Happy Halloween! What a perfect week to focus on covers that give us the chills!
Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, featuring a different top 10 theme each week. This week’s topic is Top Ten Scariest Looking Books Covers. What makes a cover scary? I’m less impressed by actual blood and gore — but give me just the hint of something sinister or creepy, and I’m hooked!
My top ten creepy, eerie, spooky, chilling, scary book covers are:
1) It by Stephen King: Responsible for a generation or two of people completely traumatized by clowns and storm drains.
2) Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith
3) The Replacement by Brenna Yovanoff
4) I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
5) Poe’s Children: The New Horror by Peter Straub
Doll parts? Always creepy.
6) Red Spikes by Margo Lanagan
7) Four and Twenty Blackbirds by Cherie Priest
8) Hollow City by Ransom Riggs
9) The Monstrumologist by Rick Yancey
I don’t know what’s in the jar… and I don’t want to know.
10) Sunshine by Robin McKinley
Honorable mention: I wanted to give a special shout-out (or should that be a scream-out?) to some blast from the past creep fests:
Happy Halloween! May your reading be extra spooky and creepy this week!
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Bookshelf Fantasies 
Great covers *shudder*. This topic isn’t great for a wimp like me 😉 I also have The Replacements on my list this week.
LOL. The content may be too much for me on occasion (not usually, though), but the covers never drive me away! I actually loved this week’s topic. 🙂
Red Spikes? I haven’t seen this cover before. So…disturbing. Perfect pick!
Margo Lanagan’s books can be so disturbing, and this cover just always freaks me out a little bit. Thanks for stopping by!
I really want to pick up some of these books. I love horror books with creepy covers. There is a clear pattern again today 🙂
Oh yes, I don’t think I’ve seen a single list yet that doesn’t include It! Creepy covers are so much fun — love the lists this week!
It and I Am Legend are the worst! I see we share some as well, 3 if I counted right. There really are super creepy 😀
My TTT
I’d forgotten I even had I Am Legend until I started going through my shelf trying to find the creepiest and spookiest. What fun!
Some very creepy covers here! I have never been a huge “OMG CLOWNS NO” kind of person but those are some creepy clowns for real. I have never seen that edition of the Rick Yancey book but I’m with you..I DO NOT WANT TO KNOW. I honestly can’t pick which Peregrine’s book is the creepiest now because SUPER CREEPY KIND THING GOING ON ON but that one has a whole in its body so maybe it wins.
Creepy kids are the creepiest, aren’t they? Kids with scary eyes — oh, and dolls too, especially old ones — much scarier, in my opinion, that bloody, gory covers! I have a different version of the Rick Yancey book too, but this one is so vague and ooky that it creeps me out. Thanks for stopping by!
These are some great picks. I ended up picking a different topic, but I Am Legend definitely would have made my list.
Thanks! I always love a good excuse to pull books off my shelves and look at covers. 🙂 Can’t wait to see what you did for yours!
Those are some really creepy covers you chose for this week! lol. Ransom Riggs’ books seem to be very popular for this week 😉 And The Replacements (I cringe whenever I see it). I also never realised that the cover for I Am Legend was quite–freaky.
My TTT
I think the pictures are a big part of the reason why I love the Ransom Riggs books — something about the kids’ eyes, in particular, is just so… off. This week’s topic is such fun!
Wow. Seriously creepy covers. It made my list too, but the rest were newer to me. I didn’t think of Pride & Prejudice & Zombies. And I haven’t thought about Where are the Children in years. It’s the book that made me love Mary Higgins-Clark! I’ll have to check a few of these out! 😀
My TTT
It seems to be popping up everywhere today! No wonder so many people have clown phobias! It was fun to dig up some of those 70s-era books that scared the heck out of everyone way back when… I remember always thinking The Omen was particularly terrifying!
I’ll tell you what… between clowns and creepy children, I just may never sleep again! To add to your list, I’d include Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark (they had the creepiest drawings EVER) and The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer only because the idea of someone holding you under water is so disturbing.
Oh, I’d forgotten about the Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark books — those are pretty terrifying for kids! (Also all of the Goosebumps books, which are just gross, IMO). Being held underwater? Yup, nightmares galore!
Seriously though, what the hell is in that jar? Ugh. And you know I’m completely terrified of clowns but I have yet to read It OR watch the movie.
The thing with It is that it’s really, really terrifying — until (I thought) a totally unsatisfying end. Oh well, the clown is still enough to ruin your sleep for years! That jar?? Ugh! I haven’t read the book, but I hear it’s SO disturbing. (Can’t wait to read it! 🙂 )
Seriously- that last cover of It is so terrifying!! I hate clowns.
Me too. Although maybe I hate clowns because I was scarred by It!
These scary book covers are definitely doing what they set out to do; which is creep us the hell out!
Here’s Our List
I agree… and isn’t it wonderful? I had so much fun putting together this week’s list — creepy covers are amazing! 🙂
Seeing that I Am Legend cover reminds me that I need to buy it! I’ve still only seen the film. And I love the P and P and Z cover. She looks so peaceful (aside from the whole rotting corpse thing), as though she’s not aware she’s a zombie.
LOL, a peaceful zombie! I’ve always loved that cover — the perfect Regency young woman, with her skin rotting away. What will the neighbors think? 🙂
Oh my goodness, all of these are the perfect Halloween covers! I especially love the Stephen King covers, especially since it’s so simple yet scary at the same time.
Great list & thanks for stopping by my TTT! (:
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