Horror has come to more or less dominate my reading for the past few years, and it being October (Shocktober) it felt like a good time to celebrate my favourite recent reads with a list. There may be some repetition from previous lists as I didn’t do a specific horror list last year and who’s keeping a calendar around here anyway.

There’s a good proportion of comics/graphic novels going on here, because I’ve been sliding deeply into that world through a combination of reading fatigue and the discovery of just how many great comics there are.

So, in no particular order, here’s my top ten horror books that I’ve read in 2025 (and a little of 2024)!

My Top 10 Horror Reads of 2025

1. Diavola by Jennifer Thorne

A somewhat estranged family come together for a holiday in Tuscany with chilling results; this is an incredibly enjoyable ride, drawing you in with an irreverent main character in a classic alone-against-everyone social scenario and a thrilling crescendo of haunted house shenanigans. A bit like a White Lotus horror story.

2. Beautiful Darkness by Fabien Vehlman

A graphic novel with all the appearance of a children’s book, following a fable-like story of a bunch of tiny people building a new life in the woods. Except the woods are incredibly dangerous for tiny people, and they are a callous, vicious little bunch. This jumps from whimsy to some absolutely brutal scenes that are still haunting me – in part because of how blithely it’s presented.

3. Maeve Fly by CJ Leede

A disaffected young woman grows even more disaffected, and things get bloodier along the way. This one’s got a great voice and it’s likely to polarise depending on how you like the misanthropic main character – I found her to be wonderfully fun. I didn’t find it to be as grizzly as its reputation suggested but if you’re not into gore it does get rather nasty.

4. Suicide Motor Club by Christopher Buehlman

A fast-paced, monsters-on-the-road story that reminded me of Near Dark; a grieving mother-turned-nun is out for revenge, and things are going to get nasty. All the quality and grit you’d expect from Buehlman, though it does invite comparisons with Lesser Dead (I wonder if they exist in the same world), which I would say is the better of the two.

5. Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle

A meta Hollywood horror romp, with a screenwriter up against the ever-evolving, ever abusive movie industry’s latest corruptions, bringing out various horrors in a snarky, twisty tale. While I didn’t find this especially dark/scary, it is highly creative and enjoyable.

6. A Guest in the House by EM Carroll

This short and colourful tale of grief and isolation gets a lot darker than you might expect considering the delightful artwork. Playing on a few classic haunted-house tropes, it’ll charm you then hit you upside the head.

7. The Blackwater Sagaby Michael McDowell

A magnus opus of Southern Gothic, this is an epic family saga that utterly engages with its long and twisting, characterful journey. For its length, the actual horror element is rather light, but when the nasty scenes come they are gloriously grizzly – and it’s never short of hugely atmospheric.

8. The Silver Coin by Various Authors

An anthology horror comic I stumbled upon, probably well-known in the right circles because it brings together a range of terrific talent. Three volumes of, I believe, 6 tales each, all written and drawn by different people, loosely connected by the titular silver coin – there’s a great variety of unpleasant stories to explore.

9. The Woman in Black by Susan Hill

It felt like time for a reread of this classic, so that’s what I did. I don’t think this needs much introduction; it’s such a thoroughly solid and sinister ghostly tale.

10. The Reformatory by Tananarive Due

This fantastically affecting story of imprisoned children delves into racial inequality and petty tyranny in a small Florida town. A great part of its unpleasantness comes from how real it feels: I looked up a few names to see where it aligned with the history, and could imagine it still happening today. An excellent read.

Honourable Mentions

• House of Psychotic Women by Kier-La Janisse: part-memoir, part horror-movie analysis, this is a unique and interesting study of the genre as a whole and how it can relate on a personal level.
• Back To School by Zoe Thorogood: a graphic novel I picked up randomly, this introduced me to the world of Hack/Slash, an unashamedly bloody and sexy slasher horror saga playing on final girl tropes.
• Bigger Than Biggs by Danie Ware: not technically horror, but I’ve been sinking deep into the world of Judge Dredd, including the novels, and this novella has some vividly weird and vicious horror imagery! A quick, action-packed Judge Anderson adventure featuring a grotesquely extreme monster.
• Black Hole by Charles Burns: a horror graphic novel with a unique style and some wonderful twisted body horror, coming-of-age in a town of mutations. This could’ve been in the Top 10 list but I only just remembered it.
• The Grip of It by Jac Jeng: another short, solid haunting novel, with a contemporary-couples twist.