8 Horror Books to Get You Into the Summerween Spirit

Quinn Maybrook has just been moved to the boring small town of Kettle Springs. But her and her father's fresh start is looking hopeless as the closure of the Baypen Corn Syrup Factory has left Kettle Springs tense and divided.

The adults desperately want to return Kettle Springs to its former glory. Meanwhile, the kids in town just want to have fun, play some pranks, and abandon the place as soon as they can.

Torn between tradition and progress, the conflict may just be what destroys Kettle Springs.

Then Frendo, the Baypen mascot—an unsettling clown in a pork-pie hat—sets off on a killing spree. After all, if he can just get rid of all the rotten kids holding it back, Kettle Springs will flourish once more…

After you read, check out the new film inspired by the book!

Theodore Constantine has watched his asthmatic daughter suffer in the polluted air of the city for long enough. He and his wife pack up the family and move into a 19th-century home in the idyllic New England farming village of Cornwall Coombe.

Their new life is a simple one, full of fresh air and nature. But little do they know, this village is home to something more terrifying than the darkest Manhattan alley.

After the Constantines befriend the town matriarch, the enigmatic Widow Fortune, they are invited to join the ancient Harvest Home festival.

But this ceremony will see to it that the earth gives rise to something unimaginably sinister.

Charity is living out her spooky dreams taking on the role of the “final girl” at Camp Mirror Lake for the summer.

The guests have signed on to live out scenes from the classic slasher movie The Cure of Camp Mirror Lake, and Charity and her crew are going to make it as terrifying as possible.

The script gets flipped, however, when during the last weekend of the season, Charity's co-workers start to go missing. When one of them turns up dead, it looks like life might be imitating art.

Charity and her girlfriend Bezi need to figure out what the killer wants if they're going to survive the night.

But as they peel back the history of the real Mirror Lake, they find there's a lot more to the story than she ever imagined.

Lamesa, Texas, 1989.

In this small town of cotton and oil where everyone seems to know everything about everyone, 17-year-old Tolly Driver is a good kid with a lot of room to grow.

That is, until he's cursed to kill for revenge…

Nothing feels more like the stretch between summer and Halloween than the rush a good Goosebumps book gave me—and this book by Greg Taylor captures that same sense of youthful terror!

Toby McGill wants to be a famous chef one day—unfortunately, his experience is limited to binge-watching the Food Network channel. It seems like the perfect opportunity to up his game when he's offered a summer job at Killer Pizza.

The menu features cool pies like The Monstrosity and The Frankensausage, and his coworkers, Annabel and Strobe, are great company. Toby loves everything about being part of a team.

But he and his new friends aren't ready for what really goes on here. It seems the pizza joint is really just a front for a monster-hunting organization.

Toby's sure he can probably handle learning how to make a few pizzas, but will he survive a fight against hideous monsters? And if he quits, will his town be overrun?

In 1929, 17-year-old Lenora Hope's entire family was murdered. The massacre has since been reduced to nothing more than a macabre schoolyard chant, and while everyone believed Lenora herself was behind the killing, the police could never prove it.

Lenora denied taking part in the murders, but has otherwise declined to comment on the tragedy publicly. She refused to even return to the cliffside mansion, Hope's End, where the horrors occurred.

Now, in 1983, Lenora is in her 70s and, after a series of strokes, confined to a wheelchair and rendered mute. Her only way of communicating is to tap out words on an old typewriter.

After Lenora's previous nurse fled in the night, her new home-health aide, Kit McDeere, arrives at the rundown Hope's End. And one night, Lenora offers to tell Kit everything about that horrific night.

The old woman still swears by her innocence, but she's the only one still living. As Kit helps Lenora write about that fateful night, it soon becomes obvious there's more to the story than people understand.

But Kit can't help but wonder if Lenora is telling the whole truth…

With her workaholic husband, independent teenagers, senile mother-in-law, and endless to-do list, Patricia Campbell has never felt smaller. Her one grip on sanity is her book club, which brings together a group of Charleston women with a passion for true crime.

After book club one night, Patricia is viciously attacked by an elderly neighbor.

It's a rocky introduction to the old woman's handsome and charming nephew, James Harris, who is not only interesting and intelligent, but also inspires a lot of feelings in Patricia that she hasn't felt in a long time…

But as kids on the other side of town start to go missing, Patricia suspects James Harris may be the cause. The only problem is, she thinks he's a more literal monster than the ones her club discusses.

As James insinuates himself more and more into Patricia's life, Patricia must take some big risks to protect those dearest to her.

Derry, Maine is a small city as regular as any one of our hometown's. Except, that is, for the horrific darkness in the sewers…

A group of seven teenagers first encountered the terrible creature known only as It. Then those seven kids grew up into adults who have left Derry and found success and happiness.

28 years ago, however, they made a promise to reunite and put an end to the evil that preyed on the town's children for good. As kids have started dying again, their repressed memories from that horrifying summer have started to return.

And the monster is eagerly waiting for them, too.

A classic from Stephen King, this book is perfect for Summerween, not only because of the atmosphere and terror, but because it's so long that if you start it now, it will probably take you until Halloween to finish.