The best mysteries with creepy houses

Why am I passionate about this?

I love exploring old homes. Whether I’m on a historic house tour, an estate sale, or a real estate open house, I love seeing the glimpses of the people who once occupied the home. When my mom passed away, I hired an estate sale organizer to help me clear out her house and became fascinated with the estate sale business. What a great way to peek into other people’s houses and lives and perhaps discover their darkest secrets! That’s how I started writing my Palmyrton Estate Sale Mystery Series. 


I wrote...

Another Man's Treasure

By S.W. Hubbard,

Book cover of Another Man's Treasure

What is my book about?

On a snowy Christmas Eve, a beautiful young mother goes out to buy a few last-minute gifts...and never returns. Thirty years later, her daughter picks up her trail. 

As the successful owner of an estate sale business, Audrey has put her mother’s disappearance behind her. Until the day Audrey clears out the home of a lonely old widow and finds some shocks. Street drugs in the silverware drawer, a trunkful of jewels in the attic, and the distinctive ring Audrey’s mother was wearing the night her car supposedly sank to the bottom of a New Jersey lake. Relentlessly, Audrey pursues clues to her family’s troubled history. Because the truth will set her free…unless it gets her killed.

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of The Broken Girls

S.W. Hubbard Why did I love this book?

In an old mansion that has become a school for wayward girls, a series of troublesome deaths occur. The school is reminiscent of the horrible Lowood School in Jane Eyre, one of my all-time favorite books. The story unfolds across multiple timelines—I enjoyed the 1950s story the most. The crimes are solved in the present day by a determined heroine, and the supernatural element is well integrated into the plot.  

By Simone St. James,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Broken Girls as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

THEY WON'T FORGIVE. THEY WON'T FORGET.

'Clever and wonderfully chilling. It held me hostage' - Fiona Barton, Sunday Times-bestselling author of The Widow and The Child

'A brilliant page-turner' Jenny Quintana, author of The Missing Girl

1950 - At the crumbling Idlewild Hall school for unwanted girls, four room-mates begin to bond over dark secrets and whispered fears - until one of them mysteriously disappears . . .

2014 - Journalist Fiona Sheridan can't get over the murder of her sister twenty years ago, near the ruins of Idlewild. And when another body is found during renovations of the school,…


Book cover of The Family Upstairs

S.W. Hubbard Why did I love this book?

A con man, his wife, and two teenage kids move in with a wealthy family in their ominous mansion on the banks of the Thames. The con man takes over their lives, holding them hostage in their own home, until the kids plot a diabolical escape. No one portrays the corruption and dissipation of the British upper classes better than Lisa Jewell!

By Lisa Jewell,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked The Family Upstairs as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'I swear I didn't breathe the whole time I was reading it. Gripping, pacy, brilliantly twisty.' CLARE MACKINTOSH

'Creepy, intricate and utterly immersive: an excellent holiday read.' GUARDIAN

'A twisty and engrossing story of betrayal and redemption.' IAN RANKIN
____________________________

FROM THE #1 BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THEN SHE WAS GONE

In a large house in London's fashionable Chelsea, a baby is awake in her cot. Well-fed and cared for, she is happily waiting for someone to pick her up.

In the kitchen lie three decomposing corpses. Close to them is a hastily scrawled note.

They've been dead for several days.…


Book cover of The Last House on Needless Street

S.W. Hubbard Why did I love this book?

A lonely man lives in a shabby house with his cat (who narrates part of the story) and is visited by a young girl who might be his daughter (or is she?) and recalls his mother (who’s not very maternal). Creepy, atmospheric, tragic, and at times confusing, this book will keep you up at night wondering what the next plot twist will bring. 

By Catriona Ward,

Why should I read it?

8 authors picked The Last House on Needless Street as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"The buzz...is real. I've read it and was blown away. It's a true nerve-shredder that keeps its mind-blowing secrets to the very end." ―Stephen King

Winner of the British Fantasy Award for Best Horror Novel!
A World Fantasy Award Finalist!
An Indie Next Pick! A LibraryReads Top 10 Pick!
A Library Journal Editors' Pick! STARRED reviews from Library Journal and Publishers Weekly!
Named one of the "50 Best Horror Books of All Time" by Esquire!

