The Good Kind of Scary

Spine-tingling new reads include a short story anthology from Jordan Peele and frightfully clever works by Tananarive Due, Briana Cole and Vanessa Riley!

Published October 27, 2023

Sistersletter Staff

If you like things that go bump in the night, you will enjoy these spooky books. These new scary stories are smart, witty, and will have you holding your breath and bracing yourself with every turn of the page. Some of our most gifted storytellers have concocted spine-chilling tales just the way you like them. So, prepare to shiver and shout as you read these frightful stories wide-eyed!

Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror

Edited by Jordan Peele

You’ll want to have a new set of press-ons nearby before cracking open this nail biter! Jordan Peele, the famous writer and director of such blockbuster suspense films as Get Out and Us, has curated an anthology for the thrill seekers amongst us. Filled with brand new Black horror stories about both the supernatural and the very real horrors that so many face in society, this one-of-a-kind compilation will be an essential addition to your bookshelf. Whether it is a story about two freedom riders stranded on an Alabama road or one about a young girl who will stop at nothing to find her relatives' killer, you are sure to have a hair-raising reader experience! All of your favorite, and soon to be favorite, Black suspense, thriller, mystery, horror writers such as N. K. Jemisin, Nnedi Okorafor, Rion Amilcar Scott, Tananarive Due, and Violet Allen, gift readers with chilling stories perfect for a reading in the dark of the night!

In Their Shadows

By Briana Cole

This novel is perfect for lovers of psychological thrillers! It delivers alluring suspense, sibling rivalry, and secrets. Be warned, you may just fall off of your seat because you’ll be sitting on the edge of it with this captivating read! This is a story about April, a woman who has done the conniving work to be able to live out the perfect con. Not only does she have two identities, and two separate lives, but two separate husbands to match! All is well for April until one fateful day when a strange package arrives filled with contents that could expose all of her shocking secrets. You will be either rooting for her freedom or her demise as April attempts to use her bag of tricks to keep everything just the way she likes it. Will she succeed or will she be exposed, but more importantly who wants to air out April’s dirty laundry and how far will they go to do just that?

Murder in Drury Lane

By Vanessa Riley

This is the second book in the Lady Worthing Mysteries series by bestselling author Vanessa Riley. Although Lady Abigail Worthing finds herself in a loveless marriage to an absent lord, she does find solace at the Drury Lane theater taking in the magnificently entertaining shows from her box seat. That is until a piercing scream reverberates through the beautiful theater during a performance! Abigail and her neighbor Stapleton Henderson bolt backstage where they learn that a man has been stabbed right through the heart and lays dead in the prop room! Ever curious, Abigail is compelled to investigate. It does not take her long to see why they say art imitates life! On top of the real-life drama Abigail investigates, she is all too aware that people want to keep her quiet permanently for secretly working for the abolition of slavery. Enjoy this wildly suspenseful ride.

The Reformatory

By Tananarive Due

It is the summer of 1950 and twelve-year-old Robbie Stephens, Jr. has been sentenced to serve six months in a segregated reformatory, the Gracetown School for Boys. His crime? Defending Gloria, his older sister, by kicking the son of a wealthy landowner. While imprisoned, young Robbie, experiences his ability to see ghosts which was once a comfort to him after his mother died and his father, having no other choice, fled the town for his safety. But in the reformatory, the ghosts seem to make Robbie keenly aware of the horror that the boys endure within the walls of terror. Meanwhile, his friends Redbone and Blue help Robbie learn the ins and outs of the reformatory and most importantly, how to survive. Robbie has something else going for him: His sister Gloria is exhausting every effort to free her baby brother before the horror of the reformatory grabs a hold of him. A lecturer who teaches Afrofuturism and Black Horror at UCLA, Tananarive Due is an award-winning author who has created yet another riveting tale!

Jina DuVernay is an Atlanta-based freelance writer focusing on Black literature and Black joy. Find her on social @goodbookingout.