Halloween is this weekend, boys and ghouls! And you're here because you want something scary to read this holiday, so let me suggest three great titles for you.
These three books represent selections from middle grade fiction, young adult fiction, and adult biography.
First up, some kid-level scares:
Ghost Squad by Claribel A. Ortega
Ghost Squad is a middle grade tale about ghosts, witches, curses, and, most importantly, family and friendship.
Meet Lucely Luna. Lucely lives in St. Augustine, FL with her father, Simon, and a household of aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents. Well, technically only her and her father are living in their home, because Lucely’s extended family are all ghosts. Simon runs a ghost tour through historic St. Augustine and Lucely “assists” in making the tours more authentic. One night, as Simon is guiding a tour group through a cemetery, a nearby Lucely receives a dire warning from the other side that sets into motion a spooky and exciting adventure.
Untrained in the ways of magic, Lucely and her best friend, Syd, cast a spell in the hopes of preventing disaster. But their actions accidently awaken the very threat they were trying to ward off. Now Lucely and Syd are destined to defeat an old curse, protect Lucely’s ghost family, and save St. Augustine.
Claribel Ortega treats the themes of family and death in Ghost Squad in remarkable and comforting ways while also maintaining a Ghostbusters Jr. type of vibe. Ghost Squad is fun and exciting, definitely a little scary at times, and a great read for Halloween.
Next up, a scary read for teens:
The Taking of Jake Livingston by Ryan Douglass
I was a little unsure about this YA horror novel after learning about the weighty subject matter being tackled in the story. There has been lots of critical analyses of horror fiction as a mirror authors use to amplify and recontextualize our real-world fears into something more accessible for exploration. This is my long way of saying The Taking of Jake Livingston includes a school shooting as an important plot point, a point that is never treated in an exploitative way. In fact, anyone who has been a teenager since the late 90s will find this type of horror very relatable and unnerving.
Jake Livingston is one of the few Black students at a prep school where he has daily run-ins with racist teachers and students. If that weren’t already a lot for a teenager, he can also see the dead, and they’re never pleasant. Mostly he sees confused ghosts trapped in looping reenactments of their violent and surprising deaths (do not read this book before bed). These ever-present tableaus are enough to make Jake walk through life with his head low and silent. Between the dead and high school, Jake has become trapped in his own trauma loops. And then, in the midst of his regular miseries comes the ghost of Sawyer, a school shooter who has found a way to still commit violence from beyond the grave.
Sawyer murdered six students when he opened fire in his high school before killing himself. Now a ghost, he is determined to finish what he started. Now it is up to Jake to unravel the mystery of where Sawyer gets his power from before Sawyer can claim any more victims.
Jake’s interactions with the world of the dead are vividly realized and gut-churningly visceral. I repeat, do not read this book before bed. I personally made the mistake of reading this while working alone one night in a century-old library after the sun went down. Every knock or bang in the building’s old wooden frame set my heart-racing and my mind panicking. Kudos to Ryan Douglass for the solid scare.
As I've already stated, the subject matter is heavy here, but also very true to the anxieties many teens are feeling in today’s American high schools. The Taking of Jake Livingston creates a space to examine these fears for both teen and adult readers while also delivering a terrifying tale.
Our last pick is for the grown-ups who want to relax with a book while the kids are out trick-or-treating:
Yours Cruelly, Elvira by Cassandra Peterson
There is a part of me that still wants to grow up to be Elvira. Sure, sexiness is her schtick, but she’s also funny, smart, and a horror icon. That’s a legacy to aspire to!
OK, so I’m a librarian, and Cassandra Peterson began her career as an actress/comedian/showgirl. Obviously we followed divergent paths, but Peterson is still rocking that skimpy dress and tall wig at 70, so I still have time to catch up.
Cassandra Peterson became Elvira when she was 30. She grew up in a somewhat troubled childhood in 1950s and 1960s America, and then went to Hollywood in the 1970s to become an actress. Her path to stardom was mostly paved in failure. She was ready to give up her aspirations when she took one last chance on a local hosting role and was hired for the job that would define her career for the rest of her life.
A big break doesn’t mean life got any easier, though. In Yours Cruelly, Elvira Peterson takes us through the ups and downs of the last forty years of her life, tumultuous and painful experiences that she battled through while managing to persevere and grow. I don’t want to spoil much, but her story has more than a few surprising twists, along with a decent dose of Hollywood gossip.
Yours Cruelly, Elvira is pretty inspiring. Lots of don’t give up on your dreams and maintaining healthy and realistic expectations messages in here along with a fantastic story about how a burn-scarred kid from Kansas grew up to become the undisputed Queen of Halloween.
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