During the winter months, there is always so tempting just creeping back into the bed and read all day. And to get us through the long nights that are already scary, let’s look at some books that can help us be freaked out in the dark.
Thirteen Storeys
By Jonathan Sims
Publication date 24 Nov 2020
Synopsis
You’re cordially invited to dinner. Penthouse access is available via the broken freight elevator. Black tie optional.
A dinner party is held in the penthouse of a multimillion-pound development. All the guests are strangers – even to their host, the billionaire owner of the building . None of them know why they were selected to receive his invitation. Whether privileged or deprived, besides a postcode, they share only one thing in common – they’ve all experienced a shocking disturbance within the building’s walls.
By the end of the night, their host is dead, and none of the guests ever said what happened. His death remains one of the biggest unsolved mysteries – until now.
But are you ready for their stories?
Jonathan Sims’ debut is a darkly twisted, genre-bending journey through one of the most innovative haunted houses you’ll ever dare to enter.
The author from the wildly popular Bird Box, Malermann is back with a brand new book. And the plot of this book, if I may, sounds way more intriguing than Bird Box ever did.
Synopsis
From the New York Times bestselling author of Bird Box comes a haunting tale of mystery and love, as a boy and a girl on their first date discover a strange house at the bottom of a lake–and a secret that will change their lives forever. So many love stories begin like this: It is summer. It is a beautiful night at a lake in the woods. They are seventeen. And it is their first date. But no other love story ends like this. For Jim and Amelia find something even stranger and more magical than first love: Under the water and in the darkness, there is a house at the bottom of the lake. They can’t resist exploring it. What they find seems to be an ordinary house like any other on any street in their little town . . . except that it is underwater. But there is something inside it. Something that calls to them. Something that is telling them to come home . . .
If you liked the new rise of campy academical witch novels, this is probably for you. If you loved a Discovery of Witches, this looks like it will sort of be in the same type of universe.
Synopsis
In Gilded Age New York, a centuries-long clash between two magical families ignites when a young witch must choose between love and loyalty, power and ambition, in this magical novel by Louisa Morgan. In 1692, Bridget Bishop was hanged as a witch. Two hundred years later, her legacy lives on in the scions of two very different lines: one dedicated to using their powers to heal and help women in need; the other, determined to grasp power for themselves by whatever means necessary. This clash will play out in the fate of Annis, a young woman in Gilded Age New York who finds herself a pawn in the family struggle for supremacy. She’ll need to claim her own power to save herself-and resist succumbing to the darkness that threatens to overcome them all.apart, she clings to one purpose: to protect her children at any cost–even from themselves.
Ah the long summer days. At the beach, in the woods. Far away or close at home. Summer season is reading season and some horror books is just what we need to contrast the floral pattern people thinking about flowers and picking shells. Give us the blood, the gore and the eerily feeling of cold ghosts not even the sun can shine away.
This is a list of something new, and something classic. One can pick and choose now a days, and even the format. If you rather listen to the audio book version, this is included here as well!
Affiliation disclaimer. We are using affiliated links in these posts. that means if you purchase something through these links, we earn a small commission from it. And with that out of the way, let’s get to the good stuff!
It amazes me just how many that have watched this movie, but never read the book, or rather, didn’t know it was a book. So in that regard, this will be on every horror summer list until everyone have reached enlightenment. The interesting thing about this book is actually what happened to the writer of it. Benchley felt so responsible giving the shark its bad rep that he has no became one of its protector. He said in an article for the National Geographic published in 2000, Benchley writes “considering the knowledge accumulated about sharks in the last 25 years, I couldn’t possibly write Jaws today … not in good conscience anyway. Back then, it was generally accepted that great whites were anthropophagus (they ate people) by choice. Now we know that almost every attack on a human is an accident: The shark mistakes the human for its normal prey.”
Synopsis: Peter Benchley’s Jaws first appeared in 1974. As well as Steven Spielberg’s film adaptation, the novel has sold over twenty million copies around the world, creating a legend that refuses to die – it’s never safe to go back in the water . . .
It was just another day in the life of a small Atlantic resort until the terror from the deep came to prey on unwary holiday makers. The first sign of trouble – a warning of what was to come – took the form of a young woman’s body, or what was left of it, washed up on the long, white stretch of beach . . .
