"Bad Apples" (Five Slices of Halloween Horror)

For today's countdown to Halloween post, more literary horror, this time very topical one. As I have mentioned recently, I like to vary the types of horror I read come this time of year, mixing Gothic ghost stories with modern horror. I also like to read at least Halloween anthologies. As I had finished all my Halloween books and was eager to read new ones, I recently purchased Bad Apples, the first book of a series. I understand Evans Light edited it and I had really enjoyed Doorbells at Dusk, which he also edited. You can find my post on Doorbells here. I go back to it every year. So anyway, long story short, I started reading Bad Apples. It has five stories in it, a bit long to be short stories, more like novelettes or even novellas. And so far, it's a blast.

Doorbells at Dusk

For today’s countdown to Halloween reading suggestion: Doorbells at Dusk. It is an anthology of contemporary horror stories set on Halloween night. Or day, sometimes. Quite a lot to love here: a paranoid psycho turns out to be right about an alien invasion of doppelgängers, a young boy from a religious family who may or may not have a mental illness discovers (or hallucinates) his true supernatural parentage, a gang of home invaders get into trouble with undead creatures, a divorced father high on booze and drugs becomes afraid of the monster hiding under his son’s bed, a teenage boy unleashes a devilish entity by carving pumpkins, a midwife turns out to be a baby snatching witch. And that’s just a few of the stories there. Not great literature perhaps, but very entertaining and it does give good chills. It was this year's discovery for me in my Halloween reads.