After finishing up a list of books to read that evoked the luxurious settings and flexible morals of The White Lotus, I realized I wasn’t quite done thinking about nice places to rest one’s head (I’m reminded of the Ambrose Bierce definition of “home” in his iconic Devil’s Dictionary: “Open all night.”) 2025 is not just full of releases set in resorts—there’s also a plethora of works set in elegant accommodations beset by supernatural forces and/or haunted by terrifying creatures and curses. Of course, the bent towards the unusual would never interfere with the management’s standards: no matter a character’s likelihood of impending death, they’ll sleep the night before their demise sleeping quite comfortably. These elegant, cursed behemoths have a reputation to uphold. And mouths to feed…
Since there are so goddamn many books set in hotels, I used the following criteria to narrow my list down to a manageable number:
– The hotel must be in regular use, if not at full occupancy, for most of the book (so nothing that screams The Shining)
– The book must be recently released or an upcoming publication
– The hotel must be either supernatural itself or full of supernatural guests (there is one scifi book on here, but as Arthur C. Clarke reminds us, any technology that is far enough advanced becomes indistinguishable from magic)
– No matter what happens overnight, the sheets are clean by morning (or at least, cleaning is attempted)
– No short-term rentals! These hotels might welcome monstrous visitors, but they also pay their taxes.
Alexandra Bell, The White Octopus Hotel
(Del Rey, October 28)
I may have cried while reading this in public. But that’s just proof of how good it is! In The White Octopus Hotel, an art appraiser finds her way to a mysterious and magical hotel in the Swiss Alps, traveling through time to arrive at the luxurious building in its 1930s heyday, where she forms an intense connection to a shell-shocked composer. The two lovers seek to learn the building’s secrets and avert the terrible events of the future, but the hotel’s magic is capricious, unpredictable, and possessed of its own inscrutable agenda.
Cat Scully, Below the Grand Hotel
(Clash, May 6)
It’s the 1920s, and while even the most respectable establishments are hiding speakeasies, the Grand Hotel’s secrets are far stranger (and more violent). When a pickpocket steals a necklace from the hotel’s demonic proprietors, she must collect enough souls to get out of their debt and into the limelight on Broadway. If she fails at her mission, she’s toast, but Scully’s gamine heroine doesn’t particularly care either way—she’s having far too much fun working for her new masters to worry about a silly thing like the future.
Maggie Stiefvater, The Listeners
(Viking, May 27)
The Listeners has all the glorious backdrops and sinister undertones of Remains of the Day or Rules of the Game (there’s even a lovelorn flying ace). I’m serious—almost every page of this novel made me think of the “Anticipation” speech from the end of Gosford Park.
In a West Virginia resort famed for its luxurious standards and healing mineral waters, the sturdy general manager has guided her hotel through the Great Depression, only to find herself facing an enormous new challenge as war breaks out. The hotel has been ordered to host Axis “internees”—mostly German, Italian, and Japanese diplomats—in pampered confinement, and under the watchful eyes of toughened G-men, until they can be repatriated to their homelands. The hotel workers find themselves recruited to spy on their reluctant new guests in an uneasy dynamic further complicated by the demands of the draft and the start of wartime rationing.
Stiefvater bases her novel in real history, featuring plenty of anecdotes that are far too strange to be fictional, while immersing the reader in the wild beauty of her mountain setting. Also, if you are wondering why it is on this list, the mineral waters are quite literally magical, and the general manager must commune with them regularly and take on any negative vibes they are channelling or risk the entire hotel flooding.
C. J. Dotson, The Cut
(St. Martin)
Dotson’s setting is a bit less cozy than some of the others here, but I cut the building a little slack because her heroine works in housekeeping, and really does try to keep the rooms up to standard. Unfortunately, the building plays host to quite the disturbing set of monsters, and they are just so messy. I devoured this novel in an afternoon, and you can too! Perhaps from the pool area of a nicer establishment…
Ivy Pochoda, Ecstasy
(Putnam, June 17)
Ivy Pochoda’s new horror novel, Ecstasy, takes place at an exclusive new establishment that may also be home to an ancient Greek god. Pochoda’s protagonist arrives muted and depressed; a group of women engaged in strange rituals may just be the pick-me-up she needs to get out of her funk (and into the service of the aforementioned deity).
Rob Hart, The Paradox Hotel
(Ballantine)
I couldn’t write such a list as this without including Rob Hart’s cheeky locked-room thriller set in a hotel that caters to a specific crowd: time-traveling tourists. When a guest is murdered in an impossible crime, the head of security finds herself tasked with both solving the crime and preserving the *ahem* future of time travel.
Erika T. Wurth, The Haunting of Room 904
(Flatiron)
Yeah, so, you really should crack open Erika T. Wurth’s wonderful, inventive new horror novel The Haunting of Room 904. First of all, the premise is stellar: it’s about a woman who (after the death of her clairvoyant sister) finds that she can communicate with ghosts—and goes to investigate a phenomenon in a hotel, where, every few years, a girl is found dead in the same hotel room, no matter what room she checked into. I know! That conceit, plus Wurth’s prose and sense of narrative structure are always top-shelf. –Olivia Rutigliano, CrimeReads editor
