It’s not all about toffee apples, and pumpkin costumes! Delve into the sinister side of Halloween with our horror collection (recommended for grown ups only!). All items are available with your Hampshire Library card.
Edgar Allan Poe: the best of his macabre tales complete and unabridged
This collection from the all-time master of the macabre contains Poe’s dark poem “The Raven,” a Halloween classic about a gloomy man’s bizarre encounter with an “ebony bird.” You can also read heart-stopping horror stories such as “The Pit and the Pendulum,” “The Black Cat,” and “The Tell-tale Heart.” In this last story, the unnamed narrator murders an old man simply because “he had the eye of a vulture.” In Poe’s autumnal world, every night seems dark and gloomy and his many stories reflect a morbid sensibility that’s frightening any day of the year, especially on Halloween.
Dracula, Bram Stoker (eBook)
He is deathly pale. His fingernails are cut to sharp points. His teeth protrude menacingly from his mouth in clouds of rancid breath. Yet even Count Dracula’s unnerving appearance and the frightened reaction of the local peasants fail to warn Jonathan Harker, a young man from England, about his host. Little does Jonathan know that this is a land where babies are snatched for their blood and wolves howl menacingly from the forest, where reality is far more frightening than superstition. What’s more, it’s going to be up to him to stop the world’s most bloodthirsty predator.
Heart shaped box, Joe Hill
For a thousand dollars, Jude will become the proud owner of a dead man’s suit, said to be haunted by a restless spirit. He isn’t afraid. He has spent a lifetime coping with ghosts—of an abusive father, of the lovers he callously abandoned, of the bandmates he betrayed. What’s one more? But what UPS delivers to his door in a black heart-shaped box is no imaginary or metaphorical ghost, no benign conversation piece. It’s the real thing. And suddenly the suit’s previous owner is everywhere: behind the bedroom door …seated in Jude’s restored vintage Mustang … standing outside his window . . . staring out from his widescreen TV. Waiting—with a gleaming razor blade on a chain dangling from one bony hand…
Doctor Sleep, Stephen King
King says he wanted to know what happened to Danny Torrance, the boy at the heart of ‘The Shining’, after his terrible experience in the Overlook Hotel. The instantly riveting Doctor Sleep picks up the story of the now middle-aged Dan, working at a hospice in rural New Hampshire, and the very special twelve-year old girl he must save from a tribe of murderous paranormals.
The Walking Dead, Robert Kirkman – Vol 1 to 16 (ebooks)
An epidemic of apocalyptic proportions has swept the globe, causing the dead to rise and feed on the living. In a matter of months, society has crumbled: There is no government, no grocery stores, no mail delivery, no cable TV. Rick Grimes finds himself one of the few survivors in this terrifying future. A couple months ago he was a small town cop who had never fired a shot and only ever saw one dead body. Separated from his family, he must now sort through all the death and confusion to try and find his wife and son. In a world ruled by the dead, we are forced to finally begin living.
Red rain, R. L. Stine
First came the hurricane. The red rain began to fall. The blood of its victims. And the twin angels emerged. Lea Sutter is in the wrong place at the wrong time. Trapped on an island during a hurricane, she barely escapes alive. Out of the carnage, two boys appear – innocent, angelic and thrilled to be adopted by their new mother. But these are no ordinary children. They bring the gift of death – and they want to share it with the whole town.
Let the right one in, John Ajvide Linqvist
Oskar and Eli. In very different ways, they were both victims. Which is why, against the odds, they became friends. And how they came to depend on one another, for life itself. Oskar is a 12 year old boy living with his mother on a dreary housing estate at the city’s edge. He dreams about his absentee father, gets bullied at school, and wets himself when he’s frightened. Eli is the young girl who moves in next door. She doesn’t go to school and never leaves the flat by day. She is a 200 year old vampire, forever frozen in childhood, and condemned to live on a diet of fresh blood.
The stand, Stephen King (eBook)
A patient escapes from a biological testing facility, unknowingly carrying a deadly weapon: a mutated strain of super-flu that will wipe out 99 percent of the world’s population within a few weeks. Those who remain are scared, bewildered, and in need of a leader. Two emerge–Mother Abagail, the benevolent 108-year-old woman who urges them to build a peaceful community in Boulder, Colorado; and Randall Flagg, the nefarious “Dark Man,” who delights in chaos and violence. As the dark man and the peaceful woman gather power, the survivors will have to choose between them–and ultimately decide the fate of all humanity.
Dolly, Susan Hill (e-Book)
The remoter parts of the English Fens are forlorn, lost and damp even in the height of summer. At Iyot Lock, a large decaying house, two young cousins, Leonora and Edward are parked for the summer with their ageing spinster aunt and her cruel housekeeper. At first the unpleasantness and petty meannesses appear simply spiteful, calculated to destroy Edward’s equanimity. But when spoilt Leonora is not given the birthday present of a specific dolly that she wants, affairs inexorably take a much darker turn with terrifying, life destroying, consequences for everyone.
The woman in black (DVD)
Supernatural drama, based on the novel by Susan Hill, in which a young lawyer finds himself battling to contain the ghost of a dead woman bent on destruction. When Arthur Kipps (Daniel Radcliffe) leaves his son (Misha Handley) behind in London to head off on an assignment to a remote village, he has little idea of what lies in store for him. Once there, Arthur discovers that the locals live in such fear of a mysterious figure known as the ‘Woman in Black’ that they keep their children locked away indoors, afraid that contact with the woman would harm them. Arthur’s investigations lead him to believe that the woman is a ghost, haunted by her inability to save her son from drowning. When she turns her attention towards Arthur’s own son, the lawyer is forced to confront the spectre head on.
Hampshire Library Service 