Fall is all about pumpkins, spice, and rainbows of leaves painting the landscape—oh, wait… this… isn’t that kind of post? This is about the books that embrace the creepier aspects of fall, and dive into the mysteries, bloodshed, and monsters instead?
Fine by us, because we love all of the above! Give us thrillers, chillers, a blanket to hide under when things get a little too scary, and we’re all set! Some of the creepiest and best books we’ve ever read are perfect for a stormy fall night, so if you’re with us, grab your favorite over-the-top, limited edition caffeinated beverage or a handful of that candy you’re SUPPOSED to be saving for Halloween, and get ready to curl up with these chilling reads!
24 Thrilling, Chilling Books
YOU SHOULD READ ON A STORMY FALL NIGHT
1. All These Bodies by Kendare Blake
A summer plagued by murder. A girl who couldn’t have done all by herself. So many questions with some chilling answers.
Summer 1958. A gruesome killer plagues the Midwest, leaving behind a trail of bodies completely drained of blood.
Michael Jensen, an aspiring journalist whose father happens to be the town sheriff, never imagined that the Bloodless Murders would come to his backyard. Not until the night the Carlson family was found murdered in their home. Marie Catherine Hale, a diminutive fifteen-year-old, was discovered at the scene—covered in blood. She is the sole suspect in custody.
Michael didn’t think that he would be part of the investigation, but he is pulled in when Marie decides that he is the only one she will confess to. As Marie recounts her version of the story, it falls to Michael to find the truth: What really happened the night that the Carlsons were killed? And how did one girl wind up in the middle of all these bodies?
2. White Smoke by Tiffany D. Jackson
We’ll let you know right now we had to leave the lights on to read some scenes. Tiffany crafted quite the terrifying tale with her first foray into horror.
Marigold is running from ghosts. The phantoms of her old life keep haunting her, but a move with her newly blended family from their small California beach town to the embattled Midwestern city of Cedarville might be the fresh start she needs. Her mom has accepted a new job with the Sterling Foundation that comes with a free house, one that Mari now has to share with her bratty ten-year-old stepsister, Piper.
The renovated picture-perfect home on Maple Street, sitting between dilapidated houses, surrounded by wary neighbors has its . . . secrets. That’s only half the problem: household items vanish, doors open on their own, lights turn off, shadows walk past rooms, voices can be heard in the walls, and there’s a foul smell seeping through the vents only Mari seems to notice. Worse: Piper keeps talking about a friend who wants Mari gone.
But “running from ghosts” is just a metaphor, right?
As the house closes in, Mari learns that the danger isn’t limited to Maple Street. Cedarville has its secrets, too. And secrets always find their way through the cracks.
3. Any Sign of Life by Rae Carson
Right from the opening, we’re filled with a sense of uneasiness, with unexpected scary scenes popping in when we least expect them. The end of the world is, in fact, scary.
Paige Miller is determined to take her basketball team to the state championship, maybe even beyond. But as March Madness heats up, Paige falls deathly ill. Days later, she wakes up attached to an IV and learns that the whole world has perished. Everyone she loves, and all of her dreams for the future—they’re gone.
But Paige is a warrior. She pushes through her fear and her grief and gets through each day scrounging for food, for shelter, for safety. As she struggles with her new reality, Paige learns that the apocalypse did not happen by accident. And that there are worse things than being alone.
4. Among the Beasts & Briars by Ashley Poston
Just one scene featuring these beasts will be enough to send you burrowing under your blankets… A terrifying, murderous wood filled with Ancients, bone-eaters, and the living corpse of a dead friend? Among the Beasts & Briars was made for fall reading.
Cerys is safe in the Kingdom of Aloriya. Here there are no droughts, disease, or famine, and peace is everlasting. It has been this way for hundreds of years, since the first king made a bargain with the Lady who ruled the forest that borders the kingdom. But as Aloriya prospered, the woods grew dark, cursed, and forbidden.
Cerys knows this all too well: When she was young, she barely escaped as the woods killed her friends and her mother. Now Cerys carries a small bit of the curse—the magic—in her blood, a reminder of the day she lost everything.
