The 10 spooky books perfect for Halloween

All Hallow's Eve has for centuries been synonymous with darkness, terror and not always benevolent magical creatures roaming the realm of the living. Halloween is a Western holiday that comes from the United States of America, but it was originally Samhain, the New Year's Eve of the witches: it is the first festival in the pagan calendar, the time when magic is thought to be at its highest peak. It's a great night for recharging crystals, predicting the future with tarot cards and the like and for reading something spooky. The High Sabbath, after all, deserves some ad hoc reading: whether it's a Stephen King-esque raw horror or Lovercraft-esque creepy, a picture book with pumpkins and ghosts or a romance set in a magical world and with a love interest who has fangs, bat wings or magical powers, Halloween is the perfect time to dive between the pages of a good book: we suggest ten, who knows you might be able to find the one that will get you into the spirit of the most mystical and spooky holiday of the year. 

Weyward - Emilia Hart (2023, Fazi Publisher)

The fates of three women are intertwined over five centuries, from the witch trials in seventeenth-century England to 2019, where Kate finds herself fleeing an abusive man and taking refuge in the Weyward Cottage that a great-aunt, Violet (whom she has only seen once in her life), bequeathed to her when she died. She discovers that witch blood runs in her veins, and that her family has passed down the story of Altha, who was tried in 1619 for causing the death of a man (thought to be using magic).

Them - Roberto Cotroneo (Neri Pozza, 2021)

Margherita takes up service in 2018 with an upper-class family living on the outskirts of Rome, the Ordelaffi: in a seemingly bright and cozy villa, she will have to take care of the twins Lucrezia and Lavinia. But the girl's encounter with them, the presences that haunt the house and seem to be attracted to the girls, will make her realize that there is much more than meets the eye within the walls of the glass house. A novel that keeps you glued to the pages, where the dead and the living come disturbingly and dangerously close. 

Dark and shallow lies - Ginny Myers Sain (Giunti, 2024)

Grey was born and raised in La Cachette, Louisiana, the "capital of the paranormal", but she has been coming home only in the summer for years. However, when she discovers that Elora, her childhood best friend, has disappeared into thin air, she will have to manage to plunge into the darkness of the bayou to figure out what really happened. Between mystical powers and rougarou, La Cachette and Grey's stories are suffocatingly intertwined, coming to reveal secrets and wrongs suffered that could change the fortunes of many of the inhabitants. Even those Grey believes are closest to her. 

Witch Effect (Night Falls, Midnight, The Spell) - Juliette Cross (2024, Newton Compton Publishing)

The paranormal romance series consists of six books (only three have been released in Italy), and each book is about one of the Savoie sisters, a clan of witches living in New Orleans. In Night Falls, Evie will have to help Mateo, a werewolf who has been unable to transform for three months; in Midnight, Isadora will have to investigate the disappearance of some neighborhood girls together with the charming vampire Devraj; in The Spell, Violet decides to open a magical tattoo store together with Nico, a werewolf she met by chance at a party and who cannot control his wolf. With a light style and a hint of spicy, this series is perfect for those who, even on Halloween, don't give up on romance.

Lolly Willowes or the Loving Hunter - Sylvia Townsend Warner (Adelphi, 2019)

In this short novel first published in 1926, Laura Lolly Willowes is a complex and ever-present character, a woman who, having reached almost middle age as a spinster (guest at her brother's house), who has served her family all her life by putting others first, decides to rebel and retreat alone to the country to escape that life so stifling and monotonous. It will be in the countryside that she will have her calling as a witch and meet Satan himself. 

Mexican Gothic - Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Mondadori, 2021)

Noemi receives a strange letter from her cousin, who has just married an Englishman and lives in a manor house in the Mexican countryside, High Place. Once she arrives, she immediately realizes that something is wrong: both in the groom's family, who try hard to persuade her to leave, and in the house, which seems to have a life of its own and haunts her mind with forebodings and horrible dreams. If the Brönte sisters and Lovercraft wrote a book together, it would be Mexican Gothic. 

Blackwater (the saga) - Michael McDowell (Neri Pozza, 2023)

A horror-tinged family saga that starts in the 1920s through the 1980s, following the story of the town of Perdido, Alabama, and the Caskey family. The arrival of the mysterious Elinor after a river flood disrupts the plans of matriarch Mary-Love and the other members of the Caskey family: what is she really hiding? For those who love family sagas but won't give up moments of terror. 

Interview with the Vampire - Anne Rice (Longanesi, 2010)

From this book the 1994 film starring Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise, and the 2022 TV series. Louis de Pointe du Lac, a 100-year-old vampire who decides to be interviewed to talk about his life and how he became a creature of the night: a story of love and death, the first novel in an iconic saga.

The Yellow Wall-Paper and Other Stories - Charlotte Perkins Gilman (ABEditor, 2023)

The author (1850-1935) was an activist for the women's liberation movement, and in this series of short stories she succeeds in painting a perfect picture of the female condition of the time, surrounded by eerie and gothic settings in which patriarchy is sovereign. 

Tales of the Macabre - Edgar Allan Poe (illustrated by Benjamin Lacombe, Rizzoli, 2018)

Tales by Edgar Allan Poe, master of the macabre, accompanied by drawings by French artist Benjamin Lacombe, himself a specialist in melancholy and dark drawings. A collector's item divided into two volumes, for those who love picture books and horror classics.