10 spooky modern horror books to read this fall

polygon.com:

Dark times often call for some sort of escapism and, for many people (myself included), that escapism comes in the form of reading the most terrifying book you can get your hands on. Scary stories are a space where you can practice being brave and learn how to cope with internal and external worries and fears.

From time to time you might come across a book that is too scary, and you have to put it in the freezer like Joey Tribbiani does with his copy of The Shining in that one episode of Friends (my freezer book is A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay), but horror can be fun too! Shouting “you idiot” or “oh no” or “absolutely not” out loud while reading a book can be cathartic.

To encourage everyone to read more scary books, I have compiled a list of horror novels, novellas, and graphic novels that, in my opinion, are well worth the scares.

People don’t often consider horror and romance to go hand in hand. With Our Wives Under the Sea, Julia Armfield has crafted a modern fairy tale that is as deeply heartfelt as it is unsettling and strange.

After the deep-sea mission that she’s on takes a disastrous turn, Leah returns to dry land a changed woman. She drifts aimlessly around her apartment, doesn’t eat or drink, and runs the tap in the bathroom for hours at a time. It’s up to Miri, Leah’s wife, to seek out answers. What happened to Leah at the bottom of the ocean? Why won’t the company that Leah worked for answer Miri’s phone calls? And most importantly — is the woman who returned to Miri the same woman she fell in love with all those years ago?

Space is, undeniably, terrifying. The idea of being trapped on a haunted spaceship filled with horribly mutilated dead bodies that have been missing for decades is even more