Most Read Paranormal Books

Harry Potter, a scrawny boy with glasses and a lightning-bolt scar, has no idea he's a wizard — until a letter arrives. Dragged from his mundane life, he's whisked away to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, where he discovers a world of magic, ancient secrets, and a mysterious stone that someone is trying to steal. Alongside his new friends Ron and Hermione, Harry must navigate the perils of the school and the mystery surrounding the Philosopher's Stone before it's too late.

• coming of age
• mentor figure
• quest

When seventeen-year-old Isabella "Bella" Swan leaves sunny Phoenix to live with her father in the perpetually rain-soaked town of Forks, Washington, she expects little more than a dull, gray exile. Instead she becomes fascinated by Edward Cullen, a strikingly beautiful and aloof classmate who seems to alternate between saving her life and warning her away from him. As Bella pieces together the truth about Edward and his family, she realizes he is a vampire — one who has chosen to resist human blood, but whose very nature makes loving her dangerous. Their bond deepens into an intense, all-consuming romance, even as Bella learns that not every vampire shares the Cullens' restraint, and that being close to Edward may cost her everything. The first book in Stephenie Meyer's blockbuster Twilight Saga, this is a moody, atmospheric teen romance about desire, danger, and the pull between what we want and what is safe. Told in Bella's earnest first-person voice, it launched a global phenomenon and defined a generation of paranormal romance.

• forbidden love

When the painter Basil Hallward completes a portrait of the beautiful young Dorian Gray, Dorian makes an idle, despairing wish: that the picture might age in his place, and that he could stay forever as young and lovely as the day it was painted. His wish is granted. As Dorian, encouraged by the cynical, epigram-spouting Lord Henry Wotton, gives himself over to a life of pleasure, cruelty, and corruption, his face remains untouched — while the portrait, hidden away, grows monstrous with every sin. Oscar Wilde's only novel is a dark fable of aestheticism, vanity, and moral consequence, as sharp in its wit as it is unsettling in its horror. Around Dorian's unchanging beauty, Wilde builds a Faustian parable about the cost of a life lived purely for sensation, and a portrait of Victorian society's obsession with surface and youth. First published in 1890 and expanded the following year, the book scandalised its first readers and remains one of the most enduring works of Gothic and philosophical fiction in English.

In the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, noble houses vie for power through marriage, betrayal, and war while an ancient threat stirs beyond the Wall. Jon Snow joins the Night's Watch to defend the realm; Daenerys Targaryen gathers allies in Essos to reclaim her throne; and Tyrion Lannister navigates a deadly court after his father's death — all as old enemies converge toward a conflict that will reshape their world.

• multiple povs
• betrayal
• morally grey
• court intrigue

A murder inside the Louvre pulls symbologist Robert Langdon into an overnight chase across Paris and London, chasing a trail of clues hidden in the works of Leonardo da Vinci.

• mystery box

Forced out of the Night Court's inner circle and into the House of Wind by her sister and Rhysand, Nesta Archeron struggles to rebuild her life after the devastating events of the war against Hybern. Haunted by trauma and numb to everything she once was, she spirals into self-destruction until Cassian — the battle-hardened Illyrian warrior who has always pushed her hardest — refuses to let her disappear. Thrown together in the mountain fortress, they must train alongside two other female warriors, Gwyn and Emerie, as a long-buried legend about an ancient order of Valkyries resurfaces. Meanwhile, a deadly set of magical objects called the Trove threatens to tip the balance of power across Prythian, and Nesta's terrifying power — absorbed during her transformation into High Fae — may be the only force capable of containing it. The first book in the series told from a perspective other than Feyre's, this instalment explores trauma, healing, and what it means to choose to survive.

• forced proximity
• grumpy sunshine
• slow burn
• redemption arc

Circe is born to Helios, god of the sun, but she is a disappointment: not powerful, not beautiful by the standards of gods, with a voice like a mortal's and none of the obvious gifts of her siblings. Overlooked in her father's glittering halls, she discovers a talent the gods fear, the mortal art of witchcraft, and when she uses it she is exiled to the deserted island of Aiaia to live out eternity alone. There, in solitude, Circe grows into her power. She tames wild beasts, masters herbs and transformations, and over the centuries crosses paths with some of the most famous figures of Greek myth, including Daedalus, the Minotaur, Medea, and the cunning Odysseus, whose visit changes the course of her long life. As threats gather from both gods and mortals, Circe must decide where she truly belongs. Madeline Miller retells the story of a minor goddess from The Odyssey as a full life, giving voice to a woman written for millennia as a footnote. Lyrical and quietly fierce, Circe is a meditation on power, motherhood, mortality, and the freedom of choosing one's own nature.

