Living in Australia, I don’t really celebrate Halloween. It’s just not a thing in our neck of the woods. That being said, it doesn’t stop the retail stores wistfully stocking their shelves with spooky products for those few of us who go all out. Personally, I carve a pumpkin and that’s it. I do like carving pumpkins.

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly event hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl and this week’s prompt is:

Halloween Freebie

Nonetheless! In the spirit of the spooky season (and given that I carved my pumpkin only yesterday and thus have some spooky vibes jangling about me) I’ve put together what I think would be a great Halloween TBR based on the books already in my TBR (which is several hundred books strong . . . so plenty to choose from). I’m not much a horror reader myself so these just have slightly darker themes.

---

1. Pan’s Labyrinth
by Guillermo del Toro and Cornelia Funke

Now, depending on who you are, you may wholly agree or disagree with my choice here. Many a person has told me this is not a particularly scary tale, but jeepers did the movie spook me. Maybe it was just the costume/graphics (idek?) for the monster things in the film that were out-dated and therefore off-putting. But this will always hold a special place in my heart for being creepy. With these images in mind, I’m sure I will find my reading experience of this to be tainted spooky, too.

---

2. The Wood
by Chelsea Bobulski

The cover for this straight up gets spooky points. From the blurb of this book, it certainly seems like we might encounter scary creatures (or at least unnatural ones) in the woods that the MC of this story has to take guardianship over. Naturally, any book that starts with you parents dying mysteriously would be a good fit for Halloween anyway, right?

---

3. Dreamfall
by Amy Plum

You can’t go too far wrong with a dystopian, and an Amy Plum dystopian at that. With this book centering around the concept of a cure for insomnia going very, very wrong, we’re on the right foot for an unsettling read as we light our jack-o-lanterns. Honestly, I would recommend reading the blurb of this if you have not already, it’s highly disconcerting.

---

4. The Extinction Trials
by S.M. Wilson

This book would be perfect for Halloween. The blurb for this is so brief but it sounds like a dystopian where fighting for survival is the only way to make it in this world. There’s talk of a competition and world full of monsters. BIG TICK.

---

5. Slayer
by Kiersten White

I mean, you can’t go too far wrong with a Kiersten White book. I plan to pick this up one day after I finish the And I Darken trilogy but given that this is about girls gifted with supernatural powers to fight the forces of evil, I’m sure it’d be a splendid fit for a Halloween read.

---

6. This Splintered Silence
by Kayla Olson

I was so extremely excited about this when it first came out but I just haven’t gotten around to reading it yet (damn you ARCs, taking up all my free reading time). But this is set on a space ship where the first generation crew were wiped out by a deadly illness. The second generation are supposed to be immune BUT suddenly second gen people start showing symptoms and the MC begins to wonder if someone has intentionally started this disease. MADNESS. Perfect for a spacey spook.

---

7. The Moving Finger
by Agatha Christie

Is it even Halloween without Agatha Christie? (she says having never actually read a Christie book at Halloween). Whilst I have several of Christie’s books on my TBR, The Moving Finger strikes me as the spookiest simply because the title is intriguing and weirdly horrifying and also the cover is wonderfully dark. I don’t need to know what it’s about: one just trusts that Christie will take us on a wild and brilliant ride.

---

8. Three Dark Crowns
by Agatha Christie

Perhaps this isn’t exactly scary – though that being said I also (obviously) haven’t read this to know. But wandering down the path of darker fantasies, I think this is a nice fit. With three sisters pitted against each other in a fight to the death in order to win the crown it seems like a pretty dark time to me.

---

9. Demon Road
by Derek Landy

How could you NOT consider this is a great pick for Halloween!? There’s a demon on the front cover. That is all we need. But the story itself is about our MC on the run from demons so wooooo – the excitement and spookiness just got real!

---

10. Ninth House
by Leigh Bardugo

Dabbling into a more recent release, Leigh Bardugo’s latest book – Ninth House – would be a great pick! With dark magic hinted at, a girl dead on the grounds of Yale and rumours of raising people back from the dead, if this isn’t made for Halloween, then I don’t know what is.

---

That’s a wrap!

Now I only wish that I did celebrate Halloween more in a literary way because I’m so excited about all these books. But then again, I would never stick to a TBR for a whole month!

What books are you reading for Halloween?

---

~~ Kirstie ~~

Follow @ozbooksnail