The Lineup recently featured this list: 9 Unsettling Horror Books About Grief. For those who don't know, The Lineup covers movies, TV shows, and books about horror, true crime, and thrillers. They focus on backlist titles so it's a great resource for discovering titles for book displays and book lists.
Grief horror is big right now and a focus on a popular theme, trope, or subgenre can help fans of a recent title find other books they will love. I would add other fiction about grief to the display to fill it out and to allow you to leave it up for a longer time if you don't currently have enough horror titles. Don't forget to include information about which titles you have in your digital collections.
One of the lists below includes recovering from trauma with the fiction about grief so I included some lists about that subject for those who wanted to expand their display.
It's always possible to put up a small, curated, pop-up collection at a service desk or on a bookcart. This would allow more staff to be involved as you would have to change it out more frequently when titles were checked out. Include a link to your catalog on the sign and encourage patrons to place holds if titles are already checked out.
If you decide to put up some non-fiction, consider your community and perhaps place that in a different part of the library. However, as the Reddit threads indicate, reading fiction about loss is one way to grieve and deal with a death.
Here are some lists to help get you started:
The Seattle Public Library : Next Chapter: Grief (Fiction)
Goodreads : Grief Fiction Books
Reddit r/literature : Novels with grief as an important theme
Reddit r/suggestmeabook : My partner passed recently, fiction books about loss and grief?
Reddit r/suggestmeabook :Suggest me a fiction book with grief as a theme
The Fiction Fox : Ultimate Guide to Grief Fiction
Book Riot : 8 of the Best Novels About Grief and Recovering from Trauma
Reddit r/suggestmeabook : Fiction books with a MC struggling/dealing with trauma in a realistic way?
The Fiction Fox :Ultimate Guide to Novels on (Healing from) Trauma
Electric Lit : 7 Novels About the Reverberations of Trauma
