I love planning out my TBR during the fall more than any other time of year. I want ALL the Gothic, spooky and fantasy goodness! I thought it would be fun to share my top picks, but I did struggle to narrow down my list to only nine books. I would explain in depth why I’ve chosen these particular books but that’s just not how I read. Some I have known about for awhile and want to prioritize reading them soon and others I simply stumbled across on social media and thought they sounded interesting. I’m very much a mood reader so I may come across another book that I want to read more or I may start one of these, hate it and DNF. Life is too short to read bad books! With that being said, I’m going to list out the title and synopsis for each of these books. They’re not in any particular order. Almost all of these are available through Kindle Unlimited.
- The Knight and the Moth by Rachel Gillig
Sybil Delling has spent nine years dreaming of having no dreams at all. Like the other foundling girls who traded a decade of service for a home in the great cathedral, Sybil is a Diviner. In her dreams she receives visions from six unearthly figures known as Omens. From them, she can predict terrible things before they occur, and lords and common folk alike travel across the kingdom of Traum’s windswept moors to learn their futures by her dreams.
Just as she and her sister Diviners near the end of their service, a mysterious knight arrives at the cathedral. Rude, heretical, and devilishly handsome, the knight Rodrick has no respect for Sybil’s visions. But when Sybil’s fellow Diviners begin to vanish one by one, she has no choice but to seek his help in finding them. For the world outside the cathedral’s cloister is wrought with peril. Only the gods have the answers she is seeking, and as much as she’d rather avoid Rodrick’s dark eyes and sharp tongue, only a heretic can defeat a god.
- Ghost Eaters by Clay McLeod Chapman
One of Vulture’s Best Horror Novels of 2022, this terrifying supernatural page-turner will make you think twice about opening doors to the unknown.
Erin hasn’t been able to set a single boundary with her charismatic but reckless college ex-boyfriend, Silas. When he asks her to bail him out of rehab—again—she knows she needs to cut him off. But days after he gets out, Silas turns up dead of an overdose in their hometown of Richmond, Virginia, and Erin’s world falls apart.
Then a friend tells her about Ghost, a new drug that allows users to see the dead. Wanna get haunted? he asks. Grieving and desperate for closure with Silas, Erin agrees to a pill-popping “séance.” But the drug has unfathomable side effects—and once you take it, you can never go back.
- This House Will Feed by Maria Tureaud
Amidst the devastation of Ireland’s Great Famine, a young woman is salvaged from certain death when offered a mysterious position at a remote manor house haunted by a strange power and the horror of her own memories in this chillingly evocative historical novel braided with gothic horror and supernatural suspense for readers of Katherine Arden’s The Warm Hands of Ghosts and The Silence Factory by Bridget Collins.
County Clare, 1848: In the scant few years since the potato blight first cast its foul shadow over Ireland, Maggie O’Shaughnessy has lost everything—her entire family and the man she trusted with her heart. Toiling in the Ennis Workhouse for paltry rations, she can see no future either within or outside its walls—until the mysterious Lady Catherine arrives to whisk her away to an old mansion in the stark limestone landscape of the Burren.
Lady Catherine wants Maggie to impersonate her late daughter, Wilhelmina, and hoodwink solicitors into releasing Wilhelmina’s widow pension so that Lady Catherine can continue to provide for the villagers in her care. In exchange, Maggie will receive freedom from the workhouse, land of her own, and the one thing she wants more than a chance to fulfill the promise she made to her brother on his deathbed—to live to spite them all.
Launching herself into the daunting task, Maggie plays the role of Wilhelmina as best she can while ignoring the villagers’ tales of ghostly figures and curses. But more worrying are the whispers that come from within. Something in Lady Catherine’s house is reawakening long-buried memories in Maggie—of a foe more terrifying than hunger or greed, of a power that calls for blood and vengeance, and of her own role in a nightmare that demands the darkest sacrifice…
- The Mother Who Drowns by A.R. Tapiero
Grief drowns you, because love is the hand that holds you under.
When Georgette Klein flees her abusive husband and arrives in an isolated seaside town, she answers Dr. Agoston Haddor’s posting for a medical study. But his work is far from ordinary: he recruits women and performs controlled drownings, then resuscitates them to record their near-death experiences.
For Georgette, it’s a chance to see her infant son, Henry, again—even if only in the visions between breath and death.
For Dr. Haddor, it’s a chance to prove consciousness, or the soul, survives outside the body…and perhaps a way to outrun the curse that already claimed his family.
