Books like 'Spook Lights: Southern Gothic Horror'
Readers who enjoyed Spook Lights: Southern Gothic Horror by Eden Royce also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
fantasy horror gothic southern-gothic folk-horror rural poc-mc season-autumn paranormal
-
Owned by Magic by Zara J. Black
Rated: 5.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsI'll be safe in the prince's bed, from everyone but him.I stole from a brutal street gang, and now they want me dead. There’s only one place they can’t touch me. The palace. But safety comes at the cost of my freedom. I'll sell myself as a courtesan, serve for five years, and leave with enough money to pay my debt... -
Street Soldiers by L. Divine
Rated: 4.67 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsAt South Bay High, the drama just keeps on growing... In the long-awaited 15th volume of the Drama High series, Street Soldiers picks up with a murder in front of Jayd's grandparents' house. Mama and Daddy are convinced the police have the wrong suspect in custody and have joined forces to help organize the neighborhood and find the real killer... -
Slewfoot: A Tale of Bewitchery by Brom, Бром
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsA spirited young Englishwoman, Abitha, arrives at a Puritan colony betrothed to a stranger – only to become quickly widowed when her husband dies under mysterious circumstances. All alone in this pious and patriarchal society, Abitha fights for what little freedom she can grasp onto, while trying to stay true to herself and her past... -
Clash by Chrissy Peebles
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsTaylor looks for a way to get back home, retrieve an ancient artifact to stop the werewolf war, and searches a way to divorce the man she was forced to marry... -
-
The Fabric of Sin by Phil Rickman
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsCalled in secretly to investigate an allegedly haunted house with royal connections, Merrily Watkins, deliverance consultant for the Diocese of Hereford, is exposed to a real and tangible evil. A hidden valley on the border of England and Wales preserves a longtime feud between two old border families as well as an ancient Templar church with a secret that may be linked to a famous ghost story... -
Count Magnus and Other Ghost Stories by M.R. James
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe only annotated edition of M. R. James's writings currently available, Count Magnus and Other Ghost Stories contains the entire first two volumes of James's ghost stories, Ghost Stories of an Antiquary and More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary... -
The Best Ghost Stories Of Algernon Blackwood by Algernon Blackwood
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsSelected from the entire body of Algernon Blackwood’s work, this collection contains some of his finest writing. Blackwood’s ability to create and sustain an atmosphere of unrelieved horror is witnessed in ‘The Willows’, a starkly terrifying tale of another dimension impinging on our own. In contrast, ‘The Other Wing’, is a chilling but delicate evocation of the mysteries of childhood... -
Painted Devils by Robert Aickman
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsStories included:RavissanteThe Houses of the RussiansThe ViewRinging the ChangesThe School FriendThe Waiting RoomMarriageLarger Than OneselfMy Poor... -
Conflicted by Chrissy Peebles
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsTaylor deals with the aftermath of the millennium ceremony. As she fights to survive, her friends and family stay loyally at her side. Taylor is conflicted about her new condition and nobody knows how to help her. Is there hope for her? Can she survive? Or will her life spiral out of control? Especially when she is deemed Queen of the Immortals... -
Dark and Dangerous Things by Kelly Martin
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsThe final showdown has begun. With Abel in the hospital and Molly stronger than ever, it is up to Elise and newly released Silas Ford to figure out a way to send Molly back to Hell for good. She won't make it easy, of course. She has bargains to keep. Elise Morgan is ready for this to all be over... -
The Events at Poroth Farm by T.E.D. Klein
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsThe Events at Poroth Farm is a horror novella written by T.E.D Klein, in which Jeremy, a college lecturer, takes a summer vacation in Gilead, New Jersey, to prepare for a course on Gothic literature he'll be teaching in the upcoming semester. He rents an outbuilding from Mennonite couple Sarr and Deborah Poroth, and at first his holiday is happy and productive, but then odd things begin to happen... -
Deep Web by Chrissy Peebles
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsThe dreaded night, of the first full moon in January, has finally arrived. Will Taylor survive when evil threatens to destroy her life forever? Taylor relocates back to Big Bear Lake not trusting the people who signed a treaty to keep her safe. Being with her family and friends is wonderful, but knowing that she is a sacrifice is beyond unsettling... -
