As we move into the last week of October, there’s clearly something spooky going on. Halloween will be celebrated next Saturday night, and there is no shortage of dark literature to help us get into the spirit(s) of the occasion.
Predictably, volunteers with the Tucson Festival of Books were happy to share some of their Halloween-season favorites:
“Catch the Devil” by Pamela Colloff is a true-crime story about an ex-cop turned con man who proved that monsters aren’t always fictional. Even after he was caught, Paul Skalnik’s false testimony about a fellow prisoner sent the man to death row. The book earned Colloff this year’s Kirkus Prize for nonfiction. — Holly Rosen
“Off the Reservation” is a sequel to Stephen Graham Jones’s haunting bestseller, “The Only Good Indians.” Released Oct. 13, it follows a ragtag group of activists trying to repatriate the body of a Blackfeet boy who died at the infamous Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania. — Emma Baker
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"This Haunted Land" by Betsy Gaines Quammen explores some of America's most enduring legends and uncovers how ghost stories illuminated some of the most unsettling parts of history. The subtitle says it all: “Reckoning with Ghosts and the Stories that Shaped America.” — Abby Mogollon
“The Summoning of Tess Pham” by Trang Thanh Tran is a young adult chiller featuring an 18-year-old woman who travels from Washington to Vietnam to scatter the ashes of her recently deceased brother. Once there, she finds a community unraveling under the weight of supernatural forces. As the story unfolds over one harrowing night, Tess is forced to confront difficult questions about her family's past. — Kathy Short
“Ghost Business” is one of two spooky romance novels by Tucsonan Jen DeLuca. Set in Florida’s haunted Boneyard Key, it features a young tour guide fighting to stay in business. She finds allies in the strangest of places. DeLuca’s other ghost story is “Haunted Ever After.” — Jessica West
“Never Whistle at Night,” edited by Shane Hawk and Theodore C. Van Alst Jr., is an anthology of dark Indigenous fiction. Many indigenous peoples believe that whistling at night can cause evil spirits to appear, and this book’s title is just the beginning. “Back for Blood,” a sequel, was released in August. — Anne Gardner
“Rooms for the Dead and the Not Yet” by Rhoni Blankenhorn is a collection of poems that explore the power of imagination and how it can help us live, love and mourn. Blankenhorn’s speaker communes with dead beloveds while buttering toast, petting dogs, kissing lovers, making art, and holding hands with friends. — Cameron Quan
“Ghost Eye” by Amitav Ghosh is not a ghost tale in the usual sense, but an uplifting story of the supernatural, reincarnation, and how we all have connections to the past and the future. The final pages are unexpected and special. — Pamela Clarridge
“The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches” by Sangu Mandanna features Mika Moon, an orphan who is now one of the few witches left in England. She knows she must lay low and be careful around other witches, lest their powers intertwine and attract attention. But she can’t help launching an online blog, pretending to be a witch. — Isabella Hightower
"Mi Ofrenda" by Mariana Galvez is a bilingual board book that helps young children understand and celebrate Día de Los Muertos. — Soleil Munoz
“The Buffalo Hunter Hunter” by Stephen Graham Jones is a chilling historical novel featuring an Indigenous vampire wreaking revenge after 217 Blackfeet were found dead in the snow in Montana. "What I am is the Indian who can't die," he warns. "I'm the worst dream America ever had." — Bruce Dinges
“Looking for Love in All the Haunted Places” by Claire Kann is a romance novel about a woman whose affinity for the supernatural has done nothing but get her in trouble. Then she is employed to spend time in a haunted house … and deal with the spirits within. — Jessica Pryde
“The Changeling” by Victor LaValle is the latest iteration of a premise first explored onstage in London in 1622. This, too, is a dark fairytale, set in New York and filled with magic, mystery and madness. LaValle’s version was adapted into a series that aired on Apple TV in 2023. — Christine Bollow
“The Midnight Library” by Matt Haig takes a woman named Nora Seed to a magical library filled with books that detail how her life would have evolved had she made different choices along the way. Would any of them have been better than the one she lived? — Lori Roman
