9 Historical Fiction Books Worth Reading This Spooky Season

If you love historical fiction but want something a little darker for October, this list is for you. I’ve chosen books that mix fascinating historical settings with gothic houses, witches, ghosts, mysteries, and stories that feel just unsettling enough for the season.
I love adding atmospheric historical fiction to my fall reading list. If I am not in the mood for full-on horror books, these are just perfect. You still get that eerie, spooky feeling, but with the rich settings and characters that make historical fiction so easy to get lost in.
So if you’re building your October TBR here are 9 historical fiction books worth adding to your list.

The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas

Set after the Mexican War of Independence, The Hacienda follows Beatriz after she marries a wealthy man and moves to his countryside estate. She hopes the marriage will give her a safe home again. Instead, strange voices, visions, and secrets begin to haunt her. With no one willing to help, Beatriz turns to a young priest who knows more about witchcraft than anyone realizes.

Mexican Gothic meets Rebecca in this debut supernatural suspense novel, set in the aftermath of the Mexican War of Independence, about a remote house, a sinister haunting, and the woman pulled into their clutches…

In the overthrow of the Mexican government, Beatriz’s father is executed and her home destroyed. When handsome Don Rodolfo Solórzano proposes, Beatriz ignores the rumors surrounding his first wife’s sudden demise, choosing instead to seize the security his estate in the countryside provides. She will have her own home again, no matter the cost.

But Hacienda San Isidro is not the sanctuary she imagined.

When Rodolfo returns to work in the capital, visions and voices invade Beatriz’s sleep. The weight of invisible eyes follows her every move. Rodolfo’s sister, Juana, scoffs at Beatriz’s fears—but why does she refuse to enter the house at night? Why does the cook burn copal incense at the edge of the kitchen and mark its doorway with strange symbols? What really happened to the first Doña Solórzano?

Beatriz only knows two things for certain: Something is wrong with the hacienda. And no one there will help her.

Desperate for help, she clings to the young priest, Padre Andrés, as an ally. No ordinary priest, Andrés will have to rely on his skills as a witch to fight off the malevolent presence haunting the hacienda and protect the woman for whom he feels a powerful, forbidden attraction. But even he might not be enough to battle the darkness.

Far from a refuge, San Isidro may be Beatriz’s doom.

BUY NOW ON AMAZON  | LISTEN FREE ON AUDIBLE

The London Séance Society by Sarah Penner

Set in 1873, The London Séance Society follows Lenna Wickes, who travels to Paris looking for answers about her sister’s death. She begins working with a famous spiritualist who claims she can contact murder victims. When they travel to London to investigate another death, they discover a much bigger mystery involving the powerful Séance Society.

A spellbinding tale about two daring women who hunt for truth and justice in the perilous art of conjuring the dead.

1873. At an abandoned château on the outskirts of Paris, a dark séance is about to take place, led by acclaimed spiritualist Vaudeline D’Allaire. Known worldwide for her talent in conjuring the spirits of murder victims to ascertain the identities of the people who killed them, she is highly sought after by widows and investigators alike.

Lenna Wickes has come to Paris to find answers about her sister’s death, but to do so, she must embrace the unknown and overcome her own logic-driven bias against the occult. When Vaudeline is beckoned to England to solve a high-profile murder, Lenna accompanies her as an understudy. But as the women team up with the powerful men of London’s exclusive Séance Society to solve the mystery, they begin to suspect that they are not merely out to solve a crime, but perhaps entangled in one themselves.

BUY NOW ON AMAZON  | LISTEN FREE ON AUDIBLE |  READ with Kindle Unlimited

The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow

In The Once and Future Witches, three sisters reunite in New Salem in 1893. They become involved in the women’s suffrage movement while also discovering old forms of magic that many believed were gone forever. Soon, their fight for women’s rights becomes connected to something much more dangerous. This is a great pick if you want witches, history, and sisterhood.

In 1893, there’s no such thing as witches. There used to be, in the wild, dark days before the burnings began, but now witching is nothing but tidy charms and nursery rhymes. If the modern woman wants any measure of power, she must find it at the ballot box.

But when the Eastwood sisters–James Juniper, Agnes Amaranth, and Beatrice Belladonna–join the suffragists of New Salem, they begin to pursue the forgotten words and ways that might turn the women’s movement into the witch’s movement. Stalked by shadows and sickness, hunted by forces who will not suffer a witch to vote-and perhaps not even to live-the sisters will need to delve into the oldest magics, draw new alliances, and heal the bond between them if they want to survive.

There’s no such thing as witches. But there will be.

