If you’re looking for a horror story that you can devour in just a day, these twenty books could be your perfect next pick. Whether on the big screen or the page, chills and thrills keep horror lovers going. However, some of the best and darkest horror books, like House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski and The Terror by Dan Simmons, require a substantial time commitment, which isn’t always feasible. It would be great if we could spend all day every day reading books, but that’s just not how life works. Luckily, bite-sized horror is nothing new, whether it’s internet creepypastas or terrifying novellas.
Great short-form horror dives into cosmic horrors and the most terrifying parts of the human mind with as much attention to detail and creativity as any long-form story. They’ll provide small doses of fear that will linger. That said, “Short” is extremely relative. Not everybody has the same reading speed, attention span, and daily responsibilities. So we’ve collected twenty horror novels ranging from 22 to 300 pages, so you can choose titles that fit your needs.
Fewer Than 100 Pages
- The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (Published: January 1892 / 22 pages / Purchase here): A woman experiencing postpartum depression gets locked away in a room with ugly yellow wallpaper by her physician husband, and she finds something sinister trapped inside the pattern.
- When the Devil by Emma E. Murray (Published: May 7, 2024 / 47 pages / Purchase here): Oppressed by an abusive husband and Catholic guilt, a homemaker named Libby finds her salvation in a mysterious woman named June, who encourages her to harness her desire and rage.
- In the Tall Grass by Stephen King & Joe Hill (Published: October 9, 2012 / 76 pages / Purchase here): Siblings Cal and Becky go into the tall grass to save a young boy crying out for help, but the further they go, the more disturbing and disorienting it becomes.
- A Sincere Warning About the Entity in Your Home by Jason Arnopp (Published: October 28, 2023 / 92 pages / Purchase here): Perfect for fans of creepypastas, an anonymous letter from a previous occupant shows up at your new home, warning you about a malevolent entity attached to the house.
- Carmilla: A Classic Tale of Vampirism [Annotated] by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (Published: 1872 / 94 pages / Purchase here): In this vampire novella, written over 25 years before Dracula, Laura develops a magnetic attraction to an alluring woman named Carmilla, with a dark, secret past.
If you’re looking for a horror book that will give you scares but not require a long time commitment, these books under 100 pages are perfect choices. The Yellow Wallpaper and Carmilla are two older horror books worth reading nowadays. The stories have stuck with readers for years after they first read them, and they’re considered some of the best short horror books. Meanwhile, newer books under 100 pages center on female rage and ghost stories. What’s more, In the Tall Grass is an exciting team-up between the horror father-son duo Stephen King and Joe Hill.
The Yellow Wallpaper and Carmilla are also available through Project Gutenberg because their copyright has expired.
100 To 149 Pages
- A Short Story in Hell by Steven L. Peck (Published: March 17, 2012 / 110 pages / Purchase here): An ordinary man named Soren Johnsson wakes up in Hell, a giant library he can escape by finding the book that tells his life story without typos or incorrect details.
- Hammers On Bone by Cassandra Khaw (Published: October 11, 2016 / 112 pages / Purchase here): In this Lovecraftian story minus the racism, John Persons, an ancient private investigator specialized in the occult, gets hired by a ten-year-old to kill KcKinsey, his monster stepdad.
- Telecommuting by L. Marie Wood (Published: May 4, 2021 / 112 pages / Purchase here): A distinctly COVID-19 lockdown psychological horror, Chris works from home in his eerily empty home. But the isolation starts to chip away at his sanity, and then the whispering starts.
- Below by Laurel Hightower (Published: March 29, 2022 / 115 pages / Purchase here): Traveling through the West Virginia mountains during a snowstorm, a woman with unexplained car trouble must accept help from a charming truck driver. However, they soon find themselves followed by a creature with glowing red eyes.
- Shadow Manor by Candace Nola (Published: June 15, 2024 / 132 pages / Purchase here): Sinclair takes shelter in a Gothic abandoned manor during a nasty thunderstorm, and she finds the diary of a woman from the 1920s whose ghost is still lurking in the shadows.
