Summer Scares: 18 Horror Books That Will Chill You to the Bone this Season

Looking for a summer horror novel that’s going to make you ask, “What the heck did I just read?” This is it. And I mean that in the best way. This book truly scared me. When Vera’s mother tells her to come home, she obeys, even though Vera hasn’t been back to her childhood home in years. Now, she will be forced to confront the horrible things that happened there — her strained relationship with her mother, the haunting memory of her serial killer father, and then there are all the bodies that he buried there. And while Vera thought most of these things were in the past, very real ghosts of her childhood still remain. What’s more, Vera keeps finding notes around the house written for her in her father’s handwriting.

In Haelsford, Florida, the Haunting Season is approaching. Logan is a new witch who has just arrived at Mesmortes Coven Academy and is immediately taken under the wing of the infamous Red Three: Iris, Talia, and Jailah. With the Haunting Season upon them, the witches must prepare for the arrival of the Wolves, who will rise from the swamp to kill. Every year, witches and humans must work together to fight against the onslaught. But this year, the stakes are higher as students at the school start turning up dead. And Iris, Thalia, Jailah, and Logan realize it’s up to them and them alone to stop the Wolves.

The Book Eaters is an inventive dark fantasy/horror novel about a secret group of people who live on the Yorkshire Moors. These people consume books as food and then retain all of a book’s information. Devon, the member of an old family of reclusive book eaters, has been raised like all other book eater women, eating a diet of fairy tales and cautionary stories. But there is a bigger world of dark, unhappy endings out there. This becomes all too apparent to Devon after her son is born with a rare a hunger for human minds.

Hell Hath No Sorrow Like A Woman Haunted is a debut short story collection from RJ Joseph. These stories focus on the Black women that are already familiar to us in our daily lives — the mothers, wives, business owners, creatives, and more who work harder than we could ever know to hold it together. These are women we recognize, but some of them are also victims. Some are monsters. And many of them are a little bit of both.

The Women Could Fly is a dystopian horror novel set in a world where witches are real and The State mandates that all women are married by the age of 30. If they are not married by then, they must enroll in a registry that allows for their every move to be monitored. 27-year-old Josephine Thomas has never known why her mother mysteriously disappeared. But now as Josephine nears 30 and still has no interest in getting married, she feels like she understands her more than ever. When Jo is offered the opportunity to honor one last request from her mother, Jo will leave behind the life she’s always known to feel a connection to her one last time.

Katrina Monroe’s queer gothic ghost story is set in a haunted place called Cape Disappointment. At least, the tourists say it’s haunted, and that’s why they keep coming. Meredith Strand’s mother, who is suffering from early stages of Alzheimer’s, is also convinced the ghost stories are real. She believes there’s something in the water. Something watching them. Waiting for them. And if Meredith isn’t careful, she, her mother, and her daughter, will all fall victim to the ocean’s call.

Three-time Bram Stoker Award-winning author Gwendolyn Kiste’s latest novel is inspired by the untold stories of forgotten women in literature. Set during the Summer of Love, Haight-Ashbury, 1967, this novel focuses on two men of classic literature, Dracula and Mr. Rochester, and the two women who survived them, Bertha and Lucy. Now Bertha and Lucy are undead immortals, and when Dracula and Rochester make a shocking return, these women refuse to be victims again. This time, they will have their revenge.

Tiffany D. Jackson’s White Smoke was my favorite YA horror novel of 2021, so I’ve been eagerly awaiting the release of this new novel all year. Especially because it’s a retelling of Stephen King’s Carrie. Madison Washington is a student at Springville High, a small high school in small-town Georgia. She’s always been the target of bullying, but things get much worse after her big secret is revealed: she’s biracial and has been passing as white, at the behest of her white father Thomas Washington. After a video that reveals the high school’s racism goes viral, Springville students know they have to rehabilitate their image. Their solution? Hosting the school’s first integrated prom. But of course the students’ intentions aren’t all good. They still have a few surprises for Maddy. And when Maddy reveals another one of her well-kept secrets, she’ll have a big surprise for them as well.

Sure, it’s still hot outside, but that doesn’t mean it’s too early for a snowy horror novel. Riley Kowalski is spending her winter break on a research trip to Antarctica, along with five student volunteers, a chaperone, and an impartial scientist. Their aim is to prove that environmental plastic pollution has reached all the way to Antarctica. But what they find instead is much, much worse. When Riley first notices their expedition leader, Greta, is acting strange, she writes it off as her overactive imagination. Then Greta snaps and tries to kill Riley before she completely disintegrates, and suddenly Riley realizes something has infiltrated the camp. And if they’re not careful, it could replace any one of them.

Best-selling horror author Josh Malerman is reinventing the slasher genre with his new female villain Daphne. For Kit Lamb, this is her last high school summer, which means it’s her last summer with the basketball team, the last summer with her best friend Dana, and the last summer before her life begins. But Kit’s world gets turned upside down when one of her fellow basketball players tells a ghost story about Daphne, a girl who went to their school many years ago and died under mysterious circumstances. Shortly after Kit hears the story, her teammates start to disappear. Are the stories of Daphne real, or is it all in Kit’s head? Either way, Kit will have to face her fears before this becomes her last summer — ever.

If the stunning cover of Clay McLeod Chapman’s latest horror novel doesn’t scare you, how about this synopsis? Erin and Silas have been in a tumultuous, on-again, off-again relationship for years. Erin knows that Silas is reckless and that her relationship with him is toxic, so she decides to end things with him once and for all. But then she learns that Silas has died of an overdose, and what’s more, apparently Silas had discovered a drug that would allow him to see the dead. Erin doesn’t believe in ghosts, but in her grief and guilt for abandoning Silas, she agrees to a pill-popping “séance” to ease her pain. Unfortunately for Erin, it appears as if the drug is real, and once she attempts to step into the real world, her visions of the dead refuse to let her go. Are the bloody and brutal images she sees all around her the effects of some powerful drug? Or is something more sinister at play?

We started with a bang, so let’s end with a bang. The Getaway is another one of my most-anticipated horror novels of the year, from one of my favorite YA authors, Lamar Giles. This book is about Jay, who is loving his life at Karloff Country, one of the world’s most famous resorts. He’s got good friends, a great family, and a job he loves, working after school at the property’s main theme park. The world outside might not be going so great, but inside the resort, people can escape from their problems. Little does Jay know what’s really going on. When the richest and most powerful families arrive and don’t leave, employees discover that the resort has been selling shares in an end-of-the-world oasis. As the world ends outside, the most powerful people in the world can remain safe and taken care of. And Jay and the rest of the resort’s employees will be the ones to care for them, whether they like it or not.