Library showcase: Halloween Tales!
Source: Pixabay
Possibly the two most famous scary stories of all time, Frankenstein
by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and Dracula
by Bram Stoker, have inspired dozens of movies, stories, and plays over the
years. Another famous thriller is The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux, which was adapted into the
celebrated Broadway show of the same name. If you’re already familiar with
these, try some other spooky classics, such as
Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes or Stephen King’s Just after Sunset.
Vampires have enjoyed a lot of popularity in recent fiction, mostly due to Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight
series, but there's also Dead until Dark by Charlaine Harris, the novel that inspired the HBO show,
True Blood, and Pandora: New Tales of the Vampires by Anne
Rice, author of Interview with the
Vampire. For more books sure to provide a little Halloween spirit,
check out Coraline
or The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, Monster
by Frank Peretti, or The Monstrumologist by Rich Yancey.
We also have a great collection of nonfiction books on
Halloween-worthy topics. Try Classics of the Horror Film by William K. Everson for a well-researched and
enjoyable history of the horror film genre, or In Search of Dracula by Raymond T. McNally and Radu Florescu to follow
the myth of vampires back through European history and folklore. Hoping to
witness a paranormal event this Halloween? Get ready by reading about ghostly
phenomena in The Spirit Book by Raymond Buckland or Real-life X-Files: Investigating the Paranormal by Joe Nickell.
Anyone looking for an extra dose of terror this Halloween might
enjoy World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks, or the terrifying
trilogy Ring,
Spiral,
and Loop
by Koji Suzuki. Whether you see Halloween as a time to relish something truly frightful
or simply enjoy the autumn colors and a hot pumpkin spice latte, you can always
find something to read at the library.