In some long-ago October, I can vaguely recall a house that gave out books for Halloween one year instead of candy, a substitution only slightly better received than, say, a toothbrush or a single Brussels sprout.
However, for me, I would have happily traded a few sleeves of Smarties or a stale Charleston Chew for the chance to stuff a good book into my pillowcase. “Just take one,” I imagine this ghoulishly literate parent saying as I reached into a bowl and pulled out a copy of “The Collected Stories” by William Trevor or an orange and black snack pack of Penguin Classics.
A boy can dream, right?
Well, your dreams – fine, my dreams – have come true this October because you can enjoy your Halloween treats in book form by reading on for some of the best titles coming out this month, a mix of novels and nonfiction, major publishers and independents, tasty tartness or full of nuts.
However, if this list of essential reading is the kind Victorian Dr. Jekyll, my creepy colleague and all-round spooky spectral creature of the dark, Sarah Batcha (whose very name harbors a hidden bat!), has created the Mr. Hyde version of this month’s new release list: She’s got 31 ghostastic, spooktacular novels that delve into the darkest, dankest depths of your consciousness. Be afraid of how much you’ll love the list.
So do you head toward the light (or lighter) lit list, or do you explore the cobweb-covered passage into the dark and scary books? Here’s the thing: You don’t have to choose. Check out these 22 here and then head over to get her 31 books perfect for Halloween and scaring yourself silly.
And if you happen to find a cache of long-discontinued Marathon bars, let me know and I’ll be right over.
31 horror novels and scary books for Halloween coming out this October
Oct. 6
“We Radiant Things: Notes on Being Alien and Becoming Cyborg” by Franny Choi (Ecco)
This debut book of essays by the author of the poetry collection “The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On” digs into science fiction tropes involving Asian women and cyborgs, as well as explores AI, chatbots, “Terminator 2: Judgment Day,” and Choi’s own family history in South Korea and the U.S.
“Dark Reading Matter” by Jasper Fforde (Soho Press)
Twenty-five years after Fforde’s first Thursday Next novel, “The Eyre Affair,” the series returns with what’s reported to be the eighth and final adventure of the literary detective who must battle a bad batch of Martians who bust out from an H.G. Wells novel.
“The Occidental Book of the Dead” by T. Geronimo Johnson (Morrow)
In a sprawling narrative centered around a 1992 police shooting in Atlanta, the novel employs a unique structure to tell the story of a Black Army veteran turned police officer whose life begins to shatter in the aftermath of a murder. “Welcome to Braggsville” author Johnson explores corruption, racism, systemic inequality and more in the book, which concludes his cycle of novels set in and around the city.
“Mothsblood” by Lynn D. Jung (Bloomsbury)
A writer from Southern California, Jung offers a dose of dark academia for her debut novel. In “Mothsblood,” the headmistress of a Paris university is found dead, and a young alchemist and a competitive cohort of students are pulled into the case as the murder investigator believes a secretive cult may be responsible.
“Partita” by Barbara Kingsolver (Harper)
In her first novel since the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Demon Copperhead,” Kingsolver returns with a story about a woman whose quiet life is disrupted when a former lover, with whom she had an affair during her days studying at a music conservatory, calls after decades of silence.
“Agate Head / Stone Soup” by Patricia Lockwood (Penguin Books)
Lockwood, one of our funniest and most original voices, is back with a new book of poetry after her memoir “Priestdaddy” and novels such as the Booker Prize finalist “No One Is Talking About This.” “Carlsbad California,” a poem included here, finds the poet collecting treasures on the San Diego County beach while reflecting on a constellation of deeper concerns.
“What Remains” by Brais Lamela; translated by Jacob Rogers (Dorothy, A Publishing Project)
We’re always interested in books from Dorothy, A Publishing Project – named after a badass San Bernardino County librarian who drove around Southern California delivering books – and this slim, translated debut melds fiction, memoir, essay and more to tell the story of a Galician scholar in New York City who’s researching the displacement of the Galicians from Spain under Franco’s rule.
“Fair Ones” by Lydia Millet (W.W. Norton)
One of our most consistently compelling writers in book after book, Millet returns here with a novel about two women who each narrate a section about the sudden death of a mutual friend and its fallout.
