Scary Reads for Halloween

 



Looking for a chilling story to put you in the mood for Halloween?  I came across a list of Top 10 Scary Books on the Fox News Magazine website compiled by librarian Miriam Tuliao, Assistant Director of Branch Collection Development at New York Public Library and a former colleague of mine.  Here are Miriam's picks:

The Amityville Horror by Jay Hanson
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill
Let Me In by John Ajvide Lindqvist
The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters
Misery by Stephen King
Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin
The Shining by Stephen King
The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris
The Strain by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan

For more information about this list, visit Top 10 Scary Books

Personally I am not much of a horror fan. I prefer thrillers from my go-to list of authors: J.T. Ellison, Tana French, Alex Kava, Lisa Gardner and Karin Slaughter.  Their novels send chills up my spine.  Horror authors who come to mind for me are those who have written classic tales; namely, Bram Stoker, Edgar Allan Poe, and Mary Shelley, and more contemporary authors like horror master Stephen King, Robert Kirkman, who writes the Walking Dead novel series, and Peter Blatty of Exorcist fame.  In fact, The Exorcist is currently celebrating the 40th anniversary of its publication. Several of the classics--Dracula and Frankenstein--and short stories by Poe and Stoker, are available as free ebook downloads on Feedbooks, the website mentioned in yesterday's post, Calling All Ereaders.  If you browse the Feedbooks public domain horror section,144 short stories and novels are available.

While scores of other horror book lists abound, I'll leave you with just one more--a 21st century choice, The 25 Best Horror Novels of the New Millennium compiled by Matt Barone, staff writer at complex.com, a pop culture website.

Catherine

Follow me on Twitter: @bookclubreader

 

Scary Reads for Halloween was originally published by Catherine for bookclublibrarian.blogpost.com.  This post cannot be republished without express written permission.