I've included some classics, non-fiction,YA, mystery, and dark fantasy for this year's Halloween Reads Post:)
1.The White People and Other Stories by Arthur Machen
A classic of eerie horror. The title story is told to one man by another, and concerns a green book, the journal of a girl whose nanny had a connection with malevolent spirit folk. That nanny's influence might have sent the girl spiraling into madness. The Great God Pan is another disturbing tale with lovely bits of mythic darkness.
2.The Call by Peadar O'Guilin
This was YA horror? Set in contemporary Ireland, it's a Hunger Games with Very Bad Faery Folk, the type that make living skin suits out of the teenagers they hunt for five minutes in faeryland. If you survive, you win. Very few survive. Death is preferable.
3.The World of Lore: Dreadful Places by Aaron Mahnke
An entertaining collection of urban legends and haunted places examined by Mahnke, whose podcast of the same name is also fascinating. There are two other books in this collection--Wicked Mortals and Monstrous Creatures.
4.Never-Contented Things by Sarah Porter
Ksenia has to save her foster sibling Josh from Prince and his tribe, glamorous creatures disguised as teenagers, who lure young people into a mirror world to feed off of their emotions. Ksenia plays along with these soul-sucking creatures until she can find a way out--and the sacrifice she must make is heartbreaking. Also, the never-contented things are creepy.
5.Coldheart Canyon by Clive Barker
An action star's plastic surgery leaves him disfigured, so he isolates himself by purchasing a mansion once owned by a Romanian actress who may have been a witch. He soon learns she and her disciples never left. The ghosts are disturbing, a crossbreeding of the phantoms of Hollywoood stars and the wraiths of a menagerie of exotic beasts kept by the witch.
6.Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo
Alex is given a free ride to Yale University because she can see the dead. She becomes an apprentice to Darlington, the young man who teaches her the ways of Lethe House, which polices the Houses of the Veil--the secret societies like Skull and Bones, who actually practice magic. The ghosts are terrifying, as is Alex's stumbling alone through this world when she loses Darlington.
7.HeartBeast by Tanith Lee
A werewolf story. Like all of Lee's writing, it's strange, lyrical, elegant, and brutal. Daniel, a beautiful young adventurer, becomes the victim of a horrific curse while traveling the world in what seems to be the early 19th century. and then he comes home . . . Striking imagery and fascinating characters.
8.A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay
A reality show is following a teenager who is soon to be exorcised. The events are told in flashback by her sister, now a writer haunted by what took place. It's a chilling and absolutely disturbing story of what might be a demonic possession or horrific episodes of schizophrenia.
9.In The Woods by Tana French
A pair of Irish detectives investigate the terrible murder of a young girl in the woods--the same woods where one of the detectives, as a child, became lost with two of his friends. He was the only one who returned. His friends were never found. and he has chilling flashbacks of an antlered man. Saturated with bits of what could potentially be supernatural--or not--it's a story of a damaged man determined to find justice for a murdered child.
10.The Drowning Girl by Caitlin R. Kiernan
A contemporary dark fairy tale/ghost story about a young woman named India, who suffers from schizophrenia, and whose relationship with a mysterious hitchhiker--who might be either a werewolf or a mermaid--leads to tragedy for one, and healing for the other
