Spooky + Snug: Stories for Halloween

'Rivers of London' Series, by Ben Aaronvitch

Peter Grant is a newly graduated police from London. After an encounter with a ghost he is recruited to the Folly, a police unit working with supernatural crimes. 

The first book in the series was published as Midnight Riot in America.

'Clue,' by Paul Allor

When the mysterious Mr. Boddy turns up dead at his own dinner party, everyone's a suspect! Miss Scarlett, Colonel Mustard, Mrs. Peacock, Professor Plum--all the familiar faces from the famous board game are back, with a couple new twists. But will Boddy's body be the last to fall, or is it just the beginning?

'Lord of the Wings,' by Donna Andrews

It's another holiday and Mayor Randall Shiffley has turned Caerphilly, Virginia into Spooky City, USA. The residents are covering every window with cobwebs and roaming the streets in costume to entertain the tourists, and Meg's grandfather is opening a new "Creatures of the Night" exhibit in the zoo. When a real body at the zoo and a suspicious fire at the Haunted House threaten to mar the town's creepy fun, it's up to Meg Langslow to save Halloween.

'Cottage on Pumpkin and Vine,' by Kate Angell

It's time for the annual Halloween costume party at the cottage on Pumpkin and Vine, the perfect place to celebrate the pleasures of the season. Guests return to the picturesque B & B year after year to snuggle up in its cozy rooms, explore the quiet, tree-lined streets and enjoy all the spooky fun of the holiday. But local legend whispers that it's also a place where wishes have a strange way of coming true.

For three unsuspecting revelers, it's going to be an enchanted weekend of candy corn kisses and midnight black kittens, along with some real Halloween surprises-the kind that make your heart skip a beat-for many more celebrations to come...

'Buffy the Vampire Slayer: High School is Hell,' by Jordie Bellaire

This is the Buffy Summers you know, who wants what every average teenager wants: friends at her new school, decent grades, and to escape her imposed destiny as the next in a long line of vampire slayers tasked with defeating the forces of evil...only this time around, her world looks a lot more like the one outside your window.

'Howloween Murder,' by Laurie Berenson

With just a few days left before Halloween, everyone at Howard Academy is anticipating the guaranteed sugar high they'll experience from gorging on Harriet Bloom's famous marshmallow puffs. The private school's annual costume party revolves around the headmaster's assistant and her seemingly supernatural batches of gooey goodies. So, it's a shock when Harriet's elderly neighbor is suddenly found dead with the beloved dessert in his hand. In a snap, police start questioning whether Harriet modified her top-secret recipe to include a hefty dose of lethal poison...

Melanie knows her tenured colleague would never intentionally serve cyanide-laced puffs to a defenseless old man. But as explosive neighborhood gossip reveals a potential culprit, it also brings her closer to sealing her own doom. Because on an evening ruled by masked revelers, bizarre getups, and hidden identities, Halloween might just be the perfect opportunity for a cold-hearted killer to get away with murder once again-this time sending a nosy, unsuspecting sleuth to an early grave!

'Boston Scream Murder,' by Ginger Bolton

October 31st is just around the corner and Emily Westhill's Boston cream donuts, carved with a scream, have made an indelible impression on local eccentric Rich Royalson. So much so that he's ordered three dozen, with twice the fudge icing, for his 70th birthday-a special event in more ways than one. It's to be held on fog-shrouded Lake Fleekom where, twenty years ago, his wife mysteriously drowned.

But the next day, when Emily arrives with her scrumptious screamers, she stumbles upon Rich's corpse. The poor guy wanted a unique birthday bash-just not one to the side of his skull. With a guest list of possible perpetrators, and his last will and testament suspiciously left at the scene, Emily soon discovers that the Royalson closet is rattling with skeletons. As the fog thickens, motives mount, and the tricks outnumber the treats, Emily fears that Rich may not be the last one in Fallowbrook to go out screaming.

