Annual Halloween theme read

With October almost here, Halloween is just around the corner. Hopefully the dozen titles on the list include something that will appeal to everyone - a few classics, a graphic novel or two, and even a mystery or two for those who get their chills from tales of murder. I found a couple with World War I themes for the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the war.

All Hallows’ Eve by Charles Williams - for any Inklings fans

Baltimore, or the Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire by Mike Mignola and Christopher Golden – a graphic novel with vampires & World War I

Beowulf – an epic monster tale. J. R. R. Tolkien's translation was recently published for the first time, or there's the late Seamus Heaney's translation

The Body Farm by Patricia Cornwell – I can't thing of many things creepier than a place where bodies are left to decompose. We had been talking about the Body Farm around Knoxville for years. This is the book that got everybody else talking.

Coraline by Neil Gaiman – choose between the book or the graphic novel

The Foreshadowing by Marcus Sedgwick – another World War I theme

The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton – for anyone doing Mark's American authors challenge

The Monster of Florence by Douglas Preston – non-fiction about a modern day "monster"

The Quick by Lauren Owen – a few 75ers read and loved this Victorian vampire tale earlier this year

The Sittaford Mystery a.k.a. Murder at Hazelmoor by Agatha Christie – one of her standalone mysteries featuring a séance that predicts murder

Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury - I saw the movie but never got around to reading the book

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson - a horror classic

Oh, this is great list! I've never read any Williams, and this is a great excuse to try the Tolkien Beowulf. Plus, The Quick has been on my list this year. This is gonna be fun!

The only Williams I've read up to now is Descent into Hell and it was memorable. Charles Williams went to St. Albans School, and the geography and local legends of St. Albans seemed to me to have influenced that book. (I lived in St. Albans for a while.)

starred!

I've dropped my star here, too. Great choices.

I've preordered Hansel and Gretel by Neil Gaiman and I think it comes out on Oct. 28, I think it might be a good Halloween-y read.

Ah, The Body Farm! I remember enjoying that one, back when I didn't want to punch Kay Scarpetta in the face every other chapter. :-)

Have you read any of the mysteries co-written by Bill Bass, the real-life Body Farm guy? They are ... not terrible. At least I've never wanted to punch any of his characters in the face.

>6 rosalita: I've read the first three Jefferson Bass mysteries. They're not bad, and pretty accurate with the local details. Dr. Bass was the speaker at my graduation ceremony the year he retired from teaching.

This IS a great list! I'm really tempted to try to dig into some of these. The problem of course being, Time ...

Starred! I was hoping we'd have this thread for Halloween again, so thanks for doing it, Carrie.

That is a scary good list, and I've read several of them already. I started my Halloween reading a few weeks ago, so I'm currently reading Neverwhere by Gaiman and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.

My Must-Reads for this year are:
The Horror in the Museum- Lovecraft
Graveminder-Melissa Marr
Henry VIII: Wolfman
The Witch's Curse- McGowan

My list of books I hope to get to are:
The Long Hard Road Out of Hell- Marilyn Manson
Full Dark, No Stars- King
Jane Slayre
Aunt Dimity: Vampire Hunter

Ooh, I'm in for The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton. You've got a great list, and I have read and enjoyed several of those you've listed.

I'm hoping to get to this anthology of H.P. Lovecraft that I obtained last year, as well as The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe.

Fun reading!

Karen O.

I'm actually planning on reading Frankenstein!

Hmmm...I may give Heaney's Beowulf a re-read this month. I had the Tolkien translation in my hand in a nifty independent bookstore in Shepherdstown, WV, in June, and I left it there. Can't imagine what I was thinking.

Also, Wharton's ghost stories is a very likely read for me, as I will be doing the AAC Wharton challenge. Nice of Mark to pick someone who wrote spooky stuff as our October author.

>11 cyderry: I really enjoyed reading Frankenstein. Hope you do too.

Hi! I don't think I'll do much from the list -- I have too many scary books on my shelves, both actual and virtual, that I need to get to. I just finished Come Closer by Sara Gran, which I didn't like very much, but at least it was short and a quick read.

I've read several of the books mentioned here...I don't feel called by any of them so far, but i also can't settle on one on my own. Dilemma.

Great list of Halloween books! Thanks!

Ooh, I read a good one last night! Marina by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. Appropriately creepy!

I looked on my shelves, and while I don't have The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton, I do have a collection of her stories that has some of her ghost stories included. So at least I'll get to read a few.

I've just finished Neverwhere and liked it.

Finishing up Turn Coat by Jim Butcher (Dresden Files series), and it fits really well into a Halloween theme--vampires, werewolves, wizards, fairies, all kinds of supernatural and scariness! I love the Dresden Files series!

Karen O.

I've read a couple of the Wharton stories, "The Lady's Maid's Bell", which gets high marks for atmosphere but left me wondering at the end, and "The Eyes", which is only superficially about the supernatural. I'll be reading maybe one other, either "Kerfol" or "Pomegranate Seed".

Terrific list, Carrie! I did not know that Edith Wharton had written ghost stories! I have read several of the book up there, and my favorite is Something Wicked This Way Comes - just loved that one. So far I this month I have read The Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde, which was not as good as I thought it would be. I bet it packed a punch in its original days though before readers were so familiar with the premise of the story.

