The Ultimate Fall Reading List: Cozy, Magical, and Slightly Spooky

Looking for the perfect fall read? This fall TBR has a little bit of everything. From cozy and magical to dark, moody, and slightly spooky.

FEATUREDTHE READING NOOK

Jess

8/22/202613 min read

Fall has always felt like a little bit of everything to me.

It's that first cooler air after summer, gloomy afternoons, changing leaves, pumpkins, fall candles, and finally wanting to sit outside with a book again. It's walking through the park more, wandering around bookstores, and getting a pumpkin spice latte because apparently I am exactly that predictable.

But it's also when everything starts getting a little weirder.

Spirit Halloween appears. Ghosts, magic, and all things Halloween are suddenly everywhere. I start thinking about scary movies, Halloween costumes, and all the questionable decisions that seemed perfectly reasonable in October—like using a Ouija board with friends on Halloween night.

My own Halloween history has ranged from trick-or-treating as an innocent little witch when I was young to eventually deciding that a slightly less innocent pirate was a perfectly acceptable costume when my friends and I were probably getting a little too old to still be trick-or-treating.

So when I think about a fall reading list, I don't want just one version of fall. I want the whole thing.

I want cozy bookstores and pumpkin spice. I want magic and strange little worlds. I want gloomy weather and old houses. And as Halloween gets closer, I want a few ghosts and things that go bump in the night too.

That's what I'm building my fall TBR around this year: books that cover the whole spectrum from cozy and comforting to magical, moody, and slightly spooky.

No requirement that everything involve a witch, a murder, or a pumpkin on the cover.

🍂 Cozy & Comforting

For when you want your fall reading with a blanket and something warm to drink.

This is the pumpkin-spice end of my TBR. These are the books I'm reaching for when I want something warm, charming, and easy to settle into. Preferably while the weather is finally cool enough to sit outside without immediately regretting it.

Pumpkin Spice & Everything Nice by Katie Cicatelli-Kuc

I bought this one last fall during a Barnes & Noble café event where buying something from the café meant you could get the book for $5. A fall book, a coffee, and a $5 deal? Obviously it came home with me.

And then, naturally, I didn't even read it.

So Pumpkin Spice & Everything Nice has been waiting on my shelf for another fall to come around. It's a small-town romance centered around Lucy's mom's coffee shop, with plenty of pumpkin spice and fall atmosphere. If there was ever a time to finally read it, this is it.

Emma by Jane Austen

Emma has technically been on my TBR since 2015, although not the same physical copy.

I originally bought it while I was studying British literature and brought it with me on a study abroad trip to Scotland and England. And then I left it on the plane.

So that reading plan ended rather abruptly.

Last Christmas, my mom bought me a beautiful special-edition copy, which means I no longer have an excuse. I already really like Sense and Sensibility, and I've wanted to finally read Emma for more than a decade now. Between the English countryside, matchmaking, social drama, and the fact that I've been meaning to read it for more than a decade, this fall feels like a good time to finally do it.

Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree

This is one of those books I've seen recommended over and over again whenever cozy fantasy comes up, so eventually it made its way onto my wishlist.

It's a low-stakes story that follows an orc who retires from adventuring and decides to open a café in a city that barely knows what coffee is. There's fantasy, found family and baked goods.

Fantasy plus coffee and baked goods already sounds like a pretty strong fall argument. At this point, I mostly want to know whether it's actually as cozy as everyone says it is.

✨ Magical & Otherworldly

For when regular fall isn't enough and you need a little magic involved.

Fall and fantasy have always made sense together to me. Give me witches, strange worlds, a little romance, and even an undertaker or two. These are the books for when I want my fall reading to feel a little less ordinary.

The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy by Megan Bannen

I wish I had some deep reason for why this ended up on my TBR, but the truth is much simpler: it was on sale for $4 on my Nook.

Obviously, I bought it.

Now that I've looked into it again, I'm wondering why I haven't read it yet. Hart is a marshal who patrols a strange magical world filled with dangerous creatures, while Mercy works for her family's undertaking business. The two can't stand each other—until an anonymous letter starts an unexpected correspondence between them.

Fantasy, romance, undertakers, and just enough death to feel seasonally appropriate? My $4 impulse purchase may have had a plan after all.

The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna

This is another one that has been hanging around my TBR for a while. I couldn't tell you exactly when I added it or who convinced me to, but I keep seeing people describe it as delightful, which sounds like a good endorsement to me.

It follows Mika Moon, a witch who has spent most of her life hiding her magic until she's invited to a mysterious house to teach three young witches how to control theirs. There's magic, found family, romance, and a whole lot of coziness.

