Cozy Horror Books
Depending on whom you ask, the notion of cozy horror as a genre tends to receive mixed responses from readers. Die-hard horror fans may not embrace a more subdued approach to horror, but there are quite a few who do! In fact, some of the most popular “cozy horror” media in pop culture tend to be genre-blends. In mainstream media, movies and series such as Beetlejuice, The Addams Family, Interview with the Vampire, and even Scooby-Doo are classic examples of the spectrum of horror that appeals to a large demographic of viewers. While there will always be space for overt thrashers, monsters, aliens and the paranormal, cozy horror books allow readers to build up a tolerance for all things scary.
If you have a hankering for crunchy leaves, anything with pumpkin spice, and weighted blankets, these cozy horror stories will comfort you with the perfect balance of fear and delight.
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Add to BookshelfKiss Slay Replay
by Rachel Harrison
It’s the picture-perfect wedding weekend: The venue is dreamy, the weather is beautiful, love is in the air — and Willa Sullivan is having a bad time. A masked killer is terrorizing the reception and Willa has to fight to save the ones she loves and survive the night, but the killer is unrelenting. A final girl Willa is not. Or is she? She wakes up and it’s the morning of the wedding. After some uncanny coincidences, Willa comes to understand that she’s stuck in a loop of carnage and terror that she must learn how to escape or else suffer a fate worse than death — being an eternal wedding guest.
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$30.00Buy from Other Retailers:
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Don’t Open Your Eyes
by Liv Constantine
Societal horrors can be labeled as cozy, but that doesn’t mean they won’t have any jump scares. Imagine thinking that you have it all. The perfect career, the perfect family, and you lead the picture-perfect life. Suddenly, you find yourself the victim of recurring nightmares you can’t control. That’s what happens to Annabelle, who tries to downplay the frightening dreams at first. Maybe less coffee and more sleep with help? Soon, Annabelle realizes these dreams are not stemming from her unrestricted imagination. These horrific dreams are premonitions of her loved ones and their demise. Readers will be horrified as they try to put themselves in Annabelle’s situation.
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$20.00Buy from Other Retailers:
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Alice
by Christina Henry
From the national bestselling author of Ghost Tree comes a mind-bending novel inspired by the twisted and wondrous works of Lewis Carroll … “A dark, delightfully disturbing fall down a rabbit hole of madness and mystery. This is not your mamma’s Alice … If you’re looking for a book that will make you feel like you were just on a bender with the blue caterpillar, I highly recommend Alice” (R.S. Belcher, author of Nightwise).
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$12.99Buy from Other Retailers:
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How to Sell a Haunted House
by Grady Hendrix
Mix a haunted house with sibling rivalry and grief, and you have one intriguing paranormal, horror saga. Louise and her brother Mark are complete opposites of each other. Louise is ambitious, successful and has a lot on her plate, juggling motherhood and her career. When she is alerted that her parents have died, she dreads traveling back to South Carolina to finish their final affairs. Additionally, her brother Mark, who has never left the town their family is from, harbors resentment for his sister. Now, together, they have to work to sell their family house, but only if the house allows them to do so.
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$19.00Buy from Other Retailers:
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Little Rot
by Akwaeke Emezi
This high-octane story turns people’s desires into weapons of power as five people who are nothing more than acquaintances to each other find themselves intertwined in a fast-paced, dark thriller. Aima and Kalu are a couple that are on the verge of breaking up. One night, Aima and her friends find themselves flirting with the dark, Nigerian nightlife scene when they are swept up in the crosshairs of the wealthy and elite class who publicly denounce the acts they enjoy behind closed doors. This action-packed story combines depravity, antiquated societal expectations and temptations in a seductive web of fear.
