It’s the most wonderful time of the year! Ghosts and goblins and slasher flicks ahead as the nights gets longer, the shadows get deeper, and things start to go bump in the night.

This is Halloween we’re talking about; changes in our celebrations brought about by the pandemic are no excuse to slack off. They mean we have to find other ways to have fun. So find a haunted corner and curl up with one of these spine-tingling, hair-raising books.

Middle Grade

Witches of Brooklyn by Sophie Escabasse

Sophie lost her mom and now she’s been dropped off in a new place with two aunts she doesn’t know, and she’s pretty sure they didn’t know she was coming. She doesn’t want to be there, and she doesn’t think they want her there.

Then she starts to learn more about them. And they’re pretty neat.

She goes to her first day of school and makes some friends.

Then she learns a little more about her aunts. It tuns out they’re more than pretty neat. And so is Sophie…

Séance Tea Party by Reimena Yee

Lora’s friends are all growing up.

Lora thinks it looks and sounds pretty terrible. She wants to keep living in her imagination, reading her books, and having her séance tea parties. After all, it was at one of those tea parties she met Alexa, her best friend who happens to be a ghost. A ghost who was the same age as Lora was now when she died.

Both girls think they want everything to stay exactly as it is forever.

But can it?

And what happens to their friendship if it doesn’t?

Whispering Pines by Heidi Lang and Kati Bartkowski

Rae’s father vanished one night.

Rae knows what happened to him, but no one – not even her mother – believes her, so her mom decides a fresh start in a new town is what both she and Rae need. And Whispering Pines sounds like such a nice town.

It’s not.

Caden, who’s lived in Whispering Pines his whole life, can confirm as the son of the resident ghost hunter. Which is why no one thinks much of kids disappearing and then reappearing in a zombie state without eyes (you’d think the no-eyes part would spark at least a little interest). Except Caden, who, as Rae did with her dad, knows the backstory even if no one else does. Rae knows what that sort of frustration feels like, so the two team up to fix what’s gone wrong.

Poisoned by Jennifer Donnelly

A retelling of Snow White unlike anything you’ve ever read, Poisoned is a hybrid of fantasy, steampunk, and horror, weaving all three together into a story that defies genre classification while retaining the cadence and feel of a fairy tale. I was impressed with the ways in which Donnelly made the characters more solidly human than many fairy tale retellings do, giving them a heft and weight.

So too with the inclusion of vignettes that discussed statecraft and gender politics – topics that might have felt forced if included in other versions of Snow White but because Donnelly’s tale is populated by individuals rather than tropes, it added both to the context and urgency of the narrative. They also explained the Queen’s motivations, which, though perhaps extreme, do make a certain amount of sense in a man’s world. A villain with a complex cause is always more interesting than a villain who does evil simply for the sake of jealousy.

This one does have some gruesome moments so use caution with more sensitive kiddos.

Young Adult

B*Witch by Paige McKenzie and Nancy Ohlin 

Iris just wants to get through the first day of school. The fact she’s a witch can definitely wait. Except she’s immediately adopted by a coven that includes Binx, Ridley, and Greta.

Alas, they aren’t the only coven in school. There’s also the Triad: mean girls with magical powers who like using dark magic to make everyone’s lives hell.

When a witch is murdered, however, the two covens have to move past their rivalry to find the culprit before a full-blown witch hunt affects them all…

Rules for Vanishing by Kate Alice Marshall 

Once a year, a road appears in the forest. If you make it to the end, Lucy Gallows will let you leave her strange reality. If not…

One year ago, Sara’s sister Becca disappeared. Sara’s parents and the police think she ran away with her boyfriend. Sara knows better; Becca stepped onto Lucy’s road, and now Sara and her friends are going to do the same so they can find Becca and bring her home.

This book is listed as YA, but it is genuinely fucking terrifying. I got so creeped out while I was reading it one night that when the cat ran by my door I screamed and threw my kindle at him. Make sure your younger readers know what they’re getting into and that it’s okay to put it down if it’s too much.

Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas

Yadriel has always known he was a boy; his family has a harder time accepting the fact, denying him the opportunity to attempt the ritual that will make him a full brujo. One night, unable to wait any longer, Yadriel and his cousin Maritza perform the ceremony on their own and Yadriel is thrilled when Santa Muerte accepts him. Almost immediately, however, he’s assailed by the terrible pain brujos feel when someone close to them has died horribly – Yadriel and Maritza’s cousin Miguel, they realize. Yadriel attempts to summon Miguel’s spirit so  the family can conduct the proper rites and see him again on Dia de los Muertos, but he accidentally summons Julian Diaz instead.

