It was another big Halloween at SFFWorld, I wound up posting 7 book reviews during October in the lead up to and (in the case of one book) on Halloween.
This is my favorite bookish time of year, especially as just over 50% of what I’ve been reading every year for the past few years has been horror. Here's what I featured, going back to the start of the month.
The Sundowner’s Dance by Todd Kiesling kicked off the Halloween 2025 celebration at SFFWorld. This is the second year in a row I’ve included a Todd Kiesling novel in the countdown. The man delivers on the creeps and the emotions.
Few writers deliver as often (multiple books per year) with such quality as Jonathan Maberry, including his Lovecraftian/Space Opera/Military Science Fiction novel NecroTek. This is not his first Halloween appearance at SFFWorld, nor will it be his last… because (like Jonathan Janz's back-to-back appearance in 2024) while NecroTek published in 2024, the sequel published on October 14, 2025, which is when my review of Coldwar:A NecroTek Novel post.
You wouldn’t think a septuagenarian would be the Final Girl star of a slasher / murder mystery novel, but then you may not have read The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre by Philip Fracassi. This novel impressed the hell out of me and fell in love with Rose DuBois as a protagonist.
Last year (2024), the DarkInk event at the Doylestown Bookstore was a great event and provided some books for the Halloween Reads. The same can be said for the 2025 event because Small Town Monsters by Diana Rodriguez-Wallach was a book I picked up at that event and absolutely adored. She was the surprise star of the day for me because I hadn't read her previously and she just oozed enthusiasm during her panel.
Over the last 2 or 3 years, Ronald Malfi has become a must read horror writer for me, Senseless kept that trend alive. A little different from his previous novels that leaned more into the crime genre, but an excellent novel nonetheless.
Closing out my contribution to the Countdown to Halloween is the 2025 novel from a writer who just might be the current Queen of Horror, Rachel Harrison and her take on the Haunted House story, Play Nice.
