Welcome to Spooky Reads Friday, where every Friday in the month of October, I will be giving you scary selection book recommendations that will make your weekend reading more fulfilling…and scary 🎃. Check out these haunting book recs…if you dare…
Since I missed the past few Fridays, I have listed 15 spooky titles for this post.
You Should Have Been Nicer to My Mom by Vincent Tirado
When Papi Ramon, the patriarch of the wealthy Abreu family dies, he gives the family one last message in the will: “One of you is el bacà, the demon that I made a deal with. Get rid of them or you will be damned.” Xiomara, the uncontested favorite of Papi Ramon (and therefore the least liked in the family), watches as everyone dismisses this as the joke of a senile old man and demands the lawyer obtain the previous will Papi wrote.
While the lawyer drives back to his office, a storm breaks out, forcing the entire family—Xiomara’s aunts and uncles and cousins—to remain in the house. And the words of Papi’s will hangs over their heads even heavier than the rain clouds. Over the course of the night, scandal after scandal is revealed to the public about the family. Suddenly a tense few hours of surviving her family turns into a vicious night of recrimination, violence, accusations…and murder.
Xiomara is faced with an impossible task: uproot a demon and somehow kill it or excise the ghosts that linger within her own family.
And the clock is ticking… (Credit: William Morrow)
Bone of My Bone by Johanna Van Veen
The year is 1635.
Sister Ursula, a young nun fleeing the ruins of her convent, and Elsebeth, a sharp-witted peasant, escape a band of marauding soldiers and disappear into the Bavarian forest. War scorches the land, and no one survives it alone. Amid the devastation, they find something in the arms of a dying man: the gilded skull of a saint.
It is said that if you reunite the saint’s skull with her body, a wish will be granted. Desperate for salvation, and each with secret desires of their own, Ursula and Elsebeth follow a ragged map across the blighted countryside. But darkness follows them. A necromancer, drawn to the relic’s power. The saint herself, whispering at night. And as the lines between blessing and curse blur, the women must face a harrowing truth: the magic they seek comes at a cost.
At the journey’s end, they’ll face an impossible choice–one that could tear apart everything they know… or bind them to each other forever. (Credit: Poisoned Pen Press)
Stagtown Volume 1 by Punko
Something mysterious is happening all around Stagtown: Cameras are appearing everywhere on the streets, and even in the corners of apartments and homes. Cutting one down only spawns more in its place. Someone is surveilling the residents and now that Frankie is back home from college, she is going to discover who—or what—is behind this.
After the shocking death of her neighbor Jeremy, Frankie becomes obsessed with uncovering the truth behind these occurrences. Armed with Jeremy’s box of cryptic clues, a loyal cat companion, and the help of Jeremy’s friend Felix, Frankie embarks on a perilous journey through town. Her quest leads her to a sinister marble house, a blood-stained carousel, a dark underground cellar filled with traps, and more. Each encounter brings her closer to the horrifying truth, culminating in a desperate attempt to escape Stagtown once and for all.
With beautifully haunting illustrations and a terror-filled story, Stagtown is a masterpiece of psychological horror. This volume includes the complete first season of the Webtoon comic, along with a bonus mini-comic. (Credit: Ten Speed Graphic)
Our Cut of Salt by Deena Helm
There is something haunting Nuhad’s childhood home in Haifa. Cats avoid its perimeter, strange noises come from within, and residents have mysteriously vanished without a trace. Although Nuhad has not returned to her home since the Nakba in 1948, she always held a place for the house in her heart.
And, in return, the house did the same for her.
After Nuhad passes away, her granddaughter, Marina, is determined to visit her grandmother’s home after a lifetime of being kept in the dark about her culture and family history. Marina’s mother, Haifa – named for the city that was lost to their family – reluctantly agrees to her trip, though she knows firsthand that some secrets are better left buried.
But the house is no longer a home. It is a painful, festering wound that infects everything it touches. The more Marina digs into her family’s past, the sicker she becomes. Despite Nuhad’s ghostly warnings, Haifa rushes to help her daughter.
As the three women converge in their ancestral home, they must put the haunting to rest before the secrets of the past drown them all. (Credit: Tor Nightfire)
Slasher Summer by E.L. Chen
The sleepy town of Cedar Lake is best known as the shooting location of the campy ’80s horror flick Slasher. In high school, preppy Patrick, jock Jason, cheerleader Tiffany, stoner Freddy, goth Jennifer, and nerdy Mikey had played the cast of Slasher during midnight showings, with virginal Carrie as the Final Girl, of course.
Years later, the friends reunite at the remote cabin where Slasher was filmed. They’ve changed since high school—Carrie found a boyfriend, Patrick came out, Mikey bulked up, and, well, Freddy’s still stoned—and they’re looking forward to a weekend to catch up. But when night falls, and the eponymous masked killer is spotted, the reunion takes a deadly turn. The friends discover their tires deflated and the phone line disconnected, and soon they’re being stalked by a mysterious assailant. Is someone trying to make their Slasher experience as authentic as possible?
