Book cover of Home Before Dark

Book description

In the latest thriller from New York Times bestseller Riley Sager, a woman returns to the house made famous by her father’s bestselling horror memoir. Is the place really haunted by evil forces, as her father claimed? Or are there more earthbound—and dangerous—secrets hidden within its walls?

What was it…

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Why read it?

4 authors picked Home Before Dark as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

This was my first peek into the world of paranormal ghost stories through books. Before this spooky thriller, truth be told, I didn’t know there was such a genre as ghost thrillers. 

I will forever be grateful to Riley Sager for not only opening me up to such a captivating genre but for writing such an amazing story.

This book gives you the present perspective of a woman returning to a haunted house that ran her family away 25 years ago, alongside the perspective of what happened 25 years ago when she was a child from the lens of a…

From Mads' list on spooky books for the season.

I live and breathe horror, but I’ve never really found a book that could evoke the same emotions as a horror movie–until I read this book. There is something so subtle about the horror in it that I almost have a hard time pegging what was so scary about it.

There weren’t jump scares, possessions, or gore. It was just a well-written family drama that happened to involve a haunted house. The descriptions of the home and the oh-so-subtle hauntings that could almost be explained away as natural phenomena were my favorite parts of this story.

From Shannen's list on proof humans are scarier than ghosts.

Sager’s novel Home Before Dark is set in a large Victorian mansion in the Vermont woods. Nicknamed the House of Horrors, the creep factor for this setting is high. Our protagonist, Maggie, returns after twenty-five years away to learn the truth of what drove her family out of the house late one night when she was only a child. Was the house really haunted as her mother and father had told her for all of those years or is there a logical explanation for the horrible things that had happened there? This novel gets my recommendation because it has…

From Jessica's list on with creepy settings.

If you love Home Before Dark...

Book cover of The Inhabitants

The Inhabitants by Beth Castrodale,

Artist Nilda Ricci could use a stroke of luck. She seems to get it when she inherits a shadowy Victorian, built by an architect whose houses were said to influence the mind—supposedly, in beneficial ways. At first, Nilda’s new home delivers, with the help of its longtime housekeeper. And Nilda…

Remember The Amityville Horror? Welcome to Baneberry Hall. Maggie Holt spent twenty days living in Baneberry Hall when she was five but has no memory of what sent her family fleeing in the middle of the night. What she does know is that her father wrote a book that turned into a bestseller about the supernatural events which took place. “The book” has shaped her life ever since.

When she inherits the Baneberry Hall, she’s determined to get to the bottom of what really took place the night her family left. Alternating between past and present, the story unfolds…

If you love Home Before Dark...

Book cover of The Inhabitants

The Inhabitants by Beth Castrodale,

Artist Nilda Ricci could use a stroke of luck. She seems to get it when she inherits a shadowy Victorian, built by an architect whose houses were said to influence the mind—supposedly, in beneficial ways. At first, Nilda’s new home delivers, with the help of its longtime housekeeper. And Nilda…

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