A Baker’s Dozen for Halloween
October 23rd, 2006 by Alan Chudnow
Living in the perpetual summer of Southern California I find I need a little something extra to help me get in touch with the autumnal spirit as the rest of the country slides through October towards All Hallow’s Eve. This year I turned to a couple of my favorite Halloween tales, Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes (Simon & Schuster 1962) and Roger Zelazny’s A Night in the Lonesome October (Morrow/AvoNova 1993).
Having finished those I began searching about for additional reading suggestions. I was surprised to discover a dearth of Halloween oriented reading lists for adults. I found any number of recommendations for children but very few with the mature reader in mind.
So, to that end, I put together an even thirteen suggestions with which to settle down as dusk begins to fall, the wind outside stirs up the skittering of old, dead leaves and the dark, orange moon begins to rise. Of course, having first editions of all these would make for the beginnings of a drop dead collection.
Here are tonight’s offerings. I’d love to hear of your favorite haunts.
- Barker, Clive, The Thief of Always
†
- Bradbury, Ray, From the Dust Returned
- Bradbury, Ray, The Halloween Tree
- Bradbury, Ray, Something Wicked This Way Comes
- Chizmar, Richard and Robert Morrish, October Dreams
- Kaye, Marvin, The Ultimate Halloween
- King, Steven, ‘Salem’s Lot
- Le Fanu, Sheridan, In a Glass Darkly
- Leiber, Fritz, Our Lady of Darkness
- Morley, Christopher, The Haunted Bookshop
- Updike, John, The Witches of Eastwick
- Zelazny, Roger, A Night in the Lonesome October
