Spooky Summer Reading Guide
Who says beach reads can't be a little terrifying?
Close your eyes and picture the platonic ideal of a “beach read” book. Colorful cover, lighthearted romance, probably selected for a celebrity book club recently, potentially written by Nicholas Sparks… you know the drill.
I’d like to propose, however, that there is no real seasonality to books, and that horror and mystery can make fantastic summer reading fodder. Now, sure, some spooky books just lend themselves best to curling up with a cup of cocoa and a cozy blanket by a fireplace in October (dark academia, for one, feels very autumnal to me).
But there are so many books filled with the type of sweltering, sticky, oppressive heat that makes people go just a little bit crazy. Southern Gothics, wilderness and folk horror, anything set in Appalachia—these things aren’t solely in the realm of October.
So without further ado, I’d like to share a roundup of beach reads with teeth—eerie, creepy horror and mystery novels where the summer heat may as well be its own character.
Mayra by Nicky Gonzalez
It’s been years since Ingrid has heard from her childhood best friend, Mayra. But when Mayra calls out of the blue to invite Ingrid to a weekend getaway in the Everglades, she impulsively accepts. They spend the weekend exploring the labyrinthine house, which holds as much mystery and danger as the swamp itself. Indoors and on the grounds, time itself seems to expand, and Ingrid begins to lose a sense of the outside world, and herself.
Turn Off the Light by Jacquie Walters
Edith is a healer, a woman of knowledge—and a woman watched. Terrified she has opened her home to the Devil, Edith makes a desperate choice. Four hundred years in the future, Claire returns home to care for her dying father and finds her childhood house… listening. As one sleepless night bleeds into the next, she becomes convinced something is stirring beneath the floorboards. As the danger mounts, Edith and Claire will discover they’ll need each other to survive. But they are separated by four hundred years. And time is running out for them both.
Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn
Reporter Camille Preaker faces a troubling assignment: she must return to her tiny hometown to cover the unsolved murder of a preteen girl and the disappearance of another. For years, Camille has hardly spoken to her neurotic mother or to the teenage half-sister she barely knows. Now, back in her old bedroom in her family’s Victorian mansion, Camille must unravel the psychological puzzle of her own past if she wants to get the story—and survive this homecoming.
Little One by Olivia Muenter
It’s been a decade since Catharine abandoned the sinister commune in Florida where she was raised, and she’s done her best to reinvent her life—until an email from a journalist interrupts her peace. Her first instinct is to ignore the stranger’s prying questions. But when she realizes the journalist knows far more than he’s letting on, she reconsiders. If Catharine can stay one step ahead of him, she may be able to find the one thing she never wanted to leave behind—her sister, Linna—and make sure her own secrets remain buried too.
The Witch’s Orchard by Archer Sullivan
PI Annie Gore’s latest case takes her to an Appalachian holler not unlike the one where she grew up. Ten years ago, three girls went missing from their tiny mountain town—and only one returned. Annie begins to track the truth, navigating a decade’s worth of secrets and folklore. But while the case may have been buried, echoes of the past linger. And Annie’s arrival stirs something into action.
The Antidote by Karen Russell
The small town of Uz, Nebraska is collapsing—not just under the weight of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl drought, but beneath its own violent histories. The Antidote follows a “Prairie Witch,” whose body serves as a bank vault for peoples’ secrets; a wheat farmer who learns how quickly a hoarded blessing can become a curse; his orphan niece, a basketball star and witch’s apprentice; a voluble scarecrow; and a New Deal photographer whose time-traveling camera threatens to reveal both the town’s secrets and its fate.
Marrow by Samantha Browning Shea
Years ago, Oona was kicked out of her mother’s coven, and gave up on her dreams of magic. Now, she’s carved out an ordinary life, but is filled with a deep longing. If she could only become a mother, then she will come into her magic. But after years of failed pregnancies, Oona is desperate. Out of options, she decided to return to the remote island where she was raised, to seek help from her mother, a dark, enigmatic witch who gives childless women the chance to become mothers. A gift, Oona soon learns, that hides a sinister darkness.
