Say Her Name

Juno Dawson

Piper’s Hall School for Young Ladies certainly looks like a gothic haunted house, but Bobbie Rowe and Naya are pretty sure that being bored to death is probably the worst thing that could happen there. When one of their classmates dares them to recite “Bloody Mary” five times into a mirror at midnight, they don’t take the Halloween prank that seriously. But when strange things start happening, Bobbie begins to believe. When she starts walking in the body of a dead girl, she is determined to get to the bottom of the Mary Worthington mystery . . . before it is too late and she disappears, too.

Breathe: A Ghost Story

Cliff McNish

After his father dies, Jack and his mother move into a house whose elderly owner has just died. Jack is sensitive to the spirits of the dead, and before long he realises that they are sharing the house with four ghost children and a ghost mother bent on vengeance. The ghost mother feeds on souls, and no one in the house is safe from her – including Jack. Crippled with fear and asthma, Jack must elude the ghost who wants to replace the child she lost long ago.

Anna Dressed in Blood (Anna, #1)

Kendare Blake

Cas Lowood inherited an athame and a mission from his father: to track down bloodthirsty ghosts and send them back to the spirit world. Cas may only be in high school, but he has taken out dozens of ghosts. A tip from one of his sources takes him to Thunder Bay, Ontario. The town may look idyllic, but it is harbouring a powerful ghost known as “Anna Dressed In Blood”. Cas finds Anna, but she is not what he expected. She has the opportunity to kill him, and doesn’t; he needs to destroy her, but instead he finds himself drawn to her.

violence; strong language

We Have Always Lived in the Castle

Shirley Jackson

Mary Katherine Blackwood is eighteen years old and she lives in the Blackwood mansion with her older sister Constance and her frail Uncle Julian. The rest of her family is dead; poisoned by arsenic in the sugar. Mary Katherine wants nothing more than to be left alone with the ghosts, and her carefully preserved routines, but when her cousin Charles comes to stay he disturbs their fragile peace. This classic horror story is deliciously creepy and generally thought of as the author’s finest work.

The Thirteenth Tale

Diane Setterfield

Margaret Lea is a shy, bookish young woman who rarely leaves her father’s bookshop. When Margaret is chosen to be the biographer of Vida Winter – a popular writer whose past is shrouded in mystery – she is completely bemused. As Margaret is drawn into the troubled story of twins, a haunted house and a destructive fire, her own mental health is affected. In this gothic mystery, secrets from the past won’t stay buried.

violence; emotionally disturbing

The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender

Leslye Walton

Once the Roux family had two parents and four happy children; now, there is only Emilienne. Bad luck and betrayal have plagued Emilienne Roux for three generations. She lives in a house full of ghosts with a reclusive daughter, a grandson who barely speaks and a granddaughter who was born with an unusual gift. Ava Lavender may finally break the Roux curse, but first she has to trust in love – not easy when more than one person wants to clip her wings.

The Loney

Andrew Michael Hurley

A middle-aged man looks back over his life and remembers an Easter holiday at the Loney. A house full of memories and death. A bleak landscape shaped by the tides. A dead baby. A miraculous transformation. This coming-of-age story has the atmosphere and suspense of a horror novel crossed with haunting mysteries from the past.

This book contains a few instances of strong language.

Ghostly: A Collection of Ghost Stories

Audrey Niffeneggar

If you don’t have time to commit to a novel, short stories are always a good option. For a quick fix of “scary”, try this brandnew collection of ghost stories. Classic stories from acknowledged masters of horror like Edgar Allen Poe and M.R. James are mixed in with more contemporary writing from Neil Gaiman and Audrey Niffeneggar.

Darkmere

Helen Maslin

Kate is the new girl at Denborough Park and still feels uncomfortably out of her depth with her posh classmates. When Leo invites Kate to join the summer party at the castle he has just inherited, Kate cannot turn down this amazing opportunity. But Darkmere isn’t quite what she expected, and neither is Leo. Rundown, menacing, and full of ghosts, Darkmere is still haunted by another girl who trusted too much in a man she didn’t really know at all.

strong language; drugs/alcohol; sexuality

Cuckoo Song

Frances Hardinge

There is something very wrong in the Crescent household. When Triss wakes up from a fever, with a head full of scattered memories, she is told that she fell into the Grimmer. Her naughty little sister Pen claims that she is not really Triss at all, but an imposter. Meanwhile, her parents are receiving letters from Sebastian – who died in the Great War. In this unusual horror story, post-war sadness and uncertainty have allowed the shadowy world of the Besiders to make mischief in the real world. Ghosts must be banished, and little girls must be saved, but it will take an unlikely trio of allies to fix what is wrong with the Crescent family.