It is not everything of Gillian Flynn that I like, but I like, I really like. Sharp Objects is such a messed up book, and the description of the more gory stuff is gut wrenching.
Synopsis: Fresh from a brief stay at a psych hospital, reporter Camille Preaker faces a troubling assignment: she must return to her tiny hometown to cover the murders of two preteen girls. For years, Camille has hardly spoken to her neurotic, hypochondriac mother or to the half-sister she barely knows: a beautiful thirteen-year-old with an eerie grip on the town. Now, installed in her old bedroom in her family’s Victorian mansion, Camille finds herself identifying with the young victims—a bit too strongly. Dogged by her own demons, she must unravel the psychological puzzle of her own past if she wants to get the story—and survive this homecoming.
This is on the list because it is of one of the most anticipated series right now, and people better get to reading this before it comes out. Use this summer to it!
Synopsis: Chicago, 1954. When his father Montrose goes missing, twenty-two year-old Army veteran Atticus Turner embarks on a road trip to New England to find him, accompanied by his Uncle George – publisher of The Safe Negro Travel Guide – and his childhood friend Letitia. On their journey to the manor of Mr. Braithwhite – heir to the estate that owned one of Atticus’s ancestors – they encounter both mundane terrors of white America and malevolent spirits that seem straight out of the weird tales George devours.
At the manor, Atticus discovers his father in chains, held prisoner by a secret cabal named the Order of the Ancient Dawn – led by Samuel Braithwhite and his son Caleb – which has gathered to orchestrate a ritual that shockingly centers on Atticus. And his one hope of salvation may be the seed of his – and the whole Turner clan’s – destruction.
Needed to put in one of these enjoyable YA horror. It is set in the summer months of a small town, and it is a classic kind of bored high school students going to a haunted house on a dare. Plus, it has ghost hunters in it. Love it!
Synopsis: Cas Lowood is no ordinary guy – he hunts dead people.
People like Anna. Anna Dressed in Blood. A beautiful, murderous ghost entangled in curses and rage. Cas knows he must destroy her, but as her tragic past is revealed, he starts to understand why Anna has killed everyone who’s ever dared to enter her spooky home.
This really took off after the movie came out as well and is one of the many examples lately of why you shouldn’t go to Scandinavia for the summer.
Synopsis: In Adam Nevill’s The Ritual, four old university friends reunite for a hiking trip in the Scandinavian wilderness of the Arctic Circle. No longer young men, they have little left in common and tensions rise as they struggle to connect. Frustrated and tired they take a shortcut that turns their hike into a nightmare that could cost them their lives.
Lost, hungry and surrounded by forest untouched for millennia, they stumble across an isolated old house. Inside, they find the macabre remains of old rites and pagan sacrifices; ancient artefacts and unidentifiable bones. A place of dark ritual and home to a bestial presence that is still present in the ancient forest, and now they’re the prey.
As the four friends struggle toward salvation they discover that death doesn’t come easy among these ancient trees . . .
Did you plan on camping in the wilderness for the summer? Don’t bring this then – or do – if you plan on having no sleep and full on paranoia attack.
Synopsis: Once every year, Scoutmaster Tim Riggs leads a troop of boys into the Canadian wilderness for a weekend camping trip–a tradition as comforting and reliable as a good ghost story around a roaring bonfire. But when an unexpected intruder stumbles upon their campsite–shockingly thin, disturbingly pale, and voraciously hungry–Tim and the boys are exposed to something far more frightening than any tale of terror. The human carrier of a bioengineered nightmare. A horror that spreads faster than fear. A harrowing struggle for survival with no escape from the elements, the infected…or one another.
To proper celebrate summer season, we need to have a proper southern gothic on our reading list. And why not start with one of the now classics? A treat for horror fans out there.
Synopsis: After a bizarre and disturbing incident at the funeral of matriarch Marian Savage, the McCray and Savage families look forward to a restful and relaxing summer at Beldame, on Alabama’s Gulf Coast, where three Victorian houses loom over the shimmering beach. Two of the houses are habitable, while the third is slowly and mysteriously being buried beneath an enormous dune of blindingly white sand. But though long uninhabited, the third house is not empty. Inside, something deadly lies in wait. Something that has terrified Dauphin Savage and Luker McCray since they were boys and which still haunts their nightmares. Something horrific that may be responsible for several terrible and unexplained deaths years earlier – and is now ready to kill again . . . A haunted house story unlike any other, Michael McDowell’s The Elementals (1981) was one of the finest novels to come out of the horror publishing explosion of the 1970s and ’80s. Though best known for his screenplays for Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice and The Nightmare Before Christmas, McDowell is now being rediscovered as one of the best modern horror writers and a master of Southern Gothic literature.