'15 Minutes of Flame,' by Christin Brecher

When Stella's friend inherits a creaky, abandoned home in Nantucket, she knows it's the perfect setting for the town's annual Halloween fundraiser. A deserted, boarded-up building on the property-once used as a candle-making shop-adds to the creepy ambiance. But as Stella explores the shack's dilapidated walls, she discovers a terrible secret- the skeleton of a Quaker woman, wrapped in blood-soaked clothing and hidden deep within a stone hearth.

While police investigate, Stella wastes no time asking for help from friends with long ties to Nantucket's intricate history. The key to the murder may lie within a scorching 18th century love triangle that pit two best friends against one another over a dubious man. But before the case is solved, another life will be claimed-leaving Stella to wonder who in Nantucket is friend, and who is foe...

'Buried in the Stacks,' by Allison Brook

In winter, the Haunted Library is a refuge for homeless townspeople. When a group purchases a vacant house to establish a daytime haven for the homeless, Carrie offers the library as a meeting place for the Haven House committee, but quickly learns that it may be used for illegal activities.

As the new Sunshine Delegate, Carrie heads to the hospital to visit her cantankerous colleague, Dorothy, who had fallen outside the local supermarket. She tells Carrie that her husband tried to kill her--and that he murdered her Aunt Evelyn, the library's resident ghost, six years earlier.

And then Dorothy is murdered--run off the road as soon as she returns to work. Evelyn implores Carrie to find her niece's killer, but that's no easy task- Dorothy had made a hobby of blackmailing her neighbors and colleagues. Carrie, Evelyn, and Smoky Joe the cat are on the case, but are the library cards stacked against them?

'Meddling Kids,' by Edgar Contero

With raucous humor and brilliantly orchestrated mayhem, Meddling Kids subverts teen detective archetypes like the Hardy Boys, the Famous Five, and Scooby-Doo, and delivers an exuberant and wickedly entertaining celebration of horror, love, friendship, and many-tentacled, interdimensional demon spawn.

'Hallowe'en Party,' by Agatha Christie

When a Halloween Party turns deadly, it falls to Hercule Poirots to unmask a murderer in Agatha Christie's classic murder mystery, Hallowe'en Party.

At a Halloween party, Joyce--a hostile thirteen-year-old--boasts that she once witnessed a murder. When no one believes her, she storms off home. But within hours her body is found, still in the house, drowned in an apple-bobbing tub.

That night, Hercule Poirot is called in to find the `evil presence'. But first he must establish whether he is looking for a murderer or a double-murderer...

'Crypt Suzette,' by Maya Corrigan

Suzette Cripps has been occupying a spare bedroom at Val's granddad's house while she takes classes in this Maryland Eastern Shore town-but she's always seemed a little secretive and fearful, and any talk about her past is a closed book.

After winning the costume contest at the Halloween-themed bookstore party, Suzette is mowed down by a hit-and-run driver-and Val and her grandfather start to wonder whether it was really an accident or if someone was after Suzette. Granddad is a little distracted by his new enterprise as a ghost-buster, but as Val talks to Suzette's coworkers and fellow creative writing students, she grows more convinced that the dead woman's demons weren't imaginary-and that she needs to rip the mask off a killer...

Includes delicious five-ingredient recipes!

'Saturday Night Ghost Club,' by Craig Davidson

Growing up in 1980s Niagara Falls - a seedy but magical, slightly haunted place - Jake Baker spends most of his time with his uncle Calvin, a kind but eccentric enthusiast of occult artifacts and conspiracy theories. The summer Jake turns twelve, he befriends a pair of siblings new to town, and so Calvin decides to initiate them all into the 'Saturday Night Ghost Club.' But as the summer goes on, what begins as a seemingly light-hearted project may ultimately uncover more than any of its members had imagined.

