Looking for the best scary novel out there but do not want to spend the next several weeks reading a 500-page book? A short horror book gets quickly down to the uneasy part, and keeps the thrill high all the time.
Most often, I think there is something about the short-form horror that makes your Halloween spooky and fun. You think you are going to read a few chapters and the next thing is you are wondering why on earth you would decide to go for horror as your bedtime read. If you have the time for a longer scare, here’s my list of the scariest horror books ever written.
So here are 15 of the best short horror books, including psychological horror novels, supernatural tales, bloody body horror tales, gothic novels, stories about cursed/haunted houses, strange tales that explore bizarre subjects and several other books that are simply too difficult to label below.
The Best Short Horror Books Under 150 Pages
1. Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke by Eric LaRocca
Best for: Disturbing psychological horror
Length: Around 104 pages
This book is about two women who basically start to get obsessed with each other, mainly though messages back and forth and conversations online.
It starts off as a bit of a weird friendship between two women, but it gets weirder and a lot darker further in time.
It is just uncomfortable and intimate and if you tend to watch, watch it in one go.
My verdict: It’s one of the best short scary novels if you want something disturbing instead of typical monster horror.
2. A Short Stay in Hell by Steven L. Peck
Best for: Existential horror
Length: Around 108 pages
This is the most memorably titled by Steven L. Peck entry on our list, a man dies and finds his idea of Hell is a library unending from which he must find one single book, from an uncountable amount of volumes.
Sounds funny till you realize it would be the height of horror; an infinite library, for you to search in for an infinite period.
My verdict: Definitely one of the best short horror novellas I’ve ever read, and I would recommend it thoroughly to everyone who enjoys existential dread, horror books and thinking about those big old philosophical questions everyone thinks about sooner or later in their lives.
3. Mapping the Interior by Stephen Graham Jones
Best for: Supernatural horror
Length: Around 128 pages
Something I recommend often when people ask for something creepy, but do not have that much time.
It was his father’s death and finding unusual items hidden in his new hometown house, which brought something uncanny in the world, of a teenage boy which things become strange. This, hopefully, is not just the tip of something ugly growing in the family home.
The house is getting stuffier gradually and Jones was good in making a familiar area a scary one.
My verdict: Short, weird, atmospheric and genuinely creepy.
Also Read: Stephen Graham Jones’ The Buffalo Hunter Hunter
4. Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw
Best for: claustrophobic
Length: Around 130 pages
Old friends gather in a Heian-era Japanese mansion, said to be haunted by the vengeful spirit of a bride sealed alive in its walls, to hold a wedding. Old resentments resurface right as the house starts proving the legend true. It is one of the books like House of Leaves.
My verdict: Khaw’s prose is genuinely gorgeous — dense, lyrical, and dripping with atmosphere — packed into a story you can finish in under two hours. It’s proof that a horror novella doesn’t have to sacrifice style for length.
5. The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin
Best for: Psychological horror and paranoia
Length: Around 130 pages
For a horror novel that makes the normality of the suburban domestic house seem scarier than any haunted mansion, start with The Stepford Wives.
Joanna and her family move to the town of Stepford where everything seems perfect until she finds out all the wives love their husbands and are devoted to their housework and domestic life. Over the last months Joanna has realized that something is not right.
The horror is easy to create in the book; Levin does not have to put any monsters in the closet to horrify the reader.
It is short, snappy, but also weirdly makes sense.
My verdict: One of the best short psychological horror novelettes if you are into paranoia and social commentary over gore.
6. The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle
Best for: Cosmic horror
Length: Around 154 pages
For some cosmic horror with a Lovecraftian feel, that is also a shorter read, you can’t beat trying The Ballad of Black Tom.
The tale of Charles Thomas Tester: a young, black musician in 1920s Harlem that found himself swept up by forces more influential and bone-chilling than any we write about.
My verdict: I found in it a clever, disturbing short horror novella that gave cosmic horror in another form a chance to make sense. It has also won Shirley Jackson award in 2016 for this novella.
7. We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
Best for: Gothic
Length: Around 160 pages
Merricat Blackwood lives in isolation with her sister and ailing uncle, years after a family tragedy left the rest of the household dead.