And the adventure begins. (Check out our full review here.)

Cinderella is Dead by Kalynn Bayron

Cinderella is dead, but her legacy lives on. Every year, all of the girls in the kingdom are mandated to attend a ball so they may be paraded in front of the men wishing to claim a bride. Each girl has three chances to be chosen. After that, they are shipped to workhouses or worse…

Sophia’s grandmother taught Sophia to think for herself, and Sophia never forgot those lessons, so when she has a chance to escape, she takes it. Once free, however, she discovers there’s more to Cinderella’s story than the official version reveals and that she and her new allies may have a chance to defeat the king if they’re willing to use dark magic to do so.

Very dark magic.

Corpse-raising magic.

Is it worth the risk?

Is it worth losing everything?

Mature

The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix

This book is not at all what I expected when I started reading, but I was not disappointed. Set in the 80s and 90s in suburban South Carolina, The Southern Book Club’s Guide introduces us to a group of women who are bored.

They do all the unacknowledged and unappreciated work of keeping their families together and functional, but they want and need more. They’ve tried the town book club. It is literally the worst. So when one of the friends suggests they start their own club focused on true crime, well… the books are more interesting, and isn’t it fun to do something a little illicit?

It does cause some problems when an actual vampire comes to down though.

The crux of the book isn’t the damage the vampire does, however. It’s the question of which is worse: the vampire or the people they’ve known all their lives the book group is trying desperately to save.

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

A mysterious letter. A terrifying house. A young socialite. A handsome, menacing husband. A shy, quite stranger.

Mexican Gothic has the beating heart of a traditional Gothic tale, yet Moreno-Garcia has simultaneously recombined the tropes into something new and darkly fascinating. Most notable is our heroine, Noemí, who doesn’t happen upon trouble or fall into it. She strides in, unafraid, determined to save her cousin from whatever demons, human or inhuman, hold her captive.

The Ghost Tree by Christina Henry

The Ghost Tree is an especially interesting novel because you know what the creeping evil is almost from the jump, and in many author’s hands, that would be the death knell of any suspense.

In Henry’s, however, it adds to the dread that brings horror readers to the genre in the first place and perhaps even adds to the sense of abject, delicious terror because you see it coming… and there is absolutely nothing you can do to stop it.

Toritan: Birds of a Feather, Vol. 1 by Kotetsuko Yamamoto

In Western culture, corvids are generally considered bad omens. Not so in Japan, however, and especially not for Inusaki, who can understand and speak to birds. So when a crow reveals himself to have a lovely voice very similar to that of Inusaki’s landlady’s handsome son? Well, that would be impossible… right?

Shapeshifters are so Halloween. If he is a shapeshifter. We have to wait until March to find out (in Volume 2). March.

Vampires Never Get Old: Tales With Fresh: Tales with Fresh Bite ed. Zoraida Córdova & Natalie C. Parker

In many vampire stories set in the modern world, the creature in question is still hanging out in his drafty castle wearing velvet and lace, temping fair damsels with the bustled gowns of his dead wife, and we’re supposed to think it’s… romantic? There is nothing romantic about leaky ceilings in Romania in October. If humans, with our lifespan of decades are supposed to live by the adage “adapt or die,” then logically, vampires, with their lifespan of centuries, are going to need to do the same. See how the 11 authors in Vampires Never Get Old run with the theme.

Unspeakable: A Queer Gothic Anthology ed. Celine Frohn

Ghosts. Sea Creatures. Sentient houses. And secrets. Always secrets. Eighteen tales of the unspeakable and uncanny, each with a twist you’ll never see coming until it’s under your skin and in your brain. Who knows, you might even get the giant helmet crushing a guy that started it all.

Black Cranes: Tales of Unquiet Women ed. Lee Murray and Geneve Flynn

There are times when tradition can be used to conceal something rebellious, something furious, something dark. When expectation cracks and the other begins to show through, be it the color of one’s skin, what she dares to write or that she does so at all, or the place she has made where permission has been granted, she risks becoming forever other… a monster.

Black Cranes is an anthology of stories about women who took such risks because they needed to be more – as did the women who created them.

There’s a little something for everyone… and hey, maybe the start of a new tradition. Go buy your favorite candy, sit with it like a dragon with its horde, and read a good, spooky, scary, or creepy cute book. There are worse ways to spend Halloween.