Hotels are already a little creepy if you think about them too hard. You’re sleeping in a room where hundreds of strangers have stayed before you, there are people coming and going at all hours, and you really have no idea what’s happening on the other side of those walls.
Put all of that into a thriller and things can go bad very quickly.
The books on this list take us everywhere from rundown roadside motels and isolated mountain inns to abandoned hotels with very questionable histories. Some lean psychological, some are supernatural, and a few prove that getting snowed in at a motel is almost never a good idea.
If creepy buildings are your thing, I also have a list of terrifying haunted house books where the setting is often just as unsettling as anything living inside it.
The Sun Down Motel
by Simone St. James
The Sun Down Motel is exactly the kind of place I picture when I think of a creepy roadside motel. In 1982, Viv Delaney is working the night shift there when she starts realizing something about the place is very wrong. Then Viv disappears.
Thirty-five years later, her niece Carly comes to Fell, New York, looking for answers about what happened to her aunt. She ends up working the same night shift at the same motel—and starts uncovering the secrets Viv was looking into before she vanished.
If you like mysteries with dual timelines, old disappearances, and a motel that feels creepy even before anything supernatural starts happening, this one belongs on the list.
This is also one of my favorites on the list.
The Vacancy in Room 10
by Seraphina Nova Glass
Anna Hartley receives a phone call from her husband confessing to something she never imagined he was capable of. Before she can make sense of what he told her, Henry is found dead.
Looking for answers, Anna moves into The Sycamores, the rundown motel-turned-apartment complex where Henry had secretly rented a room as an art studio. The more she talks to the people living there, the more she realizes her husband may have had an entire life she knew nothing about.
Then threatening letters start showing up at her door, and finding out what Henry was hiding suddenly becomes a lot more dangerous.
Do Not Disturb
by Freida McFadden
Quinn Alexander is on the run after committing a crime that could put her in prison for the rest of her life. Her plan is to head north and disappear, but a snowstorm forces her off the road and into the isolated Baxter Motel.
The motel is run by Nick Baxter, who seems friendly enough. The place itself is another story. It has a disturbing history, and Nick’s sick wife spends her time sitting in the house across the way, watching from the window.
Quinn only needs somewhere to stay until morning. Unfortunately, surviving one night at the Baxter Motel may be harder than getting away from the police.
The Guest in Room 120
by Sara Ackerman
In 1905, Jane Stanford—cofounder of Stanford University—dies under mysterious circumstances while staying at Honolulu’s Moana Hotel. More than a century later, Maile is working at the same historic hotel when she becomes caught up in the old mystery surrounding Jane’s death.
The story moves between past and present as Maile digs into what happened in Room 120 and tries to figure out what really happened to Jane.
This one gives the list something a little different: a historic hotel, a real unsolved death, and a mystery that has been waiting more than a hundred years for answers.
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The Shining
by Stephen King
Jack Torrance takes a job as the winter caretaker of the Overlook Hotel, thinking the isolation will give him time to work on his writing and reconnect with his family.
Then the snow starts falling, the hotel is cut off from the outside world, and the Overlook begins showing just how much history is hiding inside those walls.
His young son Danny seems to understand the danger before anyone else, but by the time the adults catch up, leaving the hotel isn’t exactly an option.
If being trapped somewhere with nowhere to go is the part that gets to you, these books that make isolation feel uncomfortable take that idea even further.
The Last to Vanish
by Megan Miranda
Abigail Lovett manages The Passage Inn in Cutter’s Pass, a small North Carolina mountain town with a disturbing history of unexplained disappearances.
When a journalist comes to town to investigate the missing people and then disappears himself, his brother arrives looking for answers. Abby wants to help, but the deeper she gets into the mystery, the more she realizes the people around her may know far more than they’re saying.
The inn isn’t quite as sinister as some of the hotels on this list, but the isolated mountain setting, missing guests, and town full of secrets still give this one plenty of creepy vacation vibes.
