22 Perfect Books To Read When It’s Stormy

Shana Merchant is starting over after surviving a serial killer abduction as an NYPD detective. In her new job in the Thousand Islands region of Upstate New York, she is called, with fellow investigator Tim Wellington, to investigate a man missing on a private island.

There is blood on the scene and the wealthy Sinclair family and friends are all on edge. Shana is convinced of murder and as the storm outside intensifies, she discovers everyone is keeping dangerous secrets.

Guests gather to celebrate two people joining their lives together on an island off the coast of Ireland. Service is spotty and waves are rough but everything has been expertly planned.

As the festivities begin, petty jealousy mixes with well wishes, groomsmen begin playing a college drinking game, the bridesmaid “accidentally” spills on the bride, the brides oldest male friend give an uncomfortably caring toast, and someone turns up dead.

I would also really like to read this one and just realized I have it on my Kindle! It’s great for anyone interesting in locked-room mysteries (as is the next book on the list!)

Ten teens are having an exclusive party on Henry Island, having the weekend of their lives when they find a DVD with a sinister message: Vengeance is mine. 

They are cut off from the outside world thanks to a raging storm.  A killer is soon picking them off one by one, getting more violent as he does and now it’s up to Meg to find out who it is before more people die.

On a cool June morning in the village of Salten, a woman’s dog charges into the water of the Reach and pulls out something much worse than a stick.

The next morning, Fatima, Thea, and Isa receive the three-word text from Kate they hoped they never would. “I need you.”

They were best friends at Salten, the boarding school near the village, and became notorious for the Lying Game they played. One day the game got out of control and now their past is coming back to haunt them.

Tom Faraday is determined to finish his high-concept environmentally friendly home he’s building in Norway. It’s the same place he lost his wife, Aurelia, to suicide and he wants to honor her with their dream home.

Lexi takes a job as his nanny and falls in love his the two girls, especially Gaia. But something is off about the isolated home.

Muddy footprints appear inside, Aurelia’s diary appears in Lexi’s room, and Gaia keeps telling her about the Sad Lady. She begins to expect Aurelia didn’t kill herself and they’re all in danger of something far more sinister.

Eighteen months ago the Raxter School for Girls was put under quarantine when the Tox hit.

Teachers dying one by one, but then the students started getting infected and were left to fend for themselves on their island home.

They don’t dare wander from the school’s fence where the woods have become wild and dangerous from the Tox as they wait for a cure.

But Hetty will break quarantine and brave the horrors beyond the fence to find Byatt where she learns there is more to their life at Raxter than she ever imagined.

Lo is used to being on her own since her parents died in a car accident and her sister, Bea, joined the elusive community called The Unity Project. She’s spent the last six years trying to reconnect with Bea but only getting radio silence.

She thinks they’ll finally be reunited when she’s given exclusive access to their reclusive life. She digs deeper into The Project and in the process, she uncovers more questions than answers.

Every year, Tim Riggs leads a group of scouts on a camping trip near Prince Edward Island. But this year was different.

A horrendously hungry, pale, and skinny man shows up on the island and exposes them all to the nightmare bioengineered bug. It’s a harrowing struggle for survival to fight infection and each other.

I read this one last year and it’s very creepy! If you’re looking for horror books that will actually scare you, this is a good option.

Tom Kennedy takes his son, Jake, to Featherbank after the sudden death of his wife believing a fresh start will help, but the town has a dark past.

Twenty years ago, a serial killer abducted and murdered five residents. Then Frank Carter was caught and nicknamed “The Whisper Man” for luring his victims out by whispering by their windows at night.

Just as they settle down, a young boy vanishes and it resembles Frank Carter’s crimes reigniting rumors that he worked with an accomplice.

Now detectives have to find the boy before it’s too late. But soon, Jake starts acting strange and hears a whispering at his own window.

Robin has no idea what she’s getting into when she tags along to an epic party scavenger hunt. When things get going, they take a dark turn and Robin has to go against every rule she has to survive.

On Marin’s island, the day lasts for fourteen years, the night lasts for fourteen more. The sun is going down and everyone is preparing to leave for the Desert Lands. They prepare the houses with strange rituals that none of the adults will discuss.

Just as the ships are preparing to leave, Line, Marin, and her brother’s best friend is found to be missing. They run off to find him since they’re the only ones that know the truth of where he is. But night is falling, the island is changing, and when they return to the ships, it may be too late.

Charlotte married a wealthy widower, Paul, causing a lot of gossip in their small town. Everything is going well, at least until she finds a body under the dock in their backyard. And it’s not the first.

