Halloween Reading List: 30 Books for Spine-Tingling Stories

Traci Thomas, host of the podcast The Stacks, has released a list of 30 books to mark the Halloween holiday this weekend. The recommendations span fiction, horror anthologies, and true crime nonfiction. Thomas selected titles designed to create fear and tension for readers seeking a scare.

The fiction category includes 19 novels and short story collections. Stephen King’s Carrie appears on the list alongside Toni Morrison’s Beloved. Other authors include Agustina Bazterrica, whose novel Tender Is the Flesh was translated by Sarah Moses. Stephen Graham Jones contributes The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, while Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah offers short stories in Friday Black. Kim Bo-Young’s A Plagued Sea is also featured, translated by Sophie Bowman.

Additional fiction selections include Tananarive Due’s The Reformatory and Gerardo Sámano Córdova’s Monstrilio. Victor LaValle’s Lone Women and Jen Sookfong Lee’s The Hunger We Pass Down are included. Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby and Joyce Carol Oates’s Zombie round out the classic horror entries. Carmen Maria Machado’s short story collection Her Body and Other Parties is also on the list.

The list features three horror anthologies edited by prominent voices in the genre. Shane Hawk and Theodore C. Van Alst Jr. edited Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology. Its sequel, Back for Blood: Never Whistle at Night Part II, is also included. Jordan Peele and John Joseph Adams edited Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror. Cynthia Pelayo edited Something Followed Us Home: Tales of Latiné Horror.

The nonfiction section contains eight books focused on historical tragedies and true crime. Lizzie Johnson’s Paradise details a town’s struggle against a wildfire. Ben Wickey’s More Weight: A Salem Story and Wright Thompson’s The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi examine specific incidents. Philip Gourevitch’s We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families covers Rwanda.

Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry’s Helter Skelter recounts the Manson murders. Daniel James Brown’s The Indifferent Stars Above tells the story of the Donner Party. Heather Ann Thompson’s Blood in the Water examines the 1971 Attica prison uprising. Iris Chang’s The Rape of Nanking and Richard Lloyd Parry’s People Who Eat Darkness complete the nonfiction selections.