As a new queen is crowned, however, things long hidden in the woods descend on the kingdom itself. Cerys is forced on the run, her only companions a small and irritating fox from the royal garden and the magic in her veins. It’s up to her to find the legendary Lady of the Wilds and beg for a way to save her home.
But the road is darker and more dangerous than she knows, and as secrets from the past are uncovered amid the teeth and roots of the forest, it’s going to take everything she has just to survive.
5. Burn Our Bodies Down by Rory Power
It’s weird to remember that our parents had whole lives before they had us, but Margot is forced to come to that same realization when she goes to her mother’s hometown of Phalene. Because her mother may have left for a reason, and there’s a rot so deep in this town that it will make you wonder about your own family history!
Ever since Margot was born, it’s been just her and her mother. No answers to Margot’s questions about what came before. No history to hold on to. No relative to speak of. Just the two of them, stuck in their run-down apartment, struggling to get along.
But that’s not enough for Margot. She wants family. She wants a past. And she just found the key she needs to get it: A photograph, pointing her to a town called Phalene. Pointing her home. Only, when Margot gets there, it’s not what she bargained for.
Margot’s mother left for a reason. But was it to hide her past? Or was it to protect Margot from what’s still there?
The only thing Margot knows for sure is there’s poison in their family tree, and their roots are dug so deeply into Phalene that now that she’s there, she might never escape.
6. You Were Never Here by Kathleen Peacock
If you like: dark mysteries, friendship stories, haunting magical realism, and more, you’ll die for You Were Never Here. Cat is forced to return to her hometown after her childhood best friend—whom she hasn’t seen in years—disappears.
Cat hasn’t been to Montgomery Falls, the town her family founded, since she was twelve years old. Since the summer she discovered she could do things that no normal twelve-year-old could do. Since she had her first kiss with Riley Fraser. Since she destroyed their friendship.
Now, five years later, she’s back and Riley has disappeared.
When Noah, Riley’s brother, asks for help in discovering what happened, Cat is torn between wanting to learn the truth and protecting the secret that she’s been guarding ever since that summer she and Riley stopped speaking. Only one choice will put her in a killer’s sights…
7. Ghost Wood Song by Erica Waters
Ghost Wood Song has honestly been haunting our dreams for the past few months. Darkness, ghosts, and deadly secrets make this one we’re sure to reread on a stormy night.
Sawkill Girls meets Beautiful Creatures in this lush and eerie debut, where the boundary between reality and nightmares is as thin as the veil between the living and the dead.
If I could have a fiddle made of Daddy’s bones, I’d play it. I’d learn all the secrets he kept.
Shady Grove inherited her father’s ability to call ghosts from the grave with his fiddle, but she also knows the fiddle’s tunes bring nothing but trouble and darkness.
But when her brother is accused of murder, she can’t let the dead keep their secrets.
In order to clear his name, she’s going to have to make those ghosts sing.
8. The Devouring Gray by Christine Lynn Herman
If you’ve ever seen fog and thought, “Hm, nope, that looks alive, I’m going back inside,” then you kind of understand what the teens of Four Paths, NY are dealing with. Except there IS a monster in their fog, new girl Violet kind of just let it out, and they have to get over their interpersonal issues before they can deal with all that. It’s part Raven Boys, part Stranger Things, all atmospheric and lyrical, so what are you waiting for?
On the edge of town a beast haunts the woods, trapped in the Gray, its bonds loosening…
Uprooted from the city, Violet Saunders doesn’t have much hope of fitting in at her new school in Four Paths, a town almost buried in the woodlands of rural New York. The fact that she’s descended from one of the town’s founders doesn’t help much, either—her new neighbours treat her with distant respect, and something very like fear. When she meets Justin, May, Isaac, and Harper, all children of founder families, and sees the otherworldly destruction they can wreak, she starts to wonder if the townsfolk are right to be afraid.
When bodies start to appear in the woods, the locals become downright hostile. Can the teenagers solve the mystery of Four Paths, and their own part in it, before another calamity strikes?