When a cousin arrives determined to move in, the fragile peace of their strange, insulated life starts to crack.
My verdict Jackson’s final novel is somehow even more quietly unsettling than Hill House — Merricat’s narration is one of the most memorable unreliable-narrator voices in horror, gothic or otherwise.
8. The Woman in Black by Susan Hill
Best for: Classic horror
Length: Around 165 pages
A young solicitor is sent to settle the estate of a reclusive widow in a remote marsh house, and starts seeing a woman in black who seems to appear right before tragedy strikes local children.
My verdict: This is the pure gold when it comes to gothic ghost story, written similar to Victorian classics like The Turn of the Screw. If you want old-fashioned dread rather than modern gore, this is your book.
9. Come Closer by Sara Gran
Best for: Possession
Length: Around 180 pages
Amanda has a good life — a career, a marriage — until small things start slipping: a strange voice in her head, a cigarette burn she doesn’t remember giving her husband, a growing sense that she isn’t fully herself anymore.
My verdict: This is possession horror which is atmost claustrophobic, told entirely from inside a mind that’s losing its grip. Short chapters and an unreliable narrator make it very easy to read in one anxious sitting.
10. What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher
Best for: Gothic Horror
Length: Around 180 pages
A retelling of Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher: retired soldier Alex Easton arrives at the decaying Usher estate to find their childhood friend Madeline gravely ill, the grounds overrun with unnatural fungal growth, and something deeply wrong with the local wildlife.
My verdict: Kingfisher does the impossible here — she makes a 175-year-old story feel genuinely fresh and freaky. The mushroom-horror angle is unexpectedly one of the creepier things I’ve read in the last few years.
11. Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark
Best for: Historical and supernatural horror
Length: Around 185 pages
Ring by P. Deji Clark shout is an alternate history horror/dark fantasy set in 1920’s America.
Ring Shout is about a group of resistance fighters taking on demons connected to the Ku Klux Klan and a demonic force which feeds on hatred itself.
My verdict: If you are looking for horror plus action alongside a well-grounded historical storyline then I would recommend having this one too.
12. The Grip of It by Jac Jemc
Best for: Haunted-house horror
Length: Around 224 pages
A couple moves into a new house hoping changes will help them with the problems they have.
As this is a horror novel, it does not exactly go according to plan!
This can make it difficult at times for reading, whether the house has changed itself or has the character has just reached a new level of insanity.
My verdict: A good modern (haunted house style) tale if you like the occasional bit of ambiguity!
Also Read: House of Leaves, the ultimate haunted-house mindbender
13. The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling
Best for: Sci-fi horror
Length: Around 304 pages
Go down into no eyesight underground cave, “the world of normality” is the man speaking on the other end of the radio suit.
That is more or less the nightmare at the center of The Luminous Dead.
The enclosed setting, the sense of claustrophobia is effective (if you suffer from it you certainly are going to enjoy this book!).
My verdict: A great book for anyone who loves science fiction with a subtle sense of psychological thriller elements.
14. The Ruins by Scott Smith
Best for: Survival horror
Length: Around 368 pages
Whilst it is one of the longer books on this list, it is still a fairly swift read for a horror as it does not give you much of a break.
Tourists in Mexico go to look at an archaeologists’ site. It is not as easy to leave from there. The less you knew what was going on, the better.
And from there? one of the most claustrophobic horror novels I’ve read.
Reddit fans loves The Ruins becoz of the horrible feeling where people slowly start turning against each other because stress turns humans into raccoons fighting over chips.
My verdict: If you’re happy to go slightly over ‘short’, pop this on your list.
15. The Troop by Nick Cutter
Best for: Body horror
Length: Around 360 pages
This recommendation is slightly longer than average, but if you are a horror fan and want something disturbing to get your teeth into, then it is worth taking a chance with.
Set on an isolated island, this horror short features a group of scouts, a stranger, a horrific disease, disturbing parasites, and shocking physical transformation.
I would not recommend this one to everyone. Unless you have the will of a saint when it comes to animal abuse or body gore and can let this kind of thing just float above you, skip it.
My verdict: I think it is one of the more disgusting modern body horror books I have read, and I would not recommend it for an evening read.