Synopsis: When Roger Huntington comes home from college for the summer and is met by his best friend, Tooth, he knows they’re going to have a good time. A summer full of beer, comic books, movies, laughs, and maybe even girls. The sun is high and the sky is clear as Roger and Tooth set out to shoot beer cans at Bobcat Mountain. Just two friends catching up on lost time, two friends thinking about their futures . . . two friends suddenly thrust into the middle of a nightmare. Forced to fight for their lives against a sadistic killer with an arsenal of razor sharp blades and a hungry dog by his side. If they are to survive, they must decide: are heroes born, or are they made? Or is something more powerful happening to them? And more importantly, how do you survive when all roads lead to death?
The age old question. Should tourist go places or should they stay at home. Would the world be a richer place without tourists? The horror genre would at least be poorer as this is one of the many examples of horror when tourists steps on something ancient on foreign land they don’t understand.
Synopsis: Trapped in the Mexican jungle, a group of friends stumble upon a creeping horror unlike anything they could ever imagine.Two young couples are on a lazy Mexican vacation-sun-drenched days, drunken nights, making friends with fellow tourists. When the brother of one of those friends disappears, they decide to venture into the jungle to look for him. What started out as a fun day-trip slowly spirals into a nightmare when they find an ancient ruins site . . . and the terrifying presence that lurks there.
Are you tired of sitting inside, watching I Know What You Did Last Summer again and again to get a piece of horror, but still a summer feeling? Get some books and head to the beach, your back yard, the woods or the mountains, the parks or your favourite cafe. Horror in a book format can follow you everywhere.
Want to get some new horror books on your bookshelves but don’t know were to start? Look no further. This is a list of horror books being published this summer and that we are really looking forward to. Check it out to get some inspiration to what darkness you want to bring to the beach!
Affiliate disclosure: These titles are found on book depository which moonmausoleum are affiliated with. Any purchased made through these links, we earn a small commission from. And with that said, let’s get into the good stuff!
The Institute
By Stephen King
Publication date 14 Jul 2020
The King of horror is back, giving Maine a creepy reputation as always! This summer will give us a chilling tale from the woods and a tale of kids with scary abilities. A classic from King then!
Synopsis: Deep in the woods of Maine, there is a dark state facility where kids, abducted from across the United States, are incarcerated. In the Institute they are subjected to a series of tests and procedures meant to combine their exceptional gifts – telepathy, telekinesis – for concentrated effect.
Luke Ellis is the latest recruit. He’s just a regular 12-year-old, except he’s not just smart, he’s super-smart. And he has another gift which the Institute wants to use…
Far away in a small town in South Carolina, former cop Tim Jamieson has taken a job working for the local sheriff. He’s basically just walking the beat. But he’s about to take on the biggest case of his career.
Back in the Institute’s downtrodden playground and corridors where posters advertise ‘just another day in paradise’, Luke, his friend Kalisha and the other kids are in no doubt that they are prisoners, not guests. And there is no hope of escape.
But great events can turn on small hinges and Luke is about to team up with a new, even younger recruit, Avery Dixon, whose ability to read minds is off the scale. While the Institute may want to harness their powers for covert ends, the combined intelligence of Luke and Avery is beyond anything that even those who run the experiments – even the infamous Mrs Sigsby – suspect.
If this book is anything like the beautiful sci-fi Station 11, we are in for a treat. Emily St. John Madel truly has a way of poetic ways into genre writing, lifting the genre books to the heights were they deserve to be. Is she continues like this, I call for that she will contribute to change how we look at genre literature.