Jude was seven years old when a faerie knight murdered her parents and carried her and her two sisters across the sea to live in the treacherous High Court of Faerie. Ten years later, Jude is a mortal girl raised among immortals — and she wants nothing more than to belong, even though the fey despise humans and take cruel pleasure in reminding her that she does not. Chief among her tormentors is Prince Cardan, the youngest and most vicious son of the High King. To secure a place at court and protect herself and her sisters, Jude defies him — and is drawn into a dangerous web of palace intrigue, shifting alliances, and outright treason. As rival factions maneuver for the throne, she discovers she is willing to do almost anything, and become almost anyone, to survive and to win power in a world that was never meant to be hers. The first book in Holly Black's bestselling Folk of the Air trilogy, The Cruel Prince is a sharp, seductive fantasy of ambition, betrayal, and the fine line between hatred and desire.

• enemies to lovers
• court intrigue
• morally grey

Surrounded by enemies, the once-great nation of Ravka has been torn in two by the Shadow Fold, a swathe of near-impenetrable darkness crawling with monsters that feed on human flesh. Alina Starkov, an orphaned junior cartographer in the First Army, has never been remarkable at anything — until her regiment is attacked crossing the Fold and a dormant power erupts out of her, a light strong enough to save them all. Torn from everything she knows, including her lifelong friend Mal, Alina is whisked away to the royal court to be trained as a member of the Grisha, Ravka's magical elite. There she comes under the wing of the Darkling, the enigmatic and dangerous leader of the Grisha, who believes Alina's gift as the Sun Summoner may finally be the key to unmaking the Fold. But as she is drawn deeper into a glittering world of luxury and intrigue, Alina begins to realise that nothing at court is what it seems — and that the fate of a nation may rest on her shoulders alone. The opening book of Leigh Bardugo's Shadow and Bone trilogy and the gateway to the sprawling Grishaverse, this is Russian-influenced young-adult fantasy rich with magic, court politics, and a fraught love triangle.

• chosen one
• love triangle
• court intrigue
• coming of age

When Clary Fray discovers a hidden world of demon hunters, her ordinary life is turned upside down. She's drawn into a dangerous conflict in New York City, where vampires and werewolves are real, and forbidden love might be the least of her worries. This is the start of an epic urban fantasy adventure.

• chosen one
• found family
• secret identity
• forbidden love

Linus Baker leads a quiet, rule-bound life as a caseworker for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth, inspecting government orphanages and filing tidy reports. Then Extremely Upper Management hands him a classified assignment: travel to remote Marsyas Island and evaluate an orphanage housing six of the most dangerous magical children on record, among them a gnome, a wyvern, a green blob of indeterminate origin, a were-Pomeranian, and a boy who happens to be the Antichrist. Expecting menace, Linus instead finds a strange, warm household held together by its enigmatic master, Arthur Parnassus. As grey routine gives way to sunshine, the sea, and a family he never imagined wanting, Linus is forced to weigh the demands of his job against the home taking shape around him. Warm, funny, and quietly pointed about prejudice and the courage of ordinary kindness, TJ Klune's novel is a modern comfort read about found family and the choice to do the decent thing.

• found family

A young solicitor travels to Transylvania on ordinary business and discovers his client is no ordinary nobleman. When the count relocates to England, a small circle of friends led by the physician Van Helsing must piece together the truth from letters, diaries, and telegrams before it is too late. Bram Stoker's 1897 epistolary novel that defined the modern vampire.

• epistolary

In a world where supernatural beings and humans coexist, Misery Dueña and Lowe Proctor enter into a marriage of convenience to unite their warring factions. What begins as a political alliance soon sparks an undeniable attraction between them. As they navigate the complexities of their union, they must decide if their arrangement is truly just for show or if it's destined for something more.

