14 New Scary Books For Fall 2025, From Thrillers To Straight-Up Horror

It's 1765, and there's a terrible plague in Zacatecas. Along with her wealthy merchant parents and her fiancé, Carlos, Alba takes shelter in Carlos' parents' silver mine. There she begins experiencing strange hallucinations, and she has the sense that something new and dangerous is lurking inside of her. Meanwhile, Carlos' cousin Elías is grappling with his own troubled past, and now he's forced into close quarters with Alba, whom he can't help but feel drawn to. And that makes him the first to notice that something might be wrong with her.

Kesta was a pathologist before the zombie virus spread, taking out much of London’s population, including her own husband, Tim. But unlike other zombies who were rounded up and done away with, Kesta keeps Tim hidden and barely alive in the spare room of her flat. She’s determined to join Project Dawn, an underground lab tasked with finding the cure — it’s her last chance to save Tim. But just how desperate will she become before the end? This book is easily one of my favorite new releases of this year.

This is such a satisfying read for moms who are parenting through generational trauma. Thea lives in the desert with her husband, two sons, and her infant daughter, who was born with a full set of teeth and has just killed a chicken with her bare hands. As Thea does everything to protect her family and daughter from each other, she’ll also have to face repressed pain from her own past and confront her own monstrosity.

Three astronauts have spent years training to be the first to colonize Mars. When they land, the droids that were supposed to be prepping their new base have taken on human names and formed alliances, and the humans will have to get each bot’s story and decide who’s telling the truth as to why the base is half-ravaged with claw marks.

This is the author’s debut novel, and he really came out swinging. A rising star in the literary world, Tessa Calloway is on a massive book tour for her own bestseller, All This Could Be Yours. Her fans flock to see her in city after city, and her husband and two kids are just as supportive from home. But Tessa soon realizes someone is stalking her along the way, and they don’t just want to get close to her — they want to expose her darkest secrets and destroy everything she has built.

Kit landed the titular role in a new opera based on the 1960s cult classic film Barbarella, cementing her as the rising star of the New York City opera scene. Then she meets her understudy, Yolanda, who makes it clear she is gunning for Kit’s spot as the lead. When one of Kit’s costars is murdered, she’ll start digging into Yolanda’s past and unearth just how many enemies she has made to get what she wants.

Two teenage girls vanish from North Falls, a small town where everyone believes they know everyone. Officer Emmy Clifton is tasked with finding the girls, one of whom is her best friend’s daughter, whom she turned away when the girl needed her help the most. And the more Emmy digs into the girls’ lives, the more she realizes no one truly knew them at all.

Glen’s wife died six years ago, and he is heading out on a road trip with his teenage daughter, Lauren, in hopes they can meaningfully reconnect. As they stop for a bite to eat in the Appalachian mountains, a group of armed men bursts in, raving about some “living water” that attacked another group of people down the road. Glen and Lauren then find themselves held hostage by the gunmen and a nebulous entity outside the diner.

Frida and Gabriel have always been inseparable and deeply in love, but that connection has frayed in the past few years after a terrible tragedy rocked their world. They arrive at the Ara Hotel in the deserts of Utah, hoping to find that old spark. But when a young woman’s dead body washes ashore, Frida and Gabriel will be questioned as suspects and forced to revisit their upbringing in a cult in upstate New York. It’s a book that will make you question if you can ever fully know the person you love.

Ella Winters was the A-list actress 20 years ago, after the incredible success of the slasher movie she starred in called Grad Night. What no one knows is that something truly horrible happened behind the scenes that she and her castmates agreed never to speak of again. Now that her mother has passed away and she’s no longer a caretaker, Ella decides to return to acting, while also filming a reunion documentary about Grad Night. But when the actors reunite in the remote cabin where they filmed all those years ago, they’re not alone — someone has arrived to force them to live out their movie in real time. Can the final girl survive once again?

Available Oct. 7

Sailboat captain Sam Vines has fallen on hard times. Visiting scuba divers and snorkelers want a luxury experience, not her drunk, often snarky self leading the way. So when her former crewmate asks for help delivering a 100-year-old sailboat from Seattle to England for a massive payout, she can’t really afford to say no. At first, she can’t tell if the boat is really haunted or if her alcohol withdrawal is clouding her senses, but the true nature of the ship becomes clear soon enough.

Available Oct. 14

Something’s wrong with Clara, so wrong that she unintentionally killed both her parents when she was 14. She has taken pills and buried it deep inside ever since. But on the 10-year anniversary of their death, Clara and her sister Jade, along with their childhood friend and his younger brother, take a weekend trip to a cabin in the woods. And there’s a terrifying stranger waiting for her in the woods.

Available Oct. 14

Corey is a new mom, so the shocking news that two teenage girls were found hanged in a local park hits even closer to home now. Even worse, the authorities seem to chalk it up to a recent increase in street crime, and they don’t seem keen on seeking justice. As a former reporter, she uses all her investigative skills to figure out what really happened, all while battling postpartum anxiety with her infant son in tow.

Available Dec. 9

This comes out a little past spooky season, but if you like thrillers year-round, this one’s for you. Set in a 1920 small town in a colonial empire, Soraya believes she has finally landed the perfect job as a personal maid in a manor not far from the Muslim Quarter, where she resides with her family. Mrs. Hattingh’s home is clearly overrun with spirits, by the way.

When her employer offers to help Soraya write letters to her fiancé, Nour, it begins a pattern of once-a-week dictations in which Mrs. Hattingh writes while Soraya speaks, and the ritual becomes one that will threaten both of their sanity.