As All Hallows Eve approaches it is time for remembering the dead, dressing up, eating too much sugar and reading the kind of books that make you jump at every sound.
Remember that episode Friends when Joey was reading The Shining? It got so scary that he put it in the freezer.
Get the deep freeze ready because this list of five historical fiction reads is going to make your skin crawl and invade your dreams.
1) THE WINTER PEOPLE BY JENNIFER MCMAHON
1908, West Hall, Vermont: Sara Harrison Shea is found dead in the field behind her house, just months after the death of her daughter. Now flash forward to the present day, when 19-year-old Ruthie, her younger sister, and their mother live in Sara’s old farmhouse. When their mother mysteriously disappears one morning, Ruthie discovers Sara’s diary hidden in their mom’s bedroom and gets sucked into a supernatural historical mystery that hasn’t yet been solved.
2) INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE BY ANNE RICE
This is the story of Louis, as told in his own words, of his journey through mortal and immortal life. Louis recounts how he became a vampire at the hands of the radiant and sinister Lestat and how he became indoctrinated, unwillingly, into the vampire way of life. His story ebbs and flows through the streets of New Orleans, defining crucial moments such as his discovery of the exquisite lost young child Claudia, wanting not to hurt but to comfort her with the last breaths of humanity he has inside. Yet, he makes Claudia a vampire, trapping her womanly passion, will, and intelligence inside the body of a small child. Louis and Claudia form a seemingly unbreakable alliance and even "settle down" for a while in the opulent French Quarter. Louis remembers Claudia's struggle to understand herself and the hatred they both have for Lestat that sends them halfway across the world to seek others of their kind. Louis and Claudia are desperate to find somewhere they belong, to find others who understand, and someone who knows what and why they are.
I vividly remember having truly bizarre dreams for about a month after reading Interview With The Vampire. They were dark and swirly and filled with the cold silver of fear, like it was being injected into my bones!
3) MAYHEM BY SARAH PINBOROUGH
Scotland Yard already has its hands full with trying to capture Jack the Ripper, and now there’s another killer in their midst who has been dubbed the Torso Killer, who neatly wraps his victims’ body parts and steals their heads. Police surgeon Dr. Thomas Bond has taken to scouring London’s opium dens for some much-needed relief, but one evening meets a Jesuit priest in the same opium dens who has some horrifyingly unnatural theories about the Torso Killer.
4) THE CASSANDRA BY SHARMA SHIELDS
CaGifted and cursed with the ability to see the future, Mildred Groves takes a position at the Hanford Research Center in the early 1940s. Hanford tests and manufactures a mysterious product to aid the war effort. Only the top officials know that this product is processed plutonium, to make the first atomic bombs. Inspired by the classic Greek myth, this 20th-century reimagining is based on a real WWII compound. A timely novel about patriarchy and militancy, The Cassandra uses both legend and history to examine man’s capacity for destruction, and the compassion it takes to challenge the powerful.
HALLOWEEN HISTORICAL FICTION READS: How could I create a top 5 scare list, without mentioning the master...Mr Stephen King.
5) 11/22/63 BY STEPHEN KING
Jake Epping is a thirty-five-year-old high school English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, who makes extra money teaching adults in the GED program. He receives an essay from one of the students—a gruesome, harrowing first person story about the night 50 years ago when Harry Dunning’s father came home and killed his mother, his sister, and his brother with a hammer. Harry escaped with a smashed leg, as evidenced by his crooked walk. Not much later, Jake’s friend Al, who runs the local diner, divulges a secret: his storeroom is a portal to 1958. He enlists Jake on an insane—and insanely possible—mission to try to prevent the Kennedy assassination.
Any of these historical fiction reads is guaranteed to get the heart pumping!
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