Here are 100 books that A Remembrance of Ghosts fans have personally recommended if you like
A Remembrance of Ghosts.
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During the years that I have been writing ghost stories, many of them collected in The Haunted Heart and Other Tales, I have read a variety of classic and contemporary ghost stories, horror anthologies, and novels that included gay characters, written by authors who are also openly gay or whose legacy has identified the writer as homosexual. While there are a number of short stories that are personal favorites, this list focuses on novels.
Walking an empty stretch of New Jersey highway on an autumn night, a lonely gay teenaged boy meets a strange and beautiful guy who turns out to be a local legend who has haunted that stretch of road for decades. At the heart of this superb coming-of-age tale is the remarkable portrayal of the friendships of a group of Goth teens. This is an extraordinary, moving ghost story that will engage both young readers and adults.
On a chilly, autumn night, on a lonely New Jersey highway, a teenager meets the boy of his dreams dressed in vintage clothing. When the boy vanishes, the teenager discovers he’s encountered the local legend, the ghost of a young man who died four decades earlier and has haunted that stretch of road ever since. Curious and smitten, the next evening the teen returns with his best friend. So begins an unusual story of boy-meets-ghost complete with Ouija boards, hours spent in cemeteries, scares and macabre humor. This new edition of the book, to celebrate its thirteenth anniversary, features a…
The dragons of Yuro have been hunted to extinction.
On a small, isolated island, in a reclusive forest, lives bandit leader Marani and her brother Jacks. With their outlaw band they rob from the rich to feed themselves, raiding carriages and dodging the occasional vindictive…
I grew up in South Wales, where ghost stories are cherished. As a child, I spent many a winter evening telling spooky tales with my mum and my sisters, sitting before the fire. We would record them on tape (I am that old) complete with homemade sound effects, then play them back to listen to. I loved the combined fear and excitement these stories instilled in me. My father also loved to read horror and scary fiction, which had some influence on what I chose to read as I grew older. For someone who always loved to write, I think publishing in this genre is simply a natural extension of all that.
First of all, the title. Intriguing, original, enigmatic. That is what first drew me to this book. I had to find out more about it.
This book is much more in the style of traditional ghost stories, which I love. A spooky, desolate setting in an old house with a long history. I love the build-up of suspense, the remote location adding to the sense of isolation and helplessness, everything cold, chilly.
The ghostly happenings, whilst perhaps not original, are very well done, which is just fine with me. Traditional ghost stories are meant to have certain elements that are standard, just as fantasy stories must have certain magical aspects. As far as ghost stories are concerned, as long as they make the hair on the back of my neck stand on end, I’m happy. This book does that extremely well, I thought. Absolutely dripping with spooky atmosphere.
An eerie and compelling ghost story set on the dark wilds of the Yorkshire moors. For fans of The Witchfinder's Sister and The Silent Companions, this gothic tale will weave its way into your imagination and chill you to the bone.
'Spine-tingling... the scariest ghost story I have read in a long time' Barbara Erskine
'A wonderful, macabre evocation of a lost way of life' The Times
'Like something from Emily Bronte's nightmares' Andrew Taylor, author of The Ashes of London
Maybe you've heard tales about Scarcross Hall, the house on the old coffin…
During the years that I have been writing ghost stories, many of them collected in The Haunted Heart and Other Tales, I have read a variety of classic and contemporary ghost stories, horror anthologies, and novels that included gay characters, written by authors who are also openly gay or whose legacy has identified the writer as homosexual. While there are a number of short stories that are personal favorites, this list focuses on novels.
A string of supernatural events occurs when a gay writer moves into a house in the San Diego mountains built by a legendary film star of the 1930s. But the writer is not alone at the house—he has invited his close friends for a housewarming—and they soon discover the deceased actor had some nasty habits and a gruesome behavior. The investigations and resolutions of this absorbing novel unveil some shocking and grisly details, but there is a masterful balance of comedy along with the horror.
Jim Brandon has a new house, and boy, is it a pip. Built high on the side of the San Diego mountains by a legendary B-movie actor of the 1930s, Nigel Letters, the house is not only gorgeous, but supposedly haunted. As a writer of horror novels, Jim couldn't be happier.
But after a string of ghostly events sets Jim’s teeth on edge and scares the bejesus out of his dog, Jim begins to dig into the house’s history. What he finds is enough to creep out anybody. Even Jim. It seems long-dead Nigel Letters had a few nasty habits…
Jake Sledge, a rugged ex-cop turned private eye, teams up with his colossal partner Bobo to navigate the gritty streets of River City.
A murdered lawyer drags them into a web of political intrigue, neo-Nazi thugs, and bloody showdowns. With sharp wit and hard-hitting action, Jake tackles scumbags the only…
My interest in the supernatural is a consequence of early life contact with the macabre fantasy works of authors such as Edgar Allen Poe, MR James, and HP Lovecraft. Influenced by my father in my early years, these were favourites of his, though I remain unsure if he ever actually read any of their works; I don’t recall seeing any of their titles amongst the textbooks and journals weighing heavily on the well-stocked bookshelves in the study. It was through watching television productions of the author's titles, one of the rare times the family gathered with our father, that linked the author's names in my mind to their works.
