Haunted Houses: Mystery Book List

Slip behind the bleak walls and vacant windows of Netflix’s reimagining of the mansion of doom in this anthology of works by Edgar Allan Poe that inspired the limited series The Fall of the House of Usher. From well-loved classics like “The Raven” and “The Tell-Tale Heart” to lesser-known gems such as “Tamerlane” and “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” these collected tales have withstood the test of time, haunting readers for nearly two hundred years.

The mind-bending cult classic about a house that’s larger on the inside than on the outside. A masterpiece of horror and an astonishingly immersive, maze-like reading experience that redefines the boundaries of a novel.

Mexican Gothic meets Rebecca in this debut supernatural suspense novel, set in the aftermath of the Mexican War of Independence, about a remote house, a sinister haunting, and the woman pulled into their clutches …

A screenwriter, his wife, and their four-year-old daughter rent a house in the mountains of Germany, but something isn’t right. As he toils on a sequel to his most successful movie, the screenwriter notices that rooms aren’t where he remembers them — and finds in his notebook words that are not his own.

First published in 1959, Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House has been hailed as a perfect work of unnerving terror. It is the story of four seekers who arrive at a notoriously unfriendly pile called Hill House. At first, their stay seems destined to be merely a spooky encounter with inexplicable phenomena. But Hill House is gathering its powers — and soon it will choose one of them to make its own.

In a dusty corner of a basement in a rambling Victorian house in northern New Hampshire, a door has long been sealed shut with 39 six-inch-long carriage bolts. From the bestselling author of The Double Bind, Skeletons at the Feast, and Secrets of Eden, comes a riveting and dramatic ghost story.

An isolated mansion. A chillingly charismatic aristocrat. And a brave socialite drawn to expose their treacherous secrets … From the author of Gods of Jade and Shadow comes “a terrifying twist on classic gothic horror” (Kirkus Reviews) set in glamorous 1950s Mexico.

Down the road from a working-class British pub, along the brick wall of a narrow alley, if the conditions are exactly right, you’ll find the entrance to Slade House. A stranger will greet you by name and invite you inside. At first, you won’t want to leave. Later, you’ll find that you can’t. Every nine years, the house’s residents — an odd brother and sister — extend a unique invitation to someone who’s different or lonely: A precocious teenager, a recently divorced policeman, a shy college student. But what really goes on inside Slade House? For those who find out, it’s already too late. . . .

When Louise finds out her parents have died, she dreads going home. She doesn’t want to deal with her family home, stuffed to the rafters. But most of all, she doesn’t want to deal with her brother. Unfortunately, she’ll need his help to get the house ready for sale because it’ll take more than some new paint on the walls and clearing out a lifetime of memories to get this place on the market. But some houses don’t want to be sold, and their home has other plans for both of them …

In this enthralling and atmospheric thriller, one young family’s dream of a better life is about to become a nightmare. House of Echoes is a novel that shows how sometimes the ties that bind us are the only things that can keep us whole.

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.

In this masterpiece of modern American horror that inspired Stanley Kubrick’s classic film, Jack Torrance takes a job as the caretaker of the remote Overlook Hotel. As the brutal winter sets in, the hotel’s dark secrets begin to unravel.

Five strangers from across America are about to open the door to an unspeakable evil in this horror novel from Bentley Little, the “master of macabre” (Stephen King)! Now, their journeys are about to converge in a terrifying challenge to confront their nightmares — or be trapped inside them forever …

Sixteen never-before-published chilling tales that explore every aspect of our darkest holiday, Halloween, co-edited by Ellen Datlow, one of the most successful and respected genre editors, and Lisa Morton, a leading authority on Halloween. In addition to stories about scheming jack-o’-lanterns, vengeful ghosts, otherworldly changelings, disturbingly realistic haunted attractions, masks that cover terrifying faces, murderous urban legends, parties gone bad, cult Halloween movies, and trick or treating in the future, Haunted Nights also offers terrifying and mind-bending explorations of related holidays like All Souls’ Day, Dia de los Muertos, and Devil’s Night.

An eerie, masterful novel about pregnancy as a haunted house and the ways the female body has always been policed and manipulated, from the award-winning author of The Illness Lesson.

A missing God. A library with the secrets to the universe. A woman too busy to notice her heart slipping away. Populated by an unforgettable cast of characters and propelled by a plot that will shock you again and again, The Library at Mount Char is at once horrifying and hilarious, mind-blowingly alien and heartbreakingly human, sweepingly visionary and nail-bitingly thrilling — and signals the arrival of a major new voice in fantasy.

A young woman searches for the truth behind her uncle’s mysterious death in a town haunted by a restless ghost in this gripping novel by the New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Cold Cases.

A haunting thriller about a troubled married couple whose vacation to Paris leads them into a nightmare. Deftly weaving together two complex and compelling narrators, S. L. Grey builds an intimate and chilling novel of a disintegrating marriage in the wake of a very real trauma. The Apartment is a terrifying tour-de-force of horror, of psychological thrills, and of haunting suspense.