Top Ten Tuesday; Best Spooky Books I Read in 2025

It's Tuesday, which means it's time for another Top Ten Tuesday post courtesy of That Artsy Reader Girl and as it's the first Tuesday of the new year, the theme is fittingly enough best (spooky) books I read in 2025.

Here's my ten spine-chilling reads.

Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica

Description from Goodreads

Working at the local processing plant, Marcos is in the business of slaughtering humans—though no one calls them that anymore.

His wife has left him, his father is sinking into dementia, and Marcos tries not to think too hard about how he makes a living. After all, it happened so quickly. First, it was reported that an infectious virus has made all animal meat poisonous to humans. Then governments initiated the “Transition.” Now, eating human meat—“special meat”—is legal. Marcos tries to stick to numbers, consignments, processing.

Then one day he’s given a gift: a live specimen of the finest quality. Though he’s aware that any form of personal contact is forbidden on pain of death, little by little he starts to treat her like a human being. And soon, he becomes tortured by what has been lost—and what might still be saved.

The Fisherman by John Langan

Description from Goodreads

In upstate New York, in the woods around Woodstock, Dutchman's Creek flows out of the Ashokan Reservoir. Steep-banked, fast-moving, it offers the promise of fine fishing, and of something more, a possibility too fantastic to be true. When Abe and Dan, two widowers who have found solace in each other's company and a shared passion for fishing, hear rumors of the Creek, and what might be found there, the remedy to both their losses, they dismiss it as just another fish story.

Soon, though, the men find themselves drawn into a tale as deep and old as the Reservoir. It's a tale of dark pacts, of long-buried secrets, and of a mysterious figure known as Der Fisher: the Fisherman. It will bring Abe and Dan face to face with all that they have lost, and with the price they must pay to regain it.

The Reformatory by Tananarive Due

Description from Goodreads

A gloriously creepy Deep South horror story based on the infamous Dozier School for boys, perfect for fans of The Only Good Indians and Nothing But Blackened Teeth.

Jim Crow Florida, 1950. Twelve-year-old Robert Stephens Jr., who for a trivial scuffle with a white boy is sent to The Gracetown School for Boys. But the segregated reformatory is a chamber of horrors, haunted by the boys that have died there. In order to survive the school governor and his Funhouse, Robert must enlist the help of the school's ghosts – only they have their own motivations...

Vampires of El Norte by Isabel Cañas

Description from Goodreads

Vampires and vaqueros face off on the Texas-Mexico border in this supernatural western from the author of The Hacienda.

As the daughter of a rancher in 1840s Mexico, Nena knows a thing or two about monsters—her home has long been threatened by tensions with Anglo settlers from the north. But something more sinister lurks near the ranch at night, something that drains men of their blood and leaves them for dead.

Something that once attacked Nena nine years ago.

Believing Nena dead, Néstor has been on the run from his grief ever since, moving from ranch to ranch working as a vaquero. But no amount of drink can dispel the night terrors of sharp teeth; no woman can erase his childhood sweetheart from his mind.

When the United States attacks Mexico in 1846, the two are brought abruptly together on the road to war: Nena as a curandera, a healer striving to prove her worth to her father so that he does not marry her off to a stranger, and Néstor as a member of the auxiliary cavalry of ranchers and vaqueros. But the shock of their reunion—and Nena’s rage at Néstor for seemingly abandoning her long ago—is quickly overshadowed by the appearance of a nightmare made flesh.

And unless Nena and Néstor work through their past and face the future together, neither will survive to see the dawn.

The Hysterical Girls of St. Bernadettes by Hanna Alkaf

Description from Goodreads

An all-girls private school is struck with mysterious cases of screaming hysteria in this chilling dark academia thriller haunted by a deeply buried history clawing to the light.

For over a hundred years, girls have fought to attend St. Bernadette’s, with its reputation for shaping only the best and brightest young women.

Unfortunately, there is also the screaming.

When a student begins to scream in the middle of class, a chain reaction starts that impacts the entire school. By the end of the day, seventeen girls are affected—along with St. Bernadette’s stellar reputation.

Khadijah’s got her own scars to tend to, and watching her friends succumb to hysteria only rips apart wounds she’d rather keep closed. But when her sister falls to the screams, Khad knows she’s the only one who can save her.

Rachel has always been far too occupied trying to reconcile her overbearing mother’s expectations with her own secret ambitions to pay attention to school antics. But just as Rachel finds her voice, it turns into screams.