The Lamb by Lucy Rose
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsMargot and Mama have lived by the forest ever since Margot can remember. When Margot is not at school they spend quiet days together in their cottage, waiting for strangers to knock on their door—"strays," Mama calls them, people who have strayed too far from the road. Mama loves the strays. She feeds them wine, keeps them warm... -
Maggie's Grave by David Sodergren
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsThe small Scottish town of Auchenmullan is dead, and has been for years. It sits in the shadow of a mountain, forgotten and atrophying in the perpetual gloom.Forty-seven residents are all that remain.There's nothing to do there, nothing to see, except for a solitary grave near the top of the mountain. MAGGIE WALL BURIED HERE AS A WITCH reads the faded inscription... -
-
The House of Memory by Carolyn Haines
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratings2nd book in the Pluto's Snitch... -
The Ghost of Tobacco Road by Dale J. Young
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsOn the banks of the Skeleton River in a remote part of North Carolina lies the small town of Starlight. Once known for its tobacco fields and rural charm, Starlight has seen better days. Now most of the stores on Main Street are boarded up, and many of the residents have left town for good... -
The Haunted Dolls' House by M.R. James
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsEvil comes with many different faces. A macabre human drama is re-enacted in a Gothic dolls' house one night; a whistle awakens a force of unspeakable malevolence; an ancient curse is passed from person to person; a grisly crime is avenged from beyond the grave; the tomb of a Swedish count will not rest quietly . M. R... -
Sleepy Hollow: Bridge of Bones by Richard Gleaves
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 10 ratings"My earliest memory is of discovering my grandfather's severed head." The HEADLESS HORSEMAN has risen and rides. JASON CRANE is the Horseman's target. But Jason must stay and fight, to protect those he loves. For Sleepy Hollow is falling to evil. Now Jason Crane lives under a tyrannical guardian. Jason Crane must descend into fearful darkness. And Jason Crane has an appointment with death.. -
Delicious Monsters by Liselle Sambury
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsThe Haunting of Hill House meets Sadie in this evocative and mind-bending psychological thriller following two teen girls navigating the treacherous past of a mysterious mansion ten years apart.Daisy sees dead people—something impossible to forget in bustling, ghost-packed Toronto. She usually manages to deal with her unwanted ability, but she’s completely unprepared to be dumped by her boyfriend... -
The Collected Ghost Stories of E.F. Benson by E.F. Benson, Richard Dalby
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsContents:Room in the tower --Dust-cloud --Gavon's eve --Confession of Charles Linkworth --At Abdul Ali's grave --Shootings of Achnaleish --How fear departed from the long gallery --Caterpillars --Cat --Bus-conductor --Man who went too far --Between the lights --Outside the door --Terror by night --Other bed --Thing in the hall --House with the brick-kiln --"And the dead spake-" --Outcast... -
Asylum by Lee Mountford
Rated: 4.36 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum--a place with a history of pain and suffering.Sarah Pearson and Father Luca Janosch are sent to the asylum in West Virginia, America, after the Church receives a mysterious letter stating that ancient secrets lie beneath the facility. Secrets that only Sarah can uncover... -
Tales of Horror and the Supernatural by Arthur Machen
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsThe Best of Arthur Machen's short stories: The Novel of the Black Seal, The Novel of the White Powder, The Great God Pan, The White People, The Inmost Light, The Shining Pyramid, The Bowmen, The Great Return, The Happy Children, Out of the Earth, N, The Children of the Pool, The Terror... -
The Ghost Tree by Sara Bain
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsA newcomer to a small town must contend with a 17th century poltergeist intent on murder Five years after the death of his wife, MacAoidh Armstrong moves into a smallholding in southern Scotland with the intention of living a self-sufficient existence. Although he’s heard the steading has a reputation for being haunted, the pragmatic Highlander does not believe in ghosts... -
In a Lonely Place by Karl Edward Wagner
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsContents:In the PinesWhere the Summer EndsSticksThe Fourth Seal... -
-
High Lonesome Sound by Jaye Wells
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsIn the sleepy mountain town of Moon Hollow, Virginia, there is a church with a crooked steeple. No one will say for sure how it got that way, but it’s the reason the whole town gathers every Decoration Day to honor the dead.But this year, there are two fresh graves up on Cemetery Hill, a stranger’s come to town, and the mountain’s song is filled with dark warnings... -
