Scary Reading

Looking for something scary to read for Halloween? Here's the Horror Writers Association's Reading List.

Best Ghost Stories of Algernon Blackwood
The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty (read this one when I was a teenager; hid it from the parents)
Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
Lost Souls by Poppy Z. Brite
The Hungry Moon by Ramsey Campbell
The Between by Tananarive Due
Darklands by Dennis Etchison
Raven by Charles L Grant
Dead in the Water by Nancy Holder
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (read this in grad school; loved it; wrote a paper on it)
The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson
Turn of the Screw by Henry James (one of my favorite ghost stories, much better than Portrait of a Lady. Sorry Portrait fans)
The Ghost Stories of M.R. James
Dr. Adder by K.W. Jeter
The Metamorphosis and Other Stories by Franz Kafka (weird but not scary)
Pet Semetary by Stephen King
The Shining by Stephen King
The Stand by Stephen King
Skin by Kathe Koja
Dark Dance by Tanith Lee
Conjure Wife by Fritz Leiber
Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin
Songs of a Dead Dreamer by Thomas Ligotti
Lovers Living, Lovers Dead by Richard Lortz
The Dunwich Horror and Others by H.P. Lovecraft
At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft
The Hill of Dreams by Arthur Machen
Tales of Horror and the Supernatural by Arthur Machen
Sineater by Elizabeth Massie
I Am Legend by Richard Matheson (saw the movie; does that count?--Have read Mary Shelley's The Last Man; same premise but no vampirey beings)
Relic by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (I teach this novel in Honors Symposium)
Book of the Dead edited by John Skipp and Craig Spector
Ghoul by Michael Slade
Vampire Junction by S.P. Somtow
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (who hasn't read it?)
Dracula by Bram Stoker (a book I need to re-read)
Some of Your Blood by Theodore Sturgeon
Phantom by Thomas Tessier
Sacrifice by Andrew Vachss

Grab one from the list and go scare yourself! (That sounded kind of rude, didn't it?)

Happy Halloween!

I have two Halloween wishes for you. The first is that you enjoy some chocolate without guilt, and the second is that you make time to read for pleasure. If you read Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, so much the better!

Here are some "Halloween-y" poems to get you started. The candy's on you.