This short story reminds me of a disused railway line that my siblings and I took to be a playground when we lived in a small village in North Wales. All that remained of the route was the track ballast. The route was some two miles long and at one point cut into the hillside before entering a long dark tunnel. It was easy to imagine a steam train from bygone years appearing in the mouth of the tunnel, much as the engine that brought the doom of the signalman in Dickens’s tale.
"This book is amazing." Halloween might seem like the spookiest time of year, but Charles Dickens felt otherwise. He was among the many authors who set their scariest stories during the dim and shivering days of--yes, Christmas. First published in 1866 for a special yuletide issue of All the Year Round, Dickens' "The Signalman" has since fallen into obscurity. An eerie story of isolation, dread, and supernatural visitation, this book is a small treasure, meant to be read aloud on a cold, dark winter night.
I’ve always been intrigued by monsters. I grew up watching or reading anything that had a monster in it, much to the chagrin of my monster-hating mother. Over time, I grew bored with the same monsters in the same historical settings. It wasn’t until I discovered some of the books on this list that I found writers doing new, fun, and inventive things that reinvigorated my own love for them. I’m always going to be a monster junky, but I always hope to find authors that can bring these classic terrors into the modern world.
I loved the tie-in to classic superstitions and historical events that lay the foundation for this story. I found the spreading evil within the town to be one of the most compelling parts of the story. While the heroes were nice, I wanted to see just how far this malignant force would spread before being stopped.
I liked that the protagonists truly struggle and are in real peril. I enjoyed the more subdued action of the book and the real-world tone that it set.
"This is horror on a grand scale, reminiscent of Stephen King." --Publishers Weekly
The book that launched the Pine Deep trilogy
Thirty years ago, a blues musician called the Bone Man killed the devil at the crossroads, only to be beaten and hung like a scarecrow in a cornfield--or so the story goes. Today, the people of Pine Deep celebrate their town's grisly past by luring tourists to the famous haunted hayride, full of chills and scares. But this year, "The Spookiest Town in America" will learn the true meaning of fear. Its residents will see the real face of…
I’ve written and published one hundred very short ghost stories, plus a handful of longer ones, and have spent a lifetime reading and watching and thinking about stories of ghosts and the afterlife. My expertise, such as it is, involves ghosts as beings of narrative and metaphor. I’ve encountered great numbers of them on the page and on the screen—nowhere else—but I confess that I would love someday (though don’t expect) to encounter them in the flesh. My flesh, that is to say; their fleshlessness.
One of the most inventive novels of recent years, Leanne Shapton’s Guestbook uses prose, photographs, and illustrations to find thirty-three ways of approaching the ghost story. The book moves swiftly and exhilaratingly through its pages, which are knit together by a sense of what it means for spirits to fasten themselves unexpectedly to people and what it means for people to feel haunted. Recommended if you like your ghosts both abundantly imagined and abundantly pictured.
'Shapton has created a mystical territory - a performance, an exhibition, a guestbook - in which I felt the ghost within myself; the thing that will outlive me. A fearless and exquisite book' Miranda July
Guestbook explores the glimmering, unsettling things that haunt us in the midst of life, combining stories, vignettes and an evocative curiosity cabinet of artifacts and images - found photographs, original paintings, Instagram-style portraits - to transform the traditional ghost story into something else entirely.
'Leanne Shapton has a way of making books entirely new, surreal, and uncanny ... Guestbook contains ghost stories for a world…
Caroline Herschel has always lived in the shadows. Beholden to her wildly popular older brother, William, who rescued her from servitude, she's worked hard to build a life for herself – one where she can go unnoticed and repay the debt she believes she owes him. But when her brother…
My name is Alister Dray Penborn. I am a lifelong mystery lover, all the way back to my favorite childhood cartoon, Scooby-Doo, and my favorite anime, Detective Conan, or Case Closed as it was called in the US at the time of airing. It's a passion that grew over the years as I was exposed to even more great mysteries. One of the most appealing aspects is the investigation process, where a character sees the inconsistencies of crime scenes, analyzes and makes sense of events, and collects and relies on the slightest clues to act as puzzle pieces to the full picture.
I feel there's an art to incorporating the paranormal into a mystery without its presence dismissing the practical aspect of the characters’ investigation. D.J. Machale reached the perfect application of this in this book and its sequel.
While the series is directed at a younger audience, the mystery is superb without much handholding but with gripping action moments and the allure of something deeper that keeps the reader guessing until it all comes to a satisfying conclusion. Especially when paired with the sequel. Side note: tangent storylines that significantly impact each other without the characters realizing it is one of the top five forms of storytelling to me!
It begins with mysterious sounds, a fleeting face outside a window, a rogue breeze—all things that can be explained away. That is, until he comes face-to-face with a character who only exists on the pages of a sketchbook—a character Marshall himself created.