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$17.00Buy from Other Retailers:
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Withered Hill
by David Barnett
An utterly bewitching, dual timeline folk horror novel, with a truly devastating twist you have to read to believe. “Haunting, shocking, and beautifully written, Withered Hill lures you into a strange town where everything is slightly off-kilter, and then invites you to try and escape. But you can’t. And neither will you escape the draw of this brilliant, almost hypnotic novel, which is one of my favourites of the year” (Tim Lebbon, author of The Silence).
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$18.00Buy from Other Retailers:
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Fiend
by Alma Katsu
Not everything creepy and scary is set in the past. In this modern horror-thriller, a powerful family is forced to reevaluate their standing once their longstanding luck turns into a deadly battle between family members. The Berisha family has been in the import and export business for years. Some say the key to their success lies in luck, but Zef Berisha knows better. As he prepares to pass the family business to his children with their appointed positions, his children aren’t so eager to embrace the family’s legacy. When their luck hits a snag, the siblings find themselves in a battle with each other and only the strongest will survive.
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$30.00Buy from Other Retailers:
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Things We Lost in the Fire: Four Graphic Stories
by Mariana Enriquez
Set in the beautiful and vivid backdrop of Argentina, this translated short story collection by renowned author Mariana Enriquez explores the societal ills that plague the beautiful country. From systemic structures that separate classes to surviving a dictatorship, this horror collection uses historical references, magical realism, and lived experiences to paint a chilling picture. Follow teens who turn to drugs to disconnect from their deadly reality involving a government-mandated blackout to women protesting domestic violence to fight against corrupt politics and the patriarchy. However, despite the real-world threats many of the citizens of Argentina face, there’s still the presence of black magic that looms amidst the constant turmoil of events.
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$28.00Preorder from:
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The September House
by Carissa Orlando
A woman is determined to stay in her dream home even after it becomes a haunted nightmare in this compulsively readable, twisty, and layered debut novel.
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$20.00Buy from Other Retailers:
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Rewitched
by Lucy Jane Wood
Of course, you can’t have a cozy horror list without a little romance. Belladonna is a bookish gal who is doing everything she can to keep her spiteful and incompetent boss from running their bookshop out of business. Between work and keeping up with her witchy rituals, she finds herself burned out. This all comes to the surface when her coven wants to convene for her 30th birthday. Now, the last thing she wants is for her coven to know she is losing her magic. But Belladonna gets lucky and lands herself an unlikely mentor just in time to fix things. You’ll be thrilled to welcome the fall in with this cozy read that has the right amount of darkness and spice.
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$19.00Buy from Other Retailers:
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The Telling
by Jo Baker
Not all ghost stories are the same, but sometimes the paranormal realm has a way of connecting people unexpectedly. Two women find themselves having more in common than they could ever realize, despite being two generations apart from each other. Rachel, driven by the grief of losing her mother, decides to sell her late mother’s old and secluded farm home in England. But once she arrives, she can’t shake the feeling that there’s an unexplainable darkness materializing. Rachel doesn’t discover that another woman lived in her home initially, but when she does, she struggles to connect how a housemaid in the 19th century is connected to her family.
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$15.95Buy from Other Retailers:
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The Haunted Librarian
by Auralee Wallace
A lonely librarian finds love, friends, and a few ghosts between the shelves in this cozy, paranormal tale from beloved bestselling author Auralee Wallace.
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The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years
by Shubnum Khan
Who doesn’t appreciate it when magical realism and fantasy get a horror makeover? Travel back in time to 1914 on the coast of South Africa. Meena dies tragically in her family’s mansion known as the Akbar Manzil, a celebrated estate throughout the land. Fast-forward to the present and Sana, along with her father, attempt to learn more about their family’s history after the death of their matriarch and her twin sister. Now, the daughter and father duo arrive at the Akbar Manzil estate, which is now updated into apartments. As they try to fit in with the peculiar locals, Sana continues to seek more clues to her family’s past and finds herself drawn to a mysterious locked room. Once Sana opens the door, she discovers a room seemingly locked in time with a grieving, lonely djinn.
