This week's theme is Top Ten Books to Get You in the Halloween Spirit. I haven't done a TTT in a while, and I don't read a lot of scary/creepy books as a rule, but then I read this short piece in The Guardian last night, about one of my favourite short stories, The Landlady, by Roald Dahl. This particular story has made The Guardian's list of 'Scary Stories for Halloween', so using that as my jumping off point, here are a few more I think would be worthy of a Halloween re-read!
1. Kiss Kiss, Roald Dahl
The collection that The Landlady appears in. Not all the stories are as creepy as this one, but they're all very black, rather unsettling and a little bit macabre! The real horror isn't monsters, it's other people.
2. The Stepford Wives, Ira Levin
A bright young woman moves to the suburbs with her family. Unfortunately, this suburb has more secrets than most. Incredibly creepy - I read this all in one go as I couldn't put it down!
3. Rosemary's Baby, Ira Levin
Another Levin book, this time about a young couple who are befriended by their neighbours, only for the neighbours to concoct a fiendish plot with the husband to hijack Rosemary's pregnancy.
4. The Little Stranger, Sarah Waters
I definitely tend towards creepy, slow-burning horror, rather than jump-out-of-your-seat-scary, it seems. A village doctor gets sucked into the dramas of a woman and her two daughters who live in a large - and, it seems - haunted house. a psychological ghost story that leaves you wondering even when it's finished!
5. The Turn of the Screw, Henry James
Classic ghost story, in which a governess begins to see ghosts... maybe.
6. Twins, Caroline B. Cooney
And now for some classic horror from my teen years! This is the book I would hide in the wardrobe because it creeped me out so much (especially the cover). I'm sure by adult-reading standards, it's not that scary, but at the time I was terrified by the whole thing.
7. Flowers in the Attic, Virginia Andrews
Not technically a horror story, although there are plenty of horrific things going on here. Mostly remembered for being dubious and incestuous, but for all that I still remember it being genuinely unsettling (and not just because of That Scene).
8. The Silent Scream, Diane Hoh
Another Point Horror, like Twins, and another one that I remember being on my shelf. I remember being marginally scared of this at the time - girl moves into dorm room where another girl once hanged herself, and starts to hear her screaming through the walls. I remember that this book had some classic suspect-the-janitor action going on...
Have you read any of these? Thanks for stopping by!
