How to Get Spooky When Seaside or Poolside: 5 Scary Beach Reads

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Some people love a light read while sitting at the beach, and others love a steamy romance novel while chilling by the pool. Those are all perfectly valid beach reads! But some of us prefer to read edge-of-your-seat, pulse-racing reads that will have us flipping pages waterside.

If you’re into thrills and chills for your summer reads, here are five spine-tingling thrillers and horror novels that you won’t be able to put down.

Blacktop Wasteland by S.A. Cosby

A good guy doing bad things for good (well, let’s say at least understandable) reasons will always work. Books about cars always work. We are off to a good start. But it is the web of racial, cultural, and economic strings that pull on the characters of Blacktop Wasteland that elevate this from another very good crime novel into the rare territory of compelling, page-turning novels that are about something. Cosby has been steadily growing in popularity, but I think you can still get on board and be an early fan. You won’t be sorry.

— Jeff O’Neal

My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite

There are several qualities I look for in a perfect beach read: a thrilling plot, a clever sense of humor, a vivid setting, and (bonus!) a low page count that you get through in one sitting. My Sister, the Serial Killer delivers all of that, plus two morally complicated characters you can’t help but root for, even as they’re committing (or at least enabling) violent crimes. Korede has always envied her younger sister Ayoola’s beauty and charm. Now Ayoola has picked up a habit of killing her boyfriends, and Korede is stuck cleaning up the bloodstains. When a doctor at the Lagos hospital where Korede works catches her little sister’s eye, Korede already knows how it will end. But can she do anything to stop it?

— Susie Dumond

The God of the Woods by Liz Moore

Liz Moore’s hugely popular 2024 thriller was one of my favorite reads of that year because it both fed my latent desire to go to summer camp and quenched my thirst for rich-people-problems novels. You’re thrown into the mystery of the missing camper, the summer camp owners’ own daughter, from page one, and the shifting POVs keep the intrigue moving at a fast clip, hurtling you toward that sweet, horrifying spot where reliable and unreliable narrators are unmasked and stories coalesce. A beach read cannot bore, and this upstairs-downstairs (but make it camp) tale will have a death grip on your attention.

— S. Zainab Williams

My Best Friend’s Exorcism by Grady Hendrix

Looking for horror that’s as fun as it is frightening? Throw a copy of My Best Friend’s Exorcism in your beach bag. Set in the 1980s, this book follows teenagers Abby and Gretchen, two girls who have been best friends since the 4th grade. Abby knows Gretchen better than she knows herself, which is why she knows when Gretchen is acting unlike herself. In fact, Abby is certain a demon has possessed her best friend, but no one else believes her. Now Gretchen will have to fight a demon alone, with nothing but the power of friendship to protect her.

Model Home by Rivers Solomon

Rivers Solomon’s Model Home is an intense new take on a haunted house story that will keep you guessing at every turn. Years ago, siblings Ezri, Eve, and Emanuelle Maxwell moved with their parents into a gated community outside of Dallas, Texas. But almost immediately, strange things started happening in their house. The three siblings have tried their best to forget the horrible things that happened to them there, but now that their parents are gone, they’re forced to return to the site of their trauma and unpack the truth of what happened there.

Happy summer reading, horror fans! If you’re looking for more beach reads, check out Book Riot’s Best Beach Reads recommendations for what to read this summer.

The following comes to you from the Editorial Desk.

We love a good cover, and this week, we’re highlighting a list of the best short story covers. Trust us when we say that these will look so demure on your bookshelves!

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In the course of writing about great book covers, there’s one thing that I’ve noted several times: short story collections have some of the most innovative, memorable, and eye-catching covers of them all. Why is that? Perhaps part of it is because short story collections are a harder sell to the average reader, so the first line of marketing has to be for the bookshop browser, whether they’re perusing on or off line. Perhaps part of it is that many great short story collections are coming from smaller presses, so pushing boundaries with design is part of what’s possible because there are fewer stakeholders to please in the process. Perhaps it’s also simply that short story collections, by nature of their diversity, invite more creativity into the cover design process.

Whatever the reason or reasons, I suspect anyone who appreciates a good book cover is here for it.

Let’s take a look at some of the banging short story book covers that have hit shelves this year, as well as look at some of the upcoming covers of collections you’ll want to pop on your TBR ASAP. If you’re reading this when the piece publishes in mid-May, know you’ll be reading it in time to partake in Short Story Month, too. Any month can be short story month, of course, but May gives extra reason to dive into bite-sized fiction.

As always, caveats abound here. It is still unnecessarily difficult to track down cover designers and artists for book covers, especially if you don’t have the book in your hand to double-check. Many publishers still don’t put this information on the landing pages for these books, so it takes good Googling and a lot of luck to dig up names to credit.

Autocorrect by Etgar Keret, translated by Jessica Cohen and Sondra Silverston (May 27)

If you’re looking for a collection of darkly funny stories, this cover is not going to steer you in the wrong direction. It’s a squirrel that’s clearly been launched right into the book title, and he looks completely unfazed by it all. There’s a lot of nice movement in this design, especially as it is very simplistic.

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