I've managed not to read the delightful witch book this long, but I'm drawing the line at fall. Surely this is the season for it.

Threshing Day by Rebecca Yarros

This one was always going to make the list.

II've already read the other books in the Empyrean series, so a new release set in that world was always going to make my fall TBR. Threshing Day is a collection of stories featuring characters and dragons we already know, which sounds like a fun way to get back into the world while I wait for the next full book in the series.

Does it technically scream fall? Maybe not. But it's coming out this fall and I already know I'm going to want to read it, so it get's a pass.

🌙 Dark & Moody

For rainy afternoons, questionable decisions, and general gothic gloom.

Eventually fall stops being all pumpkins and cozy coffee shops and starts getting darker. These are the books for that. The gloomy weather, bare trees, old buildings, secrets, and stories that feel especially right when the sun starts setting a little too early.

Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy

This one is a more recent addition to my shelves. I picked it as my Book of the Month choice a couple of months ago and decided pretty quickly that I wanted to save it for fall.

It's set on a remote island near Antarctica, where a family is living in near-total isolation while caring for the world's largest seed bank. Then a mysterious woman washes ashore in the middle of a storm.

Remote island, terrible weather, isolation, family secrets, and a mystery? This feels like a book that deserves a gloomy afternoon and nowhere else to be.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

Remember how I said I've been meaning to read Emma since 2015? That trip was very productive for buying books and considerably less productive for actually reading them.

I bought my copy of Wuthering Heights in Haworth while visiting the Brontë house during that same British literature study abroad trip to England and Scotland.

And yes. I still haven't read it.

More than a decade later, I think it's probably time. Between the windswept moors, gothic atmosphere, obsessive relationships, and what I understand to be a collection of people making some truly questionable decisions, this might be the moodiest book on my entire fall TBR.

At least I didn't leave this one on a plane.

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

The premise of this one immediately caught my attention.

It begins with a young boy discovering a novel in Barcelona's Cemetery of Forgotten Books, only to learn that someone has been systematically destroying every copy of the author's work and his may be one of the last ones left.

A secret library, a missing author, gothic Barcelona, and a mystery centered around books themselves? I don't remember exactly when this landed on my wishlist, but I definitely understand why it stayed there.

It sounds dark, bookish, and just strange enough to earn a spot on this list.

👻 Slightly Spooky

For when you want Halloween vibes without necessarily sleeping with the lights on.

Eventually we have to get to the Halloween part of fall.

While putting this list together, I realized I had plenty of cozy, magical, and gloomy books on my TBR, but not nearly enough that felt genuinely Halloween-y. So I added a couple specifically to fix that.

We're starting with witches, moving on to a sinister carnival, and ending in a haunted mansion with demons. The definition of slightly may get a little questionable as we go. Proceed accordingly.

The Ex Hex by Erin Sterling

I added this one while putting the list together because I realized I was missing a genuinely fun Halloween read.

It's a witchy romantic comedy about Vivienne, who jokingly curses her ex after a breakup—only to discover years later that the curse may have worked a little better than intended.

There's a small town, witches, curses, romance, and plenty of Halloween atmosphere. Basically, this is what I was missing when I looked at my original TBR and realized that somehow my fall reading list didn't contain much actual Halloween.

This is for when you want spooky season, but still want it to be fun.

Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury

I wanted something a little creepier than The Ex Hex, and this is where I ended up.

A mysterious carnival rolls into a small Illinois town in the middle of the night, one week before Halloween. Two boys quickly realize there is something very wrong with the carnival, its strange attractions, and the promises being made to the people who visit.

A creepy carnival arriving after midnight in late October, dark magic, strange characters, and Halloween right around the corner? This is much closer to the kind of spooky I was looking for.

Creepy and atmospheric without deliberately searching for the most horrifying thing I can find. That's my speed.

Phantasma by Kaylie Smith

Phantasma was another Book of the Month pick that has been waiting on my shelf for me to actually read it.

This one takes things quite a bit darker. Ophelia enters a deadly competition inside a haunted mansion, where she has to survive nine challenges while surrounded by monsters, demons, and other contestants who aren't exactly rooting for her.

There’s also a mysterious stranger who offers to help her, but obviously it’s not that simple.

Gothic mansion, paranormal romance, deadly games, demons... this is definitely the darkest book on the list.

🍁Fall Books I've Already Read & Reccomend

Everything above is still waiting to be read, so I can't actually vouch for any of it yet.

But there are a few books I've already read that I’d happily recommend if you're looking for something that fits the season.