Synopsis: Vincent is the beautiful bartender at the Hotel Caiette, a five-star glass-and-cedar palace on the northernmost tip of Vancouver Island. New York financier Jonathan Alkaitis owns the hotel. When he passes Vincent his card with a tip, it’s the beginning of their life together. That same day, a hooded figure scrawls a note on the windowed wall of the hotel: ‘Why don’t you swallow broken glass.’ Leon Prevant, a shipping executive for a company called Neptune-Avramidis, sees the note from the hotel bar and is shaken to his core. Thirteen years later Vincent mysteriously disappears from the deck of a Neptune-Avramidis ship.
Sometimes books comes in a time were it seems fitting. Looking at how the situation of the world is today, this is one of those books we hope will reflect something deep from our time and the way we live today. Horror is good at that.
Synopsis: Ten years ago, four young men shot some elk then went on with their lives. It happens every year; it’s been happening forever; it’s the way it’s always been. But this time it’s different.
Ten years after that fateful hunt, these men are being stalked themselves. Soaked with a powerful gothic atmosphere, the endless expanses of the landscape press down on these men – and their children – as the ferocious spirit comes for them one at a time.
The Only Good Indians, charts Nature’s revenge on a lost generation that maybe never had a chance. Cleaved to their heritage, these parents, husbands, sons and Indians, men live on the fringes of a society that has rejected them, refusing to challenge their exile to limbo.
This look so promising, and we desperately need something from an alternative reality now. It is just as ridiculous and cool as it needs to be. This is definitely going on my summer beach reading list.
Synopsis: The new novel in the acclaimed alternate history vampire series from Kim Newman. “Compulsory reading… glorious” Neil Gaiman on Anno Dracula It is the eve of the new millennium, and the vampire princess Christina Light is throwing a party in Daikaiju Plaza – a building in the shape of a giant mechanical dragon – in Tokyo, attended by the leaders of the worlds of technology, finance, culture and innovation. After a century overshadowed by the malign presence of Dracula, Christina decrees the inauguration of an Age of Light. The world is connected as never before by technology, and conquests have been made in cyberspace that mark out new nations of the living and the undead. But the party is crashed by less enlightened souls, intent on ensuring that the brave new world dies before it can come to fruition. The distinguished guests are held hostage by cyberpunk terrorists, yakuza assassins and Transylvanian mercenaries. Vampire schoolgirl Nezumi – sword-wielding agent of the Diogenes Club – finds herself alone, pitted against the world’s deadliest creatures. Thrown out of the party, she must fight her way back up through a building that seems designed to destroy her in a thousand ways. Can Nezumi survive past midnight? Can the hopes of a shining world?
The Handmaid’s Tale meets The Village in this stunning feminist debut . . .
This is the line that got me exited. If this lives up to the hype, this is the book I’ve been waited on all my life that I never knew I needed. But anything feminism horror, I stand behind. Now, let it also be super scary.
Synopsis: Born on the fringes of Bethel, Immanuelle does her best to obey the Church and follow Holy Protocol. For it was in Bethel that the first Prophet pursued and killed four powerful witches, and so cleansed the land.
And then a chance encounter lures her into the Darkwood that surrounds Bethel.
It is a forbidden place, haunted by the spirits of the witches who bestow an extraordinary gift on Immanuelle. The diary of her dead mother . . .
Fascinated by and fearful of the secrets the diary reveals, Immanuelle begins to understand why her mother once consorted with witches. And as the truth about the Prophets, the Church and their history is revealed, so Immanuelle understands what must be done. For the real threat to Bethel is its own darkness.
Bethel must change. And that change will begin with her . . .
It looks sort of the perfect cross of back to the small time during summer holiday and look back to our childhood were it was always summer type of book. A new debut writer is always scary taking a risk on, but anything with the word wayward in it knows what’s up in the horror genre.
Synopsis: Their dangerous game became all too real . . .
THEN 1976. Loo and her sister Bee live in a run-down cottage in the middle of nowhere, with their artistic parents and wild siblings. Their mother, Cathy, had hoped to escape to a simpler life; instead the family find themselves isolated and shunned by their neighbours. At the height of the stifling summer, unexplained noises and occurences in the house begin to disturb the family, until they intrude on every waking moment . . .
NOW Loo, now Lucy, is called back to her childhood home. A group of strangers are looking to discover the truth about the house and the people who lived there.
But is Lucy ready to confront what really happened all those years ago?
An online magazine about the paranormal, haunted and macabre. We collect the ghost stories from all around the world as well as review horror and gothic media.
