As always, Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by the lovely Jana over at That Artsy Reader Girl.

1. A Box Full of Darkness by Simone St. James (available January 20, 2026)—St. James is one of my favorite authors for this kind of read. I started an e-ARC of her newest novel last night, and it's already tingling my spine quite thoroughly. It's about three adult siblings, all of whom experience paranormal visions of some kind or another, who are called back to their haunted ancestral home by the spirit of their younger brother, who disappeared when he was a child. Desperate for the answers that might finally allow them all to live in peace, the trio reunite to face the horrors of their shared past.

2. The Widow of Rose House by Diana Biller—After causing a scandal on two continents by leaving her abusive husband, Alva Webster is now a widow with the freedom to do as she pleases. What she wants is a fresh start, which includes renovating a neglected Hyde Park mansion. Unfortunately, the old pile is haunted and only one man—an eccentric scandal-maker in his own right—can rid it of its resident ghost. Alva has no choice but to let him into her home, her history, and, perhaps, even into her heart.

3. Murder at Blackwood Inn by Penny Warner—The first installment in a new cozy mystery series, this book features Carissa Blackwood, a ghostwriter whose life is rapidly falling apart. Needing a fresh start, she moves into the haunted home of her deceased grandfather, which her two occult-loving aunts have turned into a B&B. When a guest is poisoned, seemingly by an herb from her aunt's poison garden, Carissa finds herself investigating a murder. With the aid of a handsome reporter and her grandpa's ghost, Carissa is determined to find the killer.

4. The Hotel Nantucket by Elin Hilderbrand—When a deadly fire blazed through it, killing a young chambermaid, the titular hotel, once a glittering Golden Age gem, crumbled into a budget motel, then a ruined eyesore. An English billionaire is pouring massive money into restoring it to its former glory, in spite of staffing drama and the antics of the chambermaid's ghost. 

5. Pearls and Poison by Erin Lindsey (available December 2, 2025)—This is the fourth installment in the always entertaining Rose Gallagher mystery series. It's about a housemaid turned paranormal investigator in Gilded Age New York City. In this outing, Rose is on her own to recover stolen jewels and solve a murder. Meanwhile, her closest friends and family members are being threatened. Can she succeed in spite of everything standing in her way?

6. The Last Resort by Erin Estrada Kelly—In this middle-grade novel, 12-year-old Lila gets into a car accident on the way to her grandpa's funeral in Ohio. She's fine, except that now she can see ghosts. Her grandpa uses her new ability to inform her that he was murdered and he wants Lila to find out whodunit. He suspects the killer wanted access to his old Victorian home, which is not just a mansion-turned-inn, but a portal between the lands of the living and the dead. 

7. When We Spoke to the Dead: How Ghosts Gave American Women Their Voice by Ilise S. Carter—The Spiritualist movement swept through the Victorian world, capturing everyone from nobodies to noblewomen in its wake. This non-fiction book explores how the movement helped women who lived in a repressed society find their voices and their power. Sounds fascinating!

8. The Devil and Mrs. Davenport by Paulette Kennedy—Pete and Loretta Davenport live a picture perfect, God-fearing life in 1955 Missouri. Then, a girl is murdered in their hometown. When Loretta begins receiving messages from the Beyond, Pete blames them on her overactive imagination. She finds support from a male parapsychologist, even as her husband becomes more incensed, believing she's been possessed by a devil. Torn between a strange new purpose and her husband's demand for conformity, Loretta must decide who she really is and what she really wants.

9. A Grave Gift by Christy Carlyle (available December 23, 2025—In this first book of a new historical mystery series, Electra Poole quietly plies her trade as a psychic in Spiritualist-obsessed London. When she's summoned by a noblewoman, Electra foresees the woman's impending death but chooses to say nothing. Her client's subsequent murder fills the psychic with so much guilt that she seeks the help of a Scotland Yard policeman to help her find the woman's killer. As the pair edge ever closer to the truth, Electra finds her own life in peril.

