This week’s Top Ten Tuesday post is a Halloween freebie. I thought about maybe trying to get my wife to write a post for me, since I exhausted my creativity on freebies lately (and Lisa’s a horror fan, much more so than I am), but then I figured… I’ve been reading quite a bit of horror lately, despite thinking it’s not a genre I really enjoy — and I mentioned a rather creepy children’s book in my last Book Blogger Hop post.

So let’s see what I can do! These won’t all be horror, but they all had me on the edge of my seat in one way or another, sometimes creeped out, sometimes grossed out. 😱

1. Leviathan Wakes, by James S.A. Corey.
   I felt like the series didn’t hold up quite the same level of creepy space horror that this book came out the gate with, pivoting to something that was often more political. But this particular book creeped me out quite a bit!
2. Wylding Hall, by Elizabeth Hand.
   The spookiness in this one is all quiet unease. I feel like the build-up does more than the actual ending, to be fair; I feel like that gets a touch too obvious, perhaps. But there’s a sense of building unease that really works for me.
3. The Salt Grows Heavy, by Cassandra Khaw.
   Khaw’s work has often been hit and miss for me, but this one I loved. There’s a sense of tenderness amidst the horror that disarmed me completely.
4. The Summer Hikaru Died, by Mokumokuren.
   I haven’t finished this manga series yet, and I haven’t got a review up to link yet, but writing about the tenderness of the last one made me think of it: this one is sad, and wrenching, and sometimes oddly erotic — but also intimately horrifying.
5. But Not Too Bold, by Hache Puyo.
   A monstrous romance. Another one with that sense of tenderness amidst the horror. Apparently that’s something that I really like — I think mostly because it’s something that takes careful handling, so it’s often a mark of a good writer.
6. Love Everlasting, by Tom King et al.
   This comic falls more on the gross-out end of horror than the creep-out, except that it follows the main character through repeated cycles of love stories and each time she begins to surrender to them, everything goes horrifically wrong, usually in an absolute bloodbath. It’s funny and plays around with tropes, and I really hope that it’s going to stick the landing (and soon; the repeated cycles are beginning to wear on my nerves).
7. What Moves the Dead, by T. Kingfisher.
   It’s hard to pick which of Kingfisher’s books should make the cut here, because 2025 and 2026 have been the years of T. Kingfisher for me, tearing through her backlist. Her horror is inventive and yet also often has moments of wry humour which keep it from being too much.
8. Teddy Bears Never Die, by Cho Yeeun.
   This one is profoundly weird, but I had a lot of fun. Sometimes it feels like a gritty contemporary crime thriller, and then suddenly there’s ghosts and some really supremely creepy moments. Also a possessed teddy bear.
9. Play Nice, by Rachel Harrison.
   This is a very recent read, and might be my favourite of the books I’ve read by Harrison so far — though it’s hard to say, because there was much I liked about all of them. In this one I enjoyed the way it played on the everyday creepiness that many of us have experienced: the house making weird sounds, the sense of being watched, the feeling that there’s someone else there…
10. Into the Dark, by Jordan L. Hawk.
    This series is a lot of fun, following a group of people who chase the paranormal for their streaming show, with a touch of romance and a heaping spoonful of creepiness. This was the third instalment, and maybe my favourite so far, with some deeply creepy moments I don’t want to think too much about.

There were actually (to my surprise), a lot of runners-up for this, like other books by Rachel Harrison and T. Kingfisher, A.C. Wise’s Out of the Drowning Deep, and some of the danmei I’ve been enjoying (despite being romance-oriented, and usually billed as fantasy, there are some deeply horrifying moments in Heaven Official’s Blessing).

But this is something like a top ten!