Scary-Good Reads for 2020

Greetings, goblins, ghouls, and other ghastly creatures. The spookiest night of the year draws ever nearer. While Halloween this year won’t look precisely the same as one would usually expect, there’s still plenty you can do to celebrate this silly and/or spooky holiday. Wear your best costume from the comfort of your home (tag us in pics! - @oldtownbooks) or pick up some socially-distanced candy and a new thriller here at the shop on Saturday. Not sure which mystery to add to your TBR pile? Fear not, mere mortals. Our staff has some scary-good recommendations, so read on…if you dare!

I love the idea of scary books and movies. I have tried to read and watch them my entire life...and every time I regret doing so because I have endless nightmares. When I was in middle school, I would force myself to fall asleep before Nightmare on Elm Street or whichever horror film was chosen played. I made the mistake of watching Paranormal Activity, and can never look at a basement the same again. So when it comes to spooky books, I stick more to suspense, and one of my favorites has always been Agatha Christie. Chalk it up to her being incredibly prolific (66 novels and 14 short story collections) and readily available at the local used book store, I would devour everything she wrote. One of my favorites, of course, was And Then There Were None. I remember being filled with a sense of dread, as one by one, bodies were discovered. So, when I want something creepy, I turn to the gold standard, or find a book that is Agatha Christie-esque (next on my list to read: When No One Is Watching by Alyssa Cole). -Laura Rose (Bookseller)

My list of favorite spooky books is LONG, as horror, thrillers, and spooky books in general are a genre I read all year long. One I've loved in 2020 is Year of the Witching by Alexis Henderson. This book is The Witch meets Handmaids Tale, and will leave you impatiently waiting for book two. I've also enjoyed John Landis' new anthology of Haunted Houses that compiles all the classic haunted house tales from the late 1800s and early 1900s - great for super atmospheric reads that will make you terrified to step foot in any Victorian home. Another favorite spooky book is Head Full of Ghosts, which I recommend to pretty much everyone who's looking for a short but thrilling entry into this genre. If you saw and loved The Conjuring, this book will be like catnip for you. My ultimate favorites though, of course, come from the king of horror himself - Stephen King! Out of his extensive collection, two that I love are IT and The Shining. They're both scary and build worlds that you won't soon forget. Also, I'm from Maine, so I think it's pretty much in my blood to love Stephen King's classic works. -Amanda (Events Coordinator)

Sunshine by Robin Mckinley is my favorite vampire book. It was recommended to me when I was a teenager in what might be described as my Buffy/Twilight/Vampire Diaries/True Blood, creatures of the night phase. Rae, the heroine, doesn't need to be rescued. She can also bake cinnamon buns as big as your head. Robin Mckinley, the author, has said that her entire writing career was inspired by reading the scene in The Lord of the Rings in which Éowyn slays the Witch-king. Also, if it makes a difference, Neil Gaiman once described Sunshine as "pretty much perfect." If you want something that's more likely to give you real nightmares, few writers have ever done psychological horror better than Shirley Jackson. She's best known for her short story, "The Lottery." But Jackson was also a pioneer and master of the horror genre. We have a collection of her scariest stories, Dark Tales, in stock. Stephen King has credited her as an inspiration, and he once said The Haunting of Hill House was “as nearly perfect a haunted-house tale as I have ever read." The novel begins with this stunning first sentence "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream.” -Jen (Book Buyer)

If you’re a fan of thrillers, especially those a la Gone Girl, you won’t want to miss this out on Goodnight Beautiful. In this new release, Aimee Molloy takes your every expectation and preconception of an unreliable female narrator and subverts it. I found myself bamboozled at multiple turns, literally exclaiming “What??” With authorial nods to the king of horror, Stephen King, himself, this pick certainly got me ready for spooky season this fall. -Shannon (Bookseller)

Photo contributions by Laura Rose Schwartz, Amanda Robinson, and Shannon McCarthy. Blog contributions by Laura Rose Schwartz, Amanda Robinson, Jen Cheng, and Shannon McCarthy. Edited by Shannon McCarthy.