Marshall has no idea why he is being tormented by this forbidding creature, but he is quickly convinced it has something to do with his best friend, Cooper, who has gone missing. Together with Cooper’s beautiful but aloof sister, Sydney, Marshall searches for the truth about his friend while ultimately uncovering a nightmare…
I believe with all of my heart that each one of us was created with two achingly powerful inner drives: 1) the longing for new worlds and 2) the desperate urge to do something meaningful. I simply could never believe that human beings are all simply cosmic accidents produced by some sort of cosmic casino. I believe God created people and gave us each an instinct to seek our true home. The books I write—all 22 of them—are tales of flawed individuals, thrown into unexpected, life-changing events, and given the chance to journey through many astoundingly lush worlds, all in an effort to do the seemingly impossible.
Imagine a contemporary fantasy, driven by sword-wielding, swashbuckling, mystically empowered, ghostbusting teenagers. Yup. That is the cool twist in Jonathan Stroud’s Lockwood & Co. Series.
He’s best known for the Bartimaeus Trilogy, and takes all of his fantasy worldbuilding craft to design a modern world where ghosts are not only real but common and quite deadly to us living folk. You will fall in love with Lockwood and Lucy, sense the tension between them, and yet be relieved to discover that their connection isn’t the predictable stuff of typical teen romance.
The remarkable ghosts are similar to fantasy races. Rather than elves, gnomes, warlocks, etc., you have screamers, wailers, howling maids, and a whole host of specific ghost types that I dare not spoil. If you like fantasy with a touch of creepy, you’ll love Lockwood & Co.
A sinister Problem has occurred in London: all nature of ghosts, haunts, spirits, and specters are appearing throughout the city, and they aren't exactly friendly. Only young people have the psychic abilities required to see-and eradicate-these supernatural foes. Many different Psychic Detection Agencies have cropped up to handle the dangerous work, and they are in fierce competition for business.
In The Screaming Staircase, the plucky and talented Lucy Carlyle teams up with Anthony Lockwood, the charismatic leader of Lockwood & Co, a small agency that runs independent of any adult supervision. After an assignment…
I used to be the caretaker for the last home of Edgar Allan Poe, and during my four-year tenure, I tried to read everything Poe ever wrote, as well as literature inspired by his work. The key word there is “tried.” It’s an impossible task. Poe’s influence is vast and evergreen. The traditional ghost story was not his specialty, but nevertheless, I associate him with spirits and phantoms since one of his primary obsessions was the potential oblivion of the afterlife. I share these obsessions, and I doubt I would have taken the job if I wasn’t already drawn to stories that imagine what lies beyond the veil.
Ghosts are my some of my favorite creatures in horror since, unlike werewolves and vampires, I believe they tap into a shared emotional landscape. Who has not wanted to speak to the spirit of a recently deceased loved one? Who has not stood over a grave and demanded answers? Farrenkopf takes this desire and builds a whole mythology around it while adding to the mix another irresistible question:
What if you could speak to your dead relatives and find out how you are going to die? Would you want to know?
Dave Gallagher, a cemetery caretaker, wrestles with this quandary, which gives the book its tension and grit. No easy answers are given here. Farrenkopf creates a world that is both fantastical and grounded in human longing.
"The effortless world building, buoyed by Dave's confident narration, immediately immerses readers in the intense unease, carrying them to its emotional conclusion. A character-centered and thought provoking tale that is as much about embracing life as it is about death, this title will appeal to fans of Elizabeth McCracken and Neil Gaiman" -Booklist
Dave Gallagher mows the lawns and digs the graves at cemeteries in his hometown on Cape Cod. He also keeps the peace between the ghosts inhabiting those cemeteries. In the world of Living in Cemeteries, wrongdoing is atoned for by a person's descendants. Spirits decapitate relatives of…
Rodney Bradford comes into Lindsay's restaurant, offers to buy her small house for double its value, eats her brownies, and drops dead on the sidewalk in front. Next, her almost-ex-husband offers to sign the divorce papers, but only if she'll give him her small,…
Ever since I first read Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, I have been enamored of all things weird and creepy—so much so, in fact, that when I grew up, I started writing my own weird, creepy things! As a writer, I am drawn to horror that is shaped by its characters’ inner worlds, stories that explore the monsters in our heads, as well as our closets. The books on this list will haunt me for years to come. I hope that they will haunt you, too.
I have never read a Stephen Graham Jones book that I didn’t like, and this book is one of my favorites. This meditative and elegiac novella is a time-bending story about loss, family, cycles of generational trauma, and the many complicated ways in which we repeat the mistakes of our parents, whether we want to or not.
At the end of its 130 pages, I felt as though I had been shot through the heart in the best way possible.
Blackfeet author Stephen Graham Jones brings readers a spine-tingling Native American horror novella. Walking through his own house at night, a fifteen-year-old thinks he sees another person stepping through a doorway. Instead of the people who could be there, his mother or his brother, the figure reminds him of his long-gone father, who died mysteriously before his family left the reservation. When he follows it he discovers his house is bigger and deeper than he knew. The house is the kind of wrong place where you can lose yourself and find things you'd rather not have. Over the course of…
