg and Sharon Stone in the indie film If I Had Known I Was a Genius. He wrote, directed, and starred in the Amazon Prime thriller The 6th Degree, and has multiple screenplays in development. He lives in Los Angeles.
Chicago born and a member of the Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana, Nick Medina brings an appreciation for local and Native folklore, culture, and storytelling to his work. His novels, Sisters of the Lost Nation, Indian Burial Ground, and The Whistler, intertwine supernatural myths with current social issues, exploring themes rooted in history and legend. Along with writing, Nick enjoys ghost stories, playing guitar, keeping fit, and spending time with family. His fourth novel, Savage Lake, will be out on October 27, 2026.
Daphne Fama is a Filipino American author who writes historical horror about family, feminism, love, and all the terrible things people do in their name. Born in North Carolina, she has lived in Manila, Shanghai, and Seoul before putting down roots in Michigan. Her work draws upon Filipino folklore and history, where the dead refuse to be forgotten.