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$18.00Buy from Other Retailers:
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This Cursed House
by Del Sandeen
Southern Gothic takes a sinister turn in this historical fiction speculative mystery read. Jemma is excited about the opportunity to start anew when she receives word of possible employment as a tutor with the prominent Duchon family. Jemma leaves Chicago to settle into her new job and life but is met with the scorching heat of New Orleans in the summer. While the locals are nice, she can’t help but notice how people look at her and treat her when she mentions the Duchon family. While the Duchons are a Black family from Louisiana, they all have passe blanc, distinct features, which adds a complex colorism aspect that is often considered taboo. As Jemma tries to save herself, she realizes that the Dunchon family is stuck in time – figuratively and literally.
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The Ghost Notebooks
by Ben Dolnick
When Nick Beron and Hannah Rampe decide to move from NYC to the tiny upstate town of Hibernia, they’re in desperate need of a change. So Hannah accepts a job as live-in director of the Wright House, a museum dedicated to an obscure nineteenth-century philosopher whose life was marred by tragedy. At first, life in this old, creaky house feels cozy. But as summer turns to fall, Hannah begins to hear whispers in the night. Then one morning, Nick wakes up to find Hannah gone. In his frantic search for her, Nick will discover the hidden legacy of Wright House: A man driven wild with grief, and a spirit aching for home.
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Vampires of El Norte
by Isabel Cañas
For readers who welcome a dark, chilling horror romance as the temperatures continue to drop, this unforgettable story will leave you wanting more. Set in Mexico during the 1800s, right before the events leading up to the Mexican-American War, both Nena and Nestor are childhood sweethearts who plan on marrying each other when they come of age. But their dreams come to a halt when a vampire attacks Nena, and Nestor is left to believe she is dead. Heartbroken, he leaves the ranch he grew up on but returns almost a decade later to discover that his Nena is alive.
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The Bewitching
by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Here’s a daunting blend of witches, dark academia, and horror for those who are ready to embrace slightly chilling reads. This multigenerational horror story centers on three women living in different time periods. First, there is Minerva, and she has dedicated her life to all things horror, with the help of her great-great-grandmother, Nana Alba. As she prepares for her graduate thesis, her ghastly research has put her on the path to a relatively unknown but influential horror author named Beatrice Tremblay. The more she learns about Beatrice, the more she discovers how strange the woman was. After unearthing her manuscript, she finds that there was a mysterious and beautiful roommate that the horror alumni author shared living quarters with while attending university. Between the manuscript and the stories her Nana Alba has passed down to her, Minerva believes whatever dark spirit that followed Beatrice still lives on campus with her now.
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Come Out, Come Out
by Natalie C. Parker
A spine-tingling LGBTQIA+ YA horror about queer teens who accidentally invoke a twisted spirit who promises help but delivers something sinister. This delightfully dark and pointed novel calls out the systems that erase gay and queer and trans identity, giving space to embrace queerness and to unleash the power of friendship and found family against the real monsters in the world.
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$19.99Buy from Other Retailers:
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Island Witch
by Amanda Jayatissa
Embrace a touch of fear in a novel that seamlessly bridges tradition, mystery, and horror in 19th-century Sri Lanka. Amara has not had an easy life because she is the daughter of her village’s demon-priest. She has enough self-awareness to navigate her people despite their ridicule of her. However, as more British colonizers invade Sri Lanka, their customs begin to negatively affect the natives. Both she and her father become outcasts to their own people as the villagers embrace European customs. But something is preying on locals in the jungles and to survive, Amara will have to embrace her talents to save herself and her community.
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The Unhaunting
by Micaiah Johnson
At the end of the Civil War, a daughter of the Confederacy made what she thought was an innocent wish: To build a house where nothing bad could happen. But peace came at a price, and one hundred and seventy years later Shantell and her friends are about to discover where all that darkness ended up …
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$28.00Preorder from:
