We've ranked the best halloween books using expert recommendations, sales data, and millions of reader ratings. At Shortform, we know books. Our book guides are the best in the world. Learn why.
1
2
3
4
Recommended by Meghan Camarena and Simon Smith.While I was walking to the gym I finished the last chapter of The Graveyard Book by @neilhimself. I must’ve looked like a mad woman because I was balling my eyes out in public. Damn, what an incredible story. [source]
@carveresque ...but The Graveyard Book is one of the best books ever. [source]
5
Recommended by Andrei Codrescu, Becky Cloonan, Claire Jarvis, and 1 others.Vampirism is a growth industry. Dracula is bigger than Jesus now. [source]
@Noise_Raptor Oh, thank you so much! This book was such a delight, and such a challenge! Dracula is one of my favorites- funny enough I'd jump at the chance to do this again XD [source]
Dracula is very explicit. That’s what’s so surprising about it. [source]
6What's on the other side of the door? A distorted-mirror world, containing presumably everything Coraline has ever dreamed of... people who pronounce her name correctly (not "Caroline"), delicious meals (not like her father's overblown "recipes"), an unusually pink and green bedroom (not like her dull one), and plenty of horrible (very un-boring) marvels, like a man made out of live rats. The creepiest part, however, is her mirrored parents, her "other mother" and her "other father"--people who look just like her own parents, but with big, shiny, black button eyes, paper-white skin... and a keen desire to keep her on their side of the door. To make creepy creepier, Coraline has been illustrated masterfully in scritchy, terrifying ink drawings by British mixed-media artist and Sandman cover illustrator Dave McKean. This delightful, funny, haunting, scary as heck, fairy-tale novel is about as fine as they come. Highly recommended. (Ages 11 and older) --Karin Snelson
Recommended by Simon Smith.@lindsanderson @Misterbodd @PaulWat5 @f33lthesun Awesomely scary book full stop! Great though. [source]
7
Founder/TechCrunch
Shelley wrote this book as a teenager, and most of us read it in high school. Often credited as the first science fiction novel. You can read just about any political viewpoint you want into the book, and there are strong undertones that technology isn’t all good. But what I get out of it is the creativeness that can come with solitude, and how new technology can be misunderstood, even perhaps by the creator (see Twitter). Key thing to remember: Frankenstein is the name of the scientist/creator, not the Monster. Everybody forgets that. [source]
Brian Aldiss has famously argued that science fiction starts with Mary Shelley’s novel, and many people have agreed with him. [source]
Brian Aldiss has famously argued that science fiction starts with Mary Shelley’s novel, and many people have agreed with him. [source]
8
Very enjoyable. It is a good book. [source]
This book is one of several novels in which a group of ghost hunters or psychic investigators move into a house with a reputation of being haunted, and see what they find. But what makes this the greatest single ghost novel, in my view, is that it’s at least as much about the psychological interaction of the characters as it is about the overtly spectral. There’s a superb characterisation of the spinster character, who ultimately becomes one of the ghosts of Hill House, if you like. The scenes from her viewpoint are both moving and disturbing. [source]
9
10
11
12 Recommended by Dave Child.I'm in the middle of Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury. I really liked Fahrenheit 451 but for whatever reason I didn't read anything else by him. When he died in 2012, I picked up a few more of his books and this one had sat on my shelf for a while. So far I'm loving it, and that's enough of a gain for me. [source]
13
If you think you know the story because you’ve seen the film then you’d be wrong. This book is an absolute classic and a great way into the vast King oeuvre. [source]
I have always rated Stephen King. I think he is so much more than just a commercially successful horror writer. [source]
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
Recommended by Amelia Boone.This is a book that you have to hold, because there are parts of it where you need to turn it upside down to read it. There are certain pages where, you are reading it, and it turns in a circle... This is a book that's an entire sensory experience. [source]
33
34
Recommended by Bethanye McKinney Blount and Rae Paoletta.
35
36
37
38
39
40
Recommended by Darren Aronofsky.I proceeded to pound through procrastinating by reading this book, scaring the living crap out of myself. [source]
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
It’s a novel that uses the narrative form of the psychological thriller, but in the service of exploring a single emotion: jealousy. [source]
The main thing about Rebecca that I find completely compelling is the way that you, the reader, become complicit in a situation which, eventually, turns into a crime. [source]
Throughout the story, she feels the first wife haunt the house, and she can never quite measure up to her. And then the heroine begins to wonder: What if Rebecca was murdered? What if my husband did it? [source]
77
78The World's Bestselling Mystery
"Ten . . ."
Ten strangers are lured to an isolated island mansion off the Devon coast by a mysterious "U.N. Owen."
"Nine . . ."
At dinner a recorded message accuses each of them in turn of having a guilty secret, and by the end of the night one of the guests is dead.
"Eight . . ."
Stranded by a violent storm, and haunted by a nursery rhyme counting down one by one . . . one by one they begin to die.
"Seven . . ."
Who among them is the killer and will any of them survive?
Recommended by Rian Johnson.@AdamLanceGarcia I think And Then There Were None is her best book, but The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd and Curtain are probably tied for my personal favorite. [source]
79
80
81
82
83
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
