Get out your cozy clothes and warm drinks because Autumn is officially here! Halloween is just around the corner (eeep! a month away!) and, for us seasonal book readers, it’s all about spooky reads. What books are you most excited to read during the Halloween season?
If you’re not sure which story to pick up next, why not try one of these ?
Dracula by Bram Stroker
A chilling masterpiece of the horror genre, Dracula also illuminated dark corners of Victorian sexuality. When Jonathan Harker visits Transylvania to advise Count Dracula on a London home, he makes a horrifying discovery. Soon afterwards, a number of disturbing incidents unfold in England: an unmanned ship is wrecked at Whitby; strange puncture marks appear on a young woman's neck; and the inmate of a lunatic asylum raves about the arrival of his 'Master', while a determined group of adversaries prepares to face the terrifying Count.
Hocus Pocus & The All New Sequel by A.W. Jantha
Shortly after moving from California to Salem, Massachusetts, Max Dennison finds himself in hot water when he accidentally releases a coven of witches, the Sanderson sisters, from the afterlife. Max, his sister, and his new friends (human and otherwise) must find a way to stop the witches from carrying out their evil plan and remaining on earth to torment Salem for all eternity.
Twenty-five years later, Max and Allison's seventeen-year-old daughter, Poppy, finds herself face-to-face with the Sanderson sisters in all their sinister glory. When Halloween celebrations don't quite go as planned, it's a race against time as Poppy and her friends fight to save her family and all of Salem from the witches' latest vile scheme.
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
A twisted, upside-down creation myth, Mary Shelley's chilling Gothic tale lays bare the dark side of science, and the horror within us all. It tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, who plunders graveyards to create a new being from the bodies of the dead - but whose botched creature causes nothing but murder and destruction. Written after a nightmare when its author was only eighteen, Frankenstein gave birth to the modern science fiction novel.
IT by Stephen King
Derry, Maine is just an ordinary town: familiar, well-ordered for the most part, a good place to live.
It is a group of children who see - and feel - what makes Derry so horribly different. In the storm drains, in the sewers, IT lurks, taking on the shape of every nightmare, each one's deepest dread. Sometimes is appears as an evil clown named Pennywise and sometimes IT reaches up, seizing, tearing, killing . . .
Time passes and the children grow up, move away and forget. Until they are called back, once more to confront IT as IT stirs and coils in the sullen depths of their memories, emerging again to make their past nightmares a terrible present reality.
Emma in the Night by Wendy Walker
One night three years ago, the Tanner sisters disappeared: fifteen-year-old Cass and seventeen-year-old Emma. Three years later, Cass returns, without her sister Emma. Her story is one of kidnapping and betrayal, of a mysterious island where the two were held. But to forensic psychiatrist Dr. Abby Winter, something doesn’t add up. Looking deep within this dysfunctional family Dr. Winter uncovers a life where boundaries were violated and a narcissistic parent held sway. And where one sister’s return might just be the beginning of the crime.
Friend Request by Laura Marshall
Maria Weston wants to be friends with me
Maybe that had been the problem all along: Maria Weston had wanted to be friends with me, but I let her down.
She's been hovering at the edge of my consciousness for all of my adult life, although I've been good at keeping her out, just a blurred shadow in the corner of my eye, almost but not quite out of sight.
Maria Weston wants to be friends.
But Maria Weston has been dead for more than twenty-five years.
In the Footsteps of Dracula edited by Stephen Jones
Since his creation one hundred and twenty years ago, the name of Dracula has become synonymous with the legend of the vampire and the character is one of the world's most iconic to appear in fiction and film. Now, this history of the blood-drinking nobleman follows Dracula from his origins in Transylvania, through his travels down the decades, into a dystopian twenty-first century where vampires rule the world.
Is it possible that the Count's condition can be cured by modern medicine? How does the mythology perpetuated by literature and movies affect the existence of a real bloodsucker? How can an immortal creature adapt to the social and technological changes that have already shaped our modern world? And what happens when Dracula turns up for his own birthday party?
These and many other questions are answered by acclaimed authors such as Ramsey Campbell, Christopher Fowler, Charlaine Harris, Nancy Holder, Nancy Kilpatrick, Brian Lumley, Graham Masterton, Paul McAuley, Kim Newman, Michael Marshall Smith, F. Paul Wilson and many others, including Dracula's original creator Bram Stoker with a long-lost version of the story first presented in 1897.
Coraline by Neil Gaiman
When Coraline explores her new home, she steps through a door and into another house just like her own - except that things aren't quite as they seem. There's another mother and another father in this house and they want Coraline to stay with them and be their little girl. Coraline must use all of her wits and every ounce of courage in order to save herself and return home but will she escape and will life ever be the same again? Elsewhere in this collection, a sinister jack-in-the-box haunts the lives of the children who ever owned it, a stray cat does nightly battle to protect his adopted family, and a boy raised in a graveyard confronts the much more troubled world of the living. From the scary to the whimsical, the fantastical to the humorous, Coraline & Other Stories is a journey into the dark, magical world of Neil Gaiman.
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
A mysterious island. An abandoned orphanage. And a strange collection of very curious photographs. It all waits to be discovered in Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, an unforgettable novel that mixes fiction and photography in a thrilling reading experience. As our story opens, a horrific family tragedy sets sixteen-year-old Jacob journeying to a remote island off the coast of Wales, where he discovers the crumbling ruins of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. As Jacob explores its abandoned bedrooms and hallways, it becomes clear that the children who once lived here - one of whom was his own grandfather - were more than just peculiar. They may have been dangerous. They may have been quarantined on a desolate island for good reason. And somehow - impossible though it seems - they may still be alive. A spine-tingling fantasy illustrated with haunting vintage photography, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children will delight adults, teens, and anyone who relishes an adventure in the shadows.
The Raven Boys by Maggie Steifvater
Blue has spent the majority of her sixteen years being told that if she kisses her true love, he will die. When Blue meets Gansey's spirit on the corpse road she knows there is only one reason why - either he is her true love or she has killed him. Determined to find out the truth, Blue becomes involved with the Raven Boys, four boys from the local private school (lead by Gansey) who are on a quest to discover Glendower - a lost ancient Welsh King who is buried somewhere along the Virginia ley line. Whoever finds him will be granted a supernatural favour. Never before has Blue felt such magic around her. But is Gansey her true love? She can't imagine a time she would feel like that, and she is adamant not to be the reason for his death. Where will fate lead them?
Stalking Jack The Ripper by Kerri Maniscalco
Seventeen-year-old Audrey Rose Wadsworth was born a lord's daughter, with a life of wealth and privilege stretched out before her. But between the social teas and silk dress fittings, she leads a forbidden secret life. Against her stern father's wishes and society's expectations, Audrey often slips away to her uncle's laboratory to study the gruesome practice of forensic medicine. When her work on a string of savagely killed corpses drags Audrey into the investigation of a serial murderer, her search for answers brings her close to her own sheltered world.
Which story will you dig into first?