"Brilliant....[a] deeply frightening deconstruction of the illusion of the self." ―The New York Times

Catriona Ward's The Last House on Needless Street is a shocking…


Book cover of The Killer Next Door

S.W. Hubbard Why did I love this book?

A once-elegant Victorian mansion in London has been chopped up into individual “bed-sit” apartments occupied by a quirky assortment of tenants, each with his or her own secrets. The enjoyment of this book lies in the claustrophobic atmosphere of the house and the unbearable tension of wondering how each tenant will escape the killer in their midst.  

By Alex Marwood,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Killer Next Door as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

No. 23 has a secret. In this bedsit-riddled south London wreck, lorded over by a lecherous landlord, something waits to be discovered. Yet all six residents have something to hide. Collette and Cher are on the run; Thomas is a reluctant loner; while a gorgeous Iranian asylum seeker and a 'quiet man' nobody sees try to stay hidden. And watching over them all is Vesta - or so she thinks. In the dead of night, a terrible accident pushes the neighbours into an uneasy alliance. But one of them is a killer, expertly hiding their pastime, all the while closing…


Book cover of Hidden Pictures

S.W. Hubbard Why did I love this book?

A young woman desperate for a second chance accepts a position as a nanny which comes with lodging in the pool house behind the family’s main house. The pool house is nicer than any place she’s lived recently, but she soon starts hearing strange noises and the little boy she’s watching starts drawing pictures that become creepier and more detailed as time goes on. I loved the flawed but kind heroine and cheered for her to figure out what happened in that pool house and what’s going on with the seemingly normal family who hired her. A real page-turner!

By Jason Rekulak,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Hidden Pictures as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

NATIONAL BESTSELLER · OPTIONED FOR NETFLIX BY A PRODUCER OF THE BATMAN

“I loved it." —Stephen King

From Edgar Award-finalist Jason Rekulak comes a wildly inventive spin on the supernatural thriller, for fans of Stranger Things and Riley Sager, about a woman working as a nanny for a young boy with strange and disturbing secrets.

Mallory Quinn is fresh out of rehab when she takes a job as a babysitter for Ted and Caroline Maxwell. She is to look after their five-year-old son, Teddy.

Mallory immediately loves it. She has her own living space, goes out for nightly runs, and…


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A Diary in the Age of Water

By Nina Munteanu,

Book cover of A Diary in the Age of Water

Nina Munteanu Author Of Darwin's Paradox

New book alert!

Why am I passionate about this?

Author Writer Ecologist Mother Teacher Explorer

Nina's 3 favorite reads in 2023

What is my book about?

This climate fiction novel follows four generations of women and their battles against a global giant that controls and manipulates Earth’s water. Told mostly through a diary and drawing on scientific observation and personal reflection, Lynna’s story unfolds incrementally, like climate change itself. Her gritty memoir describes a near-future Toronto in the grips of severe water scarcity.

Single mother and limnologist Lynna witnesses disturbing events as she works for the powerful international utility CanadaCorp. Fearing for the welfare of her rebellious teenage daughter, Lynna sets in motion a series of events that tumble out of her control with calamitous consequence. The novel explores identity, relationship, and our concept of what is “normal”—as a nation and an individual—in a world that is rapidly and incomprehensibly changing.

A Diary in the Age of Water

By Nina Munteanu,

What is this book about?

Centuries from now, in a post-climate change dying boreal forest of what used to be northern Canada, Kyo, a young acolyte called to service in the Exodus, discovers a diary that may provide her with the answers to her yearning for Earth’s past—to the Age of Water, when the “Water Twins” destroyed humanity in hatred—events that have plagued her nightly in dreams. Looking for answers to this holocaust—and disturbed by her macabre longing for connection to the Water Twins—Kyo is led to the diary of a limnologist from the time just prior to the destruction. This gritty memoir describes a…


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