Top Ten Tuesday: Best Books For Halloween

 

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Welcome to Top Ten Tuesday! Today, I’m recommending ten books for Halloween. I chose a wide variety of books, from adorable board books to creepy horror novels. These books would make perfect additions to your children’s Halloween treat bucket, or you could curl up with them while ignoring the ringing doorbell and eating all the chocolate. Let’s get into it!

 

 

 

👻 Best Books For Halloween 🍬

 

 

 

 

Board Books For Babies And Toddlers

 

 

 

 

Never Touch A Monster by Rosie Greening

This monster-themed, touch-and-feel book is perfect for young children! Children will love reading the funny rhyme that tells them the dangers of touching a monster and then ignoring the advice!

 

Why it’s perfect for Halloween: Obviously, it’s about monsters. Cute, colorful monsters. The book has clever rhymes and silly illustrations with rubbery textures for kids to pet. My baby Brooklyn is currently 20 months old and has adored this book for most of her life. She loves “touchable” books and shows no signs of growing out of them anytime soon.

 

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Halloween Flip-A-Flap by Rosa Von Feder

 

What's inside this cheerful trick-or-treat pumpkin? Parties! Costumes! Parades! And lots of fun things to look for and talk about. Just right for little ones who are excited for trick-or-treating.

 

Why it’s perfect for Halloween: Look at it! You can’t get more “Halloween” than this book. It’s shaped like a trick-or-treat candy bucket, which makes it perfect for little hands to drag around the house. You don’t often come across a book with a handle. The illustrations are joyfully chaotic (with many intriguing flaps to flip, of course). The text asks kids to find and count objects in the pictures, so it’s educational while being fun.

 

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Fiction For Kids And Tweens

 

 

 

 

Nevermoor: The Trials Of Morrigan Crow by Jessica Townsend

 

Morrigan Crow is cursed. Having been born on Eventide, the unluckiest day for any child to be born, she's blamed for all local misfortunes, from hailstorms to heart attacks—and, worst of all, the curse means that Morrigan is doomed to die at midnight on her eleventh birthday.

But as Morrigan awaits her fate, a strange and remarkable man named Jupiter North appears. Chased by black-smoke hounds and shadowy hunters on horseback, he whisks her away into the safety of a secret, magical city called Nevermoor.

It's then that Morrigan discovers Jupiter has chosen her to contend for a place in the city's most prestigious organization: the Wundrous Society. In order to join, she must compete in four difficult and dangerous trials against hundreds of other children, each boasting an extraordinary talent that sets them apart—an extraordinary talent that Morrigan insists she does not have. To stay in the safety of Nevermoor for good, Morrigan will need to find a way to pass the tests—or she'll have to leave the city to confront her deadly fate.

 

Why it’s perfect for Halloween: Magic curses! And monsters! And giant talking cats! I’m completely obsessed with this middlegrade series. It reminds me of the excitement and happiness I felt while reading Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland or Harry Potter as a kid. It’s laugh-out-loud funny, ridiculous, action-packed, and great for kids who love (mostly) lighthearted fantasy. This is the epitome of magical escapist literature.

 

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City Of Ghosts by Victoria Schwab

 

Cassidy Blake's parents are The Inspectres, a (somewhat inept) ghost-hunting team. But Cass herself can REALLY see ghosts. In fact, her best friend, Jacob, just happens to be one.

When The Inspectres head to ultra-haunted Edinburgh, Scotland, for their new TV show, Cass—and Jacob—come along. In Scotland, Cass is surrounded by ghosts, not all of them friendly. Then she meets Lara, a girl who can also see the dead. But Lara tells Cassidy that as an In-betweener, their job is to send ghosts permanently beyond the Veil. Cass isn't sure about her new mission, but she does know the sinister Red Raven haunting the city doesn't belong in her world. Cassidy's powers will draw her into an epic fight that stretches through the worlds of the living and the dead.

 

Why it’s perfect for Halloween: It’s a novel about ghosts and the humans who hunt for them. The ghost world is intriguingly sinister. I flew through this book because I was so eager to unravel the mysteries of haunted Edinburgh. I’d call this novel “baby horror.” There are scary moments, but most kids could probably handle it. If you know a kid who wants edgier fiction, give them this book. It’s spooky without gore or nightmare-inducing violence.

 

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Fiction For Teens

 

 

 

 

Spectacle by Jodie Lynn Zdrok

 

Paris, 1887.

Sixteen-year-old Nathalie Baudin writes the daily morgue column for Le Petit Journal. Her job is to summarize each day's new arrivals, a task she finds both fascinating and routine. That is, until the day she has a vision of the newest body, a young woman, being murdered—from the perspective of the murderer himself.

When the body of another woman is retrieved from the Seine days later, Paris begins to buzz with rumors that this victim may not be the last. Nathalie's search for answers sends her down a long, twisty road involving her mentally ill aunt, a brilliant but deluded scientist, and eventually into the Parisian Catacombs. As the killer continues to haunt the streets of Paris, it becomes clear that Nathalie's strange new ability may make her the only one who can discover the killer's identity—and she'll have to do it before she becomes a target herself.

 

Why it’s perfect for Halloween: Who wouldn’t want to read a murder mystery on Halloween? It’s best time of year to read about corpses and killers. Spectacle is set in vivid 1800s Paris. The main character is a teenage reporter with psychic abilities and an interest in everything morbid. If you need an entertaining way to spend a cold Halloween night, pick up this book. It’ll keep you turning pages until the sun rises.

 

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The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater

 

It happens at the start of every November: the Scorpio Races. Riders attempt to keep hold of their water horses long enough to make it to the finish line. Some riders live. Others die.