But when whispers of witches turn the town against Georgette, and betrayal brings powerful eyes toward the doctor’s research, she must decide how far she’s willing to go for the man who does not imagine life with her, but life through her.
- A Court of Splintered Harmony by Sarah J. Maas
What was broken will be remade.
Deep in the heart of the continent, Koschei the Deathless is stirring. Though he’s been bound to a mountain lake for millennia, the insidious threat of his return now spreads across the Fae territories, attracting powerful allies hell-bent on reclaiming what was once theirs: the human lands.
The Night Court will not stand idly by while innocents are attacked. But with Prythian still piecing itself together in the wake of the devastating Hybern War, the task of uniting is proving more difficult by the day.
To make matters worse, those who rule and protect the Night Court are reeling from recent betrayals and revealed truths. The rifts dividing them seem insurmountable.
But to defeat Koschei’s creeping shadow, they must find a way back to each other and resurrect their former alliances. To survive, they must find a way to repair the splintered harmony all around them.
- Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Lockwood, the new tenant of Thrushcross Grange, situated on the bleak Yorkshire moors, is forced to seek shelter one night at Wuthering Heights, the home of his landlord. There he discovers the history of the tempestuous events that took place years before. What unfolds is the tale of the intense love between Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw. Catherine, forced to choose between passionate, tortured Heathcliff and gentle, well-bred Edgar Linton, surrenders to the expectations of her class. As Heathcliff’s bitterness and vengeance at his betrayal is visited upon the next generation, their innocent heirs must struggle to escape the legacy of the past.
- Anathema by Keri Lake
From the author of Nocticadia comes a spellbinding gothic dark fantasy about a shunned woman who is forced beyond the mortal realm’s forbidden boundary, into a terrifying world of cursed souls and grotesque creatures.
Only the banished know what lies beyond the woods …
There are whispers about what lurks in Witch Knell—the forest where sinners go to die. The villagers call it The Eating Woods because what’s taken is never given back. Only those who’ve lost their senses would dare to go near it.
Or the banished.
Maevyth Bronwick knows better than to breach the misty labyrinth of trees, but a tragic turn of events compels her beyond the archway of bones, to a boundary no mortal has crossed before. One that cloaks a dark and fantastical world that’s as dangerous as it is alluring.
It’s there that he dwells, the cursed lord of Eidolon. The one tasked to keep her hidden from the magehood that seeks to crucify her in the name of an arcane prophesy. Zevander Rydainn, known to his prey as The Scorpion, is the coldest, most calculated assassin in all of Aethyria and he’d sooner toss his feisty ward to a pack of vicious fyredrakes than keep her safe.
If only he could.
Maevyth’s blood is the key to breaking his despised curse and vanquishing the slumbering evil in Witch Knell. Unfortunately for Lord Rydainn, fate has other plans for the irresistible little enchantress. And his growing obsession with her threatens to destroy everything.
Including himself.
Anathema is a full-length, gothic dark fantasy, the first book in The Eating Woods duology. Perfect for readers who enjoy a plot-heavy and atmospheric story with a unique magic system, a slow-burn romance and a touch of horror.
- Crown Me Dead by Liv Zander
Wed me. Bed me. Slit my throat.
Born in dirt, raised in rot, I dig graves for the dead, while the living decay around me. When my brother coughs blood, he appears. A man too polished for the graveyard, with a bargain too cruel for the light: Seduce the King. Become the Queen. Die. And my brother lives.
Kael is a nightmare of living ruin, the rotting ruler of a festering realm. And Vale is his shadow, the cold architect of my demise. One man needs my heart to beat. The other plans to stop it forever. They think I’m a pawn. But I’m the gravedigger’s daughter. And I know exactly where to bury them.
Welcome to the funeral.
Darkly seductive, beautifully written, and deeply emotional, the Heartstring Duet will sweep you away into a world of forbidden desire, deadly intrigue, shocking twists, and impossible choices.
- Feathers So Vicious by Liv Zander
More treacherous than war… are the battles within a heart.
Perched between branches and shadows,
We watch, we scheme,
Fighting for a kingdom forgotten and forlorn.
Until we rip her away with our claws,
Our prisoner, our pawn.
She’s innocent and pure,
Fragile and helpless…
…but oh so guilty by blood.
She calls us beasts,
Wicked and evil,
Vicious and cruel.
We are all that and worse.
Welcome to the Court of Ravens, little white dove.
Final Thoughts:
If you have read any of these books, please tell me which one I should start first! Also, let me know if any of them are awful and I should avoid reading😅 I would love to know what your TBR list looks like for the upcoming months! Thanks for reading🖤
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