Here are 81 books that Would You Rather... fans have personally recommended if you like
Would You Rather....
Book DNA is a community of 13,000+ 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…
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
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…
Delve into this internationally best-selling series, now complete! A fast paced laugh-out-loud mix of Urban Fantasy and Mystery.
I can tell when you’re lying. Every. Single. Time. I’m Jinx, a PI hired to find a missing university student, I hope to find her propped up at a bar–yet my gut…
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…
Though I’ve always found the idea of survival after death fascinating, it was my interest in Modern Spiritualism that really sparked the desire to write Chasing Ghosts. That era (mid-1800s to the early 1900s) was a time when millions confidently believed they could communicate with the dead. Of course, this was only the tip of the paranormal iceberg. So I continued the journey into the lore of haunted places, ancient cultural beliefs, and scientific endeavors to find evidence for paranormal experiences or to debunk it. As a historian of the weirder pages of the past, this topic endlessly fascinates me. I hope it will for you as well.
Though Doyle will forever live on as the creator of Sherlock Holmes, he became an ardent Spiritualist and one of its biggest evangelists in the early 1900s. So strong were his beliefs that he lectured worldwide, and famously butted heads with Houdini over the legitimacy of communicating with the Other Side. This 1918 book explores his investigations into the world Spiritualism and the afterlife.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a Scottish writer and physician. He was born on 22nd May 1859 and was died on 7th July 1930. He was renowned for his ‘Sherlock Holmes Stories’.His famous work includes: A Study in Scarlet, The Sign of the Four, The Valley of Fear, The Mazarin Stone and His Last Bow etc.
I've been a paranormal investigator (a paranormal reporter, actually) for over a decade. One of the very best parts of my job is that I get to gorge myself on books of true accounts of the paranormal. It's exciting to see what else is out there, and what other people have experienced – both historically, and personally. I'm so grateful for the chance to add to this body of work; there are many renowned investigators and writers out there, and I'm thrilled to be counted among them. And someday, someone will read about my experiences and be terrified and intrigued and inspired by them.
I will read absolutely anything that Richard Estep writes. He has written books about the Villisca Ax Murders, Malvern Manor, and other crazy-haunted places. This one, about a site in his native England, is utterly terrifying. Estep writes with a very straightforward, matter-of-fact style (his writing reminds me much of my own style), and the evidence he presents for this haunted site is deeply chilling -- especially since his team is one of the groups that has investigated the Cage.
When single mother Vanessa Mitchell moved into a historic cottage in Essex, she had no idea that a paranormal nightmare was about to unfold. The cottage, known as the Cage, used to imprison those accused of witchcraft back in the 1500s. From her first day living there, Vanessa saw apparitions walk through her room, heard ghostly growls, and was even slapped and pushed by invisible hands. Unable to handle the dark phenomena after three years, Vanessa moved out and paranormal investigator Richard Estep moved in. Spirits of the Cage chronicles the years that Vanessa and Richard spent in the Cage,…
On the morning of December 26, 2004, an undersea earthquake struck off the coast of Sumatra in the Indian Ocean. The resulting tsunami killed an estimated 230,000 people across fourteen countries, from Indonesia to Sri Lanka to Thailand to the Maldives to India and all the way to East Africa.…
I often refer to myself as a haunted body. Death is something that has fascinated and alarmed me since I can remember. I’ve even had a spooky experience or five that I can’t explain. But to write a ghost story is akin to making someone fall in love with you, or lean in close to hear a secret. I love the intrigue and power of that kind of tale. Our oldest stories are ghost stories and the biggest and most enduring mystery for the entirety of humanity is: Is there life after death?
Helen has been haunting the English classroom for 130 years and has never, not once, been seen. And then she feels his eyes on her. Seeing her, reallyseeing her like she hasn’t been seen in decades. Without wanting to be, Helen is drawn to him. That he has a body and she doesn’t is nothing in the face of their growing love, and the two form a bond that defies death. Let me tell you this book had me in tears. I read it years ago and still think of it with deep affection. I even wrote a song about it when I was far younger and far less self-conscious than I am now!
