It’s Halloween, and before the day is over, there is still just enough time to embrace all things spooky. And while horror novels and audiobooks definitely satisfy a reader’s macabre interests, these nonfiction books reach a higher level of unsettling creepiness because these ghastly tales are about real people, real places, and real events. Here are some stories to keep you up at night.
📚 I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer by Michelle McNamara
📚 Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt
📚 The Wicked Boy: An Infamous Murder in Victorian London by Kate Summerscale
📚 Hell’s Princess: The Mystery of Belle Gunness, Butcher of Men by Harold Schechter
📚 The In-Betweens: The Spiritualists, Mediums, and Legends of Camp Etna by Mira Ptacin
📚 The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson
📚 Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness by Susannah Cahalan
📚 We Keep the Dead Close: A Murder at Harvard and a Half Century of Silence by Becky Cooper
📚 The Last Stone by Mark Bowden
📚 The Lampshade: A Holocaust Detective Story from Buchenwald to New Orleans by Mark Jacobson
📚 The Stranger Beside Me: The Shocking Inside Story of Serial Killer Ted Bundy by Ann Rule
📚 The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple by Jeff Guinn
📚 Zodiac: The Shocking True Story of the Hunt for the Nation’s Most Elusive Serial Killer by Robert Graysmith
📚 Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places by Colin Dickey
📚 If You Tell: A True Story of Murder, Family Secrets, and the Unbreakable Bond of Sisterhood by Gregg Olsen
📚 The Good Nurse: A True Story of Medicine, Madness, and Murder by Charles Graeber
📚 A Slow Death: 83 Days of Radiation Sickness by NHK TV Crew
📚 Smoke Gets in Your Eyes & Other Lessons from the Crematory by Caitlin Doughty
📚 Unspeakable Acts: True Tales of Crime, Murder, Deceit, and Obsession, edited by Sarah Weinman