15 Horror Books for Spooky Halloween Nights

Dark Harvest by Norman Partridge

Halloween, 1963. They call him the October Boy, or Ol’ Hacksaw Face, or Sawtooth Jack. Everybody in this small Midwestern town knows who he is. How he rises from the cornfields every Halloween, a butcher knife in his hand, and makes his way toward town. Both the hunter and the hunted, the October Boy is the prize in an annual rite of life and death.

Pete McCormick knows that killing the October Boy is his one chance to escape a dead-end future in this one-horse town. But before the night is over, Pete will look into the saw-toothed face of horror – and discover the terrifying true secret of the October Boy…

The Halloween Store and Other Tales of All Hallows’ Eve by Ronald Kelly

When you first enter The Halloween Store, things seem normal. Fun and frightful decorations, ghastly costumes and masks of the season, and bags of candy galore. Then, as you travel farther into its shadowy depths, things begin to change. The air smells of damp autumn leaves and candle-scorched pumpkin. Strange and unsettling things of Halloweens past and present lurk amid the cobwebs and dust…

Seven horrific tales and two nostalgic essays… hand-picked for your Trick-or-Treat bag. With the arrival of Halloween, there is no telling what terrifying treats and petrifying prizes may await you!

Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon

After watching his asthmatic daughter suffer in the foul city air, Theodore Constantine decides to get back to the land. They find no township more charming than the farming village of Cornwall Coombe. Here they begin a new life: simple, pure, close to nature–and ultimately more terrifying than Manhattan’s darkest alley.

They are invited to join the ancient festival of Harvest Home, a ceremony whose quaintness disguises dark intentions. In this bucolic hamlet, where bootleggers work by moonlight and all of the villagers seem to share the same last name, the past is more present than outsiders can fathom–and something far more sinister than the annual harvest is about to rise out of the earth.

Halloween Season by Lucy A. Snyder

Halloween is the most wonderful part of the year for many of us. With it comes a whole lot of fun: scary movies and stories, haunted houses, costume parties, and of course trick-or-treat. But Halloween is also a deeply spiritual time for some; it’s an opportunity to remember and honor loved ones who have passed on.

One of the best things about Halloween is you don’t have to be yourself. So go ahead and try on a new mask or two… you may discover hidden talents as a witch, a pirate, a zombie fighter, or even an elf. This is the perfect collection to celebrate the season of the dead or to summon those heady autumn vibes whenever you like.

One Night In Salem edited by Amber Newberry

Costumed children and adults visit haunted attractions and browse t-shirt shops and street vendors’ booths. A veiled figure appears, and you catch her out of the corner of your eye, but she quickly disappears into the crowd… or perhaps into thin air? The night is filled with laughter and screams as the living walk shoulder to shoulder with the dead.

Halloween in Salem has expanded into a month-long celebration of all things creepy, but in four hundred years of history, October 31st has held many mysterious customs and dark events, lost and forgotten in the passing of decades. Travel through time, as ghosts mingle with the living, glimpsing the Witch City on the most important night of the year, October 31st.

Doorbells at Dusk edited by Evans Light

Halloween has always gone hand-in-hand with horror. The holiday gives many children their first taste of terror, the discovery and overcoming of fears. For those who find they love a good scare, that first taste can grow into a voracious appetite.

If so, you’ve come to the right place. Doorbells at Dusk is a treasury of brand-new Halloween tales from both modern masters and rising stars of dark fiction, horror, and suspense. These are the thrills you crave, packed into a collection of stories that’s pure Halloween. Featuring stories by Sean Eads, Chad Lutzke, Josh Malerman, Lisa Lepovetsky, and more.

The Witch of Halloween House by Jeff DeGordick

There’s an old house up on a hill in the woods that the kids call “Halloween House”. They accused the mysterious old woman who lived there of being a witch. Panicked townspeople burned her house down with her in it one Halloween. She only said one thing before she died: “A curse on all of you!”