• marriage of convenience
• enemies to lovers

Jack Torrance takes a job as winter caretaker at the isolated Overlook Hotel, hoping the solitude will help him finish his writing and hold together a family strained by his history of drinking and a violent temper. He brings his wife Wendy and their five-year-old son Danny, who possesses a psychic gift the hotel's cook calls "the shining" — and who senses, before anyone else, that the Overlook is not empty at all. Snowed in for the winter with no way out, the family is cut off just as the hotel's malevolent influence begins to close in on Jack, working on his insecurities, his temper, and his thirst for a drink he's tried to give up. As the Overlook's ghosts grow bolder and Jack's grip on himself slips, Danny's shining may be the only thing standing between his family and whatever wants them to stay forever. Stephen King's breakthrough novel is a claustrophobic haunted-house story that is as much about addiction and the violence passed from father to son as it is about supernatural horror, and it remains one of the most influential haunted-hotel stories ever written.

Bella Swan is left devastated when the Cullens leave Forks, and slowly finds comfort in a deepening friendship with Jacob Black — who carries supernatural secrets of his own. As she's drawn back into a dangerous hidden world, Bella faces an ancient vampire authority. The second book in Stephenie Meyer's Twilight Saga.

• love triangle
• forbidden love

Reunited with Edward, Bella is torn between him and her bond with Jacob as a wave of mysterious killings in Seattle signals a growing danger aimed at her. Old enemies must form an uneasy alliance to protect her. The third book in Stephenie Meyer's Twilight Saga.

• love triangle
• forbidden love
• rivals

Saeris Fane has survived the brutal, water-starved city of Zilvaren by stealing, scheming, and keeping her head down — until the night she accidentally opens a portal and is dragged into a frozen, war-torn fae realm on the other side. There she becomes entangled with Kingfisher, a dangerous and infuriating fae warrior with secrets of his own, and discovers that her rare talent with quicksilver may be the key to a conflict far larger than her own survival. Torn between getting home and the pull of a world — and a man — she was never meant to know, Saeris finds herself at the center of ancient magic, court intrigue, and a slow-burning, combative attraction. The first book in Callie Hart's Fae & Alchemy series is a lush, steamy romantasy of portals, enemies, and hard-won trust.

• enemies to lovers
• slow burn
• court intrigue
• portal fantasy

The fourth and final book of Stephenie Meyer's original Twilight Saga brings Bella and Edward's story to its climax. Long-awaited choices arrive with unexpected consequences that test the Cullen family, the Quileute wolves, and the fragile peace between them — until the ancient Volturi threaten everyone Bella loves.

• forbidden love
• sacrifice

Oraya is the only human in a court of vampires — the adopted daughter of the Nightborn king — and to stop being prey she enters the Kejari, a lethal once-a-century tournament held by the goddess of death, allying with a rival competitor whose agenda could destroy her.

• enemies to lovers
• slow burn
• found family
• morally grey

Following the reality-fracturing events at the end of House of Sky and Breath, Bryce Quinlan finds herself stranded in Prythian — the world of the Fae from A Court of Thorns and Roses — with no way home. Everything she loves is back in Midgard: her family, her friends, her mate. Alone in a strange new world and unsure who among its powerful players she can trust, she has to think her way back before the Asteri finish what they started. In Midgard, Hunt Athalar is back in the Asteri's dungeons, stripped of his freedom and without any word of Bryce's fate. Ruhn is held alongside him, and their allies above ground — Ithan, Tharion, Lidia Cervos and the rest — are left to work in the shadows, hunting for a way to reach them while the Asteri tighten their grip on the city. Lidia's double life comes fully into the light, recasting much of what came before. The third book in the Crescent City series, House of Flame and Shadow is its longest and most expansive entry, drawing threads from Sarah J. Maas's connected worlds together as the fight against the Asteri comes to a head.

• portal fantasy
• multiple povs
• secret identity

The second Mortal Instruments novel. With her mother in a coma and Valentine loose in New York, Clary Fray must free Jace from the Inquisitor's custody and stop her father claiming the Soul-Sword — while discovering she can draw runes no Shadowhunter has seen before.

• love triangle
• forbidden love
• betrayal
• found family

Eve Palmer and her girlfriend Charlie are house flippers who have just bought a fixer-upper in the Pacific Northwest. Then, one evening, a family of five appears on the doorstep. The father, Thomas Faust, warm and insistent, explains that he grew up in this house — and asks whether he might show his wife and children around, just for a few minutes. Against her better judgment, and fighting her own anxiety, Eve lets them in. The visit does not end. As the strangers settle deeper into the house, small wrongnesses accumulate: a child goes missing, a presence stirs in the basement, doors and rooms stop behaving the way they should. Charlie disappears, Eve's sense of what is real begins to fray, and the line between her anxiety disorder and genuine dread dissolves. Interleaved with Eve's account are documents exploring the "Old House" — a conspiracy theory that certain houses are portals linking alternate realities, and that visitors can become permanently trapped inside. Marcus Kliewer's debut is a claustrophobic, reality-bending horror novel about intrusion, gaslighting, and the terror of not being believed.