One thing is for sure. Before the night is over, they each will have to take on the role they thought they’d left behind. (Credit: Crown)
The Burn Line by Jonathan Sims
Beneath the streets of London, it hungers…
It’s the hottest summer on record and the city is suffering. Prices are high, pay is low. And on one fateful morning five travelers find themselves trapped in a tube car deep in the London Underground.
It will change their lives forever.
By the time they leave the train they will be bound together as witnesses to a single horrific event. Something terrible, irreversible, and monstrous. Something hungry.
But they can’t remember what it is.
On their own, they each begin to experience strange dissociative events. Time gets lost. Friends disappear. Something stalks them in the shadows. They make an unlikely team, but to remember what they encountered that day on the train, they will have to work together. Because now it’s up to them to understand what horror they saw – and stop it in its tracks before it drags everyone else down below. (Credit: Poisoned Pen Press)
Mazywood by Tananarive Due
When Johnny—a filmmaker and grandson of the famous Black actress Mazelle Washington—brings his family to Mazywood, the secluded California mountain lodge left behind by his grandmother, he expects a quiet retreat. Instead, he uncovers a legacy of rage, secrets, and terror that has haunted his family for generations.
Set primarily in the present day, with haunting flashbacks to Hollywood’s Golden Age, Mazywood explores three generations while following Johnny as he pieces together the true story of his grandmother. As a young Black actress whose career spanned from the 1920s to the 1940s, Mazelle brushed shoulders with giants like Lena Horne, Clark Gable, and Hattie McDaniel. But beneath her public appearance, she carried a secret she had kept and nurtured since she was a child, when a dark wish came true and changed the course of her life forever.
Now, fifty years after Mazelle’s death, Johnny finds himself confronting the truth she buried—and the consequences she left behind. For a monster lurks outside Mazywood, hidden for generations, and Johnny brought his family to its hunting grounds. (Credit: S&S/Saga Press)
Tell The Ghosts I’m Gone by Kalynn Bayron
Moll, Redd, Agnes, and Ossie are powerful-and dangerous. But they don’t want people to fear them. They’ve spent their lives trying to understand and control their supernatural gifts, trying to help people instead of hurt them.
That’s why they offer paranormal investigative services to anyone who needs them. But when the case of a missing young woman brings them to an old (and potentially haunted) Victorian mansion, soon it’s the four teens who are in the greatest danger. The secrets they uncover about the paranormal forces inhabiting the house may shed light on the darkness that exists at the edge of their powers and finally help them gain control-if they can make it out alive. (Credit: Bloomsbury YA)
Strange Pictures Vol. 1 by Uketsu and adpated by Kikou Aiba
From Japan’s breakout horror sensation comes a chilling new manga experience.
Strange Pictures is the spine-tingling manga adaptation of Uketsu’s bestselling novel, brought vividly to life by artist Kikou Aiba. Uketsu – the enigmatic masked writer who has become one of Japan’s most talked-about authors – first captivated readers with a novel that sold in the millions. Now, the terror unfolds panel by panel.
At its core lie nine childlike sketches. A pregnant woman’s doodles on her blog conceal a dire warning. A boy’s simple drawing of his home hides a message no child should know. A murder victim’s final sketch becomes a clue that drags an amateur sleuth into a labyrinth of secrets. Each picture is innocent at first glance – yet when pieced together, they reveal a web of unsolved mysteries and shattered psyches.
For fans of Junji Ito and modern psychological horror, Strange Pictures transforms the mundane into the macabre. Some images fade, but these horrors will be etched in your memory. (Credit: Titan Manga)
Mama Came Callin’ by Ezra Claytan Daniels and illustrated by Camilla Sucre
Kirah was born from an improbable interracial relationship that, in central Florida’s infamous Asurupa County, defied all the odds. But her idyllic childhood was shattered by an urban legend come to life. The “Gatorman” was a nightmare on the lips of kids and grown-ups alike all the way back to Jim Crow: a monster with the body of a man, the head of an alligator—and a taste for Black children. That’s who crawled into Kirah’s window when Kirah was just five years old. According to the police, it was Kirah’s own father who put on that gator mask and tried to kill her.
Twenty years later, Kirah works hard to build a life unburdened by the traumatic events of her childhood. Just when it seems like she’s managed to find her stride, her dad, fresh out of prison, crashes back into her world with a chilling message: “He’s coming for you.”
Finally forced to face the hideous family history she’s been avoiding, Kirah sets off to discover where, and who, she truly came from. And the more she learns, the more disturbing the whole picture becomes. Turns out there’s a lot more to the Gatorman than Kirah thought, and even worse: he isn’t through with her just yet. (Credit: William Morrow Paperbacks)
American Nightmare by Kelly McWilliams
Clark Wendell White first encountered the Nightmare as a child during the Atlanta Race Riot of 1906, when he and his father stood guard over their family home. In the eyes of the mob surging through his neighborhood, Clark sensed this malevolent presence. It was then that the Nightmare took shape, burrowing deep into his mind and feeding on his fear.