Paul’s first wife drowned in the same spot and it seems like a coincidence at first, but it turns out Paul knew this woman. His lies start to crack their marriage and a mountain of dark secrets come out over the course of the investigation.

Every small town like Fell, New York has a place like the Sundown Motel, especially back in 1982. Some guests are out-of-towners and others are locals trying the hide their secrets.

Viv Delaney is the night clerk and determined to uncover all their secrets, but things don’t go as planned and her niece follows her footsteps years later uncovering even more.

Jack and Stephanie Singleton are on the verge of a divorce and find themselves lost on a deserted road in Alabama on their way to a counseling session.  They follow a long dirt road from the advice of a highway patrolman when their tires are flattened by spikes in the road.

Conveniently, they aren’t far from an old Victorian house in the backwoods being run as an inn by a strange family of three.  They check-in and meet another couple, Randy and Leslie, that ended up there under the same strange circumstances.  Things go downhill quickly when White, a serial killer, locks them in the house after the lights go out and tosses a can down the chimney with a message on it: unless they kill one of their own by dawn, he will kill them all.

Felix Allsey is a travel writer with a unique and not so lucrative niche of haunted places.  After a lot of hard work, he convinced the owner of the Rotterdam Mansion to let him stay for a haunting 13 nights after he convinced himself that this would be his big break.

Soon, his oldest best friend Thomas joins him and the two avoid talking about a recent rough patch in their friendship before falling into their old dark humor rhythms. 

Soon things start going wrong when they hear screams and see figures around the house.  Felix realizes his book, and his mind is tilting from nonfiction to true horror.

Evie has been an outcast in her fishing town since her best friend Anna died. But one day a girl who shares a striking resemblance to Anna shows up on the shore and each girls has their own prince charming.

Evie feels like her life might work out OK now but she has her secrets as does her new mysterious friend. Without Evie’s help, her friend can’t stay in Havnestad, at least not on two legs.

So with Evie’s powerful magic, she helps to save her friend’s humanity and her prince’s heart before she realizes what she bargained away.

Annaleigh lives a sheltered life at Highmoor with her sisters, father, and stepmother.  There used to be twelve, but four of the girl’s lives were cut short, each death more tragic than the last, and the surrounding villagers think the family has been cursed by the gods.

Annaleigh is disturbed by a series of ghostly visions making her suspicious that her sister’s deaths weren’t really accidents. 

Soon Annaleigh becomes involved with a mysterious stranger with secrets of his own.  It’s a race to uncover the darkness that has fallen over her family before it claims her next.

The day after they moved in, Coraline started exploring their new home.  It has twenty-one windows and fourteen doors, thirteen of which open. 

The fourteenth is locked with a brick wall on the other side until the day Coraline unlocked it and found a hallway to another flat in another house that looks just like theirs.

Things seem great at first with better food, more toys, books with moving pictures, and chattering dinosaur skulls.  Other Mother and Other Father want to keep her there. 

They want to change her and never let her go.  Soon she finds other trapped children and she is their only hope of rescue.

Elisabeth has always known that all sorcerers are evil. She was raised as a foundling in a Great Library of Austermeer among the magical tools of sorcery: grimoires whispering on shelves and rattling in chains.

She hopes to become a warden charged with protecting the kingdom from their power but an act of sabotage releases the most dangerous grimoire and her desperate intervention implicates her in the crime.

She is left to face justice in the capital and the only person she can turn to is Nathaniel Thron, her sworn enemy, and his demonic servant. As their alliance grows stronger, she starts to question everything she was taught.

Winter didn’t want to be the guardian of the wood but she has no choice when her dad vanishes. She has to protect the travelers who accidentally slip through the portals.

The wood is poisoned, though and soon the trees are bubbling inky black. Creatures that live there are becoming bolder and torturing lost travelers.

With the help of Henry, a young man from eighteenth-century England who knows a little too much about the wood, Winter must find the truth and hopefully those they’ve lost.

It was the storm of the century with waves over 100 feet high formed by a combination of factors that deemed it the perfect storm.

This is the stories of the lives of people touched by the storm. This is non-fiction and it’s actually a movie, too!

I would like to read this one. I remember my mom watching the movie when I was little and she made me leave the room for one part of it because it was too scary, I guess.

Audrey Rose Wadsworth is seventeen-years-old and born a lord’s daughter in a life of wealth and privilege but she leads a secret life, going against her father’s and society’s wishes.

She slips off to her uncle’s lab to study forensic medicine. She is dragged into a grizzly murder investigation after her work on a string of savagely killed corpses.