Each year, our social media feeds are filled with news of the latest books in horror, true crime, and paranormal.
So many chilling new books come out each year—and our TBRs are often stacked with delectable spooky books by the latest emerging authors. We truly are in a golden age of horror fiction.
But sometimes we're in the mood for something older—books that have stood the test of time.
These are the classics that are the most disturbing. They’re strange and unnerving in uncanny ways—often calling us back to something old and ancient and unsettling.
Every month, we’re bringing you a selection of free ebooks to read that are perfect for lovers of all things spooky, mysterious, gruesome, strange, and macabre.
Randalls Round
First published in 1929, Eleanor Scott’s Randalls Round is a legendary collection of supernatural stories that helped pioneer weird fiction and folk horror. Inspired by dreams, these nine unsettling tales explore uncanny encounters, occult rituals, otherworldly creatures, malign forces, and human madness.
Often compared to the works by M. R. James and E. F. Benson, Scott’s stories have earned a cult following among horror and ghost story enthusiasts. Nearly a century later, their eerie atmosphere and chilling power remain undiminished.
The Silver Key
Randolph Carter has grown older and lost the key to the gate of dreams in H. P. Lovecraft’s eerie tale The Silver Key. Longing to return to the fantastical worlds of his childhood, Carter begins to question whether the waking world is truly more real than the dream realm he left behind.
His search for the lost key leads him on a strange journey through familiar places and uncanny landscapes, blurring the boundaries between reality and illusion, sleep and waking, and the past and present.
Benighted
In J. B. Priestley’s classic novel of psychological terror, three travelers seek shelter from a violent storm in a sinister Welsh mansion. Philip Waverton, his wife Margaret, and their friend Roger Penderel soon find themselves trapped among the bizarre Femm family and their brutish butler, Morgan.
As the storm rages outside, the house’s dark secrets begin to emerge, including the mystery behind two locked doors. Published in 1927, Benighted later inspired the 1932 film The Old Dark House, starring Boris Karloff, Melvyn Douglas, and Gloria Stuart.
Scarface
Inspired by the life of gangster Al Capone, Armitage Trail’s Scarface is a classic noir novel and the basis for both the Howard Hawks and Oliver Stone films. Tony “Scarface” Guarino rises through the criminal underworld of Prohibition-era Chicago, building a powerful bootlegging empire after murdering a rival mob boss.
As his wealth and influence grow, Tony becomes one of America’s most wanted criminals. But the one cop capable of bringing him down may be closer than he realizes: the police chief is his own blood.
