Reading list for Halloween

Updated February 16, 2024
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The September house
Orlando, Carissa
Paper Book
When Margaret and her husband Hal bought the large Victorian house on Hawthorn Street - for sale at a surprisingly reasonable price - they couldn't believe they finally had a home of their own. Then they discovered the hauntings. Every September, the walls drip blood. The ghosts of former...
The haunting of Alma Fielding : a true ghost story
Summerscale, Kate
Paper Book
Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR * The Sunday Times * The New Statesman * The Times * The Spectator * The Telegraph Shortlisted for the 2020 Baillie Gifford Prize * A New York Times Book Review...

The crack in the teacup

At his office in South Kensington on Monday 21 February 1938, Nandor Fodor opened a letter from an East End clergyman of his acquaintance. The Reverend Francis Nicolle wanted to alert him to a poltergeist attack in the suburb of Thornton Heath, just south of London, which had been the subject of a report in that weekend's Sunday Pictorial.

'I wonder whether you have seen it?' wrote Nicolle. 'Unfortunately the actual address is not given.' The minister thought that the haunting sounded even more remarkable than a similar case in east London that he had helped Fodor...

Mexican Gothic
Moreno-Garcia, Silvia
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * "It's Lovecraft meets the Brontës in Latin America, and after a slow-burn start Mexican Gothic gets seriously weird."--The Guardian   ONE OF TIME'S 100 BEST MYSTERY AND THRILLER BOOKS OF ALL TIME * WINNER OF THE LOCUS...
The return
Harrison, Rachel, 1989- author.
Paper Book
A group of friends reunite after one of them has returned from a mysterious two-year disappearance in this edgy and haunting debut. Julie is missing, and no one believes she will ever return--except Elise. Elise knows Julie better than anyone, and feels it in her bones that...
The House by the Cemetery
Everson, John
Paper Book
"The House by the Cemetery involves everything that a horror aficionado could ever want--an undead witch, comic relief, a haunted house dedicated to obscure and not-so obscure horror films, and lots and lots of gore...Indeed, The House by the Cemetery could easily be transcribed into an action...
A season with the witch : the magic and mayhem of Halloween in Salem, Massachusetts
Ocker, J. W.
Paper Book
Edgar Award-winning travel writer spends an autumn living in one of America's spookiest tourist destinations: Salem, Massachusetts Salem, Massachusetts, may be the strangest city on the planet. A single event in its 400 years of history--the Salem Witch Trials of 1692-...

Travel writer Ocker (Poe-land) takes readers along with him and his family on an enjoyable trip to Salem, MA, during the month of October.

The stranger upstairs a novel
Matlin, Lisa
Paper Book
Most people wouldn't buy an infamous murder house to renovate for fun . . . but Sarah Slade is not most people. "This debut novel deftly explores our shadows-the dark parts of ourselves we don't want others to see. I couldn't stop reading."-Julia Bartz, New York Times...
The fervor a novel
Katsu, Alma
Paper Book
In an internment camp in Idaho in 1944, American-born Meiko Briggs and her daughter Aiko dream of their home in Seattle and the safe return of Meiko's husband who is away with the Air Force. A sickness starts to spread amongst those in the camp and though it starts as a minor cold it triggers...
The hunger
Katsu, Alma
Paper Book
As featured in The New York Times Book Review Summer Reading Issue "Supernatural suspense at its finest...The best thing about The Hunger is that it will scare the pants off you."--The New York Times Book Review "Deeply, deeply disturbing, hard to...
Slade house a novel
Mitchell, David (David Stephen).
Paper Book
The New York Times bestseller by the author of The Bone Clocks and Cloud Atlas | Named One of the Best Books of the Year by The Guardian Keep your eyes peeled for a small black iron door. Down the road from a working-class British...
The spite house
Compton, Johnny
Paper Book
A Best Horror Book of the Year (Esquire)! * A Bram Stoker Award Nominee! * A 2024 Legacy Awards Nominee! * A Finalist for the Reading the West Book Awards! A terrifying Gothic thriller about grief and...
Black tide
Jones, K. C. (Kevin Charles), 1983- author.
Paper Book
A character-driven science fiction/horror blend, KC Jones' Black Tide is Stephen King's The Mist meets A Quiet Place. A BRAM STOKER AWARD FINALIST! It was just another day at the beach. Then the world ended. Mike and Beth...
The haunting of Ashburn House
Coates, Darcy.
Paper Book
There's something wrong with Ashburn House... Everyone knows about Ashburn House. They whisper its old owner went mad, and restless ghosts still walk the halls. But when Adrienne--desperate and in need of a place to stay--inherits the crumbling old mansion, she only sees it as a lifeline.....
Kill Creek a novel
Thomas, Scott 1975- author.
Paper Book
"I've only dared to read it in the daylight." --Kaly Soto, Deputy Weekend Editor, the New York Times Book Review At the end of a dark prairie road, nearly forgotten in the Kansas countryside, is the Finch House. For years it has remained empty, overgrown, abandoned. Soon...
The lost village
Sten, Camilla
Paper Book
*BEST MYSTERY/THRILLER FOR THE YEAR* for NPR "Come for the mounting horror and scares, but stay for a devastating examination of the nature of family secrets." - New York Times book review "[A] scary, highly entertaining debut...that pays homage to...

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