Horrors & Ghosts

Are you in the mood for stories so scary you just want them to end? Here are 8 books to give you the creeps, just in time for Halloween.

Here’s the list in the catalog – https://decorah.biblionix.com/?booklist=27617

 

The cover of the book "The Woman in Black" by Susan Hill features a black-and-white image of a large, ominous house on a hill. In the foreground, there is a wrought-iron gate. The title is written in red and white lettering. The subtitle reads, "A Ghost Story.

The Woman In Black

By Susan Hill

Arthur Kipps, a young solicitor, has come north from London to attend the funeral and settle the affairs of Mrs. Alice Drablow of Eel Marsh House. The townspeople are reluctant to share any information about Mrs. Drablow but Kipps soon realizes that there is more to Alice Drablow than he originally thought. At the funeral, he sees a woman dressed in black, with a pale face and dark eyes, whom a group of children are silently watching.

While sorting through Mrs. Drablow’s papers at Eel Marsh House over the course of several days, the routine formalities Kipps anticipates give way to a tumble of events and secrets more sinister and terrifying than any nightmare: the rocking chair in the deserted nursery, the eerie sound of a pony and trap, a child’s scream in the fog, and most dreadfully and most tragically for Kipps, the woman in black herself.

 

Illustrated book cover of "The Turn of the Screw" by Henry James. The cover shows a dark and eerie illustration of a woman holding a candle in the foreground, with two children standing together on a staircase in the background, all in muted green tones.

The Turn of the Screw

By Henry James

By the comforts of a blazing fireplace on a cold Christmas Eve night, guests at a holiday party share stories of phantoms and ghosts of Christmases past. Yet one guest delivers a tale of sheer fright for which no one listening was prepared. As the story goes, after losing both parents, a young boy and girl move into a large wooded estate to be held under the care of their uncle. Wanting nothing to do with raising the children, the uncle hires a young governess to attend to their care. Yet the governess never could have anticipated the horrors that await her discovery. When it becomes evident that the children have some supernatural connection with a deceased former governess and her lover, the young governess finds herself scrambling to regain control of two children slipping away from her grasp.

 

 

The Only Good Indians

By Stephen Graham Jones

From New York Times bestselling author Stephen Graham Jones comes a novel that is equal parts psychological horror and cutting social commentary on identity politics and the American Indian experience. Fans of Jordan Peele and Tommy Orange will love this story as it follows the lives of four American Indian men and their families, all haunted by a disturbing, deadly event that took place in their youth. Years later, they find themselves tracked by an entity bent on revenge, totally helpless as the culture and traditions they left behind catch up to them in a violent, vengeful way.

 

A book cover for "The Lottery and Other Stories" by Shirley Jackson, featuring a collage of black and white facial fragments arranged against a grey background. The title is in bold black letters at the top, with a quote and an introduction by A.M. Homes at the bottom.

 

The Lottery and Other Stories

By Shirley Jackson

“Power and haunting,” and “nights of unrest” were typical reader responses. Today it is considered a classic work of short fiction, a story remarkable for its combination of subtle suspense and pitch-perfect descriptions of both the chilling and the mundane.

The Lottery and Other Stories, the only collection of stories to appear during Shirley Jackson’s lifetime, unites “The Lottery” with twenty-four equally unusual short stories. Together they demonstrate Jackson’s remarkable range―from the hilarious to the horrible, the unsettling to the ominous―and her power as a storyteller.

 

 

Book cover of "Revenge: Eleven Dark Tales" by Yoko Ogawa. The title "Revenge" is in large, distressed letters with a dark, scratched background. The author's name appears below with additional text: "A secret garden of dark, glorious flowers." - Joe Hill.

Revenge

By Yoko Ogawa

Sinister forces collide—and unite a host of desperate characters—in this eerie cycle of interwoven tales from Yoko Ogawa, the critically acclaimed author of The Housekeeper and the Professor.

An aspiring writer moves into a new apartment and discovers that her landlady has murdered her husband. Elsewhere, an accomplished surgeon is approached by a cabaret singer, whose beautiful appearance belies the grotesque condition of her heart. And while the surgeon’s jealous lover vows to kill him, a violent envy also stirs in the soul of a lonely craftsman. Desire meets with impulse and erupts, attracting the attention of the surgeon’s neighbor—who is drawn to a decaying residence that is now home to instruments of human torture. Murderers and mourners, mothers and children, lovers and innocent bystanders—their fates converge in an ominous and darkly beautiful web.

Yoko Ogawa’s Revenge is a master class in the macabre that will haunt you to the last page.

 

The cover of "House of Leaves" by Mark Z. Danielewski. The background is mostly black with a faint blueprint-like design. The title is in white and blue text, with a compass rose graphic below it. To the right edge, there is a colorful collage. The book is subtitled "A Novel.

House of Leaves

By Mark Z. Danielewski

When House of Leaves was first being passed around, it was nothing more than a badly bundled heap of paper, parts of which would occasionally surface on the Internet. No one could have anticipated the small but devoted following this terrifying story would soon command.

Now this astonishing novel is made available in book form, complete with the original colored words, vertical footnotes, and second and third appendices.

The story remains unchanged, focusing on a young family that moves into a small home on Ash Tree Lane where they discover something is terribly wrong: their house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.

Of course, neither Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Will Navidson nor his companion Karen Green was prepared to face the consequences of that impossibility, until the day their two little children wandered off and their voices eerily began to return another story — of creature darkness, of an ever-growing abyss behind a closet door, and of that unholy growl which soon enough would tear through their walls and consume all their dreams.

 

The cover of the book "Heart-Shaped Box" by Joe Hill, displaying the title in large red letters. Dark, ominous clouds loom over a deserted road flanked by trees. The tagline reads, "Sooner or later the dead catch up..." and it highlights the author as a New York Times bestseller.

 

Heart-Shaped Box

By Joe Hill

Aging death-metal rock legend Judas Coyne is a collector of the macabre: a cookbook for cannibals…a used hangman’s noose…a snuff film. But nothing he possesses is as unique or as dreadful as his latest purchase off the Internet: a one-of-a-kind curiosity that arrives at his door in a black heart-shaped box…a musty dead man’s suit still inhabited by the spirit of its late owner. And now everywhere Judas Coyne goes, the old man is there—watching, waiting, dangling a razor blade on a chain from his bony hand.

 

 

 

Annihilation book cover image

Annihilation

By Jeff VanderMeer

Area X has been cut off from the rest of the continent for decades. Nature has reclaimed the last vestiges of human civilization. The first expedition returned with reports of a pristine, Edenic landscape; the second expedition ended in mass suicide; the third expedition in a hail of gunfire as its members turned on one another. In Annihilation, the first volume of Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy, we join the twelfth expedition.

The group is made up of four women: an anthropologist; a surveyor; a psychologist, the de facto leader; and our narrator, a biologist. Their mission is to map the terrain, record all observations of their surroundings and of one another, and, above all, avoid being contaminated by Area X itself.

They arrive expecting the unexpected, and Area X delivers―they discover a massive topographic anomaly and life forms that surpass understanding―but it’s the surprises that came across the border with them and the secrets the expedition members are keeping from one another that change everything.


Posted: October 14, 2021

Categories: Book Lists, For Adults