Everyone spends the Halloween season watching scary movies, but fewer embrace the wonderful books that can thrill, terrorize and entertain. Well, those days are over!
Check out some of our recommendations of some written words that are worth your time. Enjoy with a cup of hot apple cider.
The House of Last Resort: A Novel
By Christopher Golden
Across Italy there are many half-empty towns, nearly abandoned by those who migrate to the coast or to cities. The beautiful, crumbling hilltop town of Becchina is among them, but its mayor has taken drastic measures to rebuild―selling abandoned homes to anyone in the world for a single Euro, as long as the buyer promises to live there for at least five years.
It’s a no-brainer for American couple Tommy and Kate Puglisi. Both work remotely, and Becchina is the home of Tommy’s grandparents, his closest living relatives. It feels like a romantic adventure, an opportunity the young couple would be crazy not to seize. But from the moment they move in, they both feel a shadow has fallen on them. Tommy’s grandmother is furious, even a little frightened, when she realizes which house they’ve bought.
There are rooms in an annex at the back of the house that they didn’t know were there. The place makes strange noises at night, locked doors are suddenly open, and when they go to a family gathering, they’re certain people are whispering about them, and about their house, which one neighbor refers to as The House of Last Resort. Soon, they learn that the home was owned for generations by the Church, but the real secret, and the true dread, is unlocked when they finally learn what the priests were doing in this house for all those long years…and how many people died in the strange chapel inside. While down in the catacombs beneath Becchina…something stirs.
So Thirsty
By Rachel Harrison
Sloane Parker is dreading her birthday. She doesn’t need a reminder she’s getting older, or that she’s feeling indifferent about her own life. Her husband surprises her with a birthday-weekend getaway—not with him, but with Sloane’s longtime best friend, troublemaker extraordinaire Naomi. Sloane anticipates a weekend of wine tastings and cozy robes and strategic avoidance of issues she’d rather not confront, like her husband’s repeated infidelity.
But when they arrive at their rental cottage, it becomes clear Naomi has something else in mind. She wants Sloane to stop letting things happen to her, for Sloane to really live. So Naomi orchestrates a wild night out with a group of mysterious strangers, only for it to take a horrifying turn that changes Sloane’s and Naomi’s lives literally forever. The friends are forced to come to terms with some pretty eternal consequences in this bloody, seductive novel about how it’s never too late to find satisfaction, even though it might taste different than expected.
Night’s Edge
By Liz Kerwin
Having a mom like Izzy meant Mia had to grow up fast. No extracurriculars, no inviting friends over, and definitely no dating. The most important rule: Tell no one of Izzy’s hunger – the kind only blood can satisfy.
But Mia is in her twenties now and longs for a life of her own. One where she doesn’t have to worry about anyone discovering their terrible secret, or breathing down her neck. When Mia meets rebellious musician Jade she dares to hope she’s found a way to leave her home – and her mom – behind.
It just might be Mia’s only chance of getting out alive.
Hampton Heights
by Dan Kois
On a cold winter’s evening in 1987, six middle-school paperboys wander an unfamiliar Milwaukee neighborhood, selling newspaper subscriptions, fueled by their manager Kevin’s promises of cash bonuses and dinner at Burger King. But the freaks come out at night in Hampton Heights. Sent out into the neighborhood in pairs, the boys will encounter a host of primordial monsters—and triumph over them.
Sigmone, who is bussed to a white school, is stuck with Joel, a white kid who idolizes Black culture. Mark, who’s wrestling with his sexuality, joins his secret crush, Ryan. Nishu and Al are outsiders; one is a second-generation immigrant, the other a poor kid in a rich school. Over the course of one eventful evening, the three pairs will encounter the wild things of Hampton Heights—werewolves, witches with a centuries-old story to tell, and a creepy, ancient monster who feeds on memories. Meanwhile, Kevin is having an adventure of his own, seducing a beautiful woman in the neighborhood’s tavern . . . but who is actually in control?
Funny, thrilling, outrageous, and sneakily beautiful, Dan Kois’s Hampton Heights captures without sentimentality the dreams and fears of teenage boys in a tender horror-comedy about camaraderie, bravery, vulnerability, and the terrifying prospect of growing up.
By C. M. Waggoner
Librarian Sherry Pinkwhistle keeps finding bodies—and solving murders. But she’s concerned by just how many killers she’s had to track down in her quaint village. None of her neighbors seem surprised by the rising body count…but Sherry is becoming convinced that whatever has been causing these deaths is unnatural.