9. Sawkill Girls by Claire Legrand
“Beware of the woods and the dark, dank deep. He’ll follow you home and he won’t let you sleep.” This creepy AF song is STILL giving us the chills. It’s what the children sing on Sawkill Rock, the gorgeous and affluent island community in this creepy read that we cannot recommend enough. Think Stranger Things with a fiercely feminist twist.
Who are the Sawkill Girls?
Marion: The newbie. Awkward and plain, steady and dependable. Weighed down by tragedy and hungry for love she’s sure she’ll never find.
Zoey: The pariah. Luckless and lonely, hurting but hiding it. Aching with grief and dreaming of vanished girls. Maybe she’s broken—or maybe everyone else is.
Val: The queen bee. Gorgeous and privileged, ruthless and regal. Words like silk and eyes like knives; a heart made of secrets and a mouth full of lies.
Their stories come together on the island of Sawkill Rock, where gleaming horses graze in rolling pastures and cold waves crash against black cliffs. Where kids whisper the legend of an insidious monster at parties and around campfires. Where girls have been disappearing for decades, stolen away by a ravenous evil no one has dared to fight… until now.
10. Clown in a Cornfield by Adam Cesare
We simply cannot resist the retro slasher vibes of this debut horror novel! Frendo the Clown is the ultimate nightmare-inducing villain and we can’t get enough…
Quinn Maybrook and her father have moved to tiny, boring Kettle Springs, to find a fresh start. But what they don’t know is that ever since the Baypen Corn Syrup Factory shut down, Kettle Springs has cracked in half.
On one side are the adults, who are desperate to make Kettle Springs great again, and on the other are the kids, who want to have fun, make prank videos, and get out of Kettle Springs as quick as they can.
Kettle Springs is caught in a battle between old and new, tradition and progress. It’s a fight that looks like it will destroy the town. Until Frendo, the Baypen mascot, a creepy clown in a pork-pie hat, goes homicidal and decides that the only way for Kettle Springs to grow back is to cull the rotten crop of kids who live there now.
11. There’s Someone Inside Your House by Stephanie Perkins
Does the name not say it all? When the students at her new high school begin meeting slasher-movie-style fates at the hands of an unknown serial killer, new girl Makani starts to fear that she hasn’t traveled far enough to escape the dark secrets of her past…
Love hurts…
Makani Young thought she’d left her dark past behind her in Hawaii, settling in with her grandmother in landlocked Nebraska. She’s found new friends and has even started to fall for mysterious outsider Ollie Larsson. But her past isn’t far behind.
Then, one by one, the students of Osborne Hugh begin to die in a series of gruesome murders, each with increasingly grotesque flair. As the terror grows closer and her feelings for Ollie intensify, Makani is forced to confront her own dark secrets.
12. This Is Not a Ghost Story by Andrea Portes
The line between nightmare and reality has never been thinner than in This Is Not a Ghost Story, where nothing is really as it seems.
I am not welcome. Somehow I know that. Something doesn’t want me here.
Daffodil Franklin has plans for a quiet summer before her freshman year at college, and luckily, she’s found the job that can give her just that: housesitting a mansion for a wealthy couple.
But as the summer progresses and shadows lengthen, Daffodil comes to realize the house is more than it appears. The spacious home seems to close in on her, and as she takes the long road into town, she feels eyes on her the entire way, and something tugging her back.
What Daffodil doesn’t yet realize is that her job comes with a steep price. The house has a long-ago grudge it needs to settle . . . and Daffodil is the key to settling it.
13. Two Can Keep a Secret by Karen M. McManus
From the woman who brought you One Of Us Is Lying comes a thriller set in Echo Ridge, a small town with a dark, murderous legacy. Secrets are both currency and threat there, and uncovering them one by one with Ellery might just make you want to look over your shoulder once or twice. Or just be glad your Homecoming days are behind you.
