Check out these Halloween inspired horror titles

By Coll Rowe | October 19 2023 | LiteratureHistory

In celebration of the Halloween season, we are sharing horror titles and books that are aligned with the themes of the holiday: the sometimes unknown and scary creatures, witches, and ghosts. From Edith Wharton’s classic ghost stories and popular novels like Frankenstein and Dracula that are commonly celebrated today, in literature courses and beyond, to contemporary stories about the monsters that hide in the dark, our list ranges in its stories and subject matter.

Never Whistle at Night
Never Whistle at Night
An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology
978-0-593-46846-3
Many Indigenous people believe that one should never whistle at night. This belief takes many forms: for instance, Native Hawaiians believe it summons the Hukai’po, the spirits of ancient warriors, and Native Mexicans say it calls Lechuza, a witch that can transform into an owl. But what all these legends hold in common is the certainty that whistling at night can cause evil spirits to appear—and even follow you home.
$17.00 US
Sep 19, 2023
Paperback
416 Pages
Vintage
The Penguin Book of Witches
The Penguin Book of Witches
978-0-14-310618-0
Chilling real-life accounts of witches, from medieval Europe through colonial America, compiled by the New York Times bestselling author of The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane and The Daughters of Temperance Hobbs.
$17.00 US
Sep 30, 2014
Paperback
320 Pages
Penguin Classics
Out There Screaming
Out There Screaming
An Anthology of New Black Horror
978-0-593-24379-4
The visionary writer and director of Get Out, Us, and Nope, and founder of Monkeypaw Productions, curates this groundbreaking anthology of all-new stories of Black horror, exploring not only the terrors of the supernatural but the chilling reality of injustice that haunts our nation.
$30.00 US
Oct 03, 2023
Hardcover
400 Pages
Random House
Ghosts
Ghosts
Edith Wharton
978-1-68137-572-4
An elegantly hair-raising collection of Edith Wharton's ghost stories, selected and with a preface written by the author herself.
$16.95 US
Oct 26, 2021
Paperback
288 Pages
NYRB Classics
The Shards
The Shards
A novel
Bret Easton Ellis
978-0-593-53560-8
Bret Easton Ellis’s masterful new novel is a story about the end of innocence, and the perilous passage from adolescence into adulthood, set in a vibrantly fictionalized Los Angeles in 1981 as a serial killer begins targeting teenagers throughout the city.
$30.00 US
Jan 17, 2023
Hardcover
608 Pages
Knopf
Boys Weekend
Boys Weekend
Mattie Lubchansky
978-0-593-31671-9
Boys Weekend is a hilarious trans-“final girl” horror graphic novel about a bachelor party gone very, very wrong.
$28.00 US
Jun 06, 2023
Hardcover
232 Pages
Pantheon
Silver Nitrate
Silver Nitrate
Silvia Moreno-Garcia
978-0-593-35536-7
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Daughter of Doctor Moreau and Mexican Gothic comes a fabulous meld of Mexican horror movies and Nazi occultism: a dark thriller about a curse that haunts a legendary lost film--and awakens one woman's hidden powers.
$28.00 US
Jul 18, 2023
Hardcover
336 Pages
Del Rey
Japanese Ghost Stories
Japanese Ghost Stories
Lafcadio Hearn
978-0-241-38127-4
Brilliantly entertaining and eerie ghost stories, regarded as major classics in Japan, by the Irish writer and Japanophile Lafcadio Hearn--whose life inspired bestselling writer Monique Truong's novel The Sweetest FruitsA Penguin Classic
$16.00 US
Sep 24, 2019
Paperback
272 Pages
Penguin Classics
Interview with the Vampire
Interview with the Vampire
Anne Rice
978-0-345-40964-5
“A magnificent, compulsively readable thriller . . . Rice begins where Bram Stoker and the Hollywood versions leave off and penetrates directly to the true fascination of the myth—the education of the vampire.”—Chicago Tribune
$18.00 US
Mar 18, 1997
Paperback
368 Pages
Ballantine Books
The Black Spider
The Black Spider
Jeremias Gotthelf
978-1-59017-668-9
The Black Spider can be seen as a parable of evil in the heart or of evil at large in society (Thomas Mann saw it as foretelling the advent of Nazism), or as a vision, anticipating H. P. Lovecraft, of cosmic horror. There’s no question, in any case, that it is unforgettably creepy.
$15.95 US
Oct 08, 2013
Paperback
120 Pages
NYRB Classics
Dracula
Dracula
Bram Stoker
978-0-375-75670-2
Of the many admiring reviews Bram Stoker’s Dracula received when it first appeared in 1897, the most astute praise came from the author’s mother, who wrote her son: “It is splendid. No book since Mrs. Shelley’s Frankenstein or indeed any other at all has come near yours in originality, or terror.”
$13.00 US
Mar 13, 2001
Paperback
432 Pages
Modern Library
A Cosmology of Monsters
A Cosmology of Monsters
A Novel
Shaun Hamill
978-0-525-56392-1
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR:
$17.00 US
Aug 04, 2020
Paperback
336 Pages
Vintage
The Haunting of Hill House
The Haunting of Hill House
(Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
Shirley Jackson
978-0-14-312937-0
A Penguin Classics Graphic Deluxe Edition of the greatest haunted house story ever written to celebrate the Shirley Jackson centennial
$18.00 US
Sep 27, 2016
Paperback
272 Pages
Penguin Classics
Frankenstein
Frankenstein
Or, The Modern Prometheus
Mary Shelley
978-0-375-75341-1
The Modern Library edition of Frankenstein reflects the 1831 version of the text.
$10.00 US
Jan 26, 1999
Paperback
352 Pages
Modern Library
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
And Other Tales of Terror
Robert Louis Stevenson
978-0-14-143973-0
Stevenson's famous exploration of humanity's basest capacity for evil
$9.00 US
Sep 30, 2003
Paperback
224 Pages
Penguin Classics
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