As Mean Girls taught us, “Halloween is the one time of the year a girl can dress like a total slut and no other girl can say anything about it”. And once you are a teenager, honestly, this is all most people can think of when it comes to Halloween activities. But there’s so much more you can do!
What if you’re just not very into partying, or in the mood to just immerse in a scary universe? Well, I got you! Here are some thriller, suspense, and horror books you can dive into during this time of the year – with Brazilian literature included.
1. Tiny Nightmares: Very Short Stories of Horror, by multiple authors
Tiny Nightmares is the combination of the twenty-first century and classic Halloween horror and drama – in 42 short stories. In this collection, you will read everything from vampires, witches, and monsters, to social media suffocation, global warming, and other modern challenges. With stories from to 3-6 pages, it is the perfect collection for this time of the year.
2. the Chain, by Adrian McKinty
Have you ever heard parents say they would do “anything” for their child? Well, this book takes this saying to its limits. In this suspense fiction, you are going to vicariously live through a victim, a survivor, a criminal, and a kidnapper, without (hopefully) becoming one of them: The Chain forces moms to kidnap other children and pay the rescue, in order to save their own and escape death.
It is an incredibly original, terrifying, and uncomfortable story – perfect for Halloween.
Uma Mulher no Escuro (a woman in the dark), by Raphael Montes
When it comes to Brazilian suspense literature, Raphael Montes is the one you need to look for. In this book, Victoria is the only survivor of a brutal crime that happened 20 years ago with her family. As an adult, she still has many scars from the trauma, and it all comes back when she finds out the murderer is looking for her. From that point, she starts to look for clues and investigate all the details of the crime, to figure out if she is safe or not and whom to trust.
This story won the Jabuti award in 2020, for the best romance of entertainment. The Jabuti award is one of the most traditional and prestigious literature awards in Brazil, so you should definitely give this one a chance!
My Heart is a Chainsaw, by Stephen Graham Jones
This one’s for those of you that always watch horror movies and think “if I was in this situation, I would definitely survive”. In this book, Jade is an outcast half-Indian girl, with an abusive father and absent mother, living in a small American town that isn’t fond of her. Her comfort is horror movies, so when crimes start to happen in her town, she knows exactly what to do.
This very powerful and intense narrative also explores and critiques American Colonialism, Gentrification, and Indigenous displacement. Definitely worth reading.
A última Estação (the last station), by Rodolfo Bezerra and Diogo Betioli
If you ever took the subway late at night and got scared, this is the perfect book for you., because this Brazilian novel involves the famous subway station in São Paulo. In the story, two young men (Gabriel and Alex) take the subway as usual and get into what would be the last ride of the day. Everything seems normal, but the stations are different and the final destination is unknown and staggering.
In this final destination, the characters will be forced to overcome true chaos, horror, death, and supernatural creatures in order to survive and get back home.