At age nineteen, Sean Kendrick is the returning champion. He is a young man of few words, and if he has any fears, he keeps them buried deep, where no one else can see them.

Puck Connolly is different. She never meant to ride in the Scorpio Races. But fate hasn’t given her much of a chance. So she enters the competition—the first girl ever to do so. She is in no way prepared for what is going to happen.

 

Why it’s perfect for Halloween: This is the ultimate autumn book. It’s set right after Halloween and is full of celebrations, delicious food, and terrifying human-eating horses that crawl out of the ocean every October. So . . . it’s unique. It’s also creepy and unpredictable. I love the world the author creates. I feel like I understand this island’s culture and landscape. Aside from the monster horses, it could be a real place. It’s very atmospheric.

 

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Fiction For Adults

 

 

 

 

Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix

 

Something strange is happening at the Orsk furniture superstore in Cleveland, Ohio. Every morning, employees arrive to find broken Kjerring bookshelves, shattered Glans water goblets, and smashed Liripip wardrobes. Sales are down, security cameras reveal nothing, and store managers are panicking.

To unravel the mystery, three employees volunteer to work a nine-hour dusk-till-dawn shift. In the dead of the night, they’ll patrol the empty showroom floor, investigate strange sights and sounds, and encounter horrors that defy the imagination.

 

Why it’s perfect for Halloween: It’s a horror comedy. There’s definitely some spookiness, but you’ll smile through your fear. Horrorstör is unique because it’s packaged to look like an Ikea catalog. It even has illustrations of furniture and various torture devices! Since it’s a horror story, it has gory moments, but it also has all the ridiculousness you’d expect in a tale about a haunted Ikea. It’s fast paced and clever. Give this book to anyone who has ever been hopelessly lost in a Swedish furniture superstore.

 

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The Hunger by Alma Katsu

 

Tamsen Donner must be a witch. That is the only way to explain the series of misfortunes that have plagued the wagon train known as the Donner Party. Depleted rations, bitter quarrels, and the mysterious death of a little boy have driven the pioneers to the brink of madness. They cannot escape the feeling that someone—or something—is stalking them. Whether it was a curse from the beautiful Tamsen, the choice to follow a disastrous experimental route West, or just plain bad luck—the 90 men, women, and children of the Donner Party are at the brink of one of the deadliest and most disastrous western adventures in American history.

While the ill-fated group struggles to survive in the treacherous mountain conditions—searing heat that turns the sand into bubbling stew; snows that freeze the oxen where they stand—evil begins to grow around them, and within them. As members of the party begin to disappear, they must ask themselves "What if there is something waiting in the mountains? Something disturbing and diseased . . . and very hungry?"

 

Why it’s perfect for Halloween: The horror genre can sometimes feel stale. There are tons of clichés that suck the scariness out of monsters. That’s why I’m thrilled whenever I come across a distinctive horror novel like The Hunger. I’ve never read anything like it. It takes the real-life history of the Donner Party and adds a terrifying supernatural element. It’s brave and creative. Perfect for history lovers or horror fans.

 

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Nonfiction

 

 

 

 

I’ll Be Gone In The Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search For The Golden State Killer by Michelle McNamara

For more than ten years, a mysterious and violent predator committed fifty sexual assaults in Northern California before moving south, where he perpetrated ten sadistic murders. Then he disappeared, eluding capture by multiple police forces and some of the best detectives in the area.

Three decades later, Michelle McNamara, a true crime journalist who created the popular website TrueCrimeDiary.com, was determined to find the violent psychopath she called "the Golden State Killer." Michelle pored over police reports, interviewed victims, and embedded herself in the online communities that were as obsessed with the case as she was.

I’ll Be Gone in the Dark —the masterpiece McNamara was writing at the time of her sudden death—offers an atmospheric snapshot of a moment in American history and a chilling account of a criminal mastermind and the wreckage he left behind. It is also a portrait of a woman’s obsession and her unflagging pursuit of the truth.

 

Why it’s perfect for Halloween: If you’re interested in true crime, this is a must-read. The Golden State Killer is a creepy dude who terrorized suburban California neighborhoods, but he didn’t get as much media attention as other serial killers, so his crimes aren’t well-known. This book focuses partially on him and partially on the author, an amateur detective who put her own health at risk to uncover his identity. After you read the book, please watch the documentary series! The author died before finishing the book. The documentary helped satisfy my lingering curiosity about her life. The book and documentary will keep you riveted on Halloween and for days afterward.

 

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Quackery: A Brief History Of The Worst Ways To Cure Everything by Lydia Kang & Nate Pedersen

 

Discover 67 shocking-but-true medical misfires that run the gamut from bizarre to deadly. Like when doctors prescribed morphine for crying infants. When snorting skull moss was a cure for a bloody nose. When consuming mail-order tapeworms was a latter-day fad diet. Or when snake oil salesmen peddled strychnine (used in rat poison) as an aphrodisiac in the '60s. Seamlessly combining macabre humor with hard science and compelling storytelling, Quackery is a visually rich and information-packed exploration of history's most outlandish cures, experiments, and scams.

 

Why it’s perfect for Halloween: If you’re looking for something educational, gross, and funny, this is the book for you. The history of medicine is a gruesome topic, but the authors make it bearable with their lively writing style. This is definitely not a dry academic text. I laughed while reading it. The hardcover edition is surprisingly beautiful with glossy pages and colorful graphics. If you want to skip Halloween, this book would make a nice Christmas gift.

 

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Give me Halloween book recommendations!