In the class of the high school English teacher she has been haunting, Helen feels them: for the first time in 130 years, human eyes are looking at her. They belong to a boy, a boy who has not seemed remarkable until now. And Helen—terrified, but intrigued—is drawn to him. The fact that he is in a body and she is not presents this unlikely couple with their first challenge. But as the lovers struggle to find a way to be together, they begin to discover the secrets of their former lives and of the young people they come to…
As a middle grade horror writer, I attribute my love of everything spooky to my early obsession with reading. Of course, my little brain was twisted already, but I found a perfect home in the monsters and ghouls of the library. These are the five books that inspired me to become a writer who scares children in the best possible way.
These fall more in the young adult world rather than middle grade because of the sexual situations. With that being said, I totally devoured them in middle school.
In my opinion, there is no greater master of the end of chapter cliffhanger than R.L. Stine, which keeps you frantically turning the page waaaaay after lights out. I carried these books around with me in my grandmother’s huge makeup case like my spooky book security blanket. And yes, my family was concerned.
FEAR STREET -- WHERE YOUR WORST NIGHTMARES LIVE...
The new girl is as pale as a ghost, blond, and eerily beautiful -- and she seems to need him as much as he wants her. Cory Brooks hungers for Anna Corwin's kisses, drowns in her light blue eyes. He can't get her out of his mind. He has been loosing sleep, ditching his friends...and everyone has noticed.
Then as suddenly as she came to Shadyside High, Anna disappears. To find a cure for his obsession, Cory must go to Anna's house on Fear Street -- no matter what the…
I grew up listening to my family’s "true" ghost stories, each creepy tale ending with a declaration that "there are no such things as ghosts." As a teenager, I devoured books of folklore, with all their tales of ghosts, witches, and long-legetty beasties: and also many books about paranormal research. As an adult, I’m a complete unbeliever but still very fond of both reading and writing ghost stories!
I once made the mistake of reading several of James’ ghost stories, one after another, while alone in the house.
I was making a cup of coffee when something started scratching stealthily at the inside of a cupboard door. I had to lower myself from the ceiling before I discovered that some scrunched carrier bags hung inside the cupboard had unscrunched, causing the ghostly scratching. But that’s why I love James’ ghost stories.
The second in a series of republished classic literature, The Ghost Stories of M. R. James collects the tales that best illustrate his quiet mastery of the ghost story form. Running through each of these stories is a slowly escalating sense of unease and dread, which ultimately shifts into the wildly uncanny. James' characters exist in a world of ancient objects whose atrocious histories begin to repeat when they are disturbed, and the blinkered repression common to James' narratives only amplifies the shock of the spectral appearance.
Nelson West, a former Chicago homicide detective, is hired by wealthy heir Lionel Bing to discreetly help “fix” scandals and legal problems for his father’s wealthy friends.
Bing, a brilliant but troubled investigator, suffers from PTSD symptoms as a result of being kidnapped and witnessing the murder of his mother…
I grew up listening to my family’s "true" ghost stories, each creepy tale ending with a declaration that "there are no such things as ghosts." As a teenager, I devoured books of folklore, with all their tales of ghosts, witches, and long-legetty beasties: and also many books about paranormal research. As an adult, I’m a complete unbeliever but still very fond of both reading and writing ghost stories!
We all think we know "A Christmas Carol" but after the Muppet version, I find myself thinking of it as simply comical.
Until I re-read it, I forget just how chilling the ghosts who visit Scrooge are. And I love "Captain Murderer," Dickens’ account of how his nursemaid terrified him with scary tales, because it takes me back to my own childhood love of terrors.
Then there are stories like "The Signalman," which is not at all funny, darkened with the signalman’s dreadful loneliness and apprehension.
Dickens was a Master. Even his humorous ghost stories have an edge of fear.