Echo Ridge is small-town America. Ellery’s never been there, but she’s heard all about it. Her aunt went missing there at age seventeen. And only five years ago, a homecoming queen put the town on the map when she was killed. Now Ellery has to move there to live with a grandmother she barely knows.
The town is picture-perfect, but it’s hiding secrets. And before school even begins for Ellery, someone’s declared open season on homecoming, promising to make it as dangerous as it was five years ago. Then, almost as if to prove it, another girl goes missing.
Ellery knows all about secrets. Her mother has them; her grandmother does too. And the longer she’s in Echo Ridge, the clearer it becomes that everyone there is hiding something. The thing is, secrets are dangerous–and most people aren’t good at keeping them. Which is why in Echo Ridge, it’s safest to keep your secrets to yourself.
14. You May Now Kill the Bride by R.L. Stine
The mastermind of scary stories himself—R.L. Stine—returns to Fear Street with this tale of a decades old curse that plagues the women of one family every time they prepare to walk down the aisle. Love, curses… what more could you want?!
Two sisters, divided by time. Each with a terrible resentment she can barely contain.
Two Fear family weddings, decades apart… Each bride will find that the ancient curse that haunts the Fears LIVES ON. It feeds off the evil that courses through their blood. It takes its toll in unexpected ways, and allows dark history to repeat itself.
In this all-new Fear Street story, family ties bind sisters together—till DEATH do they part.
15. The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein by Kiersten White
Ready to hear the a twist on the classic tale, from the point of view you should’ve gotten long ago? As his only companion, Elizabeth’s survival depends on her ability to stay in the good graces of the infamous Victor Frankenstein. Can she save him? Or are they doomed to the same dark fate?
Elizabeth Lavenza hasn’t had a proper meal in weeks. Her thin arms are covered with bruises from her “caregiver,” and she is on the verge of being thrown into the streets… until she is brought to the home of Victor Frankenstein, an unsmiling, solitary boy who has everything–except a friend.
Victor is her escape from misery. Elizabeth does everything she can to make herself indispensable–and it works. She is taken in by the Frankenstein family and rewarded with a warm bed, delicious food, and dresses of the finest silk. Soon she and Victor are inseparable.
But her new life comes at a price. As the years pass, Elizabeth’s survival depends on managing Victor’s dangerous temper and entertaining his every whim, no matter how depraved. Behind her blue eyes and sweet smile lies the calculating heart of a girl determined to stay alive no matter the cost… as the world she knows is consumed by darkness.
16. Redemption Prep by Samuel Miller
An eerie, elite, enigmatic boarding school hidden deep in the woods is the perfect setting for a murder—or just the perfect fall read.
Everyone knows Emma. Neesha’s her best friend, Aiden’s her basketball star boyfriend, and Evan’s her shadow, following Emma’s every move.
Emma stands out, which is hard to do at Redemption Prep, a school where every student has been handpicked to attend its remote campus in the forest of Utah. So when she goes missing in plain sight during mass, everyone notices.
And everyone becomes a suspect, especially at a school with so many rules: Don’t skip mass. Don’t break curfew. Don’t go into the woods.
Emma’s disappearance ignites an investigation, and Neesha, Aiden, and Evan all want to find her—for different reasons. But they each have their own secrets to hide, and not everyone wants Emma to be found.
As the search continues, the students start to realize that they’re not the only ones trying to hide something. Redemption Prep has secrets, too—secrets bigger than any of the students could have imagined, and Emma could be the key to finding out the truth… if anyone can find her.
17. Winterwood by Shea Ernshaw
Spooky woods! SPOOKY WOODS! SPOOKY WOODS AND WITCHES! Nora Walker and her family have always shared a connection with the woods, but she’s the one who finds the missing Oliver Huntsman there — an alluring boy with secrets that might be darker than the woods that surround them. Get ready to swoon between screaming.
Be careful of the dark, dark wood…
Especially the woods surrounding the town of Fir Haven. Some say these woods are magical. Haunted, even.
