I thought I might have to skip October for the Monthly Recommendations group, as horror is just not my thing and I won’t recommend a book that I haven’t read (oops, I did make one exception, but it is a modern classic). But then I got to thinking, there are creepy things in books outside of the horror genre. I went back to my bookshelves and this list was born:
Picture Books
I can’t resist the opportunity to recommend these two picture books:
Constance and Tiny and Constance and the Great Escape written by Pierre Le Gall, illustrated by Eric Heliot – The Great Escape could also fit in with my September recommendations, since it is largely set at a boarding school for naughty children. I absolutely adore these dark little books and will be reviewing them soon.
Primary & Intermediate Grades
Things that come out of the Black Lagoon are inherently creepy:
The Substitute Teacher from the Black Lagoon (Black Lagoon #15) by Mike Thaler – fourth grade students loved having me read this to them when I was a substitute teacher.
Middle Grade
Robots who can think for themselves are creepy:
How to Destroy the New Girl’s Killer Robot Army by Mick Bogerman – read my review here.
Young Adult/Adult
Atmosphere can make a book creepy:
Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier – the title character haunts the marriage of the young narrator. The Alfred Hitchcock movie is pretty atmospheric, too.
Drinking blood is super creepy:
The Radleys by Matt Haig – This is the first book that came to mind for this list. Here’s what I had to say on GoodReads back in January 2014:
I don’t generally gravitate towards supernatural novels, but I was intrigued by the description and the cover (even though I don’t tend to like the girl-in-a-pretty-dress covers). I was expecting a light read, a YA vampire novel. This is so not your typical vampire novel and it is so not within the bounds of what I understand to be YA. This is an adult novel about a British family (with secrets worthy of a soap opera – but better) going through a crisis and the titular family happens to be vampires. And those vampires just happen to be abstaining from human (or vampire) blood.
By giving just the barest of snippets, there is no filler or fluff here and all is inter-related and entwined, Matt Haig propels you through the story.
It was so hard to put down… I just wanted to try the first chapter (but there aren’t really chapters, it is just sectioned off by days & then by scene with titles & quotes from The Abstainers Handbook (second edition) thrown in here and there) but I ended up reading the entire first section before I could put it down. And then I had to pick it back up and continue – it wasn’t quite midnight… which led me to wonder, why is it not acceptable to call in to work as “I need to finish this book?”
Monthly Recommendations is a group on GoodReads (https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/168259-monthly-recommendations ) with monthly topics for book recommendations on blogs and BookTube channels.
If you’ve read any of these books, what did you think? Would you include them in a “creepy” list or do you think I stretched it too far?
bookworlder 
You nailed this topic! It didn’t have to be strictly horror. This is a great variety. Constance and The Radleys sound really awesome. I loved Rebecca when I read it and think it fits this theme perfectly.
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Thanks, Trina! This ended up being a really fun post and I’m considering doing a second list. I’ve only read part of Rebecca, but I really want to pick it back up (and watch the Alfred Hitchcock movie again afterward).
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