Dark and Dreadful Things by Kelly Martin
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsYou can't believe everything you see. Reeling from the events that took place at the King House, Abel Hale and Elise Morgan have been sent to a new haunting at the house of Cody Cain. Except thanks to overhearing a private conversation between Abel and the evil Silas Ford, Elise isn't sure she can trust Abel, much less work with him... -
Dark and Devious Things by Kelly Martin
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsNow that Abel Hale and Elise Morgan have been forced to hunt ghosts for Silas Ford's television show, things are about to get all kinds of freaky. Their first case involves Shonda King, a mother in Kentucky whose friendly childhood ghost has turned into an adult nightmare. Shonda, terrified for the safety of her family, wants Abel and Elise to get rid of the ghost-- by any means necessary... -
We Shall Be Monsters by Tara Sim
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsFrankenstein meets Indian mythology in this twisty, darkly atmospheric fantasy where the horror is not the monsters you face but the ones you create.After her sister Lasya’s sudden death, Kajal vows to do whatever it takes to bring her back. No cost is too great, even if it means preventing Lasya’s soul from joining the cycle of reincarnation... -
The Unsettled Dust by Robert Aickman, Reece Shearsmith
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsRobert Aickman, the supreme master of the supernatural, brings together eight stories in which strange things happen that the reader is unable to predict. His characters are often lonely and middle-aged, but all have the same thing in common: they are brought to the brink of an abyss that shows how terrifyingly fragile our piece of mind actually is... -
The Shadow at the Bottom of the World by Thomas Ligotti
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsA longtime Lovecraft devotee, who has extended the weird tale to the next level via the likes of Borges and Burroughs, Thomas Ligotti is usually published as part of a general anthology of horror writers. But now Ligotti has pulled together a collection of his favorite fiction, both old and new, representing his best and most characteristic works... -
The Children of Old Leech: A Tribute to the Carnivorous Cosmos of Laird Barron by Ross E. Lockhart, Justin Steele
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsThere are Things - terrifying Things - whispered of in darkened forests beyond the safe comfort of firelight: The Black Guide, the Broken Ouroboros, the Pageant, Belphegor, Old Leech... These Things have always been here. They predate you. They will outlast you. This book pays tribute to those Things. For We are the Children of Old Leech...and we love you... -
Gather Her Round by Alex Bledsoe
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsIn critically-acclaimed Alex Bledsoe’s latest Tufa novel, a monster roams the woods of Cloud County, while another kind of evil lurks in the hearts of menLove and tragedy are not strange bedfellows among the Tufa. Young Kera Rogers disappears while hiking in the woods by Needsville... -
Blackwater: II The Levee by Michael McDowell
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 13 ratingsElinor Dammert abandoned her first-born child in a bargain with Mary-Love Caskey of Perdido, Alabama, and set in motion a series of strange familial entanglements. Her goals: power, money, her way.In her way, she would begin to suck power from the weaknesses of the family she had entered through marriage... -
Dark Gods by T.E.D. Klein
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsFour unusually literate horror novellas, by the former editor of "The Twilight Zone" magazine... -
-
Ghost and Horror Stories of Ambrose Bierce by Ambrose Bierce
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThis volume contains 24 of Bierce's best tales of the unknown. Morbid, cynical, eerie, they take you to a twilight region of flesh and spirit — and into the darkest recesses of the human mind... -
Knock Knock, Open Wide by Neil Sharpson
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 11 ratingsKnock Knock, Open Wide weaves horror and Celtic myth into a terrifying, heartbreaking supernatural tale of fractured family bonds, the secrets we carry, and the veiled forces that guide Irish life.Driving home late one night, Etain Larkin finds a corpse on a pitch-black country road deep in the Irish countryside. She takes the corpse to a remote farmhouse... -
Curfew by Phil Rickman
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsOn the border between England and Wales lies the tiny town of Crybbe, not picturesque enough for the tourist trade, quietly sliding into decay. Max Goff means to change all that. Goff has made millions in the record business, but his heart is in New Age philosophy. He has learned that Crybbe was once a spiritual center of sorts, surrounded by ancient standing stones that were emblems of power... -
The Ghost Woods by C.J. Cooke
