Halloween Reads

Posted on October 23, 2024

Looking for a new book this spooky season? Read on for thrillers, chillers and cosy crime!

It Came From the Closet edited by Joe Vallese, foreword by Kirsty Logan

Exploring a multitude of queer experiences from first kisses and coming out to transition and parenthood, this is a varied and accessible collection that leans into the fun of horror while taking its cultural impact and reciprocal relationship to the LGBTQ+ community seriously. Download an official It Came From the Closet film watchlist, below.

Miss Blaine’s Prefect and the Vampire Menace by Olga Wojtas

Forging an uneasy alliance with newly widowed Madeleine, Shona is soon drawn into a full-blown vampire hunt, involving several notable villagers, the world-renowned soprano Mary Garden – and even Count Dracula himself. Will Shona solve the mystery, secure justice for the murder victims and make it through a deathly denouement in the hall of mirrors to return to present-day Morningside Library?

Mr Todd’s Reckoning by Ian Maitland

Norman Bates is alive and well. And he’s living just next door.

Behind the normal door of a normal house, in a normal street, two men are slowly driving each other insane. One of them is a psychopath.

How to survive everything by Ewan Morrison

Haley and Ben live with their mother. But their dad has good reason to believe there’s a new, much deadlier pandemic coming. Kidnapped by their father, they have no contact with the outside world. Can they survive? And will they save their mother?

A Case of Matricide by Graeme Macrae Burnet

In the unremarkable French town of Saint-Louis, a mysterious stranger stalks the streets; an elderly woman believes her son is planning to do away with her; a prominent manufacturer drops dead. Between visits to the town’s hostelries, Chief Inspector Georges Gorski ponders the connections, if any, between these events, while all the time grappling with his own domestic and existential demons.

His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet

The year is 1869. A brutal triple murder in a remote community in the Scottish Highlands leads to the arrest of a young man by the name of Roderick Macrae.

A memoir written by the accused makes it clear that he is guilty, but it falls to the country’s finest legal and psychiatric minds to uncover what drove him to commit such merciless acts of violence.

Halloween recommendations from team Saraband!

Rosie
This Halloween I’m looking forward to going to the cinema to see Smile 2 (though I’m not convinced I’m brave enough!) and rewatching Jennifer’s Body (more my speed!) at home. I’ve recently discovered the incredible short stories of Shirley Jackson, so after loving The Lottery and Other Stories, I’m looking forward to curling up with Dark Tales.
 
Rebecca
I’m looking forward to a yearly Halloween watch of Hocus Pocus and have been recommended the film Trap, a new horror/ thriller. I’ve just finished reading the brilliant The Ghost Cat by Alex Howard and have Autumn Chills, a collection of short stories by Agatha Christie featuring eerie manors, ghostly hauntings and supernatural mysteries, lined up next.
 
Sara
I’m not a horror fan, so I’ll be sticking with escapism and entertainment this Halloween, with a side of dark chocolate. I’ll be listening (again) to the extremely funny audiobook of Olga Wojtas’s first The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie tribute novel, Miss Blaine’s Prefect and the Golden Samovar, narrated brilliantly by the author. It’s not spooky or horrifying whatsoever (yay!), but the body count is quite impressive so I think it still counts…

Official It Came From the Closet film watchlist.

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