Halloween Recommendation: Part Three

Anna Dressed in Blood
Author: Kendare Blake
Publication Date: October 17th 2011
Publisher: Tor Teen

 

Cas Lowood has inherited an unusual vocation: He kills the dead.

So did his father before him, until he was gruesomely murdered by a ghost he sought to kill. Now, armed with his father's mysterious and deadly athame, Cas travels the country with his kitchen-witch mother and their spirit-sniffing cat. They follow legends and local lore, destroy the murderous dead, and keep pesky things like the future and friends at bay.

Searching for a ghost the locals call Anna Dressed in Blood, Cas expects the usual: track, hunt, kill. What he finds instead is a girl entangled in curses and rage, a ghost like he's never faced before. She still wears the dress she wore on the day of her brutal murder in 1958: once white, now stained red and dripping with blood. Since her death, Anna has killed any and every person who has dared to step into the deserted Victorian she used to call home.

Yet she spares Cas's life.

 You have no idea how much I love Anna Dressed in Blood, look at the cover!

It's bloody and gory and a lot of limb pulling and dismemberments. Anna, pretty much has everything you want, creepy atmosphere, hauntings, badass characters, a lot of twistedness and...did I mention bloody, gory and a lot of limb pulling and dismemberments?

Between the Devil and the Deep Blue SeaAuthor: April Genevieve Tucholke
Publication Date: August 15th 2013        
Publisher: Dial

You stop fearing the devil when you’re holding his hand…

Nothing much exciting rolls through Violet White’s sleepy, seaside town… until River West comes along. River rents the guest house behind Violet’s crumbling estate, and as eerie, grim things start to happen, Violet begins to wonder about the boy living in her backyard.

Is River just a crooked-smiling liar with pretty eyes and a mysterious past? Or could he be something more?

Violet’s grandmother always warned her about the Devil, but she never said he could be a dark-haired boy who takes naps in the sun, who likes coffee, who kisses you in a cemetery... who makes you want to kiss back.

Violet’s already so knee-deep in love, she can’t see straight. And that’s just how River likes it.

Blending faded decadence and the thrilling dread of gothic horror, April Genevieve Tucholke weaves a dreamy, twisting contemporary romance, as gorgeously told as it is terrifying—a debut to watch

It's been a year since I've read it and I still have no clue how I really felt about it. It was rather strange and weird and every other word you can think of. It had a very wrong feel about it, it's definitely a true gothic horror and had a great atmosphere, and some hard to stomach scenes.

 
The Girl from the Well
Author: Rin Chupeco
Publication Date: August 5th 2014        
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire

You may think me biased, being murdered myself. But my state of being has nothing to do with the curiosity toward my own species, if we can be called such. We do not go gentle, as your poet encourages, into that good night.

A dead girl walks the streets.

She hunts murderers. Child killers, much like the man who threw her body down a well three hundred years ago.

And when a strange boy bearing stranger tattoos moves into the neighborhood so, she discovers, does something else. And soon both will be drawn into the world of eerie doll rituals and dark Shinto exorcisms that will take them from American suburbia to the remote valleys and shrines of Aomori, Japan.

Because the boy has a terrifying secret - one that would just kill to get out.

The Girl from the Well is A YA Horror novel pitched as "Dexter" meets "The Grudge", based on a well-loved Japanese ghost story

Hahahaha...I'm just going to hide now.

I know I didn't like The Girl from the Well that much, but it did genuinely unnerve the hell out of me. Considering it's one of the myths The Ring was based on, no fucking wonder, I've mentioned a few times just how much I feel for that. I'm pretty tempted to watch it just to scare the crap out of myself this Halloween, I'm nice to myself, honest. Along with Say Her Name, it's the only one that's done that to me.

I dare you to read it in the dark. I dare you.

In the Shadow of Blackbirds
Author: Cat Winters
Publication Date: April 2nd 2013        
Publisher: Amulet Books

In 1918, the world seems on the verge of apocalypse. Americans roam the streets in gauze masks to ward off the deadly Spanish influenza, and the government ships young men to the front lines of a brutal war, creating an atmosphere of fear and confusion. Sixteen-year-old Mary Shelley Black watches as desperate mourners flock to séances and spirit photographers for comfort, but she herself has never believed in ghosts. During her bleakest moment, however, she’s forced to rethink her entire way of looking at life and death, for her first love—a boy who died in battle—returns in spirit form. But what does he want from her?

Featuring haunting archival early-twentieth-century photographs, this is a tense, romantic story set in a past that is eerily like our own time

 You guys, it's Cat Winters. The end.

Have you read any of these?