I've considered an October celebration for a few years but will finally do it this time.
Here we go..
31 Days. 31 Spooky Books.
Starting off with Ira Levin's Rosemary's Baby. This is a 1st UK HB Edition from 1967, published by Michael Joseph.
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The beautiful cover was designed by Bernard Higton.

This remains a high point in occult paranoia, a mood which Levin (The Stepford Wives, Sliver) excels at. Rosemary's Baby is a gateway into a world of unspeakable terror

Have you read it?

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Kudos to Signet for making their 1992 paperback edition of Rosemary's Baby look exactly like a Point Horror novel.

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I was originally going to keep this for Halloween night, but start the month as you mean to go on.

The Raven is a masterpiece in hallucinatory grief, highlighting Poe's mastery of maudlin contemplation.

2001 HB edition by Bullfinch / Little Brown. #31Days31SpookyBooks

Things have already taken a sinister turn. Iain Banks' The Wasp Factory left an indelible impression on me when I first read it as a teenager.

It's a damp, claustrophobic tale of a miserable outsider trapped within a bleakly inescapable landscape.

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Ritualistic cruelty, drunkeness and a complete lack of hope amalgamate in a briney excretion of penetrating unease and nausea.

The words don't so much resonate as slowly ooze off the page and cling to you.

They don't really wash away.

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31 Days. 31 Spooky Books. Day 4

Post apocalyptic, sci fi novels have always been a firm favourite of mine and John Wyndham's outstanding 1951 book, The Day of the Triffids, remains a standout title in that particular subgenre.

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31 Days. 31 Spooky Books. Day 5

One of my all-time favourite films, The Wicker Man, was novelised by original writers Robin Hardy (who also directed the movie) & Anthony Shaffer. It's a solid adaptation of the story & works well as a standalone publication

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31 Days. 31 Spooky Books. Day 6

The 1970s were absolutely brilliant for collections and compendium on any number of supernatural subjects. They could be classic short stories or contemporary examinations, but there was always something worth exploring.

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Brian J Frost put together Book of the Werewolf in 1973.

Quite a few of these stories date back to the 1800s. The cover art was painted by a young Josh Kirby, whose work would later become synonymous with Sir Terry Pratchett's superlative Discworld series.

31 Days. 31 Spooky Books. Day 7

A change of pace today, in the indefinite form of Don DeLillo's The Body Artist.

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Playing with verb tense through dialogue & perception of reality, this novella examines the life of a young woman following the suicide of her husband.

The absence of one entity within the household forces another to appear.

If ghosts would talk, what would they say?

31 Days. 31 Spooky Books. Day 8

Im going out on a limb with this one, but no one does chilling Southern Gothic like Flannery O'Connor.

Wise Blood is the story of Hazel Motes, an antagonistic and embittered young man on a crusade against religion.

O'Connor creates a grotesquerie of characters, each more reprehensible than the other. The overall result is a novel which lingers and festers within.

Unforgettable, unsettling, unspeakably dark.

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I addition to being a superb novelist and short story writer, Flannery O'Connor was also a talented and humourous cartoonist.

31 Days. 31 Spooky Books. Day 9

Short stories can be a great way to discover an author. They can also help you to get back into the habit of reading after a lapsed period.

Joyce Carol Oates excels in the form of the short story.

Her fiction often deals with the real life horrors that women face, balanced against more supernatural or inexplicable terror.

These editions are from Otto Penzler / Harcourt, but I can honestly recommend picking up any of her short story collections.

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Every Halloween countdown needs a good haunted house story.

Mark Z Danielewski's House of Leaves is a haunted puzzle box of a book that stains the memory like tobacco smoke on a ceiling.

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Taking the 'book within a book' approach (one of which I am unashamedly fond of), Danielewski experiments with form, typesetting, layout and narrative to create a disorientating, yet wholly coherent ghost story.

An unusual and occasionally challenging tale.

One of the finest Irish books to ever see the light of day, The Third Policeman is best described as an episode of The Twilight Zone written by Samuel Beckett.

Except it wasn't written by Beckett, it was written by Flann O'Brien, aka Myles na Gopaleen, who was much more fun.

A nameless narrator participates in the brutal murder of an elderly neighbor, only to find himself confronted by his ghost. This interaction sets about a series of bizarre and hilarious encounters which also manage to maintain a sense of eeriness. - #31Days31SpookyBooks Day 11

I can't say too much about The Third Policeman, as this book is full of surprises but it won't be one that you forget in a hurry.

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'Your talk," I said, "is surely the handiwork of wisdom because not one word of it do I understand.'

José Saramango's Blindness is based on a very simple premise. The world's population suffers permanent sight loss en masse.

It takes very little time for society to fall into anarchy.

Things get very bad, very quickly.

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A reflection on the inherent darkness which resides in people and the thin veil of decency which separates us from barbarism.

Blindness is not a happy book and is haunting in the truest sense of the word.

31 Days. 31 Spooky Books. Day 13.

Sex equals death. It's a trope which is regularly explored in genre, but rarely has it been as viscerally examined than in Black Hole by Charles Burns.

This is body horror at its finest. Ballard would be proud.