Dracula by Bram Stoker

If I'm recommending fall books I've already read, Dracula has to be here.

It's probably my favorite of the classic horror novels, and a big part of that is the way the story is told. Instead of a traditional narrative, it unfolds through diary entries, journals, letters, newspaper clippings, and other documents. I love the feeling of piecing the story together as you go, and it somehow makes everything happening feel a little more real.

It's spooky and atmospheric, but there's so much more to it than just Dracula himself. There's love and romance, death, conflict, friendship, and even more humor than you might expect from a book about an ancient vampire terrorizing everyone around him.

If you're going to read a classic horror novel in the fall, this is the one I'd pick.

My only ongoing complaint is that somehow, after all these years and all these adaptations, I'm still waiting for someone to make a movie version that actually feels like the book.

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab

I loved this book pretty much from the moment I picked it up.

I got a Book of the Month subscription for my birthday, and The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue was the first book I chose. At the time, I'd been in a reading slump for years, and this was the book that finally pulled me out of it.

Addie makes a deal that gives her an incredibly long life, but with one pretty major catch: no one can remember her. The second she's out of sight, she's forgotten.

There's something wild about imagining what it would actually be like to move through the world that way, and I was completely invested. It's magical and romantic but also dark and melancholy, with the kind of atmosphere I always start craving once fall rolls around.

It'll probably always be a special book for me, though. Without Addie, my current reading obsession might never have happened.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

I originally picked up Jane Eyre because I wanted to read a classic and feel smart.

That was pretty much the entire motivation.

The joke was on me because I ended up actually really liking it.

I especially connected with Jane and the way she grows up trying to find where she belongs. I felt for her through everything with her family and loved watching her grow into someone determined to build a life for herself—and eventually find love in a pretty unconventional place.

It also happens to be perfect gloomy-weather reading. There's an old manor, secrets, strange noises, romance, and plenty of gothic atmosphere without crossing into actual horror.

Turns out sometimes reading a book to feel smart actually works out.

Under the Whispering Door by T.J. Klune

I loved this one too, but for completely different reasons than something like Dracula.

Under the Whispering Door is a story about death, so you’d think it would be pretty depressing. And it is a little sad, but it's also incredibly cozy and warm.

The story follows Wallace after he dies and finds himself at a very unusual tea shop, where Hugo, a ferryman, is supposed to help him come to terms with his death and eventually move on.

What I remember most is how heartwarming it was. It's about friendship, love, acceptance, and figuring out what it means to actually make the most of the life you have. I loved the characters, and even with the heavier subject matter, I came away from it feeling much more comforted than sad.

It's basically the softer side of spooky season: ghosts, death, a cozy tea shop, and a surprising amount of warmth.

Sign Here by Claudia Lux

The main character of Sign Here literally works in Hell, so I feel like its place on a fall reading list is fairly self-explanatory.

Peyote Trip works in the deals department, where his job is basically to convince people on Earth to sign away their souls. But Hell is less fire and brimstone and more miserable office job, which is probably part of why I had so much fun with this book.

It's dark and a little twisted, but it's also genuinely funny. There are family secrets, questionable people making questionable decisions, and enough supernatural weirdness to make it perfect for spooky season without actually being scary.

Turns out eternal damnation can be pretty entertaining.

So, What Am I Actually Reading First?

That’s the problem with making a fall TBR like this. Now I want to read them all.

Realistically, I’m probably not going to make it through twelve books this fall and I’m definitely not turning something I enjoy into homework just because it's on my list. Some will get read, and some will probably still be sitting on my shelf when winter rolls around.

The point is to have something waiting for whatever version of fall I’m in the mood for: cozy and caffeinated, magical and weird, gloomy and dramatic, or fully ready for Halloween.

As for which one I’ll actually pick up first?

I might just leave that up to fate.

Can't Decide What to Read Next?

If your TBR has gotten a little out of control too, you don’t have to stare at it until you somehow make a decision.

That’s exactly why I made the Bag of Fate—a little reading picker for those of us who are much better at adding books to our TBR than choosing one.

Now I want to know what's on your fall TBR. Are you going cozy, magical, moody, spooky, or a little bit of everything?

Tell me what you're reading in the comments, especially if there's a book you think I'm missing.

Not in the mood to read?
What to Do Tonight at Home: 27 Cozy Ideas for Every Energy Level

Coming next to the Reading Nook:

Now that I've spent an entire article adding books to your TBR, I suppose I should help with the problem I just created.

How to choose what to read when every book sounds good.

Let the Bag of Fate choose my next read