The creepiest new novels to read this spooky season

If I became the dictator of the world I would introduce a new law which required every author who is actually good at writing to churn out one literary thriller a year.  I love a good murder mystery but I am often frustrated in my search to find ones where the prose isn’t so bad that it’s actively distracting (I would settle for competent!). Happily, God of the Woods by Liz Moore is a strong exception to this – it’s both an extremely fun, engrossing read and a classy affair, elegantly written and rich in its characterisation. 

Centred around two disappearances which take place at a summer camp in upper state New York, it’s part whodunnit, part coming-of-age drama, and part epic family saga about a cruel and snobbish upper-class dynasty. Even though it’s set at the height of summer, it would be a great Halloween read: there’s an escaped serial killer on the loose, for a start, which lends it the air of a spooky tale around the campfire. If there was some kind of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind-style procedure where I could erase the memory of having read this book, I would undergo that and then read it again immediately, which is about the strongest recommendation I can give. (JG)

If, like me, you’re too much of a baby for outright horror but would like to feel a bit unsettled and bewitched this Halloween then The Empusium by Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk may be the book for you. I loved this novel for its disorientating elements (of which there are many), its abundance of strange and haunting imagery, and the creeping sensation of foreboding. 

It’s the autumn of 1913 and Europe is unwittingly on the precipice of infernal warfare as the novel’s protagonist, Mieczyslaw Wojnicz, arrives at a health resort in the Silesian mountains. Suffering from tubercolosis (or so he believes), Wojnicz begns to engage in the institution’s various protocols and regimes. As life inside the resort becomes increasingly surreal, sinister forces are congregating and amassing in the dark forrests beyond. (ED)

Possession doesn’t always have to be supernatural, and monsters aren’t always just in fairytales. What’s scarier than one day waking up and discovering that the person you love has totally changed. You don’t recognise them and not only that, you’re scared of them, of what they might do to themselves.

In his memoir All Down Darkness Wide, Seàn Hewitt traces his boyfriend’s struggles with mental health as he descends into suicidal depression. In strikingly beautiful prose, he describes the visceral heartbreak and horror, the grief and the fear, of losing the person you love, even while they are still right there with you. “He was both the man I loved and the person who wanted to kill the man I loved,” he writes.

Amidst the memories and recollections, Hewitt explores religion and faith, loneliness, family and queerness. The book is full of ghosts, he’s haunted by past loved ones, phantoms of the city and the graveyards he wanders late at night, and queer figures from history including Gerard Hanley Hopkins, a Victorian poet and priest, whose poetry Hewitt returns to again and again as he tries to make sense of the world around him. (AP)

While it’s technically classed as a novel, Barrowbeck is really a collection of short stories, all set in the same bleak, isolated village in north-west England and spanning the prehistoric past to the climate change-ravaged near future. Hurley is the master of contemporary British folk horror, and Burrowbeck is pleasurable to read as much for its beautiful descriptions of natural landscapes and weather as it is for its horror elements. It’s more creepy and atmospheric than outright scary, but it contains some truly disturbing moments. (JG)

Evie Wyld’s new novel The Echoes follows Max as he haunts the corners of his old London flat. The thirtysomething creative writing professor has been killed, somehow, and is now wafting the hallways as a reluctant ghost, watching over his girlfriend Hannah as she reckons with her grief. But there are secrets that need to be uncovered, and it doesn’t take long for him to realise how little he knew of their relationship, and her dark, troubling upbringing. 

This isn’t a scary book, but the way Wyld paints death – in all its emptiness and futility – makes it one of the most chilling I’ve read in a while. (DS) 

I think this is one of the most disturbing books I've ever read. It gave me nightmares and I'm pretty sure that Bret Easton Ellis hates women. But it’s also gripping and horny and seductive and made me want to live in LA, even though I’ve been there and thought it was absolutely horrible. Anyway, the book is a fictionalised memoir of Bret’s final year at high school, where a serial killer is on the loose who likes killing pets and mutilating bodies in ways that are grosser than you could possibly imagine. 10/10 recommend! (TS)