Top Ten Tuesday Halloween Freebie

 Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together.  Each week there is a new prompt, and everyone is encouraged to share their list. 

This week's prompt is a Halloween Freebie, with the temperatures here getting cooler and the leaves changing colors it's a perfect time to reflect on the books that remind me of Halloween and reading something delightfully creepy.  

With an opening line of "There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife." I was riveted by the illustrations and the story.  

Eight stories that follow Hansel and Gretel across Grimm's fairy tales.  Not for the squeamish but also very entertaining.  

A double murder, a family that comes from a long line of psychic's and a creepy/sinister killer.  

Lindsay Currie always does creepy, spooky books so well.  I could've included The Peculiar Incident on Shady Street, Scritch Scratch and What Lives in the Woods.   All have wonderful settings and a story that sends little chills up your spine.  

 A very atmospheric kind of spooky, with the dark woods, mysterious enveloping fog, the cemetery and of course the dark stormy night. Not to mention the scary dogs and ghosts that appear to Zee. Yep, all the elements for spooky. 

A scary but not too scary story that hit all the right notes for me.  

I love everything that Jacqueline West writes and I'm especially fond of The Books of Elsewhere series.  The Strangers is the fourth book in the series and takes place during Halloween.  

She has such a beautiful poetic way in which she writes. "Above them, the purple sky was deepening to black. The moon, like a sliver of sharpened bone slit the trails of passing clouds..." and my favorite line "Twists of black crepe paper threaded the warm air, where the smells of popcorn and caramel mingled in a sugary fog..." Can't you just smell the popcorn in the air? If that wasn't enough, the illustrations by Poly Bernatene are gorgeous and capture the mood of the season with one of my favorites being Olive and her friends dressed up in costumes for a Halloween carnival. 

Anyone who knows my taste in books, knows I love the Lockwood and Company series.  These are the books that I savored, reading them slowly and only when the next book came out in the series.  I'd read these over days, enjoying every single word.  They're just the perfect book if you love creepy stories for Halloween.  

  

Ghosts, zombies, sorcery, necromancy and a girl who lives in a shadow world, destined to wield dark magic.  

This is a wonderful creepy book and I love love Fernie. With her red hair pulled up wearing green Werewolf pajamas and Frankenstein monster slippers, she is just so adorable. I even love Gustav who is sad, wears a black suit with a black tie and looks like he should be at a funeral. Overall, a wonderful story with beautiful black and white illustrations by Kristen Margiotta.

Feel free to leave me any suggestions on books that I should check out to add to my Halloween reading list.