31 Days. 31 Spooky Books. Day 14.

The world of Jeremy Robert Johnson is a remarkable one indeed and, for the curious, rewards lie in abundance.

If you'd like to discover some truly original and resonant work, look no further. Also, that cover *bites fist* is just sublime.

I can't emphasise how beneficial short stories have been for me when it comes to reigniting my love for reading. I always have a collection to hand for when I've a shorter reading window, or when I simply want to dip into a world for a brief spell.

31 Days. 31 Spooky Books. Day 15

John D. MacDonald's The Executioners was, as the cover to this Penguin paperback may suggest, better known by two separate movie adaptations (1962 and 1991) which both went by the title of Cape Fear.

Max Cady is a monster. A relentless, embittered one, hell -bent on revenge as he hunts down the family of the attorney who put him behind bars.

Once again, set aside the Simpsons references, and even the performances of Mitchum and DeNiro.

31 Days. 31 Spooky Books. Day 16

As part of Dennis Wheatley's occult series, The Satanist remains less revered than The Devil Rides Out (a personal favourite) and To the Devil - A Daughter, but it should not be forgotten as a result.

31 Days. 31 Spooky Books. Day 17.

The first series to be featured in the recommendation list and the first all ages book so far. This year, my eldest and I (he's 6) read The Spiderwick Chronicles together and it was a suitably dark and magical experience for us both.

Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black have created a truly unique narrative which is both enchanting and scary in equal measure.

Threats surround the three Grace children as they experience the fallout of a family breakup and have to move to a labyrinthine old mansion.

A hidden world of creatures, both mischievous and malevolent, lies just beyond the crumbling walls.

Gorgeously illustrated and presented, this collection is a thing of beauty and would make a fantastic addition to any child's bookshelf.

31 Days. 31 Spooky Books. Day 18.

Lord Dunsany was an Irish author who wrote about a squillion books, most of which focused on supernatural or high fantasy elements.

A contemporary and correspondent of many literary greats, Dunsany was a huge influence on HP Lovecraft & others

31 Days. 31 Spooky Books. Day 19
Rats was an instant bestseller and it's still easy to see why. Its dystopian plotline and horrifying titular creatures make for the perfect late night page turner.

It was one of those books which could be picked up at any charity shop or car boot sale for decades. Sadly you see fewer of those great genre paperbacks all the time.

31 Days. 31 Spooky Books. Day 20

Following the hugely popular Amityville Horror novel by Jay Anson, the follow-up by John G Jones follows the 'story' of the Lutz family as they try to escape the terror of the accursed house which almost ended their lives.

In this sequel, which does not correspond with the second movie by the way, Jones throws gargantuan amounts of crap at a wall to see what sticks.

Surprisingly, a lot of it does.

31 Days. 31 Spooky Books. Day 21

Professional author and liar Jay Anson may not have attained the dizzying heights of The Amityville Horror with 666, but that doesn't mean it should be discarded into the bargain bin of pulp horror history. Well, not completely...

It's not exactly a stretch for Anson as 666 focuses on a SPOOKY HOUSE! Full of GHOSTS and LIES....

Day 22: The Pan Horror series, ubiquitous in the 70s, have become insanely collectable over recent years, with some editions fetching daft prices on eBay.

Each paperback comprised of a couple of horror stories of varying quality, but the covers were always the really great part.

Day 23: The Fontana Horror series were simultaneously available at the peak of Pan's popularity and offered a pulpy, equally enjoyable alternative to the shorts which were run by its competitor.

The covers are equally ghoulish and they remain relatively easy to acquire.

32 Days. 31 Spooky Books. Day 24

In addition to their outstanding series of short story collections, Pan also branched out into adaptations of classic Hammer Films.

31 Days. 31 Spooky Books. Day 25.

Whilst best known for Watership Down, Richard Adams also penned several other animal and nature themed stories which highlight humans for the blight upon the earth which we are.

31 Days. 31 Spooky Books. Day 26

Franz Kafka is best known for Metamorphosis, but The Trial is an equally impactful novel.

This hellish, inescapable situation both frustrates and unsettles in equal measure.

31 Days. 31 Spooky Books. Day 28

Erik Larson's The Devil In The White City tells two stories. One of the worlds fair and one of the first true American serial killer, H. H. Holmes.

Larson's ability to create an engaging narrative using meticulously research is astonishing.

31 Days. 31 Spooky Books. Day 29.

The Usborne Mysteries of the Unknown is a compendium consisting of the previously published editions on Ghosts, UFOs and Monsters.

Anyone who grew up in the 80s who had access to a decent school library will probably have memories of this one.

31 Days. 31 Spooky Books. Day 30

If you don't know M.R. James then you don't know ghost stories.

A quintessential Halloween classic.

Explore.

31 Days. 31 Spooky Books. Day 31

And here we are. The final is a childhood favourite and something which will serve as an absolute delight to any fan of things that go bump in the night.

This pop up book from Jan Pieńkowski (illustrator of the brilliant Meg and Mog books) developed the most ingenious and striking creations.

I could show you inside, but it's far too terrifying. You'll just have to find out for yourself....

Happy Halloween everyone and thanks for joining me on this spooky journey!