5 Scary New Books To Read for Spooky Season in 2026

Horror and thriller stories are having a moment this year. Perhaps it’s the fact that we’ve all survived a pandemic, or that global events often feel stranger than fiction. Either way, there’s no shortage of new horror and thriller novels. However, finding a scary book without the horror tropes and cliché endings? Well, that’s a different story. To save you the frustration of reading a predictable book that’s hard to finish, here are the best scary page-turners released so far in 2026 —just in t