Here are 85 books that Would You Rather... fans have personally recommended if you like
Would You Rather....
Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
As a humorous cozy mystery author, apparitions as characters are critically important members of my cast. I have introduced two ghosts—the dead wife and young daughter of one of the men in my protagonist’s life as continuing characters in my Holly Swimsuit Mystery Series. They serve as an important yet hysterically funny bridge that connects the main character’s past to her present life and creates an extra layer of conflict in her relationship with the widower and where she wants it to go.
Unwed, broke, and over thirty, Mississippi native Sarah Booth Delaney may live on the family plantation, but take it from me; she’s no Scarlett O’Hara. And if the not-so-Southern Belle didn’t already have enough to contend with, she’s being haunted by the wise-cracking ghost of her great-great-grandmother’s nanny, who never misses an opportunity to remind her of the mess her life has become.
I burst out laughing when the irreverent ghost scolded Sarah Booth, saying her biological clock was ticking and she better start birthing babies before her eggs got too old and dried up! If you’re like me and love a sassy ghost poking fun at an unladylike sleuth, then this is the book for you.
Meet Sarah Booth Delaney, an unconventional Southern belle whose knack for uncovering the truth is about to make her the hottest detective in Zinnia, Mississippi . . . if it doesn't make her the deadest.
No self-respecting lady would allow herself to end up in Sarah Booth’s situation. Unwed, unemployed, and over thirty, she’s flat broke and about to lose the family plantation. Not to mention being haunted by the ghost of her great-great-grandmother’s nanny, who never misses an opportunity to remind her of her sorry state—or to suggest a plan of action, like ransoming her friend’s prize pooch to…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
As a humorous cozy mystery author, apparitions as characters are critically important members of my cast. I have introduced two ghosts—the dead wife and young daughter of one of the men in my protagonist’s life as continuing characters in my Holly Swimsuit Mystery Series. They serve as an important yet hysterically funny bridge that connects the main character’s past to her present life and creates an extra layer of conflict in her relationship with the widower and where she wants it to go.
Maybe it was fond memories of my own dearly-departed wise Nana that made me fall in love with Meemaw, Texas fashion designer Harlow Jane Cassidy’s ghostly granny as she worked from the Great Beyond to help her granddaughter solve a murder and clear her as the number one suspect. Give me a gal who inherits magical power and has to think on her feet when a crisis comes calling, and she has to use it.
Part paranormal, part mystery, part second chance at life and love, this is a woo-woo-infused fun trip to Never-neverland.
When her great-grandmother passes away, Harlow Jane Cassidy leaves her job as a Manhattan fashion designer and moves back to Bliss, Texas. But when she opens a dressmaking boutique in the turn-of-the-century farmhouse she inherited, Harlow senses an inexplicable "presence". Is Meemaw really gone, or she now Harlow's ghostly roommate?
Her old friend Josie orders a gown for her upcoming wedding, but when Josie's boss turns up dead, Harlow has to find the killer-with a little help from beyond.
As a humorous cozy mystery author, apparitions as characters are critically important members of my cast. I have introduced two ghosts—the dead wife and young daughter of one of the men in my protagonist’s life as continuing characters in my Holly Swimsuit Mystery Series. They serve as an important yet hysterically funny bridge that connects the main character’s past to her present life and creates an extra layer of conflict in her relationship with the widower and where she wants it to go.
Nothing tickles my funny bone more than the antics of a pampered princess who has to work like the rest of us if she wants to eat when the family fortune dries up. Pepper Martin takes the only job available as a cemetery tour guide–who knew such a creepy job existed?
After hitting her noggin on a gravestone, suddenly she sees dead people. I laughed out loud when a whacked Mafia Don “makes her an offer she can’t refuse” and threatens to haunt her until she hunts down his killers. If you’re like me and the image of Lucy Ricardo on the hunt for a mobster’s killer gets you giggling, this is the story for you.
Beautiful, smart, and chic, Pepper Martin never had to work a day in her life -- until her surgeon daddy was convicted of fraud, her wealthy fiancé took a powder, and the family fortune ran bone dry.
Suddenly desperate, the inexperienced ex-rich girl was forced to take the only job she could get: as a tour guide in a cemetery. But a grave situation took a turn for the worse when a head-on collision with a headstone left her with an unwanted ability to communicate with the disgruntled deceased . . . and now Pepper has…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
As a humorous cozy mystery author, apparitions as characters are critically important members of my cast. I have introduced two ghosts—the dead wife and young daughter of one of the men in my protagonist’s life as continuing characters in my Holly Swimsuit Mystery Series. They serve as an important yet hysterically funny bridge that connects the main character’s past to her present life and creates an extra layer of conflict in her relationship with the widower and where she wants it to go.
This book sends the perennial issue of teenage bullying to another plane. A bullied high school student encounters a female student ghost who encourages him to stand up to his bully. The bullied boy takes her advice, which takes a tragic turn when the boy’s tormentor kills him. He becomes a trapped ghost who haunts his school for decades.
