Every year, She Reads reaches out to readers to discover the books that they thought were the best of the year! This year we had over 8,000 of you cast your vote and the results are in. In our roundups of all the Best Books of 2024, we’ll include the number one book, chosen by you and some favorites from our professional book loving editors. We hope this reading year was as wonderful for you as it was for us!

Best Horror of 2024: We Used to Live Here by Marcus Kliewer

We Used to Live Here by Marcus Kliewer

When house-flipping couple Charlie and Eve score a bargain on a charming old property, their excitement turns to dread after they let a former resident and his family inside. Strange occurrences follow, including a child’s disappearance, an eerie basement presence, and the family refusing to leave. As Charlie vanishes and Eve’s grip on reality unravels, the house’s dark secrets blur the line between supernatural terror and psychological collapse.

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Who doesn’t love to be scared? Whether you’re new to horror or just had a busy year, here are the best horror books from 2024 that you may have missed out on or just didn’t get to yet. The good news? It’s never too late to add these scary stunners to your TBR!

Murder Road by Simone St. James

In 1995, April and Eddie are a couple who have taken a wrong turn in search of the small resort town they plan on taking their honeymoon at. After picking up a hitchhiker, they notice blood on her jacket and a truck chasing them. After the hitchhiker dies at the hospital, April and Eddie find themselves in the middle of an investigation when the police inform them unexplained murders have been happening on that very road for years.

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So Thirsty by Rachel Harrison

The last thing Sloane Parker wants to do is celebrate her birthday. When Sloane’s husband surprises her with a weekend getaway with her best friend, Naomi, Sloane is more than happy to get away and forget about her husband’s infidelity. Naomi has a history of being a troublemaker, so when the two friends arrive, she plans a wild night out with a group of people they don’t even know. When the night takes a horrible turn, the two are stuck dealing with consequences that will change their lives forever.

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youthjuice by E.K. Sathue

Sophia Bannion has just begun her new job working for the Storytelling team at the luxury skincare and wellness company, HEBE. Although she is close to thirty, Sophia feels that something is amiss at HEBE, she still longs for more to life and to break her habit of biting her nails. Before she knows it, Sophia is addicted to the HEBE lifestyle, especially their new moisturizer she has been testing called “youthjuice.” When Sophia finds out what the secret ingredient is, she is horrified but finds herself questioning how far she will go to keep her beauty.

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Sleep Tight by J.H. Markert

In Twisted Tree, a deranged serial killer named Father Silence would disguise himself as a priest to prey on the innocent. When the police found his “House of Horrors,” they found nineteen bodies and the sole survivor, a young boy. Two decades later and Father Silence has been put to death. When the detective who made the original arrest is found dead, a new serial killer emerges called the Outcast. The detective’s daughter, Tess Claiborne, is a detective as well and is haunted by her past and her father’s connection to Father Silence. Outcast kidnaps Tess’s daughter and now she is forced to face her fears and confront the only known survivor of Father Silence.

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Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle

Being successful in Hollywood can be quite a challenge, but Misha has finally made it with an Oscar nomination. TV executives now want Misha to take his career to the next level with his streaming series by killing off the gay characters in the season finale. When Misha refuses, he finds himself the target of the monsters from his horror movie days that are stalking him and his friends.

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Memorials by Richard Chizmar

In 1983, three college students go on a week-long road trip to film a documentary about roadside memorials for one of their classes. What starts off as a great time with nightly campfires where they get to know one another takes a dark turn when they venture into the Appalachian backwoods that feature more and more memorials than they’ve seen so far on their trip. When the group believes their car is tampered with and the locals are less than welcoming, they begin to wonder if they are being followed…and if whoever following them is responsible for the many memorials in this area.

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The Queen by Nick Cutter

Charity has been missing for over a month and most of the town believes she’s dead. When her best friend, Margaret, wakes up one morning, she finds a brand-new iPhone on her doorstep. When Margaret turns the phone on, there’s a text from Charity. Margaret and Charity were both hiding a secret from one another and now it appears that Charity wants Margaret to know the real story. As Margaret gets deeper and deeper into finding out what happened to Charity, she comes to realize that she never really knew Charity.

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The House that Horror Built by Christina Henry

Harry Adams has been a horror movie buff for as long as she can remember and now she has a job cleaning the house of famous movie director Javier Castillo. The house is filled with props and costumes from his movies he made until a scandal forced him to leave the movie industry. Javier demands privacy and the job means Harry can afford to take care of her son, so the two have always gotten along, but when Harry hears noises from behind a locked door that sound like someone calling for help, she soon realizes something more sinister may be at play.

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The Eyes Are the Best Part by Monika Kim

Ji-won feels like she’s lost it all in the aftermath of her Appa’s affair.  Her mother is distraught, her sister is hurt, and her grades are suffering. When Ji-won begins to have dreams she is walking through bloody rooms full of blue eyes, eyes that look just like George, her Umma’s new boyfriend. George brags about his job and ogles Asian waitresses while treating Ji-won and her sister poorly and is not deserving of her Umma’s love. As the victims begin to accumulate around campus, Ji-won realizes that nothing will get in the way of her rage and hunger.

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I Was a Teenage Slasher by Stephen Graham Jones

In 1989, Tolly Diver lives in a small Texas town and is seventeen and about to be cursed to kill for revenge. This is a story in which Stephen Graham Jones writes about the Texas he grew up in , what it was like for him being an outsider, and featuring the slasher genre he loves so much from the perspective of the killer, Tolly, writing his own autobiography.

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