Junie by Erin Crosby Eckstine
Sixteen years old and enslaved since she was born, Junie has lived her whole life on Bellereine Plantation in Alabama. Her days are spent in service to the master’s daughter, while she spends her nights roaming the forest, consumed with grief over her sister’s sudden death. In the face of upheaval, Junie commits a desperate act that raises her sister’s spirit and sets Junie on a collision course with the plantation’s darkest secrets.
Brutes by Dizz Tate
In a scorched suburban Florida town, three thirteen-year-old girls orbit around the local preacher’s daughter, Sammy. But when Sammy suddenly goes missing, the girls discover a dark secret about their fame-hungry town and the cruel cost of a ticket out.
The Waters by Bonnie Jo Campbell
Dorothy “Donkey” Zook, the eleven-year-old granddaughter of an enigmatic local healer, spends her days searching for truths in the lush landscape of Michigan’s Great Massasauga Swamp. Little does she know, family secrets, passion, and violence are waiting in the wings to upend her idyllic childhood.
The Haunting of Paynes Hollow by Kelley Armstrong
As a child, Sam’s testimony helped convict her father of murder, leading him to take his own life. Her grandfather staunchly maintained her father’s innocence until the day he died. Sam is surprised to find that her grandfather left her the very cottage where these events transpired, with a caveat—Sam must stay at the cottage for a month to finally face the fact that her father was innocent, in her grandfather’s words. Plagued by nightmares of eerie figures crawling from the lake, Sam is forced to question everything she thought she knew.
The House Built on Alligator Bones by Sophia Huneycutt
After her mother’s death, Dartrine Beaumonth learns of long-lost wealthy relatives living in Florida. Confused but excited, Dart travels to her grandmother’s stately mansion for answers, just in time to stake a claim on an unusual inheritance: an alligator farming empire. Instead of a welcoming family, Dart is met with fierce competition, unsettling warnings of a family curse, and shadowy figures creeping through the mansion’s halls. As Dart uncovers the truth about her violent birthright, she faces a terrible choice—accept her place in her family’s grim legacy or forge a new path by slaying a different beast entirely.
We Hexed the Moon by Mollyhall Seeley
It’s the summer after high school graduation, and four best friends are about to be forced apart by their futures. Rather than process the world of expectations bearing down on them, they perform a ritual on the moon. They don’t expect it to actually work, but suddenly the moon is gone from the sky and at their sleepover, and she’s not interested in going back. As the August night unfolds, the girls scramble to find a human sacrifice to replace the moon before their world is plunged into chaos.
Make Me Better by Sarah Gailey
Celia is so tired of being alone. All she wants is to have a family―to belong to someone. That’s why she’s going to Kindred Cove for the annual Salt Festival held by the secluded community that lives there. They promise that healing is possible. They promise that transformation is inevitable. There is no grief at Kindred Cove, because there is no suffering. Celia’s ready to be healed. She’s ready to be transformed. She’s ready to believe.
Morsel by Carter Keane
Determined to lift her ill mother out of poverty, Lou, a first-generation college grad, accepts an assignment in rural Ohio. She quickly finds herself stranded in the middle of nowhere with something stalking her through the Appalachian woods. Sooner or later, Lou will have to face the fact that her job isn’t the only thing that wants to eat her alive.
In the Woods They Wait by Carrie Lee South
A park ranger in Devil’s Den becomes obsessed with the case of a missing child—a case that mirrors the disappearance of her own brother, whom she lost in the woods many years ago—and the possibility that both were taken by something vicious and unnatural that lives deep in the Ozarks.