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsLook out for C.J. Cooke's atmospheric new novel . . . In the midst of the woods stands a house called Lichen Hall. This place is shrouded in folklore—old stories of ghosts, of witches, of a child who was not quite a child. Now the woods are creeping closer, and something has been unleashed. Pearl Gorham arrives in 1965, one of a string of young women sent to Lichen Hall to give birth... -
The Farm by Amy Cross
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsOne farm. Two tragedies, thirty years apart. And a tortured figure whose presence connects both incidents... In 1979, the Bondalen family farm in Norway is home to three young girls. As winter fades to spring, Elizabeth, Kari and Sara each come to face the secrets of the barn, and they each emerge with their own injuries... -
The Cold Calling by Will Kingdom
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsLife isn't easy for Detective Inspector Bobby Maiden. Death is even harder. When Maiden is revived in hospital after dying in a hit and run incident, his memories are not the familiar ones of bright lights and angelic music, only of a cold, harsh place, he has no wish to revisit - ever... -
Mist Over Pendle by Robert Neill
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsAgainst a background of witchcraft in 17th-century rural Lancashire, ROBERT NEILL has woven an extraordinary novel of the power of evil.. -
The Apparition Phase by Will Maclean
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsSome ghosts never leave us.SHORTLISTED FOR THE MCKITTERICK PRIZE 2021'A wild rural gothic with some slick plotting . . . the perfect novel for our phantom present' Guardian'Outstanding . . -
A Gathering of Twine by Martin Adil-Smith
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratings"Everything about you is a lie." Freeman Sullivan is a man running out of time. As he submits his final manuscript to his sceptical editor, he tells the story of Professor George Tate, and Celus - his seemingly ageless assistant - as they are expelled from the British Museum and embark on a journey that leaves a wake of irrevocably changed lives... -
The Rain Dancers by Greg F. Gifune
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsHe arrives in darkness, in the middle of a violent downpour...an affable old man with tales to tell... When Will and Betty Colby return to Betty's hometown to settle her late father's affairs and prepare his house for sale, they assume they'll be faced with some cleaning, basic repairs and making runs to the local dump... -
-
Before the Devil Knows You're Here by Autumn Krause
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsA deliciously dark folk horror for fans of Maggie Stiefvater and Erin Craig, blending the tall tales of Johnny Appleseed and Paul Bunyan with Faustian elements, and centering a fierce Mexican-American poet on a quest to rescue her brother.1836. Wisconsin Territory. All Catalina has left is her little brother—Mama died years ago, and Papa was buried just yesterday... -
Rootwork by Tracy Cross
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsSet in a small parish in Louisiana in 1889, Rootwork follows sisters, Betty, Ann and Pee Wee. When school lets out for the summer, the girls head off to stay with their hoodoo-practicing aunt, Theodora, an empowered woman equally feared and revered by the local townspeople. They learn how to make “hot foot powder” and the secrets of a good “black cat bone”... -
Dark Companions by Ramsey Campbell
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsA brilliant collection of stories by one of the masters of horror. Not all companions are friendly. There are many that you most definitely do not want to see. When Elaine was working late at the office, she thought she was all alone. But something sinister was in the elevator shaft…working its way to her floor... -
Hell’s Belles! by Paul Magrs
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsBrenda never meant to tell anyone the truth. She's got used to keeping secrets over the years. But in Whitby, people have a habit of working it out. Especially best friends like Effie, who sniff out the unusual, and expect the unexpected. And Brenda needs friends. She can't keep us safe all by herself. Not any more... -
After Dark by Manly Wade Wellman
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsA Novel of Silver JohnMany eons ago a humanoid race with supernatural powers roamed the North American Continent. But when vast hordes of Indians migrated across the Bering Strait land bridge the Shonokins soon became a defeated people. The few remaining Shonokins were able to survive and evolve into an all male race with man-like features except for cat-lie eyes and an elongated third finger... -
Midnight Harvest by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsFleeing Spain as it becomes engulfed in Civil War, the immortal vampire Saint-Germain heads for California, where he is reunited with Rowena Saxon, unaware that Cenere, a ruthless assassin, is pursuing him and will do anything, even kill those under Saint-Germain's protection, to achieve his objective. Reprint...
Or - use our amazing romance book finder to get recommendations based on your favorite content tropes and themes. Mix and match at will.