Finished Children of the Night yesterday. It was a very good take on Dracula. Also picked up Baltimore from the library yesterday.

It is a very spooky October here in the pacific northwest: it looks like, and feels a bit like, summer! Yikes! Scary

Finished my first of the list! My thoughts on Baltimore:

Henry Baltimore, an English Lord and captain stationed in the trenches of the Great War, leads his men on a suicidal charge to gain a few inches of territory from the Hessians. All his men are killed, and a plague of vampires is awakened. Years later, three men who have been involved in significant events in Henry's life are each summoned to meet in a gray, downtrodden inn to wait for Henry to arrive; they pass the time by telling their stories.

Creepy, dark and filled with atmosphere, Mignola and Golden have created a collection of stories and woven them into an arc that builds to a very good finish. The feel mixes Hellboy - especially the artwork accompanying the story - with more traditional horror to really good effect. A fine choice for Halloween!

I've finished Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and really liked it, Aunt Dimity: Vampire Hunter which annoyed me quite a bit, and Marilyn Manson: The Long Hard Road Out of Hell, which deftly takes the reader along from his childhood insecurities to megalomania.

I finished The Monster of Florence a few days ago, about a serial killer active in the 1970s and 1980s in semi-rural areas near Florence. Author Douglas Preston and his Italian collaborator, Mario Spezi, got too close with their journalistic inquiries and found themselves under investigation.

I'm about halfway through the audio of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde and about 1/3 through The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton.

Finished Tolkein's translation of Beowulf. Frankly, I like the Heaney translation better, and that's the one I'll go back to for re-reads. Buuut, and this is a BIG but, I really enjoyed Tolkien's commentary on the first 2/3 or so of the work. Christopher reduced a large set of JRR's lecture notes to some very interesting discussion of various issues around the poet, culture, relation between pagan and Christian aspects, interpretation, etc. that are technical, but fascinating for me. If you're familiar with the poem, these are quite worth the time. Plus, there's JRR's attempt at giving us what the original story might have been like.

>27 drneutron: Sounds like the Tolkien version is worth having for the commentary alone. Not that I wasn't going to add it to my library soon anyway!

I'm in the middle of a listen to Jane Eyre, and have read two Wharton short stories, only one of which was ghostly, but I'm afraid that will have to do it for me for the Hallowe'en reading. Went off on another tack, and filled my reading time with non-spooky stuff, and the month is winding down fast.

I just finished the really good The Girl with all the Gifts.

I've not done well with Halloween reading this month. I've done none from the list, and just these three that really fit the theme:

Come Closer by Sara Gran (10-3-14)
Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon (10-20-14)
Scare Stories: Strange and Spooky Tales from Somerset County, Pennsylvania and Beyond (10-25-14)

I am working on another, The Cure of Souls by Phil Rickman

I've been reading short stories:
"The Landlady" by Roald Dahl
"Dress of White Silk" by Richard Matheson and
"The Dunwich Horror" by Lovecraft

Both the Dahl and Matheson stories wait until the last lines to deliver the horror, which I like.

I finished the audio of Coraline earlier this week, and managed to finish both The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton and Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf yesterday. I'm not quite finished with the audio of The Sittaford Mystery, which is a re-read for me. I'll probably finish it this weekend.

My favorite read for the month is a toss-up between Coraline and Beowulf.

I'm still waiting for The Quick from the library, so it's a good thing there's no hard cutoff for Halloween reads... :)

I did read Hansel and Gretel: (A Toon Graphic) by Neil Gaiman and enjoyed it!

Of the list, I had already read Coraline and Something Wicked This Way Comes multiple times. I chose some of my own spooky reads:

A Red Heart of Memories and Past the Size of Dreaming by Nina Kiriki Hoffman have a ghost and plenty of spirits. Love this story.

Clariel is set in the world of Garth Nix's Abhorsen Trilogy, which is all about dealing with the Dead and necromancers.

Sunshine by Robin McKinley was my chosen reread, with truly alien non-glittery vampires threatening human existence.

A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny was a perfect Halloween day read. I found out about this relatively late Zelazny from blue salamander, and it's a great mashup of classic horror characters and tropes as seen through the eyes of the watchdog Snuff as he helps his master Jack prepare for a confrontation on Halloween. Delightful.

And The Quick was still on the library shelves when I was there yesterday, so I went ahead and picked it up after all.

My Halloween Reads were:

The House on the Strand by Daphne du Maurier
The Merry Misogynist by Colin Cotterill
The Murder Stone by Charles Todd
Silence for the Dead by St. James, Simone
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

I finished up my Halloween reads with a non-fiction, Death Makes A Holiday. It covers lots of angles that other history- of- Halloween books don't, like the rise in adults celebrating, churches running "hell houses" and the one convicted case of candy tampering that caused decades of wariness. Really interesting.

I finished the audio of The Sittaford Mystery yesterday, in which a murder is discovered as a result of "table-turning". I had read it recently enough that I remembered the murderer's identity and the motive, but I still wasn't able to figure out how the amateur sleuth put all the pieces together to solve the crime.