10. The Spite House by Johnny Compton—This horror novel might be a little too terrifying for me, but the premise is intriguing. Fleeing his past with his two daughters in tow, Eric Ross is desperate to find a safe place to land. Without any references, his job prospects are few. When he sees an ad seeking a caretaker for a supposedly haunted house, he's intrigued. If he can prove to the owner that the home is indeed bespirited (without going crazy in the process), he'll receive a large paycheck and maybe, just maybe, answers to some big questions about the strange power that seems to cling to his family.

There you go, ten ghostly tales that are haunting my TBR list. Have you read any of them? What other spooky (but not super scary) ghost stories would you recommend? I'd love to know. Leave me a comment on this post and I will gladly return the favor on your blog.

Happy October! I hope you're able to enjoy some nice, cool Fall weather where you are. Temperatures here in the Phoenix area have dropped from three digits to only two, so that's something, even if we're still in the upper 90s. Ugh. 

Enough unpleasantness, let's talk about bookish books. I read three of them in September:

The Librarians by Sherry Thomas—As indicated by the title, this murder mystery revolves around several employees of a quiet library in Austin, Texas. Although the co-workers know each other, it's not until they're faced with solving two murders related to their workplace, that they really begin to trust and rely on each other. As they reveal their secrets to each other, they create a bond that helps them find out what really happened to the murder victims.

As much as I liked the premise of this novel, it didn't end up working very well for me. The story is mostly about the characters and their interpersonal relationships, not about the plot, which made the book a bit of a slog. It took me awhile to read it because it was just so putdownable. Bummer.

Radiant by Vaunda Micheaux Nelson—This middle-grade verse novel is set in 1963 in a mostly white neighborhood in Philadelphia. It stars Cooper Dale, a Black bookworm who's just starting fifth grade. Over the course of the school year, she experiences anxiety, fear, racism, sadness, and worry as well as triumph, joy, acceptance, and love. Through it all, she relies on wise words from her father, the Bible, Martin Luther King, Jr., and her favorite poet, Langston Hughes. Although the book deals with some tough subjects, it's ultimately a hopeful, uplifting read.

Murder By Memory by Olivia Waite—I'm not sure if this novella really counts as bookish, but since it has books on the cover and it references "the library" a lot, I'm going with it. The story is set on a spaceship where people can live forever by changing up their physical bodies whenever they feel like it. If you need a break between lifetimes, you can store your mind in the ship's vast library, where it will be kept safe until you need it again. When ship detective Dorothy Gentleman is yanked out of her rest involuntarily, she's confused. Especially when she spies a dead body nearby. As she investigates the murder, she's shocked to discover that someone is purposely erasing minds from the library. Who would do such a dastardly thing? And why? It's up to her to find out.

I'm not a big fan of short fiction because I like to sink into stories, especially when they involve complicated world-building. Murder By Memory has an interesting premise and world, but I didn't feel like 100 pages was enough to really do any of it justice. Because of that, this was just an okay read for me. I think I would have enjoyed it a lot more if it were a full-length novel.

For the last three months of the year, I'm going to try to read all the books on my "Read Before the End of the Year" list. None of them are overtly bookish, so we'll see what happens. I did start this one yesterday:

The Garden Just Beyond by Lindsey Leavitt—It's a middle-grade book about a family who's known for the life-changing dinners they serve to paying guests. Diners think the magic is in the garden-fresh produce the family uses, but what they don't know is that the garden actually is magic, and the food it produces is able to manipulate people's emotions. When a suspicious person buys up all the property neighboring their secluded farm, the family worries that someone is trying to steal their secrets and run their thriving business into the ground. 

Our narrator is Maggie Gartner, a 14-year-old girl who's socially awkward and counts her books as her only real friends. Her attic bedroom is filled with a library of family history records, journals, account books, and so on. It's her happy place, the one spot where she feels truly at home.