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If you are looking for horror books to add to your TBR for the official start of Spooky Month, Libby has shared with us the most popular horror books checked out last month across the North American public library Space.
The list is full of great bestsellers and very popular horror books—there’s even a classic that was first published 128 years ago—but if you would also like horror written by people with different perspectives, here’s a post on recent BIPOC horror books to read this year.
It includes South Korean ghost stories (The Midnight Timetable: A Novel in Ghost Stories by Bora Chung, translated by Anton Hur), Nigeria-set horror (Futility by Nuzo Onoh), historical horror (Fiend by Alma Katsu), and a gothic romantasy novella (But Not Too Bold by Hache Pueyo). There’s also Indigenous horror (The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones) and gruesome dark academia (The Library at Hellebore by Cassandra Khaw).
Below are the 10 most popular horror books on Libby.
10. One by One by Freida McFadden
A twisty thriller full of betrayal that starts with a stressed-out mother’s minivan breaking down on a lonely dirt road…
9. Hidden Pictures by Jason Rekulak
From the publishers:
From Edgar Award-finalist Jason Rekulak comes a wildly inventive spin on the supernatural thriller, for fans of Stranger Things and Riley Sager, about a woman working as a nanny for a young boy with strange and disturbing secrets.
“I loved it.” ―Stephen King
8. Holly by Stephen King
From the publishers:
Holly Gibney, one of Stephen King’s most compelling and resourceful characters, returns in this chilling “exploration of grief and delusion, just pure undistilled evil” (New York magazine) as she uncovers the truth behind multiple disappearances in a midwestern town.
7. You Like It Darker by Stephen King
From the publishers:
“You like it darker? Fine, so do I,” writes Stephen King in the afterword to this magnificent new collection of twelve stories that delve into the darker part of life—both metaphorical and literal.
Finalist for the 2025 Locus Awards, and winner of the Goodreads Choice Award for Horror
6. The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix
From the publisher:
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 real monster.
5. Dracula by Bram Stoker
From the publisher:
Dracula is an 1897 novel by Irish author Bram Stoker, featuring as its primary antagonist the vampire Count Dracula.
Dracula has been attributed to many literary genres including vampire literature, horror fiction, the gothic novel and invasion literature. Structurally it is an epistolary novel, that is, told as a series of diary entries and letters. Literary critics have examined many themes in the novel, such as the role of women in Victorian culture, conventional and conservative sexuality, immigration, colonialism, postcolonialism and folklore. Although Stoker did not invent the vampire, the novel’s influence on the popularity of vampires has been singularly responsible for many theatrical and film interpretations throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.
4. Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix
From the publisher:
They were never girls, they were witches…
They call them wayward girls. Loose girls. Girls who grew up too fast. And they’re sent to the Wellwood House in St. Augustine, Florida, where unwed mothers are hidden by their families to have their babies in secret, to give them up for adoption, and most important of all, to forget any of it ever happened…
3. With a Vengeance by Riley Sager
From the publisher:
A haunted past. A train with no stops. Thirteen hours to reckon with the truth.
In 1954, Anna Matheson boards a luxury overnight train bound for Chicago that she’s commissioned, along with a list of names and a heart hardened by loss. Twelve years earlier, during the height of World War II, six people shattered her family’s life. Now, under a false guise, Anna has orchestrated a chilling reunion—trapping each of them aboard.
2. Never Flinch by Stephen King
From the publisher:
From master storyteller Stephen King comes an extraordinary new novel with intertwining storylines—one about a killer on a diabolical revenge mission, and another about a vigilante targeting a feminist celebrity speaker—featuring the beloved Holly Gibney and a dynamic new cast of characters.
1. We Used to Live Here by Marcus Kliewer
From the publisher:
From an author “destined to become a titan of the macabre and unsettling” (Erin A. Craig, #1 New York Times bestselling author), a haunting debut—soon to be a Netflix original movie—about two homeowners whose lives are turned upside down when the house’s previous residents unexpectedly visit.
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