When someone close to Sherry ends up dead, and her cat, Lord Thomas Crowell, becomes possessed by what seems to be an ancient demon, Sherry begins to think she’s going to need to become an exorcist as well as an amateur sleuth. With the help of her town’s new priest, and an assortment of friends who dub themselves the “Demon-Hunting Society,” Sherry will have to solve the murder and get rid of a demon.
This riotous mix of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Murder, She Wrote is a lesson for demons and murderers alike: Never mess with a librarian.
The Hitchcock Hotel
By Stephanie Wrobel
Alfred Smettle is not your average Hitchcock fan. He is the founder, owner, and manager of The Hitchcock Hotel, a sprawling Victorian house in the White Mountains dedicated to the Master of Suspense. There, Alfred offers his guests round-the-clock film screenings, movie props and memorabilia in every room, plus an aviary with fifty crows.
To celebrate the hotel’s first anniversary, he invites his former best friends from his college Film Club for a reunion. He hasn’t spoken to any of them in sixteen years, not after what happened.
But who better than them to appreciate Alfred’s creation? And to help him finish it.
After all, no Hitchcock set is complete without a body.
I Was A Teenage Slasher
By Stephen Graham Jones
1989, Lamesa, Texas. A small west Texas town driven by oil and cotton—and a place where everyone knows everyone else’s business. So it goes for Tolly Driver, a good kid with more potential than application, seventeen, and about to be cursed to kill for revenge.
Here Stephen Graham Jones explores the Texas he grew up in, and shared sense of unfairness of being on the outside through the slasher horror Jones loves, but from the perspective of the killer, Tolly, writing his own autobiography.
Find yourself rooting for a killer in this summer teen movie of a novel gone full blood-curdling tragic.
How to Make a Horror Movie and Survive: A Novel
By Craig DiLouie
Max Maurey should be on top of the world. He’s a famous horror director. Actors love him. Hollywood needs him. He’s making money hand over fist. But it’s the 80s, and he’s directing cheap slashers for audiences who only crave more blood, not real art. Not real horror. And Max’s slimy producer refuses to fund any of his new ideas.
Sally Priest dreams of being the Final Girl. She knows she’s got what it takes to score the lead role, even if she’s only been cast in small parts so far. When Sally meets Max at his latest wrap party, she sets out to impress him and prove her scream queen prowess.
But when Max discovers an old camera that filmed a very real Hollywood horror, he knows that he has to use this camera for his next movie. The only problem is that it came with a cryptic warning and sometimes wails.
By the time Max discovers the true evil lying within, he’s already dead set on finishing the scariest movie ever put to film, and like it or not, it’s Sally’s time to shine as the Final Girl.
American Ghoul
By Michelle McGill-Vargas
You can’t kill someone who’s already dead.
That’s what Lavinia keeps telling her jailer after — allegedly — killing her mistress, Simone Arceaneau. But how could Simone be dead when she was taking callers just a few minutes before? And why was her house always so dark?
Lavinia, a recently freed slave, met Simone, a recently undead vampire, by chance on a plantation in post-Civil War Georgia. With nothing remaining for either woman in the South, the two form a fast friendship and head north. However, Lavinia quickly learns that teaming up with this white woman may be more than she bargained for.
Simone is reckless and impulsive — which would’ve been bad enough on its own, but when combined with her particular diet Lavinia finds herself in way over her head. As she is forced to repeatedly compromise her morals and struggle to make lasting human connections, Lavinia begins to wonder is she truly free or has she merely exchanged one form of enslavement for another? As bodies start to pile up in the small Indiana town they’ve settled in, people start to take a second look at the two newcomers, and Simone and Lavinia’s relationship is stretched to its breaking point …
The House That Horror Built
By Christina Henry
Harry Adams has always loved horror movies, so it’s not a total coincidence that she took the job cleaning house for movie director Javier Castillo. His forbidding graystone Chicago mansion, Bright Horses, is filled from top to bottom with terrifying props and costumes, as well as glittering awards from his career making films that thrilled audiences—until family tragedy and scandal forced him to vanish from the industry.
Javier values discretion, and Harry has always tried to clean the house immaculately, keep her head down, and keep her job safe—she needs the money to support her son. But then she starts hearing noises from behind a locked door. Noises that sound remarkably like a human voice calling for help, even though Javier lives alone and never has visitors. Harry knows that not asking questions is a vital part of working for Javier, but she soon finds that the sinister house may be home to secrets she can’t ignore.