Years later, the same evil presence drives Clark to the NAACP’s headquarters in New York City, where he answers an ad seeking light-skinned Black men for dangerous undercover work. As a spy for the NAACP, Clark investigates lynchings, impersonating the very Nightmare that once tormented him.
As Clark descends deeper into this double life, another force rises: a new chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, finding a foothold in the storied streets of New York City. Among its eager recruits is Sam Cahill—the one man who can see past his disguise. Now Clark must outwit both the living and the dead, as he confronts a past that refuses to stay buried and a future where the act of passing exacts a soul-deep price.
Inspired by the life of civil rights activist Walter White, who passed as a white man to expose the brutality of lynchings from the South to the Midwest, American Nightmare is a gripping historical thriller that reveals the most terrifying monsters aren’t those that go bump in the night but those that walk among us. (Credit: Crown)
Fatal Glitch: Let’s Play a Game by Erin Entrada Kelly
Lewis’s big hope for his first day at a new school is to make a friend. He never expected that friend to wind up being a hyper-intelligent cuddly panda bear. A gift from his dad, his Panda Mo Nium is an exclusive kids-only AI toy and communication device with big ideas of his own. After other students at his school get their own robot pandas, Lewis suddenly has a friend group. When Mo begins asking Lewis to perform risky and bloody tasks, Lewis goes along despite his nerves…until the line between cute and creepy blurs and he senses evil intentions behind his AI friend’s glowing eyes. What does this robot panda really want from him and the other kids? The truth might be more frightening than Lewis ever imagined. (Credit: Stonefruit Studio)
Serenity Falls by C.J. Tudor
Welcome to Serenity Falls – the most idyllic town in the US and the safest place for families to grow up together, where crime is non-existent. It seems the perfect relocation option for Dan and his daughter Sadie as they move from the UK. A fresh start, thousands of miles from their troubled past.
But their new idyll is shattered when they find a dead body in their swimming pool.
And it turns out that’s just the start of a series of odd discoveries. Abandoned houses where people have seemingly just upped and left. The strange woman Sadie keeps seeing around town putting up ‘missing’ posters for a child who drowned twenty-five years ago. An ice cream van that drives around at night making sure residents are asleep…
As plans gear up to celebrate Serenity Falls’ fiftieth anniversary, something is stirring beneath the surface of the idyllic façade. Is Serenity Falls really the perfect town or is it founded on something far darker? And is someone so desperate to keep its secrets that they’d resort to anything to preserve them?
Welcome to Serenity Falls – the perfect town. For murder. (Credit: Penguin Books)
Plant Lady by Minyoung Kang
Will you dare to disrespect her plants?
Tucked away in the corner of a neighborhood in Dosan, South Korea, is the Plant Shop. Shop owner Yoohee has started anew, and her meticulously grown foliage thrives under her tender care. To both her customers and herself, Plant Shop is a refuge, where petunias and marigolds bloom and the air itself is like an elixir of peace.
By day, Yoohee dispenses advice on gardening, but she also finds herself offering a special service off the clock. Women who are at their wits’ end come to her about a man they hope might disappear from their lives. Pulling extra hours is taxing, but Yoohee has encountered—and dealt with—these kind of men in her own life, men who treated her (and her beloved plants) with utter disrespect. So as night falls, Yoohee trades her apron for a shovel and a hoe and disappears into her moonlit garden. There, she buries not just the remains of the day, but also the bloody remnants of a few unfortunate encounters.
As men begin to disappear…will anyone ever suspect the Plant Lady?
A highly acclaimed novel from South Korea, Plant Lady brings atmospheric tension and delicate humor to a story of obsession and misogyny that will keep you rooted right to its simmering last page. (Credit: Berkley)
Molka by Monika Kim
Molka: an abbreviation of molrae-kamera, a “sneaky camera” hidden to capture covert images and videos for voyeurs.
In an unassuming Seoul workplace, IT technician Junyoung’s network reaches throughout the entire building. He sees every entrance. Every lobby. Every bathroom. The women in this building may be cold and dismissive, but he can always pull up his favorite images of them and remember who holds the real power. Until one, Dahye, sets herself apart from the rest.
Dahye, ever the romantic, yearns to be cherished after years of living in the shadow of her perfect older sister, who tragically drowned years ago. Only her boyfriend seems to appreciate Dahye. He’s rich, handsome, and generous—and she’d do anything to hold on to the happiness he brings her.
But when a hidden camera scandal rocks the city’s elites, Dahye’s dreams of a fairy-tale romance twist into a grotesque nightmare. Her boyfriend abandons her. Her parents reject her. Her grip on reality begins to shatter as visions of her dead sister suddenly appear. And as Junyoung’s interest in Dahye turns to obsession, and the truths of their troubled lives are revealed, Dahye must go to extreme lengths to bring the truth to light . . . (Credit: Erewhon Books)
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