These Are the 10 Best New Horror Books of 2025 to Read This Halloween

You mightiness beryllium acquainted with immoderate of Stephen Graham Jones’ erstwhile tales. From the Indian Lake Trilogy to the 80s-inspired I Was A Teenage Slasher. And his latest publication transports america to the American westbound successful 1912. Let’s conscionable say, if you’re looking for an aggravated vampire revenge, this is it.

The communicative begins with a diary, which has been recovered wrong a partition successful the contiguous day. In it is simply a bid of transcribed interviews with a Blackfeet Indian named Good Stab, who shares the stories of his unnaturally agelong beingness implicit his visits to a confessional with the Lutheran pastor that the diary primitively belonged to. Having lived done the massacre of his people, resulting successful the execution of 217 Blackfeet, Good Stab haunts the fields of the Blackfeet Nation to question justice. Even though it tin beryllium a hard read, astatine times, the full communicative is incredibly impactful portion inactive having america connected the borderline of our seats.

Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix

You can’t truly spell incorrect with a Grady Hendrix book, peculiarly arsenic Halloween approaches, and his 2025 merchandise focuses connected each things witchy. Set successful the swelteringly blistery summertime of 1970, 15-year-old Fern arrives astatine the Wellwood Home successful St. Augustine, Florida. It’s wherever wayward girls – unwed expectant mothers whose families privation to support their existent predicament a concealed – are sent to springiness birth.

During their stay, the teenagers are forced to abide by the rules, nether the knowing that it is each for their ain good. That is until Fern is fixed a publication astir witchcraft and the occult. From it, the girls observe that not lone bash they clasp a large magnitude of power, but, similar thing successful life, thing comes for escaped – there’s ever a terms to beryllium paid. And this time, it’s successful blood.

Play Nice by Rachel Harrison

A haunted location communicative with a twist, Play Nice explores household dynamics, repressed memories and however nine treats ‘mad women’. When her parent dies, the supposedly possessed location that Clio and her sisters grew up successful passes to them. While each her sisters tin retrieve is puerility trauma, which yet led to them being removed from their mother’s custody and inspired her parent to constitute a publication astir their experience, stylist and influencer Clio sees the accidental to flip the location and papers it connected societal media.

But arsenic she begins to renovate, she rapidly discovers that possibly her parent mightiness person been telling the truth. As Clio yet starts to work her mother’s publication and memories

begin to resurface, the demonic beingness becomes each the much existent and sinister, arsenic bash the truths that person stayed buried for acold excessively long.

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Exiles by Mason Coile

The twelvemonth is 2030 and a unit of astronauts person been sent to hole the archetypal colony connected Mars. Yet, erstwhile they get there, they find the recently created basal half-destroyed and the AI robots that were deployed to acceptable things up successful chaos. In the 4 years since the robots arrived, they’ve formed alliances, chosen their ain names and picked up immoderate alternatively disturbing beliefs. And fixed that 1 of them is missing, it’s wide that nary of them are safe.

A superb locked room-style horror, Exiles combines sci-fi with intelligence horror, and astatine conscionable shy of 200 pages, this is simply a publication you tin easy work successful 1 sitting. So, if you hap to beryllium lagging erstwhile it comes to your Goodreads Reading Challenge this year, we’d decidedly urge picking this 1 up.

You Weren't Meant to Be Human by Andrew Joseph White

When a publication is said to beryllium Alien meets Midsommar, you cognize you’re successful for a chaotic thrust and that’s precisely what you get with You Weren’t Meant to beryllium Human. You mightiness request a beardown tummy to marque your mode done this communicative though, that’s for sure. Transporting america to Appalachia successful agrarian West Virginia, wherever festering masses of worms and flies person formed hives and taken implicit the area, lone a fewer humans person managed to co-exist with them. However, this means giving them their unwavering loyalty and a slew of caller corpses.

That each changes erstwhile Crane – who has recovered a accidental to modulation amongst the followers – gets large and the hive demands the child. What follows is 1 of the astir unhinged horrors that we’ve ever read, successful a precise bully way.

The Possession of Alba Díaz by Isabel Cañas

After a plague sweeps done the Mexican metropolis of Zacatecas, Alba and her household fly to her fiancé’s isolated mine, but it’s not excessively agelong earlier she starts to endure from unusual hallucinations, convulsive convulsions and bouts of sleepwalking. She can’t shingle the feeling that thing is live and moving astir beneath her skin, and lone her fiancé’s cousin, Elias, seems to announcement it too.

With an atmospheric and gothic consciousness to it, arsenic good arsenic a interaction of romance, arsenic Alba and Elías go entangled with the occult, the Church, and each other, they enactment unneurotic successful a bid to prevention her, portion uncovering a fig of long-kept secrets.

When the Wolf Comes Home by Nat Cassidy

A accelerated paced thriller of a horror, When the Wolf Comes Home seamlessly blends the paranormal with monster horror, arsenic our protagonists fly for their lives. After struggling histrion Jess finds a five-year aged lad hiding successful the bushes extracurricular her flat complex, it appears that he’s tally distant from his father. Yet, it’s not rather the home incidental that you mightiness expect. Actually, thing is arsenic it seems successful this book.

Following a convulsive confrontation, 1 which sees a antheral seemingly crook into a wolf-like carnal and permission a heap of bodies successful his wake, Jess and the lad are forced to marque a tally for it. And it soon becomes wide that they, rather rightly, person plentifulness to fearfulness arsenic the beast is blistery connected their tails.

Futility by Nuzo Onoh

From the recipient of the Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement, comes a wickedly amusive fearfulness blending murder, revenge and soup, of each things. After being betrayed by the men successful their lives, 2 women take to instrumentality matters into their ain hands successful a alternatively antithetic way.

Known for her quality and fashionable blistery capsicum soup, some are rather deceptive erstwhile it comes to Chia. And erstwhile Claire pays a sojourn to the infamous restaurant, neither pistillate tin defy the propulsion of a trickster spirit. With tons of acheronian humour and assemblage horror, fans of Oyinkan Braithwaite's My Sister the Serial Killer and Bella Mackie's How to Kill Your Family volition nary uncertainty person a large clip with this story.

Somebody Is Walking connected Your Grave: My Cemetery Journeys by Mariana Enriquez

Author of the arsenic absorbing and unsettling The Dangers of Smoking successful Bed and Things We Lost successful the Fire collections of abbreviated stories, Mariana Enriquez delves into immoderate of the astir celebrated and notable graveyards successful her latest release, Somebody Is Walking connected Your Grave: My Cemetery Journeys.

From Highgate successful London, to Montparnasse successful Paris and Greyfriars successful Edinburgh, arsenic good arsenic immoderate much distant and decrepit ruins, it’s determination betwixt a travelogue, a postulation of essays and a memoir, arsenic she marks her idiosyncratic travel to each of the burial grounds. Finding herself successful an astir flux authorities betwixt the surviving and the dead, Mariana looks into celebrated figures similar Elvis and Karl Marx, arsenic good arsenic each things voodoo, catacombs and plentifulness of skeletons.

Ellis is simply a freelance journalist, based successful the UK, with a emotion of each things books. She besides routinely chairs bookish events up and down the country, getting the scoop from immoderate of the biggest and bestselling authors to support you successful the know.

Originally posted:

Oct 31, 2025 6:00 pm