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Spooky, not scary

Not every spooky season read needs to keep you up at night. These books lean on atmosphere, old houses, odd families and a little magic, with more shivers than gore.

Books to start with

  • Coraline

    Neil Gaiman

    A girl finds a door to a second home with an "other mother" and button eyes. Eerie, but short and told with a light touch.

  • The Graveyard Book

    Neil Gaiman

    A boy is raised by the ghosts of a graveyard. Macabre, but warm at heart.

  • Something Wicked This Way Comes

    Ray Bradbury

    A dark carnival rolls into town in October. Lyrical and unsettling, more dreamlike than bloody.

  • Practical Magic

    Alice Hoffman

    Two sisters from a family of witches, and a curse on anyone who loves them. Witchy, romantic and funny.

  • The Haunting of Hill House

    Shirley Jackson

    Four people stay in a house that is not right. Quiet dread and no gore, a classic of the haunted-house story.

  • We Have Always Lived in the Castle

    Shirley Jackson

    Two sisters shut themselves away from a hostile village. Darkly funny and strange, with a narrator you will not forget.

How to choose

Decide how much fright you want. Practical Magic is the mildest: witchy, romantic and often funny, though it touches on an abusive relationship and more than one death. Coraline and The Graveyard Book were written for younger readers but still have real chills. Coraline's button-eyed "other mother" is properly creepy, and The Graveyard Book opens with a murder before settling into warmth.

Something Wicked This Way Comes is ominous and poetic, set in late October, with menace that builds slowly rather than through gore. The two Shirley Jackson novels bring the deepest unease. The Haunting of Hill House is slow psychological dread with a bleak ending, and We Have Always Lived in the Castle has no ghosts but a poisoning in the family's past and a narrator as strange as the village thinks she is. Save those two for a night with the lights on.

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