Rumored to be a witch, only Nora Walker knows the truth. She and the Walker women before her have always shared a special connection with the woods. And it’s this special connection that leads Nora to Oliver Huntsman—the same boy who disappeared from the Camp for Wayward Boys weeks ago—and in the middle of the worst snowstorm in years. He should be dead, but here he is alive, and left in the woods with no memory of the time he’d been missing.
But Nora can feel an uneasy shift in the woods at Oliver’s presence. And it’s not too long after that Nora realizes she has no choice but to unearth the truth behind how the boy she has come to care so deeply about survived his time in the forest, and what led him there in the first place. What Nora doesn’t know, though, is that Oliver has secrets of his own—secrets he’ll do anything to keep buried, because as it turns out, he wasn’t the only one to have gone missing on that fateful night all those weeks ago.
18. Missing, Presumed Dead by Emma Berquist
Brutal and bloody, this haunting ghost story (with an oddly charming love story) will keep you up all night this fall!
When eighteen-year-old Lexi foresees the brutal murder of a young woman outside a club in downtown L.A., she is powerless to stop it.
But then the girl’s ghost appears, seeking vengeance, and Lexi is swept into a dangerous search that could put her directly in the path of a serial killer. From the author of Devils Unto Dust, this fast-paced and literary thriller will haunt fans of Maureen Johnson’s Truly Devious and Karen M. McManus’s One of Us Is Lying.
With a touch, Lexi can sense how and when someone will die. Some say it’s a gift. But to Lexi it’s a curse—one that keeps her friendless and alone. All that changes when Lexi foresees the violent death of a young woman, Jane, outside a club.
Jane doesn’t go to the afterlife quietly. Her ghost remains behind, determined to hunt down her murderer, and she needs Lexi’s help. In life, Jane was everything Lexi is not—outgoing, happy, popular. But in death, all Jane wants is revenge.
Lexi will do anything to help Jane, to make up for the fact that she didn’t—couldn’t—save Jane’s life, and to keep this beautiful ghost of a girl by her side for as long as possible.
19. The Beautiful by Renée Ahdieh
Take a world with wicked beings like vampires, set it in New Orleans of the past, and release a murder-mystery into the Gothic wilds. What will you have? This book. We would never advise you to walk around a hauntingly beautiful city at night as the fog creeps in, but we would advise you to read this to live through that aesthetic vicariously. And did we mention, vampires?!
In 1872, New Orleans is a city ruled by the dead. But to seventeen-year-old Celine Rousseau, New Orleans provides her a refuge after she’s forced to flee her life as a dressmaker in Paris. Taken in by the sisters of the Ursuline convent along with six other girls, Celine quickly becomes enamored with the vibrant city from the music to the food to the soirées and—especially—to the danger. She soon becomes embroiled in the city’s glitzy underworld, known as Le Cour des Lions, after catching the eye of the group’s leader, the enigmatic Sèbastien Saint Germain. When the body of one of the girls from the convent is found in the lair of Le Cour des Lions, Celine battles her attraction to him and suspicions about Sèbastien’s guilt along with the shame of her own horrible secret.
When more bodies are discovered, each crime more gruesome than the last, Celine and New Orleans become gripped by the terror of a serial killer on the loose—one Celine is sure has set her in his sights . . . and who may even be the young man who has stolen her heart. As the murders continue to go unsolved, Celine takes matters into her own hands and soon uncovers something even more shocking: an age-old feud from the darkest creatures of the underworld reveals a truth about Celine she always suspected simmered just beneath the surface.
20. Three Dark Crowns by Kendare Blake
By sheer concept alone, you know this book is going to be chilling. But Kendare writes this tale with such a haunting, foreboding atmosphere, and so many twists to keep you turning pages as quickly as possible, that we know it will also keep you reading through the night.
In every generation on the island of Fennbirn, a set of triplets is born: three queens, all equal heirs to the crown and each possessor of a coveted magic. Mirabella is a fierce elemental, able to spark hungry flames or vicious storms at the snap of her fingers. Katharine is a poisoner, one who can ingest the deadliest poisons without so much as a stomachache. Arsinoe, a naturalist, is said to have the ability to bloom the reddest rose and control the fiercest of lions.
