Spine-Tingling Horror Mystery Books

Just like his previous books The Whisper Man and The Shadows, Alex North’s The Angel Maker is both suspenseful and terrifying — which is exactly how we like it. In the novel, Detective Laurence Page investigates the brutal murder of a controversial professor of fate and free will. He finds the case points back to two older cases. The first relates to the violent attack on Christopher Shaw when he was a teenager. The second deals with an otherworldly serial killer who many believed could see the future. Perhaps not coincidentally, Christopher has now gone missing, propelling his sister Katie on her own quest for answers. A gripping murder mystery steeped in supernatural thrills, The Angel Maker is a “delightfully bone-chilling tale” (Kirkus Reviews).   

Just announced: North's next book, The Man Made of Smoke, is coming May 2025 and available to pre-order now!

Riley Sager is an expert when it comes to crafting frightful narratives, as evidenced by his many New York Times bestselling thrillers, such as Middle of the Night and Final Girls. Home Before Dark centers on a freaky Victorian estate called Baneberry Hall. Maggie Holt just inherited the manor from her father — who wrote an Amityville Horror–style supernatural tell-all about how he and his family fled the home in terror 25 years ago because of paranormal activity. Maggie returns to Baneberry to shine a light on its dark history, only to discover that strange occurrences still haunt its creepy corridors.

Horror mystery fans will love Marisha Pessl’s New York Times bestseller Night Film, which has a plot so layered and juicy, someone should adapt the book into a movie. The novel revolves around the death of Ashley Cordova, daughter of reclusive horror filmmaker Stanislas Cordova. Though the death was ruled a suicide, journalist Scott McGrath is convinced something sinister is afoot. Hungry for the truth, McGrath investigates the mysterious death, but soon he finds himself drawn into the Cordova family’s strange and shadowy world. 

In her instant New York Times bestseller, Alyssa Cole blends creepy atmospherics with a topical plot to thrilling effect. When No One is Watching follows Sydney Green, a born-and-bred Brooklynite who’s watching her block transform due to gentrification. But something’s different about this red-hot real estate rush, and what once looked like people moving to an “up-and-coming” neighborhood may actually be something far more malevolent. Sydney gets help from new neighbor Theo, and together they look into why lifelong residents are disappearing and whether something deadly is happening. 

The Deep is a spooky horror mystery from Nick Cutter, who also wrote The Troop and Little Heaven. The novel focuses on a horrific plague that starts with the infected forgetting little details before they lose sense of who they are and how to function. A top-secret lab built deep under the ocean’s surface searches for a cure and studies the potential healing power of “ambrosia.” But when the site goes dark, a handful of people venture into the deep to figure out what evil lurks below the waves of the Pacific Ocean. 

Jennifer McMahon’s The Invited is engaging, suspenseful, and packed with creepy chills. It also brilliantly subverts the haunted-house trope: Instead of being trapped inside a home plagued by the paranormal, the characters in the novel invite the spirits in by building a haunted house. In search of the simple life, Helen and Nate buy a plot of land in rural Vermont and begin constructing their dream house. Soon, however, they discover that the land has a violent history. Helen becomes obsessed with the legend of Hattie Breckenridge, who lived and died there a century before. As the building project continues, the couple begin incorporating unique materials and artifacts charged with Hattie’s history and are quickly pulled into the haunted mysteries of the past. 

Zoje Stage’s Baby Teeth is a “deliciously creepy read” (New York Post) that will keep you up at night, so if that’s how you like it, then don’t sleep on this Omen-esque mother–daughter horror thriller. The novel focuses on Suzette and her young daughter Hanna, who appears sweet to her father but is a little devil to her mother. Suzette is becoming increasingly frightened by Hanna’s tricks — in fact, she’s beginning to suspect that her daughter is sinister to her core. Are these childish games, or is her daughter evil incarnate? 

Blake Crouch’s New York Times bestseller was recently adapted into a series on Apple TV+, and it’s easy to see why — the narrative is twisty, cinematic, terrifically creepy. Dark Matter centers on Jason Dessen, a college physics professor who’s knocked unconscious by a kidnapper and awakes in a drastically different world where his wife is no longer his wife, he has no son, and he’s heralded as the genius behind a world-shattering breakthrough. Dark Matter is the kind of mind-bending narrative that will put your brain to work while raising all the hairs on the back of your neck. 

Another excellent book with “dark” in the title, Dark Places is a haunting gem from notable author Gillian Flynn. It’s a dark and mysterious thriller, much like her books Gone Girl and Sharp Objects, but also a deeply frightening horror story. In the novel, Libby Day’s mother and two sisters were killed by her teenage brother, Ben, in a satanic sacrifice. Decades later, a group called the Kill Club approaches Libby — who testified against her brother — with the hopes of clearing Ben’s name. Libby agrees to do some investigating for the group, but her travels take her right back into the crosshairs of a killer. 

Paul Tremblay’s The Cabin at the End of the World was recommended by Stephen King as the author’s “personal best” — high praise indeed! The novel centers on a home invasion at a remote lake cabin where young Wen and her parents are vacationing. The fate of the family is wrapped up with the fate of humanity in this deeply imaginative horror mystery, but we can’t give too much away beyond that. Let’s just say that the plot may give you nightmares for a while. 

We conclude our list with a creepy treat perfect for scary movie fans: Gemma Files’s Experimental Film, which won the Shirley Jackson Award. Files’s horror mystery book centers on Lois Cairns, a film teacher and part-time movie critic who stumbles upon a mysterious piece of silent-era film. She connects the footage to the work of Iris Dunlopp Whitcomb, a spiritualist who vanished in 1918. Lois sets out to prove Whitcomb was Canada’s first female filmmaker, but as she disappears into her research, she begins uncovering terrifying connections between Whitcomb’s life and her own.