The descriptions of the ghosts and their experiences are so vivid that if you didn’t believe in ghosts before, you’d become a true believer. This is a triumph of fantasy colliding with reality. It is an unforgettable story of hope and redemption and the inner strength one must summon to face adversity created by human fallibility and fate that both YA and adult readers will enjoy and relate to.
Pinedale Central High School is rumored to be haunted. For fifteen-year-old Sam Anderson, his haunting comes from the bullying he suffers each day within the school's walls. Sam doesn't believe the rumors, not until he meets Jessica, a former Pinedale student who died over one hundred years ago. No one can see or hear her except for Sam. Jessica convinces Sam to stand up to his bully. Unfortunately, the confrontation ends in tragedy. Now Sam is one of the ghosts no one can see or hear. At least not until he meets a former military operative, now Pinedale's newest Guidance…
I’m a writer of sapphic horror and romance fiction, and a professor of nineteenth and twentieth literature and Women’s and Gender Studies. I’ve been an avid reader of ghost-focused fiction since I was a little kid. This fascination was, in part, encouraged by my horror-loving parents, but I think I’ve just always loved being scared, and for me, the scariest thing imaginable is a haunted house. I’ve read widely in the genre, by turns spooked, thrilled, and baffled, and this reading eventually encouraged me to write my own haunted house novels. If you love a chilling tale, you’re going to love the books on this list.
While there are haunted house-like novels before James’s 1898 classic, this in many ways is a granddaddy of modern haunted tales. An isolated country estate? Check. A creepy housekeeper? Check. Two even creepier children, possibly possessed? Check, check! When the unnamed narrator is hired as the new governess in a remote country home in England, she arrives to find that her two young wards are already nearly corrupted by the ghosts of the former governess and groundskeeper. As she works to save them, the narrator herself is threatened, both by the ghosts and by the children she’s meant to save. The psychological possibilities of this book, however, linger at the edges of the text, threatening to undermine the whole notion of what this haunting really is.
A young, inexperienced governess is charged with the care of Miles and Flora, two small children abandoned by their uncle at his grand country house. She sees the figure of an unknown man on the tower and his face at the window. It is Peter Quint, the master's dissolute valet, and he has come for little Miles. But Peter Quint is dead.
Like the other tales collected here - `Sir Edmund Orme', `Owen Wingrave', and `The Friends of the Friends' - `The Turn of the Screw' is to all immediate appearances a ghost story. But are the appearances what they…
My Swedish grandmother first introduced me to the horror genre when I was a small boy. Her folktales of trolls and witches really fueled my imagination! Then, when I was in junior high, my father encouraged me to read Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft. I didn’t get hooked on things Gothic, however, until I heard the lyrics of Jim Morrison and the Doors in high school. After college, I became a freelance writer. I quickly learned that 80% of my spooky stuff got accepted by magazines while only 10% of my general interest work was published. That said, it’s no wonder I became a horror writer!
The Best Ghost Stories of Algernon Blackwood features the author’s scariest tales, including “The Willows” and “The Wendigo”. Blackwood piles detail after detail atop one another until the reader nearly suffocates from the gloom and terror they create! He also squeezes much fear from isolated places like Canada and the Danube River.
A woman of snow . . . a midnight caller keeping his promise . . . forests where Nature is deliberate and malefic . . . enchanted houses . . . these are the beings and ideas that flood through this collection of ghost stories by Algernon Blackwood (1869-1951). Altogether thirteen stories, gathered from the entire corpus of Blackwood's work, are included: stories of such sheer power and imagination that it is easy to see why he has been considered the foremost British supernaturalist of the twentieth century. Blackwood's ability to create an atmosphere of unrelieved horror and sustain it…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
While I love straight-up fiction and read plenty of novels, I’ve always been just as interested in art as I have been in writing. The further into my writing career I get, the more it becomes obvious that art and illustration are just as vital to the way I want to tell my stories. I did the covers for my first few books and started experimenting with illustrating them as well with The Writhing Skies, creating a very strange blend of splatterpunk horror and Betty Boop-inspired illustration. Soft Places is a further step in the direction of telling stories in a way that’s a little different.
Edward Gorey is a forever favorite of mine, a pen and ink artist popular for the dozens of strange and macabre little books he created. The West Wing is unique in that it has no words at all, and the story is told entirely through his meticulous pen and ink images. Without a plot, or even any characters, there is only mood and vibes, and they are spooky and mysterious. Each page shows a different part of The West Wing and its seemingly endless rooms with their hints of ghosts and the feeling that someone has just left, or that something horrible has just happened. It’s my favorite haunted house story of all time.