'Undead' Series, by Maryjanice Davidson

Betsy Taylor—former model, newly unemployed secretary, 30, and still single—wakes up after being flattened by a Pontiac Aztek in a tacky coffin wearing cheap knock-off shoes. Her mother is glad she is back, albeit as a vampire, but her stepmother is enraged that Betsy has reclaimed her designer-shoe collection. With a wealthy best friend and a newly acquired doctor pal who is not susceptible to her formidable allure, she sets out to right wrongs but is abducted by Nostro, a tacky 500-year-old vampire who rules the undead roost. It seems that Betsy is an anomaly: a vampire who doesn't burn in sunlight, can fight the urge to feed, and is not repulsed by religious articles, all of which may make her the prophesied Queen of the Vampires. Teaming up with gorgeous vampire Eric Sinclair, who is in her opinion a major pervert, she takes on Nostro and his minions.

Undead and Unwed is the first book in the popular Undead series!

'Bloodstains with Bronte,' by Katherine Bolger Hyde

Classic novels and crime solving intertwine in Katherine Bolger Hyde's charming series. Bloodstains with Bronte is the second in a series that will puzzle and please fans of mystery and masterpieces alike.

Windy Corner is being remodeled into a writers' retreat. Two of the young workers, Jake and Roman, are showing too much of the wrong kind of interest in Katie, Emily's young single-mother housekeeper.

It's a stormy autumn and Emily is reading Wuthering Heights. Roman, a dark and brooding type, reminds her of Heathcliff. At a Halloween murder mystery fundraiser at Windy Corner, someone is found stabbed to death. Windy Corner's very own detective, Luke, is reluctantly forced to investigate Katie.

Luke digs into the background of the contractor, Jeremiah Edwards, and Emily, now reading Jane Eyre, realizes Jeremiah resembles St. John Rivers in his obsessive, tormented piety. Will Luke figure out who the murderer is before Katie ends up in jail or someone else is killed?

'Truly Devious,' by Maureen Johnson

Ellingham Academy is a famous private school in Vermont for the brightest thinkers, inventors, and artists. It was founded by Albert Ellingham, an early twentieth century tycoon, who wanted to make a wonderful place full of riddles, twisting pathways, and gardens. "A place," he said, "where learning is a game."

Shortly after the school opened, his wife and daughter were kidnapped. The only real clue was a mocking riddle listing methods of murder, signed with the frightening pseudonym "Truly, Devious." It became one of the great unsolved crimes of American history.

True-crime aficionado Stevie Bell is set to begin her first year at Ellingham Academy, and she has an ambitious plan: She will solve this cold case. That is, she will solve the case when she gets a grip on her demanding new school life and her housemates: the inventor, the novelist, the actor, the artist, and the jokester.

But something strange is happening. Truly Devious makes a surprise return, and death revisits Ellingham Academy. The past has crawled out of its grave. Someone has gotten away with murder. 

The two interwoven mysteries of this first book in the Truly Devious series dovetail brilliantly, and Stevie Bell will continue her relentless quest for the murderers in books two and three.

'The Bakeshop at Pumpkin and Spice,' by Donna Kauffman

Witches, goblins, the occasional ghost-they're all sure to be spotted at the annual Halloween parade, where adults and children alike dress in costume to celebrate Moonbright's favorite holiday. And no place has more seasonal spirit than Bellaluna's Bakeshop, a family business steeped in traditional recipes, welcoming warmth-and, legend has it, truly spellbinding, heart-melting treats ...

Between good-natured Halloween tricks, frothy pumpkin lattes, and some very special baked goods, for three Moonbright residents looking for love-whether they know it or not-the spookiest thing will be how magical romance can suddenly be...

'Midnight Crossroad,' by Charlaine Harris

Welcome to Midnight, Texas, a town with many boarded-up windows and few full-time inhabitants, located at the crossing of Witch Light Road and Davy Road. It's a pretty standard dried-up western town.

There's a pawnshop (someone lives in the basement and is seen only at night). There's a diner (people who are just passing through tend not to linger). And there's new resident Manfred Bernardo, who thinks he's found the perfect place to work in private (and who has secrets of his own).

Stop at the one traffic light in town, and everything looks normal. Stay awhile, and learn the truth...