Halloween is almost here! Even if you’ve outgrown the urge to dress up in costume, it’s still a great excuse to turn out the porch light, swipe the big bowl of Fun Size bars, and cozy up with a scary book. Here are six stories guaranteed to make you sit bolt upright and yelp, “What was that sound?!”

moonlit tree“Click-Clack the Rattlebag,” Neil Gaiman
For those who prefer having tales of terror read aloud: download this free scary story written and performed by Neil Gaiman, and Audible.com will donate $1 to charity (up to $100,000) through October 31, 2012! You don’t have to create an Audible account to download, but Gaiman does ask that you wait until after dark to listen.

Breed, Chase Novak
Alex and Leslie Twisden are the embodiment of quiet, upper-middle-class New York society. He’s a forty-something attorney who comes from old money, with a mansion stuffed full of valuable antiques; she’s young and beautiful, in love with Alex and his lavish lifestyle. They travel, donate to charities, attend glittering social events — in short, they have almost everything… except the child Alex desperately wants. After years of failed efforts to conceive, they hear whispers of a miracle-working fertility doctor and take a suitcase full of cash to Eastern Europe, where a horrific procedure results in both Leslie’s pregnancy (with twins!) and some violently gruesome side effects. Ten years later, twins Adam and Alice live a sheltered, reclusive life in the decaying mansion with their weird and secretive parents. When the children begin to fear for their lives, they flee on a quest to discover the truth about their sinister origins.

Dark Places, Gillian Flynn
Before there was Gone Girl, there was Dark Places, Gillian Flynn’s second creepy suspense novel featuring some gruesome crimes and seriously messed-up women. Libby Day is the adult survivor of a ghastly mass murder in her family’s Kansas farmhouse; her mother and two older sisters were brutally slaughtered, and Libby’s testimony convicted her teenaged brother Ben of the crimes. Since then, she’s lived off the proceeds of a charitable donation fund set up in her name, but when the money runs out, Libby begins selling off family memorabilia to the Kill Club, a fan club for true-crime geeks. Surprised to learn that most of them don’t believe Ben was the killer, Libby reluctantly joins their investigation and starts to wonder about her memories of that terrible night. Full of unpleasant (yet compelling) characters and a surprising final twist, the scariest part of this book is the ugliness that people are capable of.

The Distant Hours, Kate Morton
In this modern gothic romance, Edie Burchill unearths a circa-WWII mystery when a long-lost letter mailed in 1941 is finally delivered to Edie’s mother in 1992; although reading the letter deeply upsets her, Edie’s mother refuses to discuss it. Following the letter’s trail leads Edie to Milderhurst Castle, home of the three eccentric shut-in Blythe spinsters — and, Edie learns, where her mother was relocated for safety during WWII as a young girl. The elder two Blythes are twin who have spent their lives looking after their frail, damaged little sister Juniper, who had an emotional breakdown after her fiancé abruptly jilted her in 1941. They lead a reclusive, mysterious life in their run-down estate, supported all their lives by royalties from their father, Raymond Blythe, author of the bestselling children’s classic The True History of the Mud Man. As Edie returns to Milderhurst and befriends the Blythes, she slowly pieces together the mysteries of their strange, Havisham-esque lives, but is she ready to learn the terrifying truth about the betrayals, passions, and murder hidden in her mother’s past?

House of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski
House of Leaves is as delightfully scary to read as it is hard to summarize, so bear with me here. It’s really a set of stories within stories, where you’re never quite sure what’s real. Zampano is a blind shut-in who dies and leaves behind a long treatise about a nonexistent documentary film called The Navidson Record. The Record is about a Pulitzer-Prizewinning photojournalist named Will Navidson who discovers that their old, small-town house is bigger on the inside than the outside. It’s a strange curiosity until his two children go missing inside the house, and Navidson mounts a rescue expedition into the house’s darkest depths, discovering too late that the house grows, moves… and attacks. Zampano’s manuscript is discovered posthumously by Johnny Truant, a tattoo-parlor miscreant who undertakes to edit the manuscript, interviewing and investigating those who knew Zampano in an effort to understand the work. But the further he delves into the mystery, the more Johnny’s life is overtaken by severe panic attacks and psychotic breaks. If this weren’t enough, the book itself is a typographic wonder, using colored inks, spiraling sentences, and claustrophobic jumbles of side-by-side text to enhance the story’s chaotic, hallucinatory mood. Perfect for scaring yourself silly by reading alone at night.

The Thirteenth Tale, Diane Setterfield
What could be more appropriate than a creepy book about books? In this suspenseful tale, Margaret Lea, daughter of an obscure London bookseller, is contacted by the famous yet reclusive writer Vida Winter, who is finally willing to tell her mysterious life story after decades of obfuscation and outright lies to the media. Puzzled by the unsolicited request and not really interested in writing Vida’s biography, Margaret travels to Vida’s tumbledown mansion in Yorkshire, if only to see her in person and politely decline — yet she becomes intrigued and reluctantly agrees to begin the project. Between encounters with Vida’s oddball relations, Margaret takes down the testimony of the dying author while trying to make sense of her fantastical stories of governesses, ghosts, and Angelfield, Vida’s burned-down and abandoned childhood home. Vida’s beloved and bestselling book, Thirteen Tales of Change and Desperation, strangely includes only twelve tales; slowly, Margaret comes to understand that Vida’s deathbed confession will be — you guessed it — the thirteenth tale.

Stephanie Perry
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