Solace House by Will Maclean
In the summer of 1993, a broke college student joins a team clearing out a Victorian mansion bequeathed to the university by a reclusive hoarder. As the students delve deeper into the house’s secrets, one of them becomes obsessed with deciphering the owner’s strange journals and his promise of another world... and they may be willing to sacrifice everything, and everyone, to get there.
Diavola by Jennifer Marie Thorne
Anna always dreads her family’s annual vacations. Between her overbearing older sister, her chronically go-with-the-flow twin brother, and her passive-aggressive parents, there isn’t much to look forward to—but at least the villa in a remote Italian town seems just about perfect. Until the strange noises and unsettling warnings from the locals start, and Anna unravels the dark, violent past of the villa itself.
Herculine by Grace Byron
Herculine’s narrator has demons—literal and figurative. Nothing, though, prepares her for the new malevolent force stalking her through the streets of New York City. Desperate to escape this ancient evil, she flees to an the loving oasis of an all-trans girl commune in rural Indiana. Still, something isn’t quite right at here. Soon what once looked like an escape becomes a trap all its own.
The Summer of the Serpent by Cecilia Eudave
At a traveling fair, a young girl visiting with her family will ask a “serpent woman” to tell her future. The serpent woman’s answer is cryptic, but back in their neighborhood, the lives of the girl and her sister will be haunted by a ghost and a boa as their world shimmers between the real and unreal.
The Compound by Aisling Rawle
Lily wakes up on a remote compound alongside nineteen other contestants on a reality TV show. To win, she must outlast her housemates while competing in challenges for luxury rewards and necessities, like food, appliances, and a front door. As the competition intensifies, it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between desire and desperation. If Lily makes it to the end, she’ll receive prizes beyond her wildest dreams—but what will she have to do to win?
Starling House by Alix E. Harrow
Eden, Kentucky, is just another dying town, known only for the legend of E. Starling, the reclusive nineteenth-century author who disappeared. But now everyone agrees that it’s best to let the uncanny Starling House―and its lonely heir, Arthur Starling―go to rot. Opal knows better than to mess with haunted houses or brooding men, but an unexpected job offer might be a chance to get her brother out of Eden. As sinister forces converge on Starling House, Opal and Arthur must make a choice to dig up buried secrets and confront their own fears, or let Eden be taken over by literal nightmares.
The God of the Woods by Liz Moore
August 1975: a camp counselor discovers an empty bunk. Its occupant, Barbara Van Laar, has gone missing. Barbara isn’t just any thirteen-year-old: she’s the daughter of the family that owns the summer camp and employs most of the region’s residents. And this isn’t the first time a Van Laar child has disappeared. Barbara’s older brother vanished fourteen years ago, never to be found. As a panicked search begins, the secrets of the Van Laar family, and the blue-collar community working in its shadow, are unearthed
Godshot by Chelsea Bieker
Drought has settled on the town of Peaches, California. The area where fourteen-year-old Lacey and her alcoholic mother live, once a paradise, is now a barren wasteland. In their desperation, its residents have turned to a cult leader named Pastor Vern for guidance. Lacey has no reason to doubt the pastor. But her faith is shaken when her mother abandons her for a man she hardly knows, leaving her in the care of her apathetic grandpa, Cherry. As Lacey endures the increasingly appalling acts of men, she begins to uncover the full extent of Pastor Vern’s shocking plan to bring fertility back to the land.
Observer by Nicholas Russell
On a scorched summer day, Renata Scarborough comes home to find the contents of her estranged mother Corinne’s life on her doorstep. Her aunt and cousin seem eager to conclude that the troublesome Corinne is dead. Renata isn’t convinced and begins poring over her mother’s journals for answers. Among descriptions of Corinne’s work at the McNairy Observatory, Renata unearths descriptions of her mother’s encounters with a mysterious entity. Compelled beyond reason, Renata journeys to the now-abandoned outpost in the Nevada wilderness to search for the truth.
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Starling House is so atmospheric, I read it in almost one sitting!
Well looks like I’ve got my next ten books sorted