Edward Gorey's The West Wing is an invitation to the imagination. On each page, a room beckons, inviting the reader to wonder why three shoes lie here abandoned, what is retreating in that mirror's reflection, or why there is an imprint of a body on the wallpaper, faded and floating four feet above the floor. A wordless mystery, it is one of Gorey's finest works.
I've always been a fan of ghost stories. As a kid, I loved horror movies and the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Bram Stoker, and H. P. Lovecraft; later on, I discovered movies like The Innocents (based on Henry James's The Turn of the Screw) and The Haunting (adapted from Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House). As a ghost historian and editor, I've discovered dozens of brilliant tales from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; these are stories that remain relevant, entertaining, and frightening.
Ask any scholar of horror fiction to name the greatest ghost story writer of all time, and chances are good they'll come up with M. R. James (1862-1936). James, who is also highly regarded for his scholarly works and translations, was a provost at King's College, Cambridge who entertained students during the Christmas season with his ghost tales (honoring the old English tradition of telling ghost stories at Christmas). His classics include such justifiably famous stories as "Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad" and "Casting the Runes" (which was adapted into the classic 1957 movie Curse of the Demon). This edition also includes a superb introduction by David Morrell.
Dive into this collection of exquisite, classic horror stories-just make sure to have the lights on and the doors locked! First published in 1904, Ghost Stories of an Antiquary contains eight tales of supernatural horror by genre master M.R. James. Highly regarded as a masterwork of horror, this collection is a must-have for fans of the frightful. The stories in this collection include: "Canon Alberic's Scrap-Book," "Lost Hearts," "The Mezzotint," "The Ash-Tree." "Number 13," "Count Magnus," "Oh, Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad," and "The Treasure of Abbot Thomas."
I think of reading horror stories as perfect armchair adrenalin-thrill-seeking. I prefer horror on the quiet side, dark and thematic, with any depiction of blood and gore in measured quantities. My favorite is historical horror with a moral edge, or underlying theme that explores who we are—good, bad, or in-between—as human beings, and how societal norms have changed from one era to another. The monsters of our imaginations are scary, but for true terror, there's nothing more frightening than the things we've done to each other throughout history. Dress society’s ills or expectations in monster clothes and write a story about them, and I’ll want to read it.
I can never get enough ghost and haunted house stories that have social commentary themes. This is one of the books that helped inspire my own book. Trevor Riddell’s parents are separated, and Trevor and his father move to his lumber-robber-baron grandfather’s mansion in the woods of the northwest, where Trevor’s father and aunt hope to talk their ailing father into a big-money real estate deal involving the house and land.
This book has everything I love: ghosts, intrigue, mystery, history, emotionally-complex antagonists, and epistolary story-telling through letters and journals. Woven into all that, Stein manages to insert a moral about conservation and trees (and other things I’ll let you discover on your own). Ghost stories have a history of being morality tales, and this is a modern version—true to the tradition—that I really enjoyed.
From the author of the million-copy bestselling The Art of Racing in the Raincomes the breathtaking and long-awaited new novel.
This novel centres on four generations of a once terribly wealthy and influential timber family who have fallen from grace; a mysterious yet majestic mansion, crumbling slowy into the bluff overlooking Puget Sound in Seattle; a love affair so powerful it reaches across the planes of existence; and a young man who simply wants his parents to once again experience the moment they fell in love, hoping that if can feel that emotion again, maybe they won't get divorced after…
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
My interest in ghosts is partly due to growing up in York, which is one of the most haunted cities in the UK. In that city, I think that pretty much every pub has its own ghost, and if you’re unlucky (or lucky) enough, you stand a good chance of spotting long-dead Roman soldiers, plague victims, or ghostly dogs as you walk the streets. This atmosphere has seeped into my fiction; I have written two novels of the supernatural and am currently working on a third. I’ve also made a study of the grim and gothic in fiction; my Ph.D. thesis was largely about vampires (especially Dracula) but also strayed into other monsters and uncanny stories over the past two centuries.
Oscar Wilde gave us a genuinely chilling gothic tale in The Picture of Dorian Gray, but in this short story, the supernatural is a source of fun.
The Otis family, pleasant, sensible, and up-to-date Americans, move into a haunted English manor and immediately antagonize Sir Simon de Canterville, the house’s resident spectre. Sir Simon has a theatrical flair for haunting, pulling out all the stops to terrify his victims into gibbering wrecks, but it’s all wasted on the Otis family, who are hilariously unbothered by the spookiness.
If you’re staying in a haunted house, I highly recommend channeling your inner Otis.
Despite warnings from Lord Canterville that their new home is haunted and that several family have fled form it in the middle of the night the Otis family chooses to go forward with their relocation. Almost immediately the Otis Family discovers that the stories are true and that their house is haunted by the ghost of Sir Simon. It is Sir Simon's intent not to share the house with anyone, but the Otis family is not like previous families that Sir Simon has scared off in the past. Narrated by the ghost himself, this Gothic ghost story takes the reader…
