The 5 Best Books About Ghosts

Modern ghost stories with a twist

We typically think of ghost stories as scary or creepy tales filled with castles and dark and stormy nights.The Turn of the Screw by Henry James and The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson come to mind. Let’s also not forget Edgar Allen Poe, Toni Morrison (Beloved), Washington Irving (The Legend of Sleepy Hollow), and, of course, Stephen King.

A batch of recent novels, however, revisit the presence of ghosts and put a spin on the genre in interesting ways. Less horror and more suspense. Less gore and more literary attention to detail. If you’re a reader who likes hauntings, these new ghost stories are worth exploring.

Note: I am counting “new” as anything written in the last 10 years or less.

Machado’s debut short story collection is a stunner. Machado writes what can best be described as erotic, genre-bending ghost stories and they never disappoint.

Amazon’s description: “In Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado blithely demolishes the arbitrary borders between psychological realism and science fiction, comedy and horror, fantasy and fabulism. While her work has earned her comparisons to Karen Russell and Kelly Link, she has a voice that is all her own. In this electric and provocative debut, Machado bends genre to shape startling narratives that map the realities of women’s lives and the violence visited upon their bodies.”

The Third Hotel is a strange and beautiful book, one that made me think about ghost stories differently. The grief and longing of the main character is a perfect combination for a haunted story.

Amazon’s description: “Shortly after Clare arrives in Havana, Cuba, to attend the annual Festival of New Latin American Cinema, she finds her husband, Richard, standing outside a museum. He’s wearing a white linen suit she’s never seen before, and he’s supposed to be dead…The Third Hotel is a propulsive, brilliantly shape-shifting novel from an inventive author at the height…

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