Must-Read Ghost Books

A powerful tale of grief, love’s enduring bonds, and secrets of the past set in the Castle Rock universe from #1 New York Times bestselling author and master storyteller Stephen King.
 

In this chilling and atmospheric novel of psychological horror, a woman returns to her hometown to confront the shadows of her past after her best friend’s suicide attempt at an infamous haunted house.
 

“A chiller” (The New York Times Book Review) and #1 New York Times bestseller horror about a writer’s horrific and haunting pseudonym that destroys everyone on the path, leading to the man who created him—in this psychological horror novel by Stephen King.
 

Selected and introduced by the bestselling author of The Time Traveler’s Wife and Her Fearful Symmetry—including Audrey Niffenegger’s own stunning illustrations for each piece—this is a “spine-tingling” (Chicago Tribune) collection of some of the best classic and contemporary ghost stories of all time.
 

Thirteen “dazzling” (Associated Press) and “wonderfully wicked” (USA TODAY) stories from #1 New York Times bestselling author Stephen King.
 

New York Times bestselling author Richard Chizmar, “one of horror’s indispensable writers” (Paste), and his son W.H. Chizmar, critically acclaimed author of Them (hailed by New York Times bestselling author Josh Malerman as “one of the best debuts I’ve ever read”) present a riveting found footage narrative about doomed thrill-seekers trapped in a haunted lighthouse.
 

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Drowning Kind comes a genre-defying new novel, inspired by Mary Shelley’s masterpiece Frankenstein, that brilliantly explores the eerie mysteries of childhood and the evils perpetrated by the monsters among us.
 

An unexplained tragedy. A handsome stranger. A house of ghosts and memories. In this fresh take on the Gothic tale, a young Nigerian woman returns to the family mansion where her brother died—only to find the past ready to consume her.
 

A modern-day ghost story set on a remote Scottish island, While You Sleep is a page-turning, chillingly erotic Hitchcockian thriller evoking the dark atmospheric of a house that may be more than it seems . . .
 

An entrancing new series starring a funny, impulsive, and sometimes self-congratulatory young woman who discovers she has psychic abilities—and then must decide whether she will use her skills for good or…not.
 

In this chilling historical novel that's part love story, part ghost story, a female singer's life spins horrifically out of control as a long-dead music legend chooses her to continue his legacy.
 

Award-winning author Tananarive Due's critically acclaimed story of supernatural suspense, as a woman searches for the inherited power that can save her hometown from evil forces.
 

In this lusciously illustrated volume, international bestselling artist Lisa Aisato reimagines Dickens's classic Victorian ghost story.
 

A woman returns to the old family home after her sister mysteriously drowns in its swimming ​pool…but she’s not the pool’s only victim.
 

Lord of the Flies meets 28 Days Later in this “grim microcosm of terror and desperation haunting” (Christopher Golden, New York Times bestselling author) following a scout troop on a terrifying fight for survival when they come across a mysterious—and deadly—stranger in the Canadian wilderness.
 

The essential collection of beloved ghost stories, compiled by the editor who helped define the genre—including stories from award-winning, bestselling authors such as Joyce Carol Oates, Alice Hoffman, Seanan McGuire, and Paul Tremblay.
 

A charming ne’er-do-well returns to his haunted Irish hometown to uncover the truth about his mother in this “supernaturally skilled debut” (Vanity Fair) and turns the town—and his life—upside down.
 

The much-anticipated follow-up novel to the instant national bestseller Lost Souls Meet Under a Full Moon picks up seven years later with go-between Ayumi, a young man caught between the demands of everyday life and his extraordinary gift: reuniting the living with the dead.
 

John Irving’s fifteenth novel is “powerfully cinematic” (The Washington Post) and “eminently readable” (The Boston Globe). The Last Chairlift is part ghost story, part love story, spanning eight decades of sexual politics.
 

Mexican Gothic meets The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo in Christina Li’s haunting novel about the secrets that lie in wait in the crumbling mansion of a former Hollywood starlet, and the intertwined fates of the two Chinese American families fighting to inherit it.
 

A finalist for the Kirkus Prize, Andrew Carnegie Medal, Aspen Words Literary Prize, and a New York Times bestseller, this majestic, stirring, and widely praised novel from two-time National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward, the story of a family on a journey through rural Mississippi, is a “tour de force” (Oprah Daily) and a timeless work of fiction that is destined to become a classic.
 

