Mutant rats, possessed children, killer automobiles and psycho slashers are just a few of the treats we have selected for your reading pleasure this Halloween. This short list is a nice appetizer to the sinister season. We have many more options from which to choose.
Scary stories are not just Halloween fun, but they can also help you cope with stress according to researchers. Reading horror stories can help us learn about potential threats and experience harrowing situations without having to face the problem s ourselves.
So come visit us for some frightening, yet relaxing and refreshing stories. You can check out these titles and several other from our Halloween displays. Our collection includes books, e-books, audiobooks and video - giving you a variety of options to feel the fear.
Books
Night Shift by Stephen King
ISBN: 9780307947291
Publication Date: 2012-08-07
A collection of bone-chilling, nail-biting tales from the undisputed master of horror that showcases the darkest depths of his brilliant imagination and will "chill the cockles of many a heart" (Chicago Tribune).. INCLUDES THE STORY"THE BOOGEYMAN"- NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE FROM 20th CENTURY STUDIOS Originally published in 1978, Night Shift is the inspiration for over a dozen acclaimed horror movies and television series, including Children of the Corn, Chapelwaite, and Lawnmower Man. Night Shift is Stephen King's first collection of short stories--a perfect showcase of just how far King's dark imagination can go. Here we see mutated rats gone bad ("Graveyard Shift"); a cataclysmic virus that threatens humanity ("Night Surf," the basis for The Stand); a possessed, evil lawnmower ("The Lawnmower Man"); unsettling children from the heartland ("Children of the Corn"); a smoker who will try anything to stop ("Quitters, Inc."); a reclusive alcoholic who begins a gruesome transformation ("Gray Matter"); and many more. This is Stephen King at his horrifying best.
Poe's Children by Peter Straub
ISBN: 9780385522830
Publication Date: 2008-10-14
From the incomparable master of horror and suspense comes an electrifying collection of contemporary literary horror, with stories from twenty-five writers representing today’s most talented voices in the genre. Horror writing is usually associated with formulaic gore, but New Wave horror writers have more in common with the wildly inventive, evocative spookiness of Edgar Allan Poe than with the sometimes-predictable hallmarks of their peers. Showcasing this cutting-edge talent,Poe’s Children now brings the best of the genre’s stories to a wider audience. Featuring tales from such writers as Neil Gaiman and Jonathan Carroll,Poe’s Children is Peter Straub’s tribute to the imaginative power of storytelling. Each previously published story has been selected by Straub to represent what he thinks is the most interesting development in our literature during the last two decades. Selections range from the early Stephen King psychological thriller “The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet,” in which an editor confronts an author’s belief that his typewriter is inhabited by supernatural creatures, to “The Man on the Ceiling,” Melanie and Steve Rasnic Tem’s award-winning surreal tale of night terrors, woven with daylight fears that haunt a family. Other selections include National Book Award finalist Dan Chaon’s “The Bees”; Peter Straub’s “Little Red’s Tango,” the legend of a music aficionado whose past is as mysterious as the ghostly visitors to his Manhattan apartment; Elizabeth Hand’s visionary and shocking “Cleopatra Brimstone”; Thomas Ligotti’s brilliant, mind-stretching “Notes on the Writing of Horror: A Story”; and “Body,” Brian Evenson’s disturbing twist on correctional facilities. Crossing boundaries and packed with imaginative chills,Poe’s Children bears all the telltale signs of fearless, addictive fiction.
Final Girls by Mira Grant; Julie Dillon (Illustrator)
ISBN: 9781596068230
Publication Date: 2017-04-30
hat if you could fix the worst parts of yourself by confronting your worst fears?Dr. Jennifer Webb has invented proprietary virtual reality technology that purports to heal psychological wounds by running clients through scenarios straight out of horror movies and nightmares. In a carefully controlled environment, with a medical cocktail running through their veins, sisters might develop a bond they've been missing their whole lives while running from the bogeyman through a simulated forest. But]]can real change come so easily?Esther Hoffman doubts it. Esther has spent her entire journalism career debunking pseudoscience, after phony regression therapy ruined her father's life. She's determined to unearth the truth about Dr. Webb's budding company. Dr. Webb's willing to let her, of course, for reasons of her own. What better advertisement could she get than that of a convinced skeptic? But Esther's not the only one curious about how this technology works. Enter real-world threats just as frightening as those created in the lab. Dr. Webb and Esther are at odds, but they may also be each other's only hope of survival.With her new novella Final Girls, bestselling, award-winning author Mira Grant has conjured a heart stopping, gut-wrenching story filled with as many twists as it is versions of reality. Grant offers a chilling exploration of how surviving horrors might define us all.
