Do you ever get the feeling that you’re not alone? Perhaps a chill that creeps up your spine that you suspect may not be related to your landlord’s “forgetting” to turn the heat on. (October 1, landlords, look it up!) Before you dial 311 again or invite that new, probably-over-21 intern over to Netflix and chill, ask: What’s on your bookshelf? It could be one of these nightmare-inspiring, paranoia-inducing, majorly fun new books out. If not, maybe it’s time to get into the spirit . . . and then get a night-light.

Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe (Penguin Classics)

by Thomas Ligotti

Though he’s often compared with Edgar Allan Poe and Franz Kafka, Thomas Ligotti’s writing is scariest when he’s doing his own thing, and Penguin is reissuing two of his story collections in one volume. Experimental and absurdist, he spins worlds of decaying humanity, unreachable madness, and nightmare worthy of any horror movie . . . You may never sleep again after reading these, but it’ll be worth it.

The Witches: Salem, 1692 (Little, Brown, October 27)

by Stacy Schiff

Stacy Schiff is the hottest biographer on the block. Her last book, Cleopatra: A Life, was on every critic’s best-of lists, she is the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, and she won a Pulitzer for her biography of Vladimir Nabokov’s wife, Véra, to whom all of his work is dedicated—which is one of the best love stories, fictional or non, out there. She returns to give her dazzling IRL treatment to the Salem witch trials, and unlike the blatantly allegorical The Crucible, passing H. P. Lovecraft references, and Hocus Pocus, or any other pop-culture reference to Salem, Schiff’s book is actually about the people who lived through the trials. Schiff is at her best, infusing a historical event with as much life, mystery, and tragedy of any novelist. The scariest book on the list, because everything in here actually happened.