But becoming the Queen Crowned isn’t solely a matter of royal birth. Each sister has to fight for it. And it’s not just a game of win or lose…it’s life or death. The night the sisters turn sixteen, the battle begins. The last queen standing gets the crown.
21. This Savage Song by Victoria Schwab
A paranormal war between monsters and humans. A twisting narrative that winds between the heirs of both halves of Verity. Dark creatures, darker humans, fights, chases… you know what? You should just read it.
Kate Harker and August Flynn are the heirs to a divided city—a city where the violence has begun to breed actual monsters. All Kate wants is to be as ruthless as her father, who lets the monsters roam free and makes the humans pay for his protection. All August wants is to be human, as good-hearted as his own father, to play a bigger role in protecting the innocent—but he’s one of the monsters. One who can steal a soul with a simple strain of music.
When the chance arises to keep an eye on Kate, who’s just been kicked out of her sixth boarding school and returned home, August jumps at it. But Kate discovers August’s secret, and after a failed assassination attempt the pair must flee for their lives.
In This Savage Song, Victoria Schwab creates a gritty, seething metropolis, one worthy of being compared to Gotham and to the four versions of London in her critically acclaimed fantasy for adults, A Darker Shade of Magic. Her heroes will face monsters intent on destroying them from every side—including the monsters within.
22. Scythe by Neal Schusterman
Does anyone write dark dystopia quite like Neal Schusterman? Imagine a futuristic society that’s conquered all the causes of death—and now enlists designated lifetakers known as Scythes to keep the population under control. Now imagine you get picked for the job…
Thou shalt kill.
A world with no hunger, no disease, no war, no misery. Humanity has conquered all those things, and has even conquered death. Now scythes are the only ones who can end life—and they are commanded to do so, in order to keep the size of the population under control.
Citra and Rowan are chosen to apprentice to a scythe—a role that neither wants. These teens must master the “art” of taking life, knowing that the consequence of failure could mean losing their own.
23. Hero by Michael Grant
Speaking of dark dystopias, why not return to one of the worlds we grew up reading? The same virus that caused SO MUCH death and destruction in Michael Grant’s original series is now spreading across the globe, and if you want your chills with a side of epic action, then these are the books for you.
After the fall of Perdido Beach dome, a new set of humans developed mutant powers from the rock infected with alien virus. They are the Rockborn Gang: Dekka, Shade, Cruz, Malik, Armo, and Francis. With their superpowers, they have defended the earth from other rockborn who used their powers for evil, like Dillon Poe.
When another rock carrying the virus strikes New York, a new foe, Bob Markovic, rises with a horrifying and nearly unstoppable ability. Markovic’s unending ambition and lack of a moral compass made him unbearable before the virus. And that was before he was a swarm of plague-ridden insects, with the power and means to take over the city—and maybe the world.
As the Rockborn Gang try to defeat their latest villain, they will find themselves on morally gray grounds and have to make tough decisions if they want to save the world.
In this pulse-pounding finale to the saga more than ten years in the making, Michael Grant delivers an unforgettable conclusion while asking: What does it take to be a hero?
24. The Deepest Roots by Miranda Asebedo
This book opens with a literal tornado and is filled with mystical moments. A ghostly presence, powerful talents, and aggressive encounters make this a great book to curl up with on any night—let alone one so stormy.
Cottonwood Hollow, Kansas, is a strange place. For the past century, every girl has been born with a special talent, like the ability to Fix any object, Heal any wound, or Find what is missing.
To best friends Rome, Lux, and Mercy, their abilities often feel more like a curse. Rome may be able to Fix anything she touches, but that won’t help her mom pay rent. Lux’s ability to attract any man with a smile has always meant danger. And although Mercy can make Enough of whatever is needed, even that won’t help when her friendship with Rome and Lux is tested.
Follow three best friends in this enchanting debut novel as they discover that friendship is stronger than curses, that trust is worth the risk, and sometimes, what you’ve been looking for has been under your feet the whole time.