Top Ten Tuesday

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. A new topic is posted each week, and bloggers post their top ten in the category. I love lists, especially about books, so when I heard about Top Ten Tuesday, I just had to participate in it.

Top Ten Books to Get You Into The Halloween Spirit

10. Pay The Piper

By Jane Yolen

Because this book is geared towards slightly younger readers, there's not a lot that's too creepy about it, but the climax of the book is set on Halloween night, and it does get you into the spirit of Halloween without scaring you too terribly. 

9. Classic Ghost Stories

Various Authors

Nothing says Happy Halloween like a good ghost story, and this book is full of them, all fantastic.

8. 13 Curses

By Michelle Harrison

I love, love, love this series. Not only was the second book set around Halloween, it was also the darkest of the trilogy, with the most danger and sinister villains. Thinking of the woman who captured Rowan and the Unseelie Court still makes me shiver a little. 

7. The Raven Boys

By Maggie Stiefvater

This book was just so delightfully supernatural. There were ghosts, ley lines, long-dead kings, mysteries, and murder; there were fortune-tellers and birds and places that could have been real or imagined. I know I gush about Maggie Stiefvater a lot on this blog, but trust me, even if I wasn't obsessed with all of her books, I would still recommend this as a great Halloween read.

6. The Crowfield Curse

By Pat Walsh

Ah - a mysterious curse hanging over a secluded Abbey, strange visitors, a dead angel, a mysterious fey - definitely a book that would be enhanced by reading it around Halloween. It's full of places where the devil lurks and evil creatures hide, and - it was a pretty haunting tale when I first read it, and I imagine it would be even more so if it was read in October.

5. The Hound of the Baskervilles

By Arthur Conan Doyle

Check out my review for more about how perfect that atmosphere of this book was. It was just so spooky! And really, what's more Halloween - ish than Sherlock Holmes and a giant demonic hound?

4. The Crowfield Demon

By Pat Walsh

Possibly more terrifying than The Crowfield Curse. The demon that wreaks havoc on Crowfield Abbey in this book is absolutely, 100 percent, the stuff that comes out of nightmares and the most drastic of halloween decorations and costumes. I ended up reading far more chapters than I intended to every time I picked it up, because I had to know what happened and who made it out alive. 

3. Posessed

By Kate Cann

I'll just say this: While I loved this book, reading it after dark was the biggest mistake of my life. Dark, creepy, disturbing, startling - it was all of these things in abundance, without being too gory to handle. Definitely one to read in the middle of the day with all the lights on and a lot of other people in the house. 

2. Ballad

By Maggie Stiefvater

The king, the gathering of dangerous faeries, Nuala, everything James experiences in this book - it perfectly captures the mythical and magical side of Halloween. And, yes, it's Maggie Stiefvater, but that's not why it's on the list, I promise! It's because it's good. Which is because it's Maggie Stiefvater. Oh, never mind. Just go read it on Halloween night and prepare to be blown away. 

1. Consumed

By Kate Cann

The perfect Halloween story. The mythic and supernatural elements, the creepiness, the mysterious happenings, things that go bump in the night...actually, I think reading this on Halloween might just be too awesome for anyone to handle.

~blackandwhitedreamer