BUY NOW ON AMAZON  | LISTEN FREE ON AUDIBLE |  READ with Kindle Unlimited

The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo

Set in Madrid during the Spanish Golden Age, The Familiar follows Luzia, a servant who secretly has magical abilities. When her mistress discovers what she can do, Luzia is pushed into the world of Spain’s wealthy and powerful. Her magic could change her life, but it could also attract the attention of the Inquisition.

In a shabby house, on a shabby street, in the new capital of Madrid, Luzia Cotado uses scraps of magic to get through her days of endless toil as a scullion. But when her scheming mistress discovers the lump of a servant cowering in the kitchen is actually hiding a talent for little miracles, she demands Luzia use those gifts to better the family’s social position.

What begins as simple amusement for the bored nobility takes a perilous turn when Luzia garners the notice of Antonio Pérez, the disgraced secretary to Spain’s king. Still reeling from the defeat of his armada, the king is desperate for any advantage in the war against England’s heretic queen—and Pérez will stop at nothing to regain the king’s favor.

Determined to seize this one chance to better her fortunes, Luzia plunges into a world of seers and alchemists, holy men and hucksters, where the line between magic, science, and fraud is never certain. But as her notoriety grows, so does the danger that her Jewish blood will doom her to the Inquisition’s wrath. She will have to use every bit of her wit and will to survive—even if that means enlisting the help of Guillén Santangel, an embittered immortal familiar whose own secrets could prove deadly for them both.

BUY NOW ON AMAZON  | LISTEN FREE ON AUDIBLE |  READ with Kindle Unlimited

The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo

Set in colonial Malaya, The Ghost Bride follows Li Lan, whose struggling family receives a very unusual marriage proposal. A wealthy family wants her to marry their son but he is already dead. Soon Li Lan finds herself in a strange world filled with ghosts, spirits, and the Chinese afterlife.

‘One evening, my father asked me whether I would like to become a ghost bride…’

Though ruled by British overlords, the Chinese of colonial Malaya still cling to ancient customs. And in the sleepy port town of Malacca, ghosts and superstitions abound.

Li Lan, the daughter of a genteel but bankrupt family, has few prospects. But fate intervenes when she receives an unusual proposal from the wealthy and powerful Lim family. They want her to become a ghost bride for the family’s only son, who recently died under mysterious circumstances. Rarely practiced, traditional ghost marriages are used to placate restless spirits. Such a union would guarantee Li Lan a home for the rest of her days, but at a terrible price.

After an ominous visit to the opulent Lim mansion, Li Lan finds herself haunted not only by her ghostly would-be suitor, but also by her desire for the Lims’ handsome new heir, Tian Bai. Night after night, she is drawn into the shadowy parallel world of the Chinese afterlife, with its ghost cities, paper funeral offerings, vengeful spirits, and monstrous bureaucracy—including the mysterious Er Lang, a charming but unpredictable guardian spirit. Li Lan must uncover the Lim family’s darkest secrets—and the truth about her own family—before she is trapped in this ghostly world forever.

BUY NOW ON AMAZON  | LISTEN FREE ON AUDIBLE

The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner

The Lost Apothecary moves between present-day London and 1791. In the past, a secret apothecary sells poisons to women who want to escape dangerous men. In the present, Caroline discovers an old bottle near the Thames and begins investigating where it came from. Her search leads her to a centuries-old mystery involving murder and a hidden apothecary shop.

A female apothecary secretly dispenses poisons to liberate women from the men who have wronged them – setting three lives across centuries on a dangerous collision course.

Rule #1: The poison must never be used to harm another woman.
Rule #2: The names of the murderer and her victim must be recorded in the apothecary’s register.

One cold February evening in 1791, at the back of a dark London alley in a hidden apothecary shop, Nella awaits her newest customer. Once a respected healer, Nella now uses her knowledge for a darker purpose – selling well-disguised poisons to desperate women who would kill to be free of the men in their lives. But when her new patron turns out to be a precocious twelve-year-old named Eliza Fanning, an unexpected friendship sets in motion a string of events that jeopardizes Nella’s world and threatens to expose the many women whose names are written in her register.

In present-day London, aspiring historian Caroline Parcewell spends her tenth wedding anniversary alone, reeling from the discovery of her husband’s infidelity. When she finds an old apothecary vial near the river Thames, she can’t resist investigating, only to realize she’s found a link to the unsolved “apothecary murders” that haunted London over two centuries ago. As she deepens her search, Caroline’s life collides with Nella’s and Eliza’s in a stunning twist of fate – and not everyone will survive.

