As the nights are getting longer and more lonesome, I’ve decided to compile a list of books to match the mood of the season. Here’s a selection of some of my favorite reads, everything from short stories to novels, to read this autumn.
I wouldn’t say that all of these are exclusively ‘autumn books’ or ‘Halloween reading’, but these are some of the novels and short stories that can set the right mood for when the nights are getting longer and darker.
It’s the season when you want to slow down and cozy up on the sofa with a hot cup of tea and read for hours until the dead of the night.
Autumn 2026 reading list
- We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
- The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving
- Dracula by Bram Stoker
- No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai
- The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
- The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
- Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
- Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
- Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
- Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
- Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Süskind
- The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe
- The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole
- The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle
- The Yellow Wall-Paper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
- The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
- The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux
- Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
- The Secret History by Donna Tartt
- Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
- The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
These are the kinf od books that will keep your mind roaming and wandering off into the eerie world of the unknown and supernatural.
And then there are the disturbing stories of human life and relationships that almost certainly happened to someone at some point in history. Yet, here you are left guessing how much of it was real and what does that mean to you on a personal level.
I hope that you will find on this list something to read and re-read for years to come.
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