We Kept Her in The Cellar
By W. R. Gorman
Eunice lives her life by three simple rules: One, always refer to Cinderella as family. Two, never let Cinderella gain access to rats or mice. Three, never look upon Cinderella between the hours of twelve and three a.m.
Cinderella has dark and terrifying powers. As her stepsister, Eunice is expected to care for her and keep the family’s secret. For years, Eunice has faithfully done so. Her childhood flew by in a blur of nightmares, tears, and near-misses with the monster living in the cellar. But when she befriends the handsome Prince Credence and secures an invitation to the ball, Eunice is determined to break free.
When her younger sister, Hortense, steps up to care for Cinderella, Eunice grabs her chance to dance the night away-until Cinderella escapes. With her eldritch powers, Cinderella attends the ball and sweeps Prince Credence off his feet, leaving behind a trail of carnage and destruction as well as a single green glass slipper.
With Cinderella unleashed, Eunice must determine how much of herself she is willing to sacrifice in order to stop Cinderella.
Pay The Piper
By George A Romero & Daniel Kraus
In 2019, while sifting through University of Pittsburgh Library System’s George A. Romero Archival Collection, novelist Daniel Kraus turned up a surprise: a half-finished novel called Pay the Piper, a project few had ever heard of. In the years since, Kraus has worked with Romero’s estate to bring this unfinished masterwork to light.
Alligator Point, Louisiana, population 141: Young Renée Pontiac has heard stories of “the Piper”—a murderous swamp entity haunting the bayou—her entire life. But now the legend feels horrifically real: children are being taken and gruesomely slain. To resist, Pontiac and the town’s desperate denizens will need to acknowledge the sins of their ancestors—the infamous slave traders, the Pirates Lafitte. If they don’t . . . it’s time to pay the piper.
This Cursed House
By Del Sandeen
In the fall of 1962, twenty-seven-year-old Jemma Barker is desperate to escape her life in Chicago—and the spirits she has always been able to see. When she receives an unexpected job offer from the Duchon family in New Orleans, she accepts, thinking it is her chance to start over.
But Jemma discovers that the Duchon family isn’t what it seems. Light enough to pass as white, the Black family members look down on brown-skinned Jemma. Their tenuous hold on reality extends to all the members of their eccentric clan, from haughty grandmother Honorine to beautiful yet inscrutable cousin Fosette. And soon the shocking truth comes out: The Duchons are under a curse. And they think Jemma has the power to break it.
As Jemma wrestles with the gift she’s run from all her life, she unravels deeper and more disturbing secrets about the mysterious Duchons. Secrets that stretch back over a century. Secrets that bind her to their fate if she fails.
Batman: Resurrection
By John Jackson Miller
The Joker is dead, but not forgotten. Gotham City is saved, but it is still not safe. By night, its new symbol of hope, Batman, continues his fight to protect the innocent and the powerless. By day, his alter ego, Bruce Wayne, wonders whether there may someday be a future beyond skulking the city’s rooftops or the cavernous halls of his stately manor alongside the ever-dutiful Alfred Pennyworth.
But even after death, the Clown Prince of Crime’s imprint can be seen in more than just the pavement. Remnants from The Joker’s gang are leading wannabes fascinated by his bizarre mystique on a campaign of arson that threatens the city—even as it serves greedy opportunists, including millionaire Max Shreck. And survivors of exposure to The Joker’s chemical weapon Smylex continue to crowd Gotham City’s main hospital.
To quell the chaos, Batman needs more than his cape and his well-stocked Utility Belt. Bruce Wayne is forced into action, prompting a partnership with a charismatic scientist to help solve the health crisis. But as he works in both the shadows and the light, Bruce finds himself drawn deeper into Gotham City’s turmoil than ever before, fueling his obsession to save the city—an obsession that has already driven a wedge between him and Vicki Vale. The loyal Alfred, who had hoped Bruce’s efforts as Batman could help him find closure, finds the opposite happening. Nightmares begin to prompt Bruce to ask new questions about the climactic events in the cathedral, and investigations by Commissioner Gordon and reporter Alexander Knox into the arsons only amplify his concerns.
Having told the people of Gotham City that they’d earned a rest from crime, Batman finds the forces of evil growing ever more organized—and orchestrated—by a sinister hand behind the scenes. The World’s Greatest Detective must solve the greatest mystery of all: Could The Joker have somehow survived? And could he still have the last laugh against the people of Gotham City?
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