The New York Times bestselling “witty, atmospheric” (People) story of a once powerful American family, and the price that must be paid by the heirs as they struggle for redemption: “A captivating page-turner” (Star Tribune, Minneapolis).
 

From the internationally bestselling author of the “unique and unforgettable” (The Wall Street Journal) The Trouble with Goats and Sheep comes a funny and poignant story of a woman who encounters the ghosts of her past as she untangles the mystery of her daughter’s disappearance—a powerful, hopeful reminder that the people we love are always with us.
 

A charming collection of winter and holiday stories by iconic 20th-century writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, including pieces from the height of his 1920s magazine writing up to his first ever story about Pat Hobby’s adventures in Hollywood, compiled into an irresistibly festive package.
 

"I've come to find that most people ignore the dead," Conrad Avery Sutton III begins The Worthy, a wickedly funny and frightening ghost story.
 

The New York Times bestselling author Jude Deveraux brings a “wonderful addition” (Booklist) to her Montgomery/Taggert Family series with this supernatural romance in which, with the help of a feisty ghost, a man uncovers the secrets that led to the tragic death of his fiancée.
 

This classic ghost story from the author of The Last Unicorn follows Jonathan who’s been living in a cemetery with a raven as his only friend amongst the newly dead until he discovers a pair of ghostly lovers bearing an extraordinary gift—the final chance for his own happiness.

The “devilishly passionate” (RT Book Reviews) Immortals After Dark series continues with this tale of a vampire shunned by his own kind and a beautiful phantom, bound together by a passion they cannot resist from New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author Kresley Cole.
 

From Bram Stoker Award–winning author Gwendolyn Kiste comes an “emotionally devastating, character driven ghost story” (CrimeReads) about three childhood friends who miraculously survive the night everyone in their suburban hometown turned to ghosts—perfect for fans of Yellowjackets.
 

Mexican Gothic meets Get Out with this Rebecca-inspired gothic horror rooted in Chinese American history, as a gifted artist uncovers a haunted mansion’s chilling secrets that threaten to make her dream life a living nightmare.
 

From the author of the #1 bestselling The Time Traveler's Wife, a spectacularly compelling novel—set in and near Highgate Cemetery in London, about the love between twins, men and women, ghosts and the living.
 

An “exquisite…too lovely to bear” (The New York Times Book Review) debut novel from an award-winning writer: a playful and daring tale about a teenage ghost who falls in love with the writer George Sand.
 

From award-winning author John Crowley comes an exquisite fantasy novel about a man who tells the story of a crow named Dar Oakley and his impossible lives and deaths in the land of Ka.
 

From the author of the multi-award-winning, National Book Award–longlisted, “vivid, fast, funny, way-smart, and verbally inventive” (George Saunders) story collection Heads of the Colored People, comes a sly, spry, literary debut novel about the murder of an infamous moonshiner and the cacophony of true stories a small town can tell about itself.
 

One might not expect a woman of Edith Wharton's literary stature to be a believer of ghost stories, much less be frightened by them, but as she admits in her postscript to this spine-tingling collection, "...till I was twenty-seven or -eight, I could not sleep in the room with a book containing a ghost story."

A gripping and darkly nostalgic tale, “Perrotta at his finest” (Ron Charles), about a tumultuous summer in 1970s suburban New Jersey, from the perspective of a middle-aged writer looking back on a series of events that changed his life—and the story he finally has the courage to tell.
 

From “one of America’s finest living writers” (San Francisco Chronicle) and “heir apparent to Toni Morrison” (LitHub)—comes a haunting masterpiece about an enslaved girl in the years before the Civil War that’s destined to become a classic.

A gripping, page-turning “masterpiece” (Joe Hill, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Fireman) set in Jim Crow Florida that follows Robert Stephens Jr. as he’s sent to a segregated reform school that is a chamber of terrors where he sees the horrors of racism and injustice, for the living, and the dead.
 

From New York Times bestselling author Sharyn McCrumb comes this finely wrought novel set in nineteenth-century West Virginia, based on the true story of one of the strangest murder trials in American history—the case of the Greenbrier Ghost.
 

In this “miraculous and thrilling” (Diane Setterfield, #1 New York Times bestselling author) gothic mystery for fans of The Essex Serpent and The Book of Speculation, Victorian London comes to life as an intrepid female sleuth wades through a murky world of collectors and criminals to recover a remarkable child.