by Samantha
October 2018
BOOKS TO GET YOU IN THE MOOD FOR HALLOWEEN!
Witches, ghosts, vampires, demons, and mass murders galore!
1. The Rules of Magic
by Alice Hoffman
October 10, 2017
Simon & Schuster
Magical Realism
New York City, 1969. The Owens family run a particularly strict household: no cast, no candles, no moonlight walks, no red shoes and no falling in love. The parents do everything they can to protect their three unique children. It’s strange, but all starts to make sense when they visit their Aunt in Salem, Massachusetts. Yup, where the Salem Witch Trials took place.
2. An Unwanted Guest
by Shari Lapena
August 7, 2018
Pamela Dorman Books
Thriller
It was supposed to be a weekend retreat in the Catskills. A blizzard hits and one of the guests is found dead. Then a second guest dies. It quickly becomes clear that no one is safe. This novel is perfect for curling up in front of the fire with a quick-paced, terrifying read!
3. The Broken Girls
by Simone St. James
March 20, 2018
Berkley
Historical Fiction
The setting is Barrons, Vermont, where Idlewild Hall, the boarding school for troubled girls open from 1912 until 1979, towers over the rural landscape. Town gossip will tell you the school is haunted by Mary Hand, who wears a black dress and veil. Alternating between 1950 and 2014, the story is told from differing viewpoints. The Broken Girls is entirely original. It is historically accurate with paranormal elements, supernatural yet fathomable. A present day ghost story intertwined with a WWII concentration camp in the past.
4. The Witches
by Roald Dahl
June 1, 1998
First Published October 27, 1983
Penguin Group
Children’s Fantasy
This is not a fairy-tale. This is about real witches. Real witches don’t ride around on broomsticks. They don’t even wear black cloaks and hats. They are vile, cunning, detestable creatures who disguise themselves as nice, ordinary ladies. So how can you tell when you’re face to face with one? Well, if you don’t know yet you’d better find out quickly-because there’s nothing a witch loathes quite as much as children and she’ll wield all kinds of terrifying powers to get rid of them. -Goodreads
5. Dracula
by Bram Stoker
August 21, 1986
First published in 1987
Signet Classics
Horror
You cannot go wrong with this classic. From Halloween fanatics to lovers of classic literature, this book should be on everyone’s must-read list this season.
6. The Girl from the Well
by Rin Chupeco
August 5, 2014
Sourcebooks Fire
Young Adult/Paranormal
A dead girl walks the streets. She hunts murderers. Child killers, much like the man who threw her body down a well three hundred years ago. And when a strange boy bearing stranger tattoos moves into the neighborhood so, she discovers, does something else. And soon both will be drawn into the world of eerie doll rituals and dark Shinto exorcisms that will take them from American suburbia to the remote valleys and shrines of Aomori, Japan. –Goodreads
7. From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death
by Caitlin Doughty
October 3, 2017
W. W. Norton & Company
Nonfiction/Science
Fascinated by our pervasive fear of dead bodies, mortician Caitlin Doughty embarks on a global expedition to discover how other cultures care for the dead. From Zoroastrian sky burials to wish-granting Bolivian skulls, she investigates the world’s funerary customs and expands our sense of what it means to treat the dead with dignity. –Goodreads
8. And Then There Were None
by Agatha Christie
May 3, 2004
First Published November 6, 1939
St. Martin’s Press
Mystery
Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None had me doing a double take in my one-bedroom apartment to make certain no one else was in the room with me – as I was so frightened by the violent and rapid plucking off of characters. After turning the first page, I simply could not stop reading and the page flipping persisted until the novel was completed. From the very beginning, Christie masterfully portrays the culprit as the least suspicious, but just suspecting enough to keep readers guessing. Christie was constantly strides ahead of her reader and concluded with a theatrical level summation of the novels murders in chronological order, as they actually occurred. ~M
9. The Ocean at the End of the Lane
by Neil Gaiman
June 18, 2013
William Morrow
Fantasy/Horror
Sussex, England. A middle-aged man returns to his childhood home to attend a funeral. Although the house he lived in is long gone, he is drawn to the farm at the end of the road, where, when he was seven, he encountered a most remarkable girl, Lettie Hempstock, and her mother and grandmother. He hasn’t thought of Lettie in decades, and yet as he sits by the pond (a pond that she’d claimed was an ocean) behind the ramshackle old farmhouse, the unremembered past comes flooding back. And it is a past too strange, too frightening, too dangerous to have happened to anyone, let alone a small boy. -Goodreads
10. How to Hang a Witch
by Adriana Mather
July 26, 2016
Knopf
Young Adult/Fantasy
It’s the Salem Witch Trials meets Mean Girls in a debut novel from one of the descendants of Cotton Mather, where the trails of high school start to feel like a modern day witch hunt for a teen with all the wrong connections to Salem’s past. -Goodreads
11. Six Women of Salem
by Marilynne K. Roach
September 3, 2013
De Capo Press
History/Nonfiction
The Untold Story of The Accused and Their Accusers in the Salem Witch Trials. This analytical masterpiece depicts the lives of six specific women who were accused of witchcraft during the Salem Witch Trials in 1692. This is not The Crucible or Hocus Pocus; it is accurate, detailed, and a must-read for anyone interested in what really went down in Salem, Massachusetts all those years ago.
12. Misery
by Stephen King
January 5, 2016
First Published 1987
Scribner
Horror
Paul Sheldon is a bestselling novelist who has finally met his number one fan. Her name is Annie Wilkes, and she is more than a rabid reader – she is Paul’s nurse, tending to his shattered body after an automobile accident. But she is also furious that the author has killed off her favorite character in his latest book. Annie becomes his captor, keeping him prisoner in her isolated house. –Goodreads
13. Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders
by Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry
December 17, 2001
First Published 1974
W. W. Norton Company
True Crime
Prosecuting attorney in the Manson trial, Vincent Bugliosi held a unique insider’s position in one of the most baffling and horrifying cases of the twentieth century: the cold-blooded Tate-LaBianca murders carried out by Charles Manson and four of his followers. What motivated Manson in his seemingly mindless selection of victims, and what was his hold over the young women who obeyed his orders? Here is the gripping story of this famous and haunting crime. –Goodreads
