TBR Terrors: 13 Unread Horror Novels Currently on My Shelves

Welcome back to Scare Me! a weekly horror newsletter. Today, I’m sharing some of the books I’m most excited—and scared—to read from my unruly collection.

My book buying ban is not going well.

At the end of 2024, my friends sold their bookstore, and I placed one of the biggest special orders of my life. Anything I’d wanted to read—a long list—became a last hurrah before they handed over the keys and new owners took up the mantle.

Stocked up, I decided to stop buying books so freely in the new year. I’d make exceptions for the $1-2 treasures at our local thrift stores, my annual spree at the Tacoma Book Center, and a handful of new releases from Nat Cassidy, Rachel Harrison, and Stephen Graham Jones. But this was it, I told myself sternly. It was time to buckle down and get to work on my horror studies with the books I already owned.

That absolutely has not happened. Between obsessively listening to Neil McRobert’s Talking Scared podcast (TBR final boss) and enduring a marathon of semi-stressful dental appointments, I’ve been spiraling a little lately. I suppose there are worse ways to cope!

On the bright side, my home library has never been more abundant. Here are 13 books I’ve hunted and gathered recently, most selected to expand the range of horror voices I’m reading.

Are any of your favorites on my list?

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‘70s Horror

Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon (1973)

When a family departs New York City in search of an idyllic country life, they think they’ve finally found their dream home. But dark folk horrors await. I adored Thomas Tryon’s debut, The Other, so when I found out he’d set a second novel in his fictionalized version of rural Connecticut, I had to pick it up. I suspect there will be something sinister about the town’s agricultural practices, and I can’t wait to find out what.

‘Salem’s Lot by Stephen King (1975)

Despite reading primarily horror for the past five years, I’ve only read two books by Stephen King: It, which I loved, and Dreamcatcher, which…let’s not talk about it. ‘Salem’s Lot caught my eye for its vampires, its Gothic New England setting, and the long shadow it’s cast over subsequently published books I’ve enjoyed—particularly Nat Cassidy’s Nestlings. Mostly, I want to see what King will do with vampires! I expect this one to be a lot of fun and hopefully scary.

Flowers in the Attic by V.C. Andrews (1979)

This is the kind of novel that should be a battered mass market paperback, and that’s exactly what I scavenged earlier this summer. All I know is that it’s about a group of siblings who are abused by their horrible aunt. In the ‘70s, it was considered perfectly normal to hit your children or withhold meals as punishment—so I shudder to imagine what crossed the line. I expect that this will be icky and either make me feel really bad or strangely comforted by recognizable flickers of my own childhood experiences with emotional neglect. (I just finished Lucy Rose’s The Lamb, which deeply resonated with me, too, and had one of the boldest endings I’ve ever read.)

‘90s Horror

The Between by Tananarive Due (1995)

Tananarive Due has won just about every award you can think of: an American Book Award, a Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel, and a Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novel, just to name a few. The Between will be my first encounter with her writing, and I cannot wait to read it. Due tells the story of Hilton, whose grandmother sacrificed her own life to save him from drowning. Now an adult, Hilton is haunted by terrifying nightmares and an onslaught of racist hate mail sent to his wife, the only Black judge in Dade County. What a stressful and scary premise! I also recently thrifted Whispers in the Night, which features some of her short stories.

Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Z. Brite (1996)

The trigger warnings for this book are a mile long—cannibalism, hostages, stalking, and gore, to name a few—but fans rave about Brite’s lush literary style and boldly transgressive storytelling, published decades before so-called extreme horror was readily available in bookstores. Exquisite Corpse follows serial killer Andrew Compton on a vampiric slaying spree that crosses oceans, continents, and the moral and ethical boundaries that would normally curtail our worst impulses. It’s not a coincidence that this book shares a list with ‘Salem’s Lot—I’ve been making my way through Anne Rice’s novels recently, and Let the Right One In is in my TBR, too.

A Sinister Sequel

Son of Rosemary by Ira Levin (1997)

I read Rosemary’s Baby in 48 hours on a chilly October weekend in 2017, back when I was still single and living alone in DC. Between the days I started and finished the slim novel, I tossed and turned and had nightmares and got woken up in the middle of the night by a cat screaming. The whole thing really got under my skin! The sequel, released exactly 30 years after Levin’s bestseller, continues the story of Rosemary and her demonic spawn (the Antichrist?!). I’m going in absolutely cold, with not-very-high expectations for where the story might take us next. (Rosemary’s Baby is perfectly complete on its own.) But I’m very fond of Levin, so if nothing else, it will be nice to spend time with his writing.

