Books for Halloween

I don't know about the rest of you, but for me October and Halloween put me in the mood to read books that are scary and books that deal with ghosts, witches, and other things that go bump in the night. I've been making an effort to read and review books of this sort on the blog this month. If you're like me, and are looking for some seasonal reading this Halloween season, then you may want to consider picking up some of these for the end of October:

The Monstrumologist
by Rick Yancey

These are the secrets I have kept. This is the trust I never betrayed. But he is dead now and has been for nearly ninety years, the one who gave me his trust, the one for whom I kept these secrets. The one who saved me . . . and the one who cursed me.

So starts the diary of Will Henry, orphan and assistant to a doctor with a most unusual specialty: monster hunting. In the short time he has lived with the doctor, Will has grown accustomed to his late night callers and dangerous business. But when one visitor comes with the body of a young girl and the monster that was eating her, Will's world is about to change forever. The doctor has discovered a baby Anthropophagus—a headless monster that feeds through a mouth in its chest—and it signals a growing number of Anthropophagi. Now, Will and the doctor must face the horror threatening to overtake and consume our world before it is too late.

My Review | Amazon | Goodreads

The Forest of Hands and Teeth

by Carrie Ryan

In Mary's world there are simple truths.

The Sisterhood always knows best.
The Guardians will protect and serve.
The Unconsecrated will never relent.
And you must always mind the fence that surrounds the village; the fence that protects the village from the Forest of Hands and Teeth.

But, slowly, Mary's truths are failing her. She's learning things she never wanted to know about the Sisterhood and its secrets, and the Guardians and their power, and about the Unconsecrated and their relentlessness. When the fence is breached and her world is thrown into chaos, she must choose between her village and her future-between the one she loves and the one who loves her.

And she must face the truth about the Forest of Hands and Teeth. Could there be life outside a world surrounded in so much death?

My Review | Amazon | Goodreads

Tighter
by Adele Griffin

When 17-year-old Jamie arrives on the idyllic New England island of Little Bly to work as a summer au pair, she is stunned to learn of the horror that precedes her. Seeking the truth surrounding a young couple's tragic deaths, Jamie discovers that she herself looks shockingly like the dead girl—and that she has a disturbing ability to sense the two ghosts. Why is Jamie's connection to the couple so intense? What really happened last summer at Little Bly? As the secrets of the house wrap tighter and tighter around her, Jamie must navigate the increasingly blurred divide between the worlds of the living and the dead.

Amazon | Goodreads

Anna Dressed in Blood

by Kendare Blake

Just your average boy-meets-girl, girl-kills-people story…

Cas Lowood has inherited an unusual vocation: He kills the dead.

So did his father before him, until his gruesome murder by a ghost he sought to kill. Now, armed with his father's mysterious and deadly athame, Cas travels the country with his kitchen-witch mother and their spirit-sniffing cat. Together they follow legends and local lore, trying to keep up with the murderous dead—keeping pesky things like the future and friends at bay.

When they arrive in a new town in search of a ghost the locals call Anna Dressed in Blood, Cas doesn't expect anything outside of the ordinary: move, hunt, kill. What he finds instead is a girl entangled in curses and rage, a ghost like he's never faced before. She still wears the dress she wore on the day of her brutal murder in 1958: once white, but now stained red and dripping blood. Since her death, Anna has killed any and every person who has dared to step into the deserted Victorian she used to call home.

And she, for whatever reason, spares his life.

My Review | Amazon | Goodreads

There are a lot of good books for the Halloween season! Here are some others that you might want to try:

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman   Amazon | Goodreads
Slice of Cherry by Dia Reeves   Amazon | Goodreads
Texas Gothic by Rosemary Clement-Moore   My Review | Amazon | Goodreads
The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson   My Review | Amazon | Goodreads
The Body Finder by Kimberly Derting   My Review | Amazon | Goodreads
Lockdown by Alexander Gordon Smith   Amazon | Goodreads
Rot & Ruin by Jonathan Maberry   Amazon | Goodreads
Graveminder by Melissa Marr   Amazon | Goodreads
Dracula by Bram Stoker   Amazon | Goodreads
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier   Amazon | Goodreads
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins   Amazon | Goodreads
The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe   Amazon | Goodreads

How many of these have you read? Did you like them? What are some other scary or Halloween-appropriate books that you'd recommend?