The 100 to 149-page range is great for folks who want to commit more time to story development and characters. These selections feature everything from existential horror to Gothic ghost horror. If you’re finally able to revisit the terrifying experience of COVID-19 lockdowns, Telecommuting is a great horror story that will make you uncomfortable in your own home. A Short Story in Hell is often praised for its twists. What’s more, folks who enjoy cryptids will enjoy Below, a Mothman story.
150 To 199 Pages
- The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle (Published: February 16, 2016 / 154 pages / Purchase here): Another Lovecraftian tale that subverts Lovecraft’s racism, a street-wise Black hustler named Charles “Tommy” Tester turns to the occult and an ancient sleeping god to get vengeance after a tragedy.
- What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher (Published: July 12, 2022 / 162 pages / Purchase here): Reimagining “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Alex Easton rushes to the Ruritania home of a dying friend, Madeline Usher, only to find fungus, wildlife, and strange behavior from the Ushers.
- The Butcher of the Forest by Premee Mohamed (Published: February 27, 2024 / 162 pages / Purchase here): Blending fantasy and Gothic fairytale horror, Veris Thorn is the only one to survive the terrifying, monster-filled forest, and she must go back in to save a merciless tyrant kidnapping children.
- Walking Practice by Dolki Min, translated by Victoria Caudle (Published: March 14, 2022 / 166 pages / Purchase here): Written in a stream-of-consciousness way, a shapeshifting alien lands on Earth with a metaphorical and literal hunger for human beings. They find prey on dating apps, changing shape to meet the other person’s physical expectations.
- The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (Published: October 16, 1959 / 182 pages / Purchase here): An occultist expert named Dr. Montague, an heir named Luke Sanderson, and two women with supernatural backgrounds, Eleanor Vance and Theodora, stay at the haunted Hill House.
Our selection of books between 150 and 199 pages spans multiple subgenres and fusions. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson is a classic horror book that everyone should read at least once in their life, though be prepared for a very different story than what’s in Mike Flanagan’s horror miniseries. The reimaginations of Lovecraft and Poe transform the source material in exciting ways. On top of that, Walking Practice became a cult-classic favorite in South Korea, so it’s a great choice for anyone who enjoys Korean horror TV shows and movies.
200+ Pages Long
- Penpal by Dathan Auerbach (Published: July 11, 2012 / 252 pages / Purchase here): A woman tries to reconstruct her past and make sense of disturbing childhood murders. Each chapter offers a different piece of the puzzle, creating a complete picture by the end.
- It Looks Like You In The Dark by Mathilda Zeller (Published: October 13, 2026 / 288 pages / Purchase here): When Tapeesa’s sister goes missing in the Alaskan wilderness, the 19-year-old Inupait woman must search for her while fighting back against greedy miners and a Kushtuka, an Alaskan native creature from folklore that changes shape to look like someone they love.
- Queen of Teeth by Hailey Piper (Published: August 1, 2021 / 200 pages / Purchase here): After a one-night stand with a woman named Doc, who’s secretly a scientist at AlphaBeta Pharmaceuticals, Yaya Betancourt discovers teeth and tentacles growing from her vagina.
- The Last Final Girl by Stephen Graham Jones (Re-publishing: January 12, 2027 / 240 pages / Preorder here): In a Texas suburb, the Billie Jean killer comes back to kill Lindsay, the town’s final girl who survived a massacre. To fight back, she creates a group of misfits, virgins, and other survivors who know the rules of surviving a horror movie.
- Hide by Kiersten White (Published: May 24, 2022 / 254 pages / Purchase here): Featuring a deadly game of hide-and-seek, fourteen people must survive seven days at a dilapidated amusement park without getting caught to win $50,000.
For those with a lot of time to kill or a faster reading pace, these books, between 200 and 300 pages long, will suck readers in. A horrormance book like Queen of Teeth is a great choice for folks who want a little romance with their body horror. White and Zeller tell compelling stories with thrilling plot twists. Most excitingly, the experimental indie slasher book The Last Final Girl is finally getting a reprint, making it available to a wider audience. Having read the original, the book races by in just a day.
