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Halloween Reads

dragonfly411

dragonfly411

Ideal_Rock
Joined
Jun 25, 2007
Messages
7,378
What are some good fiction (or even non fiction) books for Halloween? I'm thinking after I finish The Moonstone I want to do as much scaryish reading as I can to get me all pumped up for Halloween!
 
Roald Dahl's Scary Stories is a collection of scary stories by other authors that Dahl chose, himself. They're really good.
 
That's funny, I read the Moonstone over this summer too!

It's not Halloween specific, but murder mysteries I've really been getting into have been the Tony Hillerman Joe Leaphorn series. I've read The first eagle, Skinwalkers, and ...can't remember the first one but it was about an archealogist going missing who was looking for a specific kind of pottery.

What I liked about them is that they weren't particulary gorey in that forensic way more recent mysteries seem to get, but are character-driven, immerse you in the mood of the southwest. Even though people die (obviously) the emphasis is about resolution and righting wrongs, even if done in a non-traditionally police procedure way.
 
There's a good chance you've read it already but the Shining is my favorite scary book. Other good mystery/spooky thrillers are "The Dante Club" by Matthew Pearl, and "House of Leaves" by Mark Danielewski.
 
Bunny007 said:
There's a good chance you've read it already but the Shining is my favorite scary book. Other good mystery/spooky thrillers are "The Dante Club" by Matthew Pearl, and "House of Leaves" by Mark Danielewski.
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Mark Danielewski is Poe's brother, right? I remember hearing about House of Leaves from a friend of mine--he said it was pretty tough to get through but gave me some background on it anyway. I have been too intimidated to pick it up!
 
Those all sound great! I've also thought of reading the Charles Manson Story, and perhaps Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, and Frankenstein.

Others
Interview with A Vampire
The Vampire Lestat
The Witching Hour
The Amityville Horror

Any more?
 
A few possibilities.
The Haunting of Hill House. Fairly short, but very creepy. I love that everything about the house is just wrong; even all the plants on the property are poisonous. Not gory, more atmospheric. This is considered the gold standard of evil building horror.

Handmaid's tale. This one may not be what you are looking for as it is not creepy, it is a dystopian novel. That being said, it is the scariest thing I have ever read, so I added it. It is about if the craziest of the crazies of the religious right took over and women were less than slaves and how easily it could happen.

Someone in the House, Barbara Michaels (she uses a number of names on her books as she is a very well respected archaeologist and did not want her work to be trivialized by her fiction). This is my favorites of her mysteries written under this name, but they all have a similar feel so if you like this one, you would want to read some others. Again, not as gory, more about people thinking they are going crazy and weird things happening. Admittedly, this one is a bit dated as it was her first, but I still like it the best. She also writes the Amelia Peabody series of period mysteries under yet another alias.

The Devil in the White City. A history written in sort of a novel style. This is about HH Holmes, arguably the scariest serial killer this country has ever seen. He did things much sicker than you see in fiction; normal people simply cannot think of the things he did, even for fiction. The crimes were probably much worse than we know, his home from hell burned down before a lot of the information could be gathered.

I will say in my opinion the Shining and Silence of the lamb movies are creepier than the books. The rest of the Hannibal series is scarier than any adaptions however.
 
The Ruins, by Scott Smith. I was so creeped out reading that book. Also, The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. Both authors do a superb job creating a truly spooky atmosphere, plus The Historian is kind of a vampire book which fits with Halloween.
 
This year, I really enjoyed The Passage by Justin Cronin. Zombies. Vampire Zombies. It doesn't get much scarier than that. :errrr: It was my favourite read of the year so far actually.

For Halloween, I love a good haunted house book. But I've read them all I think. I read a ton of horror, and not much of it is worthy of a recommendation.
 
lyra said:
This year, I really enjoyed The Passage by Justin Cronin. Zombies. Vampire Zombies. It doesn't get much scarier than that. :errrr: It was my favourite read of the year so far actually.

For Halloween, I love a good haunted house book. But I've read them all I think. I read a ton of horror, and not much of it is worthy of a recommendation.
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Forgot about that one - yes, ditto The Passage recommendation. Along those lines, there's also The Strain by Guillermo del Toro
 
Those all sound great! I think I'd be up for non fic in relation to the scarier true stories.
 
I picked up a John Saul book last night, and hopefully it turns out good. It's called The Right Hand of Evil. I just happened to have it in my home library (yes... I do call it that... it is big enough haha). Unfortunately I seem to have misplaced my copy of Interview with a Vampire, or it would have been that.
 
Just to let anyone know, The Right hand of Evil is a good quick little scary read. I wouldn't say it was terrifying, but it was eerie at parts, and kept me hooked.
 
John Saul creeps me out! I can't read his books anymore.

I want to echo the "House of Leaves" suggestion. That book will stick with you - even now, thinking about it gives me the creeps. I want to re-read it.

And yes, Monnie, Mark Danielewski is Poe's brother. Actually, her album "Haunted" and this book were written about finding the same box in their father's attic. I don't remember the whole story, but they were cleaning out the attic and found this box, and writing the album and the book are how they each coped with it/imagined things after finding it. One version of Poe's song "Hey Pretty" has him reading a section of the book because (as Wikipedia states) due to the "post-Lilith Fair backlash" female artists weren't being played on the radio so she called her brother up and had him read from his book against the track.
 
I don't know if you have already read "Pet Sematary" by Stephen King. I don't scare easily, but this book managed to scare me good!! :o
 
Crap, I want to look some of these books up and see what they're about but JD's at work and I have to get up early for work in the morning..I don't want to scare myself before I go to bed.

I like John Saul. I've several of his books here, but have never read all that he's written. I was looking on Amazon and Midnight Voices sounds scary. Gotta get myself down to the library!
 
A note on the John Saul book: Last night I watched The Haunting in Conneticut which is based on a true story and I SWEAR Saul had to have used that story to write the book. Good fun comparison and good excuse to read a book AND watch a movie for anyone interested. The similarities are really uncanny.
 
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