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50 Best Halloween Books

Halloween has always been one of our favorite holidays here at ProWritingAid—we love carving pumpkins, putting

In this article, we’ve rounded up our favorite Halloween books in five different categories: classic books,

There’s something here for everyone, no matter what your reading tastes are

Here are some fantastic books published over fifty years ago that are still wonderful reads today

In this classic tale, a man-made monster searches for his place in the world

This is a collection of chilling gothic stories and poems, such as “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The

A schoolmaster named Ichabod Crane has a terrifying ride home

Why we love it: It’s a beautifully written haunted house story

A normal man transforms into his own evil doppelgänger each night

Count Dracula leaves Transylvania for England, where he hunts for fresh blood

At a Halloween party, a teenager brags about witnessing a murder—and then gets murdered

Why we love it: It’s a Halloween book and a Christmas book at the same time

Two thirteen-year-old boys have a nightmarish experience the week before Halloween

A corrupt man keeps his youthful beauty, while a portrait of him reflects his true self

There’s nothing like a good scary story to quicken your pulse

These twenty-first century horror books will have you on the edge of your seat

A woman moves to a rural mining town to check on her recently married cousin, where she

This is a collection of exquisite short stories, starting with a woman who refuses her husband’s

Why we love it: It has a unique typographical form, including upside-down passages

A young family moves into a house where something is terribly wrong

Why we love it: It’s a haunted house tale inspired by Japanese folklore

Why we love it: It’s a folk horror novel about community and survival

Rory crashes her car, gets attacked by an animal, and starts undergoing a strange transformation

Why we love it: It’s historical, supernatural, and suspenseful at the same time

After a man gets paralyzed in a car crash, he’s cared for by his mother-in-law, who

Why we love it: It includes mouthwatering Filipino recipes perfect for mystery-reading foodies

A woman must solve a food critic’s murder after someone drops dead in her family restaurant

Why we love it: The heroine lives in a house filled with secret rooms and staircases

A group of senior citizens meets up to investigate murders in their retirement village

A baker finds the delivery man dead and does her best to track down his killer

Why we love it: It’s about a sisterhood of women healing from trauma

A bibliotherapist, who always recommends the right books to those in need of guidance, starts a small

When a local pet breeder drops dead, an animal groomer must solve his murder

A book restorer reunites with her mentor, only to find him murdered shortly afterward

Why we love it: A tiger cat and a Welsh Corgi help solve mysteries

When citizens in a small Virginia town turn up murdered, the pets are on the case

Others are lighter in tone but feature witchcraft, ghosts, or other spooky elements, making them perfect for

A troubled teenager is left a strange inheritance by the rich local recluse

Why we love it: It’s about lesbian necromancers…in space!

The Emperor invites the heirs of each of nine necromancer Houses to compete in a deadly trial

Twelve sisters live with a strange and terrible curse, which is causing them to die off one

Why we love it: It’s a heartwarming, feel-good story about the power of sisterhood

Two sisters in a small Massachusetts town try to flee their family’s legacy of witchery

A girl finds a missing boy in the woods—a boy who should have been dead long

Three estranged sisters in 1890s Salem revive the art of witchcraft

A girl who can speak to gods tries to save her people from a centuries-long war

Why we love it: It’s a dark retelling of “Little Red Riding Hood

Halloween books aren’t only for grownups—kids and teenagers have plenty of fantastic options, too! Here

Coraline finds a strange reflection of her own house with an Other Mother and Other Father who

The Tox hits the Raxter School for Girls, causing the teachers to die and the students’ bodies

African-American children are forced to attend combat schools to learn to kill the living dead

Why we love it: It’s The Jungle Book set in a cemetery instead of a jungle

A thirteen-year-old boy with a very ill mother meets a monster outside his bedroom window

A girl with a clairvoyant mother has been warned that she will cause her true love to

Why we love it: It’s about sheltered characters slowly figuring out the truth

The fence protecting Mary’s village from the Forest of Hands and Teeth gets breached

Alice’s mother disappears, leaving only one message: “Stay away from the Hazel Wood

We hope this article helped you find some new books to explore this October