Books to Make You Scared (Fiction and Nonfiction)
Some books don’t just tell a story—they get under your skin. The best scary reads linger long after you’ve turned the last page, keeping you wide awake and checking the shadows.
If you’re the kind of reader who loves a spine-tingling thrill, you’re in the right place. These books to make you scared aren’t just creepy—they’re gripping, unforgettable, and deliciously chilling. They speak to our deepest fears, whether supernatural or all too real.
Ready for your next haunting read? Dive into this lineup that proves sometimes the best books are the ones that leave the lights on.
The Buffalo Hunter Hunter
by Stephen Graham Jones
Blending together elements of horror and the supernatural with the complexity of historical fiction, the master of horror, Stephen Graham Jones tells a bone chilling tale that will leave you scared and uneasy.. This isn’t horror for shock value, instead Jones makes you confront history’s violence and what it leaves behind. By the end, you’ll have to ask yourself, is it the horrors of the supernatural or of mankind that scare you the most.
The novel unfolds through the diary entries of a white pastor named Arthur, who records the confessions of a Blackfeet man named Good Stab. What becomes known as The Gospel of Good Stab, the testimony reveals his violent, bloody, and vengeful past, as well as his strange encounters with the supernatural, particularly the terrifying Cat Man.
Tender Is the Flesh
by Agustina Bazterrica - Sarah Moses
In a world where animal meat becomes deadly to consume, Bazterrica tells a story of how we normalize the horrors of the world. What follows is a grotesque and disturbing story that will test your fortitude as much as it will your conscience. This isn’t a gory horror of death, but an unsettling story about consumption. Because when animals are off the table, that leaves only one alternative option, and everyone is always craving a perfectly cooked slab of meat.
Through Marcos, a factory worker trying to stay numb, keep his head down, and do his job in the human meat industry. When he is given a live “specimen,” he is forced to choose between survival and humanity. This book doesn’t just scare you; it unsettles you, it lingers, and it sits on your conscience.
Dark Archives: A Librarian's Investigation Into the Science and History of Books Bound in Human Skin
by Megan Rosenbloom
Among the shelves of the world’s great libraries lie books far stranger than fiction—bound not in leather or cloth, but in human skin. In Dark Archives, librarian and journalist Megan Rosenbloom investigates the disturbing practice of anthropodermic bibliopegy, unearthing the history of doctors, criminals, and forgotten lives sewn into these grim volumes.
Part history, part science, part true crime, Rosenbloom’s work peels back the myths to reveal the unsettling truths of how these books were made and why they endure. Captivating, macabre, and rigorously researched, Dark Archives forces readers to confront mortality, memory, and the haunting reality that sometimes the horror is right there in our hands.
Redhanded: An Exploration of Criminals, Cannibals, Cults, and What Makes a Killer Tick
by Suruthi Bala - Hannah Maguire
Based on their award-winning podcast, co-hosts Suruthi Bala and Hannah Maguire dig into cases of killers, cults, and cannibals. However they don’t set out to shock, but instead to unravel what really makes a murderer. Are killers born or made?
Through meticulous research and interviews with criminologists, psychologists, and forensic experts, Bala and Maguire explore the thin line between ordinary life and extraordinary violence. Equal parts gripping and disturbing, RedHanded will leave you unsettled, fascinated, and maybe even questioning the shadows in your own neighborhood.
The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II
by Iris Chang
Some horrors are too great to be confined to history, and The Rape of Nanking makes sure we don’t look away. In 1937, Japanese forces invaded the Chinese city of Nanking and unleashed seven weeks of looting, torture, rape, and mass murder, leaving more than 250,000 civilians dead. Officially denied for decades, this atrocity is brought into sharp, unforgettable focus by Iris Chang, whose own family survived the massacre.
Told through the voices of victims, perpetrators, and the unlikely heroes who risked everything to save lives, Chang’s account is both devastating and necessary. It’s a book that doesn’t just record history, it shows you the horror and it forces you to reckon with it. The sheer brutality described here is more shocking than any fiction you might find.
We Used to Live Here
by Marcus Kliewer
A fixer-upper becomes a nightmare in Marcus Kliewer’s debut, where a young couple learns that some houses never let go of their past. When the previous residents show up asking to take a look around, a polite favor turns into something far more sinister. The family won’t leave, the walls feel alive, and reality itself begins to warp.
As shadows gather in the basement and people begin to vanish, Eve realizes the house—and the strangers inside it—may be unraveling her sanity. Claustrophobic and deeply unsettling, this book is a slow spiral into terror that proves the scariest hauntings are the ones you invite in.
The Dangers of Smoking in Bed: Stories
by Mariana Enriquez - Megan McDowell
This isn’t just a collection of horror stories, it is a look into the realities of urban Argentina with a touch of the supernatural. It is part social critique, and part horror that will leave you with stomach-churning dread. Enriquez doesn’t just write scary stories, she digs up the rot of everyday life and forces you to stare at it.
These tales are carefully crafted by Enriquez in a way that is grotesque and hypnotic and impossible to put down. From a woman obsessed with the rhythm of the human heart to vengeful games that turn deadly, there is a hunger, obsession, and pulse in every page. Disturbing and compulsively readable, the weight of history throughout, this collection proves that terrifying stories aren’t the loudest, but the soft whispers that follow you home.
The Haunting of Hill House
by Shirley Jackson - Laura Miller
Few haunted house stories have stood the test of time like Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House. Four strangers arrive at the notorious estate hoping for answers—an occult scholar, his assistant, a lonely young woman, and the heir to the property. What they find instead is a house alive with malice, biding its time until it claims someone as its own.
With unnerving precision, Jackson turns creaking walls and unseen forces into pure psychological terror. Eleanor’s fragile mind, Hill House’s suffocating presence, and the thin line between madness and haunting make this novel as chilling today as it was in 1959. This isn’t just a ghost story—it’s the blueprint for modern horror, a reminder that sometimes the scariest thing isn’t the house at all, but what it awakens in us.