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Spooky YA reads to keep that Halloween 👻spirit👻 going

By mem

We get it. You're a fan of the uncanny and all October has just been leading up to the evening of the 31st. But once it's over, how do you keep those spooky vibes going? With a spooky book, of course!

I feel Halloween can be a contentious time. You either:

  1. Care deeply and strongly and dress-up and decorate with wild abandon;
  2. Despise it as a consumerist, unnecessary, and environmentally-unfriendly (plastic skeletons!) time of year; or
  3. Don't really think too much about it.

This story is for you members of Group 1, as with the chime of midnight on October 31st your season of ghouls and goblins, creepy-crawlies and critters is over, and you'll need something extra to fill that spooky void within your dark souls.

So we're offering to fill that void within you with books!

We are NOT recommending that you do the opposite, and let a book partake of your tasty soul, as this can have disastrous results. Be warned!

B&W image of a deflated child, definitely not a child-sized doll, seated on a chair in a library, holding a book in their hands.

Image from Wellington City Recollect, c. 1950s.

With every book, there is the danger that reading it will drain you of your youthful vim and vigour and, like this poor child, leave you a shell of what you once were. Never let down your guard around a book.

Anyway, these grim warnings aren't the main point of this here story. It's all about the books! The spooky-themed books with ghosts or witches or monstrous creatures (or misunderstood creatures) or black cats or toads or any assortment of the spooky and weird.

So below, we have a list of books for you, a prescription, perhaps, to maintain your inner levels of spooky as the Halloween season drifts away:

Read one chapter daily to prevent the instillment of the mundane.

But this isn't just any old booklist, oh no! This is a new booklist! Or rather, a list of the newest spooky books we have in our collection, all shiny and new for you to borrow and read. So let's look at some books.

  • Samples from the lab / Foote, Rob
    Essential reading for any future Mad Scientists out there. An illustrated 'scientific journal' detailing the bizarre genetic experiments of Professor Fictitious Karacter, complete with hand drawn illustrations of his creations. This book was also shortlisted for 2024's New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults.
  • The monstrous kind / Gregovic, Lydia
    What do you get when you mix Regency romance with something spooky? Well yes, Pride and prejudice and zombies, of course, but also this book! Merrick's the daughter of a Lord, but she also lives in an England where an invasive mist turns those that breathe it into monstrous creatures.
  • The dark becomes her / Lin, Judy I
    This is a Rick Riordan Presents book, so you know it's good! Ruby lives in Vancouver's Chinatown where everything is normal until her sister is possessed by something demonic. And it's not just her sister that needs saving! Ruby gets drawn into a battle to keep the gateway to the underworld sealed and the horrors within locked away.
  • When the Kēhua calls / McKinnon, Kingi
    Ok, you got me. This isn't a brand-new book. But it is a brand-new edition of a great New Zealand book! This is a genuinely spooky story, about a family that moves into an old family whare and only one of them, Rewi, can tell that something is wrong.
  • An outbreak of witchcraft : a graphic novel of the Salem Witch Trials / Noyes, Deborah
    We've all heard of the Salem Witch Trials, right? Paranoia, hysteria, and self-preservation tearing apart a town... Well now you can read about the Trials in this graphic depiction of historical events. Read this, and learn that the true horror was within us all, the whole time.
  • The deep dark / Ostertag, Molly Knox
    Molly Knox Ostertag's a witch expert (see her previous series starting with The witch boy), but moves towards something darker with The deep dark (and yes, that was intentional). Mags is about to finish high school and has so many responsibilities tying her down, including something that lurks in her basement with many teeth...
  • We shall be monsters / Sim, Tara
    When your sister dies the only obvious thing to do is to break her soul's cycle of reincarnation and bring her back to life, right? Or maybe that's not the best idea if your resurrection attempt warps her soul into violent wraith with murderous intentions? What do you think?
  • The ghostkeeper : a graphic novel / Taylor, Johanna
    More ghosts here, and Dorian's the only one who can see them. So he becomes a ghost therapist. And when the key to Death's Door is stolen and all the ghosts are trapped in our earthly realm, it's Dorian who has to save them all. The ghosts, that is.
  • The Simpsons treehouse of horror : ominous omnibus. Vol. 3, Fiendish fables of devilish delicacies
    Like it says on the tin, Halloween stories from The Simpsons. If it's your cup of tea, this latest omnibus is freshly on the shelves waiting for you.