My Heart Is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones
ISBN: 9781982137632
Publication Date: 2021-08-31
Winner of the Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel Named a Best Book of 2021 by NPR In her quickly gentrifying rural lake town Jade sees recent events only her encyclopedic knowledge of horror films could have prepared her for in this latest novel from the Jordan Peele of horror literature, New York Times bestselling author Stephen Graham Jones. "Some girls just don't know how to die..." Shirley Jackson meets Friday the 13th in My Heart Is a Chainsaw, written by the author of The Only Good Indians Stephen Graham Jones, called "a literary master" by National Book Award winner Tananarive Due and "one of our most talented living writers" by Tommy Orange. Alma Katsu calls My Heart Is a Chainsaw "a homage to slasher films that also manages to defy and transcend genre." On the surface is a story of murder in small-town America. But beneath is its beating heart: a biting critique of American colonialism, Indigenous displacement, and gentrification, and a heartbreaking portrait of a broken young girl who uses horror movies to cope with the horror of her own life. Jade Daniels is an angry, half-Indian outcast with an abusive father, an absent mother, and an entire town that wants nothing to do with her. She lives in her own world, a world in which protection comes from an unusual source: horror movies...especially the ones where a masked killer seeks revenge on a world that wronged them. And Jade narrates the quirky history of Proofrock as if it is one of those movies. But when blood actually starts to spill into the waters of Indian Lake, she pulls us into her dizzying, encyclopedic mind of blood and masked murderers, and predicts exactly how the plot will unfold. Yet, even as Jade drags us into her dark fever dream, a surprising and intimate portrait emerges...a portrait of the scared and traumatized little girl beneath the Jason Voorhees mask: angry, yes, but also a girl who easily cries, fiercely loves, and desperately wants a home. A girl whose feelings are too big for her body. My Heart Is a Chainsaw is her story, her homage to horror and revenge and triumph.
Scowler by Daniel Kraus
ISBN: 9780385743099
Publication Date: 2013-03-12
Equal parts haunting and horrifying, this literary horror novel gives readers insight into the mind of a controlling homicidal man and the son who must stop him. "Marvin Burke is one of the great monsters of literature, a figure of immense, credible terror and savagery."--Cory Doctorow, author of Little Children and coeditor of Boing Boing Imagine your father is a monster. Would that mean there are monsters inside you, too? Nineteen-year-old Ry Burke, his mother, and little sister eke out a living on their dying family farm. Ry wishes for anything to distract him from the grim memories of his father's physical and emotional abuse. Then a meteorite falls from the sky, bringing with it not only a fragment from another world but also the arrival of a ruthless man intent on destroying the entire family. Soon Ry is forced to defend himself by resurrecting a trio of imaginary childhood protectors: kindly Mr. Furrington, wise Jesus, and the bloodthirsty Scowler.
The Book of Accidents by Chuck Wendig
ISBN: 9780399182136
Publication Date: 2021-07-20
NATIONAL BESTSELLER * A family returns to their hometown--and to the dark past that haunts them still--in this masterpiece of literary horror by the New York Times bestselling author of Wanderers LOCUS AWARD FINALIST * "The dread, the scope, the pacing, the turns--I haven't felt all this so intensely since The Shining."--Stephen Graham Jones, New York Times bestselling author of The Only Good Indians ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Public Library, Library Journal Long ago, Nathan lived in a house in the country with his abusive father--and has never told his family what happened there. Long ago, Maddie was a little girl making dolls in her bedroom when she saw something she shouldn't have--and is trying to remember that lost trauma by making haunting sculptures. Long ago, something sinister, something hungry, walked in the tunnels and the mountains and the coal mines of their hometown in rural Pennsylvania. Now, Nate and Maddie Graves are married, and they have moved back to their hometown with their son, Oliver. And now what happened long ago is happening again . . . and it is happening to Oliver. He meets a strange boy who becomes his best friend, a boy with secrets of his own and a taste for dark magic. This dark magic puts them at the heart of a battle of good versus evil and a fight for the soul of the family--and perhaps for all of the world. But the Graves family has a secret weapon in this battle: their love for one another.
Symbiont by Mira Grant
ISBN: 9780316218993
Publication Date: 2014-11-25
From New York Times bestselling author Mira Grant comes the second book in the terrifying Parasitology series. The SymboGen-designed tapeworms were created to relieve humanity of disease and sickness. But the implants in the majority of the world's population began attacking their hosts, turning them into a ravenous horde. Now those who do not appear to be afflicted are being gathered for quarantine as panic spreads, but Sal and her companions must discover how the tapeworms are taking over their hosts, what their eventual goal is, and how they can be stopped. "A riveting near-future medical thriller that reads like the genetically-engineered love child of Robin Cook and Michael Crichton." --John Joseph Adams on Parasite More from Mira Grant: Parasitology Parasite Symbiont Chimera Newsflesh Feed Deadline Blackout Feedback Rise