BUY NOW ON AMAZON  | LISTEN FREE ON AUDIBLE |  READ with Kindle Unlimited

The Witch of Willow Hall by Hester Fox

Set in Massachusetts in 1821, The Witch of Willow Hall follows the Montrose family after a scandal forces them to leave Boston. They move to a country estate called Willow Hall, where strange things soon begin happening. Lydia eventually realizes the house is hiding secrets and she may have powers she never knew she had.

Two centuries after the Salem witch trials, there’s still one witch left in Massachusetts. But she doesn’t even know it.

Take this as a warning: if you are not able or willing to control yourself, it will not only be you who suffers the consequences but those around you, as well.

New Oldbury, 1821

In the wake of a scandal, the Montrose family and their three daughters—Catherine, Lydia, and Emeline—flee Boston for their new country home, Willow Hall. The estate seems sleepy and idyllic. But a subtle menace creeps into the atmosphere, remnants of a dark history that call to Lydia, and to the youngest, Emeline.

All three daughters will be irrevocably changed by what follows, but none more than Lydia, who must draw on a power she never knew she possessed if she wants to protect those she loves. For Willow Hall’s secrets will rise, in the end.

BUY NOW ON AMAZON  | LISTEN FREE ON AUDIBLE

The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell

The Silent Companions follows newly widowed Elsie as she moves to her late husband’s old country estate. Inside the house, she discovers a strange painted wooden figure that looks surprisingly like her. Then she notices something even more disturbing: its eyes seem to follow her. This is a creepy Victorian ghost story perfect for an October reading list.

When newly widowed Elsie is sent to see out her pregnancy at her late husband’s crumbling country estate, The Bridge, what greets her is far from the life of wealth and privilege she was expecting . . .

When Elsie married handsome young heir Rupert Bainbridge, she believed she was destined for a life of luxury. But with her husband dead just weeks after their marriage, her new servants resentful, and the local villagers actively hostile, Elsie has only her husband’s awkward cousin for company. Or so she thinks. Inside her new home lies a locked door, beyond which is a painted wooden figure —a silent companion —-that bears a striking resemblance to Elsie herself. The residents of The Bridge are terrified of the figure, but Elsie tries to shrug this off as simple superstition–that is, until she notices the figure’s eyes following her.

A Victorian ghost story that evokes a most unsettling kind of fear, this is a tale that creeps its way through the consciousness in ways you least expect–much like the silent companions themselves.

BUY NOW ON AMAZON  | LISTEN FREE ON AUDIBLE

The Reformatory by Tananarive Due

Set in Jim Crow Florida in 1950, The Reformatory follows 12-year-old Robbie after he is sent to the Gracetown School for Boys. Robbie can see ghosts, and the spirits at the school begin revealing what has happened to boys who disappeared there. His sister, Gloria, fights to get him out while Robbie tries to survive the very real and supernatural horrors inside the school.

Set in Jim Crow Florida, follows Robert Stephens Jr. as he’s sent to a segregated reform school that is a chamber of terrors where he sees the horrors of racism and injustice, for the living, and the dead.

Gracetown, Florida

June 1950

Twelve-year-old Robbie Stephens, Jr., is sentenced to six months at the Gracetown School for Boys, a reformatory, for kicking the son of the largest landowner in town in defense of his older sister, Gloria. So begins Robbie’s journey further into the terrors of the Jim Crow South and the very real horror of the school they call The Reformatory.

Robbie has a talent for seeing ghosts, or haints. But what was once a comfort to him after the loss of his mother has become a window to the truth of what happens at the reformatory. Boys forced to work to remediate their so-called crimes have gone missing, but the haints Robbie sees hint at worse things. Through his friends Redbone and Blue, Robbie is learning not just the rules but how to survive. Meanwhile, Gloria is rallying every family member and connection in Florida to find a way to get Robbie out before it’s too late.

The Reformatory is a haunting work of historical fiction written as only American Book Award–winning author Tananarive Due could, by piecing together the life of the relative her family never spoke of and bringing his tragedy and those of so many others at the infamous Dozier School for Boys to the light in this riveting novel.

BUY NOW ON AMAZON  | LISTEN FREE ON AUDIBLE

Also read

17 Most Loved Dark Fantasy Books For Your Fall TBR

15 Fall-Themed Snacks That Bring All the Autumn Vibes to Book Club

The 51 Insanely Good Audiobooks To Listen To This Fall

7 Books I Beg You To Read Before 2026 Ends

27 Book Club Books So Good, Members Will Forget Their Phones Exist