• unreliable narrator

Galaxy 'Alex' Stern's life has been a series of disasters: a high-school dropout with a history of drugs and dead-end jobs, she is the improbable survivor of a gruesome multiple homicide. What sets her apart is that she can see ghosts — and that rare gift earns her a mysterious, fully funded place at Yale, on the condition that she help monitor the university's secret societies. Behind their Ivy League prestige, Yale's societies traffic in real occult power, and when a local girl turns up dead, Alex refuses to accept the official story. Her investigation drags her into the rot beneath the university's privilege, where magic, money, and violence are tightly intertwined. The first book in Leigh Bardugo's Alex Stern series is a dark, propulsive urban fantasy and a scathing dark-academia mystery. Content note: it depicts sexual assault, drug use, and violence.

• dark academia
• dual timeline
• mentor figure
• academy

Fresh out of rehab, Mallory Quinn takes a nanny job in the leafy New Jersey suburb of Spring Brook, minding five-year-old Teddy Maxwell. Then Teddy's drawings stop looking like a child's — and start looking like a murder. A supernatural thriller told partly in pictures.

• unreliable narrator
• mystery box

The fight for the Iron Throne escalates as old rivalries ignite and new threats emerge. Joffrey's reign is precarious, Stannis is in disarray, and Robb Stark seeks vengeance. Across the sea, Daenerys Targaryen continues her journey with her dragons, unaware of the dangers gathering beyond the known world.

• revenge
• betrayal
• multiple povs
• morally grey

Area X has been cut off from the rest of the world for decades. Nature has reclaimed the last vestiges of human civilization, and the eleven previous expeditions sent to chart it have all ended in catastrophe — in suicide, in madness, in cancer, in a hail of gunfire. Now a twelfth expedition crosses the invisible border. Its four members — a biologist, a psychologist, a surveyor, and an anthropologist, none named — carry orders they only half understand into a pristine, unsettling wilderness. The biologist, our narrator, is drawn by grief and curiosity as much as duty. Almost at once the group discovers a structure that should not exist, and the expedition begins to fracture as Area X works on their minds and bodies in ways no one can explain. Jeff VanderMeer's eerie, hypnotic novel opens the Southern Reach trilogy with a story of the uncanny, the ecological sublime, and the limits of human understanding.

• unreliable narrator
• mystery box

When author Adeline Reilly inherits Parsons Manor, her late great-grandmother's isolated estate in Washington, she moves in hoping for quiet and inspiration. Instead she finds a house full of secrets — a long-unsolved family disappearance — and the unsettling sense that she is never truly alone. Someone is watching her. That someone is Zade Meadows, a masked vigilante who runs an underground operation targeting human traffickers, and who has become dangerously obsessed with Adeline. As Adeline unravels the mystery buried in the manor's history with the help of her friend Daya, the line between predator and protector blurs into something neither of them can control. Haunting Adeline is the first book in H.D. Carlton's Cat and Mouse Duet, a BookTok phenomenon known as much for its polarizing reputation as its popularity. It is an extremely dark, graphic romance built on a stalker premise and should be approached with its extensive content warnings firmly in mind. The story concludes in Hunting Adeline.

• morally grey

In a small town, Carrie White endures a brutal existence, tormented by classmates and her overbearing mother. But Carrie harbors a secret: powerful telekinetic abilities. When a cruel prank pushes her too far, her rage ignites, leading to a terrifying night of destruction.

• coming of age
• revenge
• reluctant hero
• epistolary

An angel and a demon who have lived on Earth since the Beginning have grown rather fond of the place and do not want to see it ended. When the Antichrist is accidentally misplaced at birth and ends up with an ordinary English family in a small town, the two unlikely allies must team up to avert Armageddon while navigating prophecies, witchfinders, the Four Horsemen, and a small boy with an unusual dog. A warm, witty, and surprisingly moving celebration of humanity, written in equal collaboration between Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman.

The Creed family's new Maine home sits near an ancient burial ground that returns the dead — changed. When tragedy strikes, Louis Creed faces a temptation no one should. King's most devastating horror novel.