The Hitchcock Hotel
by Stephanie Wrobel
Alfred Smettle loves Alfred Hitchcock so much that he created an entire hotel dedicated to him. The sprawling Victorian property is filled with movie memorabilia, nonstop Hitchcock screenings, and even an aviary full of crows.
For the hotel’s first anniversary, Alfred invites the friends he hasn’t spoken to since college for a weekend reunion. That alone should probably be a warning sign.
Everyone arrives carrying secrets from the past, and Alfred clearly has his own reasons for bringing them all back together. Because apparently a Hitchcock-themed weekend wasn’t creepy enough without adding a murder.
The Night Sister
by Jennifer McMahon
The Tower Motel was once a busy roadside attraction in rural Vermont. Now it sits abandoned and falling apart, holding memories that Amy, Piper, and Margot would rather forget.
The three spent their childhood summers playing around the motel until they uncovered something they weren’t supposed to find. Years later, a horrific crime brings Piper and Margot back into Amy’s life and forces them to revisit what happened there.
The mystery stretches back to the motel’s heyday in the 1950s, with family secrets, old disappearances, and something that may be much darker than anyone expected.
The Last Room on the Left
by Leah Konen
Kerry needs somewhere quiet to pull her life together and finally finish the book she’s supposed to be writing. Taking a caretaker job at a renovated roadside motel in the Catskills sounds like exactly the kind of escape she needs.
Then a blizzard traps her there.
And then she looks outside and sees what appears to be a body buried in the snow.
Now Kerry is isolated in the mountains, questioning what she saw and whether someone else is out there with her. Considering how many motel thrillers involve blizzards, I’m starting to think the real lesson here is never check into a motel when snow is in the forecast.
The 11th Hour Motel
by Beau Savage
Missy is preparing for a blizzard at the roadside motel she runs, expecting a long, miserable night. Instead, five strangers show up looking for shelter.
Unfortunately, they aren’t all just unlucky travelers. One is badly injured and carrying stolen money, two hired guns are right behind him, and a young woman and her grandmother have no idea what they’ve just driven into.
Once everyone is trapped at the motel together, the storm outside starts looking like the least of their problems.
Asylum Hotel
by Juliet Blackwell
Aubrey Spencer likes photographing abandoned buildings, which is how she ends up at the Hotel Seabrink, a once-glamorous seaside hotel with a very dark past.
The building is supposedly haunted by two women who died there, and things get even stranger when a mysterious figure appears in one of Aubrey’s photographs. Then a man she met at the hotel turns up dead at the bottom of a cliff.
As Aubrey digs into his death, she starts uncovering older murders, the hotel’s history as an asylum, and connections that someone clearly doesn’t want her finding.
Haunted hotel, abandoned asylum, old murders, creepy photograph. This one is really checking a lot of boxes.
And if you’d rather investigate the haunted building yourself, I also rounded up haunted house board games that turn game night into a paranormal investigation.
Murder at the Hotel Orient
by Alessandra Ranelli
When Lucy arrives at the Hotel Orient, she expects luxury, not murder.
But after a guest turns up dead, Lucy finds herself tangled in the investigation and quickly realizes the elegant hotel is hiding more than a few secrets. With suspicion closing in around her, she has to figure out what really happened before she becomes the next person blamed—or worse.
This is one of the newest books on the list, and I like that it gives us a glamorous hotel setting instead of another abandoned motel in a snowstorm.
Conclusion:
Apparently the lesson from this entire list is pretty simple: don’t stay at isolated motels, avoid hotels with questionable histories, and if a blizzard is coming, just go home.
Seriously though, hotels and motels make such good thriller settings because you’re already surrounded by strangers in an unfamiliar place. Add a murder, a disappearance, or a ghost or two and suddenly that locked hotel room door doesn’t feel nearly secure enough.
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One response to “Creepy Hotel & Motel Thrillers You Won’t Want to Miss”
I am so interested in stories with this setting as I think they would be perfect to read at this time of year. I enjoy books by Stephen King but have yet to read The Shining!