Creepy Suspense Books That Will Leave You Chilled

Many years ago, Katie Shaw’s little brother Christopher was horribly attacked. Now he’s gone missing, and some unknown threat is back to torment her family once again. Meanwhile, a professor of fate and free will is brutally murdered, and it’s up to Detective Laurence Page to piece together the clues. But the deeper he digs, the more he’s pulled back towards the assault on young Christopher and the crime spree of a ghoulish serial killer who, as legend has it, could see into the future. Alex North is the bestselling thriller author of The Shadows and The Whisper Man. Like its predecessors, The Angel Maker will rattle your nerves and keep you riveted until the last page is turned.

In Peter Nichols’s twisted murder mystery Granite Harbor, a serial killer stalks a once-sleepy town in coastal Maine after a teen’s body is found at a historical archeological site. Determined to get to the bottom of things and protect their own kids, Alex and Isabel begin digging for the truth — but they may unbury more than they bargained for.

Alex Michaelides’ #1 New York Times bestseller The Silent Patient is a page-turning debut novel about an artist who shoots her husband then mysteriously stops talking. Her psychotherapist obsesses over unraveling the mystery of this silent patient right until the book’s shocking twist. Michaelides is a master at crafting pulse-racing narratives steeped in suspense. For more of his thrilling works, check out his follow-ups, The Maidens and The Fury.

Eileen Dunlop narrates the story of how she disappeared in this darkly funny and wonderfully creepy novel by Ottessa Moshfegh. With an unfulfilling job and a less than thrilling home situation, Eileen gets by on her twisted fantasies — until an enthralling new relationship brings real twists to her life. Set against a snowy holiday backdrop, Eileen isn’t what we’d call cheery — but it sure is deliciously suspenseful fun.

Let the festivities commence in Lucy Foley’s propulsive psychological thriller The Midnight Feast. It’s opening night at a hot new luxury resort, but darkness lurks on the periphery. Every guest has a secret, and as the night heats up, tensions threaten to boil over. Not everyone is going to leave happily from this wild summer night party — in fact, some won’t be leaving at all.

In Jennifer McMahon’s paranormal suspense novel The Winter People, a teen girl finds herself swept up in a century-old mystery after her mother goes missing from their spooky Vermont farmhouse. Turns out, this isn’t the first eerie occurrence to strike the country abode. With a dead woman’s 100-year-old diary in her possession, Ruthie is in a race to find her missing mother and stop the past from coming back to haunt her.

In the chilling Home Before Dark, Riley Sager pens a quintessential American horror story, drawing on our morbid fascination with haunted houses. Evil lurks, but where is it coming from? Find out in this nerve-wracking tale.

This spine-tingling thriller follows a woman on the hunt for the man who killed her family when she was a child. For those who love diving into a killer story, Catherine Ryan Howard’s petrifying book is no trick, all treat.

In Tana French’s newest mysterious thriller The Searcher, a retired detective moves to a remote Irish village, never expecting to get drawn into a dark and ominous mystery. But then a local boy goes missing and, well, you know how it goes from there.

This unnerving novel centers around four American Indian men, dealing with the resurgence of an ominous event from their youth. Here, Stephen Graham Jones draws on both drama and social commentary to tell a brutal, terrifying tale.

The titular resident in David Jackson’s latest psychological thriller is a serial killer on the run. He discovers an abandoned terrace house with an attic connected to three other houses next door. Which means, he’s not only found the perfect hideout; he’s also found his next victims.

In Wendy Walker’s Don’t Look for Me, a woman returns to the small, desolate town where her mother was last seen years before. Horrifying secrets abound, and, like in every good psychological thriller, a disappearance is never what it seems.

In Watching from the Dark, a woman is murdered while on a video call with her boyfriend, which makes this a macabre story for the current era. But it still contains the elements of a good thriller: a small-town detective and twists and turns that will leave you chilled.

Bram Stoker Award-winner Paul Tremblay’s Survivor Song is a suspenseful and disturbing story about a rabies-like virus spread by saliva. In this day and age, a thriller focused on societal chaos in the face of mysterious illness might be the most horrific of them all.