“The Rush” by Nathaniel Philbrick (Viking)
The National Book Award-winning historian of “In the Heart of the Sea” returns with a page-turning look at the fevered times of the California Gold Rush. Philbrick evokes a swirling chaos that envelopes gold-crazy arrivals, grasping politicians, Indigenous populations, boom-and-bust millionaires, lawless mobs, Chinese railroad workers, as well as those aiming to employ California’s influence upon the looming Civil War.
“Life Out of Order” by Audrey Niffenegger (Hanover Square)
For fans of Niffenegger’s massive hit, “The Time Traveler’s Wife,” the arrival of a new novel is something to celebrate – especially as this stand-alone has links to that earlier novel. Here, Alba, daughter of the original time traveler, navigates a dystopian future Chicago as she slips through time.
“The Four Wives and Five Deaths of Richard Milford” by Nafissa Thompson-Spires (Scribner)
In this debut novel from the National Book Award-longlisted author of the story collection “Heads of the Colored People,” a womanizing moonshiner is murdered in 1920s Oklahoma and four of the women he’d been involved with are suspects even as the story encompasses much more about life in these times.
“The Savage Mind: An American Legacy” by David Treuer (Little, Brown)
In his follow-up to “The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present,” Treuer, who is Ojibwe from Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota and a professor at USC, melds memoir, history and recent headlines in a work addressed to his children about the nation and the way we are.
“The Names of the New World” by Kawai Strong Washburn (FSG)
After a superstorm ravages Minneapolis, the lives of three survivors become entwined in its wake. Washburn’s second novel follows a crusading lawyer (and amateur MMA fighter), an avaricious investment banker and a mechanic trying to keep his business afloat after nearly being paralyzed in the storm.
Oct 13
“Peck & Peck” by Bonnie Garmus (Scribner)
Riverside native Garmus synthesized an extremely successful formula with 2022’s “Lessons in Chemistry,” and here she returns with her follow-up, which is set in 1980s New York City within the fiery confines of a very unusual poetry journal run by a pair of battling twins.
“Unspeakable Things” by Elizabeth Hand (Little, Brown)
We’re fans of Hand’s writing, especially her Cass Neary novels about a punkish onetime photographer drawn into some dark places. Set in the 1920s, her latest involves two young women on the run after a mysterious death who end up at an estate in the company of London’s high-living Bright Young Things.
“Music Against the Night” by Yiyun Li. (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
The author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir “Things in Nature Merely Grow” returns with a novel about two musical prodigies, one whose family hopes he’ll be the next Mozart and the other an orphan in French India, at the dawn of the 19th century.
“Pan” by Francesco Dimitri and translated by Sophia McDougall (Tor Books)
If the idea of “Peter Pan … but darker” gets your inner Wild Boy or Girl excited, then you’ll be interested in this bloody retelling set in modern-day Rome amid mythic clashes between deities, pirates and more.
Map: 100 Southern California independent bookstores to visit in 2026
Oct. 20
“The Bishop of Durham Attempts to Surrender the City” by Susanna Clarke (Bloomsbury)
After the success of “Piranesi,” Clarke returns to the world of her brilliant “Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell,” which should be a cause for exultation. This new novella tells the story of Ranulf, Bishop of Durham, as he attempts to save his city during a period of discord between humans, fairies and, um, trees.
“Sleuth-Hound” by Dr. Lindsey Fitzharris (FSG)
In this book that combines true crime and historical nonfiction, the author of “The Butchering Art” reveals the story of Joseph Bell, the 19th-century physician and pioneering forensic expert who inspired the creation of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes.
Oct. 27
“The Hollow” by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown)
Connelly, the towering crime-writing bard of Los Angeles and Southern California, returns with a fresh Bosch novel … and you have already stopped reading and gone to pre-order it, haven’t you? Good move.
“The Brightness” by Chad Harbach (Little, Brown)
Fifteen years after Harbach’s baseball novel, “The Art of Fielding,” the author returns with a novel about the friendship of two young women at a Midwestern college as they hurtle headfirst into their twenties and the bumps and bruises of life.
“A Court of Splintered Harmony” by Sarah J. Maas (Bloomsbury)
Look, either you’re already camped out in front of your local independent bookstore for this one or you’re going to need to get reading to catch up as book six of Maas’ mega-popular series arrives on the shelves.
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