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  • General Recommendations
  • Staff-Created List

Most Popular Horror Books of the Past Five Years

Horror fiction, as a genre, can be fascinating to track over time. The scary stories that we tell ourselves often reflect the anxieties we’re living through as a society. Why do certain books catch on with a large reading audience? No one knows for sure. But it’s fun to speculate.

User from Laurel County Public Library

57 items

  • A lyrical and dreamy reimagining of Dracula’s brides, A Dowry of Blood is a story of desire, obsession, and emancipation. Available in other formats.
    Book, 2021Sheffield, United Kingdom : NYX Publishing, [2021]
  • A mystery about a woman working as a nanny for a young boy with strange and disturbing secrets. Available in other formats.
    Book, 2022New York : Flatiron Books, 2022.
  • After receiving a frantic letter from her newly-wed cousin begging for someone to save her from a mysterious doom, Noemí Taboada heads to High Place, a distant house in the Mexican countryside. She’s not sure what she will find—her cousin’s husband,…
    Book, 2020New York : Del Rey, [2020]
  • When a young woman clears out her deceased grandmother’s home in rural North Carolina, she finds long-hidden secrets about a strange colony of beings in the woods. Available in other formats.
    Book, 2019New York : Saga Press, 2019.
  • Catriona Ward's The Last House on Needless Street is a shocking and immersive read perfect for fans of Gone Girl and The Haunting of Hill House. Available in other formats.
    Book, 2021New York : Nightfire, 2021.
  • Fried Green Tomatoes and Steel Magnolias meet Dracula in this Southern-flavored supernatural thriller set in the '90s about a women's book club that must protect its suburban community from a mysterious and handsome stranger who turns out to be a…
    Book, 2020Philadelphia : Quirk Books, [2020]
  • In horror movies, the final girl is the one who's left standing when the credits roll. The one who fought back, defeated the killer, and avenged her friends. The one who emerges bloodied but victorious. But after the sirens fade and the audience…
    Book, 2021New York : Berkley, [2021]
  • The spellbinding new novel from one of our most fearless chroniclers of the female experience, Bunny is a down-the-rabbit-hole tale of loneliness and belonging, friendship and desire, and the fantastic and terrible power of the imagination.
    Book, 2019[New York, New York] : Viking, [2019]
  • Our story begins in 1902, at The Brookhants School for Girls. Flo and Clara, two impressionable students, are obsessed with each other and with a daring young writer named Mary MacLane, the author of a scandalous bestselling memoir. To show their…
    Book, 2020New York, NY : William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, [2020]
  • The creeping horror of Paul Tremblay meets Tommy Orange’s There There in a dark novel of revenge, cultural identity, and the cost of breaking from tradition in this latest novel from the Jordan Peele of horror literature, Stephen Graham Jones.…
    Book, 2020New York : Saga Press, [2020]
  • A young woman living in a rigid, puritanical society discovers dark powers within herself in this stunning, feminist fantasy debut. Available in other formats.
    Book, 2020New York : Ace, 2020.
  • In her quickly gentrifying rural lake town Jade sees recent events only her encyclopedic knowledge of horror films could have prepared her for. Available in other formats.
    Book, 2021New York : Saga Press, 2021.
  • A short, irresistible, and bittersweet coming-of-age story in the vein of "Stranger Things" and "Stand by Me" about a group of misfit kids who spend an unforgettable summer investigating local ghost stories and urban legends.
    Book, 2019[New York] : Penguin Books, 2019.
  • You knew a teenager like Charlie Crabtree. A dark imagination, a sinister smile--always on the outside of the group. Some part of you suspected he might be capable of doing something awful. Twenty-five years ago, Crabtree did just that, committing a…
    Book, 2020New York : Celadon Books, 2020.
  • If these novellas show King’s range, they also prove that certain themes endure. One of King’s great concerns is evil, and in If It Bleeds, there’s plenty of it. There is also evil’s opposite, which in King’s fiction often manifests as friendship.…
    Book, 2020New York : Scribner, 2020.
  • Twenty years ago, Stephen Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower made readers everywhere feel infinite. Now, Chbosky has returned with an epic work of literary horror, years in the making, whose grand scale and rich emotion redefine the genre.…
    Book, 2019New York : Grand Central Publishing, 2019.
  • An unspeakable crime. A confounding investigation. At a time when the King brand has never been stronger, he has delivered one of his most unsettling and compulsively readable stories. Available in other formats.
    Book, 2018New York : Scribner, 2018.
  • Meet Hanna. She’s the sweet-but-silent angel in the adoring eyes of her Daddy. He’s the only person who understands her, and all Hanna wants is to live happily ever after with him. But Mommy stands in her way, and she’ll try any trick she can think…
    Book, 2018New York : St. Martin's Press, 2018.
  • Devolution

    a Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre

    Brooks, Max,
    Part survival narrative, part bloody horror tale, part scientific journey into the boundaries between truth and fiction, this is a Bigfoot story as only Max Brooks could chronicle it—and like none you’ve ever read before. Available in other formats.
    Book, 2020New York : Del Rey, [2020]
  • Seven years ago, the Atargatis set off on a voyage to the Mariana Trench to film a “mockumentary” bringing to life ancient sea creatures of legend. It was lost at sea with all hands. Some have called it a hoax; others have called it a maritime…
    Book, 2017New York : Orbit, 2017.