The horror, the horror

Quench your bloodthirst and get your teeth into these books for Halloween.

The True Tale of the Monster Billy Dean telt by hisself

by David Almond

Puffin Books

Complex and difficult issues are reflected in both narrative style and content.

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Adamtine

by Hannah Berry

Jonathan Cape

The new graphic novelist from Hannah Berry (trivia: she is Booktrust's writer in residence) takes her love of dark humour, les bandes dessinées and noir and twists them into a boiler room of a novel

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The Oxford Book of Victorian Ghost Stories

by Michael Cox

Oxford University Press

The Victorians excelled at telling ghost stories. In an age of rapid scientific progress the idea of a vindictive past able to reach out and violate the present held a special potential for terror. This anthology charts the development of...

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Visitation

by Jenny Erpenbeck

Portobello

Visitation takes place in a chillingly spooky house. The stories that surround the house and Visitation build a history of horror, taking in the German population during the Jahrhundertwende, the turn-of-the-century shift, and over the following decades of war, National...

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The Graveyard Book

by Neil Gaiman

Bloomsbury

Bod sometimes goes beyond the graveyard into the world of the living – and here his life is under threat from the man Jack, who has sought him since he was a baby.

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Let the Right One In

by John Ajvide Lindqvist

Quercus

John Ajvide Lindqvist's novel is a unique and brilliant fusion of social novel and vampire legend, a deeply moving fable about rejection, friendship and loyalty.

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A Monster Calls

by Patrick Ness

Walker Books Ltd

Connor's mum has cancer and life is changing. There is the nightmare, then there is school, where people avoid him, or persecute him. And then there is the immense, mythic Monster.

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The Little Stranger

by Sarah Waters

Virago

After her award-winning trilogy of Victorian novels, Sarah Waters turned to the 1940s and wrote The Night Watch, a tender and tragic novel set against the backdrop of wartime Britain. Shortlisted for both the Orange and the Man Booker, it...

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Villain

by Shuichi Yoshida

Harvill Secker

Villain, the first novel by Shuichi Yoshida to be translated into English, is the story of a murder: a tale of desperation set in desolate seaside towns, online chat rooms and love hotels.

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