Together, the two girls find themselves digging deeper into the school’s dark history, hunting for the truth. Little do they know that a specter lurks in the darkness, watching, waiting, and hungry for its next victim…

Hell House by Richard Matheson

Description from Goodreads

For over twenty years, Belasco House has stood empty. Regarded as the Mount Everest of haunted houses, it is a venerable mansion whose shadowed walls have witnessed scenes of almost unimaginable horror and depravity. Two previous expeditions to investigate its secrets met with disaster, the participants destroyed by murder, suicide, or insanity.

Now a new investigation has been mounted, bringing four strangers to the forbidding mansion, determined to probe Belasco House for the ultimate secrets of life and death. Each has his or her own reasons for daring the unknown torments and temptations of the mansion, but can any soul survive what lurks within the most haunted house on Earth?

The Midnight Shift by Cheon Seon-Ran

Description from Goodreads

A bestseller in Korea, a biting, fast-paced vampire murder mystery exploring queer love and the consequences of loneliness.

When four isolated elderly people commit suicide back-to-back at the same hospital by jumping out of the sixth-floor window, Su-Yeon doesn’t understand why she’s the only one at her precinct that seems to care. Dismissing the case as a series of unfortunate events due to the patients’ loneliness, the police force doesn't engage. But Su-Yeon doesn’t have the privilege of looking away. Her dearest friend, Grandma Eun-Shim, lives on the sixth floor, and Su-Yeon is terrified that something will happen to her next.

As Su-Yeon begins her investigation alone, she runs into a mysterious woman named Wanda at the crime scene. Wanda, hot on the trail of her ex-lover, Lily, gives Su-Yeon the answer: a vampire did it. Su-Yeon is skeptical at first, but then a fifth victim jumps from the window and her investigation reveals the body was completely drained of blood. Desperate to discover the cause of the deaths, Su-Yeon considers Wanda’s explanation—that something supernatural is involved.

The Midnight Shift is a gripping mystery, overflowing with commentary about societal isolation and loneliness, the sharp knife of grief, and the effects of marginalization, perfect for readers of Cursed Bunny; Woman, Eating; and A Certain Hunger.

Tunnel of Bones by Victoria Schwab

Description from Goodreads

Trouble is haunting Cassidy Blake . . . even more than usual.

She (plus her ghost best friend, Jacob, of course) are in Paris, where Cass's parents are filming their TV show about the world's most haunted cities. Sure, it's fun eating croissants and seeing the Eiffel Tower, but there's true ghostly danger lurking beneath Paris, in the creepy underground Catacombs.

When Cass accidentally awakens a frighteningly strong spirit, she must rely on her still-growing skills as a ghosthunter -- and turn to friends both old and new to help her unravel a mystery. But time is running out, and the spirit is only growing stronger.

And if Cass fails, the force she's unleashed could haunt the city forever.

The Vengeful Dead by Darcy Coates

Description from Goodreads

How far will she go to save the damned?

Keira is caught in a deadly battle. Her ability to help ghosts move on from the mortal world has made her a threat to Artec, a powerful corporation intent on trapping the tortured dead for profit. They've been tracking her for years and now, finally, there's nowhere left for her to run.

Artec fears Keira and everything she's capable of. They will stop at nothing to eliminate her―including sending armed men after everyone she holds dear.

Desperate and quickly running out of time, Keira races to hone her abilities as she searches for a way to destroy the twisted organization for good. But at least now she's no longer alone. Her friends have offered to follow wherever she leads, even if that means a direct strike deep into the heart of Artec's central base...and to the certain death waiting for them there.

The Bloodi Ruin Asylum & Taproom by Seana Kelly

Description from Goodreads

I’m Sam, the werewolf book nerd owner of The Slaughtered Lamb Bookstore & Bar. My husband, Master vampire Clive, has been asked to go to Budapest to interview for a position in the Guild, a council of thirteen vampires who advise the world’s Masters. The competition for the recently vacated spot is fierce. I worry about Clive, as it quickly becomes apparent that the last person to hold the position didn’t leave voluntarily.

Ever the supportive wife, I’m tagging along. I researched Budapest and had a long itinerary of things to do. That is, I did. When we arrive, we find out that the Guild headquarters is in the ruins of an abandoned insane asylum. Awesome. If there’s one thing I love, it’s being hounded by mentally unstable Hungarian ghosts.

Let’s just say this isn’t the romantic getaway I’d been hoping for. With Clive in top secret meetings and a bunch of creepy Renfields skulking around corners, nowhere is safe. I want to help Clive because I know he really wants the job, but the other Guild members are ancient and scary powerful. Between you and me, I thought Vlad would be taller.

Wish us luck! We’re going to need it.