A Hefty Tome

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski (2000)

I’m frankly not the sharpest thinker, but I have tackled a handful of “hard” books before: Swann’s Way, Infinite Jest, several Thomas Pynchon novels, most of Ulysses. I’ve always loved books like At Swim-Two-Birds that play with form. (Can you tell I was an insufferable English major in college?) Anyhow, I try to read one long or challenging book every year, and in 2025, I’ll finally tackle House of Leaves. If you’ve never seen this book before, it’s worth a Google—the text is visually arranged in unorthodox and surprising ways, mapping the story of a house that’s impossibly bigger on the inside than it appears. I’ll likely write more about this maze of a novel as I begin to carefully pick my way through.

Recent-ish Releases

A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay (2015)

Winner of the 2015 Bram Stoker Award for best novel, Paul Tremblay’s story follows a family cleaved open by a harrowing mental health crisis and exploited by a reality TV series that promised to help them survive. Unfortunately and maybe predictably, the episode ends in tragedy. Fifteen years later, a journalist exploring the true story behind this urban legend brings new revelations to light. I’m very interested in stories that explore trauma and memory, so this novel feels tailor-made for me.

The Fisherman by John Langan (2016)

Two widowers embark on a fishing trip to upstate New York—but they hope to catch something much more fantastic, possibly blurring the line between life and death. Partially told as a story-within-a-story, John Langan’s masterpiece weaves folklore and cosmic horror into a mesmerizing tale—or so I’ve heard. I’m almost sad to read this one, because I’ve heard it’s amazing and I know I’ll never get to read it for the first time again. At less than 300 pages, it’s a surprisingly brief novel for how epic the story seems to be.

FantasticLand by Mike Bockoven (2018)

As a devoted Stephen Graham Jones fan, I have a general “read it” policy for novels he recommends in interviews and afterwords. This story—about a group of theme park employees who devolve into violence after being stranded by a hurricane—ended up on my shelf this way. Bockoven tells his tale through a series of (fictional) interviews and reports that attempt to reconstruct the bizarre and desperate events that occurred during the employees’ five weeks of isolation. It’s billed as Lord of the Flies by way of found footage.

Bunny by Mona Awad (2019)

Is there a “weird girl” book that’s recommended more often than Bunny? (Genuine question: If yes, I would like to read that book also.) Bunny is about the deliciously claustrophobic world of elite academia, following a seductive clique of wealthy creative writing students as they draw a scholarship student into their midst. Or something! I try to go in as cold as possible and have miraculously avoided spoilers for this one. I would be very good at serving on the jury for a high profile court case, I think.

The Empusium by Olga Tokarczuk (2022)

I loved The Extinction of Irena Rey, a novel about a group of translators written by Jennifer Croft, who herself is a frequent translator of Polish author Olga Tokarczuk. (Whew, that’s a twisted sentence. Still with me?) When I spotted a Tokarczuk book recently, I plucked The Empusium off the shelf without hesitation. Billed as a “health resort horror story,” The Empusium follows a tuberculosis patient recovering at a rural Polish sanatorium. But “someone—or something—seems to be watching, attempting to infiltrate this cloistered world.” Yikes! There’s something doubly sinister about a stalker paired with the threat of a highly contagious, airborne illness. I expect these two terrors to be twinned in unsettling and delightful ways.

The Unworthy by Augustina Bazterrica (2025)

I’m generally averse to dystopian horror, so Tender Is the Flesh slipped past me (though I’ve heard nothing but glowing praise for it!). I was excited to find out that Bazterrica’s latest novel is set in a convent at the end of the world, told in the voice of a potentially unreliable, limited first person narrator. Although it’s also got dystopian, apocalyptic elements, I’d read a nun-adjacent story any day.

There seems to be something very special happening in Argentinian horror recently; from Bazterrica’s global success to films like When Evil Lurks, it’s exciting to see Argentinian storytellers captivate horror fans worldwide.

Next Up: A Ramble Through Spiritualism in Horror

I’m in the midst of reading Richard Matheson’s Hell House this week, and it’s gotten me thinking about Spiritualism. The religious movement emerged alongside the telegraph in the 1840s, ushering in an era when disembodied communication felt so miraculous people believed it might even reach the dead.

Next week, I want to trace a few of my favorite threads of Spiritualism in horror, from a haunting Sarah Waters novel to a phenomenal podcast by journalist Jamie Loftus to a BBC faux documentary that really freaked contemporary viewers out. It’ll be a nice little rabbit hole of related texts to explore for the next time you’re in the mood to leapfrog around Wikipedia!

Scare Me! is a free weekly horror newsletter published every Thursday morning. It’s written by Michelle Delgado, featuring original illustrations by Sam Pugh. You can find the archive of past issues here. If you were sent this by a friend, subscribe to receive more spooky interviews, essays—and maybe even a ghost story or two.