4 Horror Novels to Read Before Halloween

by MK French

Did you answer our poll on Instagram about whether you prefer Scary Halloween or Fun Halloween? If you prefer reading something fun for the holiday, be sure to check out these 4 paranormal romance novels, but if scary is more your thing, keep reading for some horror recommendations.

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And the River Drags Her Down by Jihyun Yun

October 2025; Knopf Books; 978-0593904879
audio, ebook, print (400 pages); YA horror

Soojin Han uses her ancestral magic to bring her sister Mirae back from the dead. The entire town knew that Mirae had drowned, so she must hide. It doesn't bother Mirae at first, but she becomes restless and hungry. She wants to unravel the truth that crushed her family and get revenge. As the town is hit with increasingly destructive rain and unusual deaths, Soojin is forced to face the fact that perhaps the sister she brought back isn’t the one she knew.

The story hooked me in from the start. Soojin is used to resurrecting her pet rat, and we find out that it had once been her mother's pet rat. Her mother had died in a car accident years ago, so it makes sense that she wants this connection. Her family friend Mark Moon sees it and keeps the secret. He also kept the secret when she resurrected her sister in a bout of intense grief. She and Mirae were close after her mother's death, in part because Mirae had to take on a lot of her mother's roles in the family. Soojin is happier after Mirae comes back, but from the start, there are differences. We see them even if Soojin doesn't want to, and learn along with Mirae the secrets some townsfolk had kept from her family. 

I absolutely understand Soojin and her motivation. Even Mirae's are well understood, for all that she's no longer human. We learn about Korean water spirits and understand why she'd be so angry. There is all kinds of grief within and around the Han family.

Buy And the River Drags Her Down at Amazon

The Cold House by A. G. Slatter

October 2025; Titan Books; 978-1835412541
audio, ebook, print (160 pages); horror

Everly lost her husband and daughter in a lorry accident, and found out that her husband had actually been very wealthy. She moves to a house in the country that has a well in the cellar, an incredibly cold room, and her daughter's voice in her ears.

The grief is a palpable thing, and one that anyone who has known loss will recognize. Told from Everly's POV, the fugue states are part of the dissociation that are part of her grief. Going somewhere new on the advice of the lawyer lands her in a house-sitting situation in an old manor house. There are ghost sightings, old traditions in the town, and then the reappearance of in-laws she didn't know existed.

The novella is a story of grief, love, and survival. The lies her husband told were matched by her own, and Everly is a survivor above all else. There are echoes of horror movies and chilling tales, which the English countryside collects due to its age and history. Everly is a compelling character to follow through the story. I really enjoyed the story and the twist ending.

Buy The Cold House at Amazon

The Graceview Patient by Caitlin Starling

October 2025; St. Martin's Press; 978-1250340757
audio, ebook, print (304 pages); horror

Margaret has a rare condition that gets her a spot in an experimental medical trial at Graceview Memorial. As the treatment progresses and her body begins to fail, she stumbles upon something sinister within the hospital. But Meg isn't sure what's real and what's a medication-induced delusion. As everything seems to fall apart, she struggles to find a way out of the darkness lurking in Graceview's halls.

The autoimmune disease that Meg has attacks epithelial cells. This means skin, gut, and vasculature, making her incredibly ill at random times and at random severity. Friends and family think she's flaky, and it's hard for her to work consistently. The medication trial means she's in the hospital for months. The infusion hurts, has all kinds of side effects, and she sometimes hallucinates. The trial intends to destroy her immune system and then build up a new one, and it puts her into a dangerous physical situation. She gets close to one of the nurses, who describes a hospital as a living organism.

Told from Meg's POV, it gets very trippy as we see her hallucinations of the dead, of the drug study rep, and even getting sedated and restrained. I didn't think much of the rep at first, but his insistence on Meg staying in the study when she began to complain, weaponizing her poverty and lack of support network, made her subsequent illness suspect. Her resilience in the face of worsening illness and confusion made me root for her, and she still wanted to help others until the last page. The ending was a combination of hallucinatory vision and truth, adding to the predatory nature of the study and the medical team. It was a haunting ending, which I'm still thinking about. Medicine is supposed to run with the tenet of do no harm, but the investigation company clearly doesn't follow that belief. 

Buy The Graceview Patient at Amazon

One Grimm Night by Chad Nicholas

October 2025; Indie; 978-1956104103
audio, ebook, print (352 pages); horror

In the middle of a haunted forest, a group of strangers is stranded together in a small cabin. Everyone present holds deadly secrets, and even the cabin itself contains secrets. As people discover the truth, bodies begin to pile up.

The interior of the book includes artwork, adding to the atmosphere of the story. First, Red stumbles upon the cabin after being chased through the woods by a shadow, then a stranger, then a woman without hair. The old woman in the cabin takes them all in, and her cantankerous friend is grumpy and full of spite, making the unexpected guests uncomfortable. We find out a little bit about the three strangers and the two cabin residents, and the true horror begins at the halfway point. The feast, the history of the characters twined together, and then the finale itself are all cinematic set pieces that truly draw out how horrifying it is for the characters to be in the forest in the middle of the storm.

I zoomed through the book, drawn in by the mystery following the characters and how they were all related to each other. It pulled from several Grimm fairy tales and mixed them together into a new story of survival, curses, and personal horror. Definitely a great story to read in the run-up to Halloween.

Buy One Grimm Night at Amazon

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