2025's Most Terrifying Horror, True Crime, and Paranormal Bestsellers

Ten years after zombies took over the world, Jory Gray has finally found peace. But when Linse, the center of his world, leaves in the middle of the night to join the church, Jory will do anything to get her back. 

He knew his mission might be suicide. He never expected to discover a gospel that reveals a past long thought dead.

Ever since her husband was arrested and convicted of murder, Maggie has tried to disappear. But when her husband refuses to confess his crimes to anyone except Maggie, police beg her to visit him in prison.

Only, he’d rather talk about their marriage and family, forcing Maggie to question their past. And when his final confession comes, Maggie realizes too late that it’s a truth she would rather never hear.

For years, two judges ruined thousands of lives by wrongfully sentencing children to for-profit juvenile detention centers in exchange for cash. It took over a decade, but the two judges were finally forced to pay millions in damages to the victims of their crimes. 

This is the chilling true story of how it all unfolded.

On March 29, 1975, two sisters disappeared from a shopping mall in Washington, D.C. The case went cold for more than 30 years until one cold case detective found a clue that had been missed.

Mark Bowden covered the first weeks of the case in 1975, and now, he writes the tragic ending.

Including research notes, detailed histories, first-hand accounts, and eerie photographs, Encyclopedia of Haunted Places is the first directory for dozens of haunted locations around the world.

Inside these pages are weird and spooky stories about ghosts, aliens, cryptids, angels, demons, paranormal abilities, and more. There are only three rules: they’re true, they’re short, and they’re creepy.

There are borders in this world. The line delineating countries. The choice between right and wrong. The boundary between life and death. There’s a price to be paid whenever a border is crossed. And sometimes, when you come back, you aren’t alone.

Spanning more than forty years and over nine thousand autopsies, Dr. Di Maio tells his life story through the cases that made him famous.

When a man finds a baby left for dead in the woods, he brings her home to his wife. Years later, tragedy strikes, and the couple’s son takes the now-grown girl to Stockholm.

He enters her in a national singing competition where her performance inspires another young girl and ignites the most terrifying duo in modern fiction.

From one of the legendary authors of American hardboiled noir crime fiction comes a collection of his greatest short stories.

Find out why Cain was called the “poet of tabloid murder” by the critics and became a Mystery Writers of America Grand Master.

Have you ever wondered what happens in the dark, after the people lights go out? Master storyteller Stephen Graham Jones wants to show you.

America in 1934 was a difficult place to live. Breadlines run through the streets, and foreclosures shuttered homes and businesses all across the country. And in the wake of this misery, confidence men and their unscrupulous schemes ran rampant.

When one man with a knack for listening “hears” a child’s cry for help, he’s drawn into a dangerous world with two dangerous cons.

On April 27, 1908, a single farmhand escaped a devastating fire that killed property owner Belle Poulsdatter and her three children.

But in the ashes, authorities made a shocking discovery. The farm had a dozen corpses of men and children. Even more shocking: the corpse they found in the fire might not have been Belle’s at all.

John F.D. Taff curates a collection of short stories offering tribute to horror’s legacy in short fiction. Featuring twelve original stories from the masters of the genre, Dark Stars explores the genre’s most beloved tropes that make horror so multi-faceted. 

Horror has brought some of the deranged villains to life, and this collection pays tribute to the best of the worst. From Hannical Lector to Patrick Bateman, Psychos features thirty-five stories about the genre’s scariest serial killers, psychopaths, and criminally deranged.

From the minds that brought you the award-winning podcast, Last Podcast on the Left, comes a deep dive into history’s most infamous serial killers.

Taken from Rice’s career as a crime reporter, 45 Murderers spans a century of murder as she takes you across the sinister dark side of America.

When a young woman was found dead in a bathtub, the three women closest to her in life, her mother and two aunts, were charged with murder.

But as the investigation continued, authorities realized this death was just the start of a brutal family history marred by violent death all leading back to the three sisters in black.

Following the death of her father, Susan Fensten turned to an online genealogy message board hoping to find family. What she found instead was a relentless sociopath who subjected her to one of the most harrowing cases of internet stalking in modern history.

Weird Tales first hit newsstands in 1923. Curated by editors Jonathan Maberry and Justin Criado, this collection features the best stories from the first two years of the publication’s life.

First published in 1970, Don’t Go to Sleep in the Dark features thirteen stories from Fremlin’s prolific short fiction career. These stories cemented her as the “indisputable mistress of horror”.

Stephen Graham Jones is not only prolific, he defies genre expectations. This collection of thirteen stories will reshape the familiar tropes you love into pieces that are shocking, horrifying, and absolutely unforgettable.

Italy, 1704. Matthew Corbett is still hunting for a mirror that can summon demons. But when his ship is injured, he’s forced onto a secluded island. Though the islanders welcome him and his crew, strange forces influence his thoughts.

If he can’t maintain his wits, he risks losing not just his life, but his mind.

Ellen Datlow has a fascination with ghosts. So, when compiling a collection of ghost stories, she asked sixteen horror authors what scares them. They wrote stories that sent shivers down their spine.

Just be warned: when you read this collection, you’ll want to keep the lights on.

No one knew what was happening inside a quiet Fresno home until neighbors heard gunshots on March 12, 2004. What police encountered horrified them. Marcus Wesson had terrorized his family behind closed doors for years until it came a violently bloody end.