Now, three years later, the spooky holiday approaches again. But strange things begin happening around the small town. Children are going missing one by one. Carmen has to protect her brother so that he doesn’t become the next victim. The witch is already dead… isn’t she?

Devil’s Night by Curtis M. Lawson

Bear witness to the ghosts and dark gods of Motor City, revealed by the light of a fiery cityscape. It’s the night before Halloween and Detroit is burning in a celebration of arson and vandalism.

Devil’s Night is a unique collection of interconnected urban horror stories taking you back to October 30th, 1987. Inside these pages, you will find cursed vinyl records, inner-city druids, diabolical priests, and slim slivers of hope. This is smart psychological horror, ablaze with visceral imagery, with equal measures of heart and heartache.

Halloween Fiend by C.V. Hunt

Strang isn’t the small, quaint town it appears to be. It’s haunted every night by a creature the townsfolk refer to as Halloween. Once the sun sets each day, Halloween emerges to collect its treats: a small, live offering from each household.

The residents comply because no one wants to be the target of Halloween’s tricks. But the nightmare of residing in Strang is nothing compared to the yearly ritual Halloween demands of the citizens on All Hallows’ Eve.

Dead Leaves: 9 Tales from the Witching Season by Kealan Patrick Burke

Two brothers find themselves drawn to the only house in the neighborhood not decorated for Halloween. A man returns to his hometown to bury his overbearing mother and finds more than memories awaiting him in the shadows of his childhood home. The son of a woman accused of being a witch accepts the villagers’ peace offering at her funeral, but all is not quite as it seems…

Featuring seven reprints, a brand new story “The Toll”, an introduction, and rounded out by the author’s recommended reading and viewing lists, Dead Leaves makes for the perfect autumnal read.

The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury

A fast-moving, eerie tale set on Halloween night…

Eight costumed boys running to meet their friend Pipkin at the haunted house outside town encounter instead the huge and cadaverous Mr. Moundshroud. As Pipkin scrambles to join them, he is swept away by a dark Something, and Moundshroud leads the boys on the tail of a kite through time and space to search the past for their friend and the meaning of Halloween.

Halloween Nights: Tales of Autumn Fright edited by James A. Moore

It’s the Season of the Witch!

Goblins roam, ghosts drift through graveyards, children dressed as monsters beg treats and the Reaper collects his dark harvest. Listen carefully and you can hear the screams, or laughter, through the rush of leaves scattered by the wind.

Halloween Nights gather some of the brightest stars in the horror constellation in this all-new collection of tales centered around autumnal hauntings guaranteed to add a shiver to the air. Featuring original tales from V. Castro, Richard Chizmar, Christopher Golden, Mary SanGiovanni, and more.

October Nights by Kevin Lucia

Halloween is a night when anything seems possible. This is true everywhere, but nowhere more so than in the small town of Clifton Heights. October nights here are long and strange, filled with both dread and transformation, and in these four shared-world tales of small-town Halloween horror, you’ll encounter things both wondrous and terrifying, in equal measure.

Four connected Halloween tales, evoking echoes of Ray Bradbury and Charles L. Grant, taking place in a town where every day is All Hallow’s Eve. Spend the Halloween season in Clifton Heights… if you dare.

The Night Country by Stewart O’Nan

At Midnight on Halloween in a cloistered New England suburb, a car carrying five teenagers leaves a winding road and slams into a tree, killing three of them. A year later, summoned by the memories of those closest to them, the three that died come back on a last chilling mission among the living.

“The Night Country” creeps through the leaf-strewn streets and quiet cul-de-sacs of one bedroom community, reaching into the desperately connected yet isolated lives of three people changed forever by the accident.

This Is Halloween by James A. Moore

Ten autumnal tales of the darker things that lurk just around the corner of Indian Summer. A man learns of a town’s obsession with scarecrows and tries to find the answers as to why they are so important. Children move through familiar streets and find that Halloween makes everything different.

Tis’ the season when ghosts are real, witches soar through the night, and things in the Beldam Woods are not always what they seem. Sometimes it’s the monsters that wear the masks.