From the Booking Desk:
This year, Halloween arrives during the weekend. This likely means there will be a lot more parties and/or more time for us to read our favorite spooky fiction. I thought I would make a few suggestions of recent books that might fit the bill.
So, whether you are looking for something to read while waiting on the porch for trick-or-treaters or looking for something to hide under the covers with – enjoy these selections. And remember, an appropriately themed book would make a great hostess gift that will last longer than wine or candy. Since these are all paperback editions, this makes for an affordable and unexpected gift.
At the top of this list, I am putting Sid the Skeleton. Any of these three books by Leigh Perry (aka Toni L.P. Kelner) would be prefect for just about anyone looking for a little fun in their reading. The most recent in the series, The Skeleton Haunts a House, is obviously Halloween-related, but with an ambulatory skeleton that talks and makes really bad funny puns, all three books are highly recommended.
Next up is another cozy. Scrapbook of the Dead is the latest in Mollie Cox Bryan’s Cumberland Creek Scrapbook mystery series. The new book is set over Halloween and features two dead bodies but is still light enough for those readers who are not really into being scared by their pleasure reading.
Somewhere in between the lighter suggestions above and the more hardcore horror below, I’d like to suggest John Connolly’s Nocturnes books. These are two collections of short stories – many of them with a more supernatural angle. The stories are various lengths making them perfect for filling those moments between ghostly visitors.
For true horror fanatics, I can’t recommend Seize the Night more highly. This is also a collection of short fiction – this time themed around vampires – but each of these stories puts a new twist on this old trope. This book will literally have you losing sleep – first because you can’t stop reading until you have finished all the stories and then because you can’t forget the stories and now fear the darkness surrounding you. What is great about this collection is that it features authors from many sub-genres and from various stages in a writer’s career. Of note to crime fiction fans will be stories from Dana Cameron, Leigh Perry, Charlaine Harris, Michael Koryta, among others.
