The spooky season is upon us, with Halloween coming up soon! Below are some appropriate books for the season, ranging from kid-friendly to super creepy to absolutely terrifying, including new releases from Stephen King and Clay McLeod Chapman and a new audiobook installment for Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman. There’s also a look back at some classic horror, such as Stephen King’s Salem Lot, The Hellbound Heart, the source material for Clive Barker’s Hellraiser, and more that are getting film adaptations.

This Halloween Reads roundup is broken up into three sections: The first list has new books that were released this Fall; the next list has titles that came out earlier this year; and the final list contains older books that were recently adapted for the screen or soon will be. Each entry includes hyperlinks to the print, ebook, and audiobook editions (were applicable).

Continue on to check out my Halloween Reading List: Spooky Book Recommendations For Fall 2022…

Spyglass Media Group has announced that they’re fast tracking a reboot of Hellraiser, the 1987 horror classic written and directed by Clive Barker and starring Doug Bradley as Pinhead. The movie was based on Barker’s own novella The Hellbound Heart.

The new take on Barker’s creation is set to be written and produced by David S. Goyer, whose credits include Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy, the Blade trilogy, and Man of Steel.

It was something I did often in high school and college – the ol’ all-night movie marathon. As a 36-year-old married adult with 2 children, the concept of staying up all through the night watching movies is something that sounds unreasonable and completely illogical. But then I saw the advertisement pop up in my Facebook feed”¦ the Cinema Arts Centre in Huntington, Long Island, NY, was hosting an all-night horror movie marathon. It took me over a week of intense debate as to whether I should do it, but on Saturday morning, with my wife’s permission (of course), I purchased my ticket for their 2018 Up All Night “Pay to Get Out” Horror Movie Marathon and headed out to meet my fate”¦ 8 horror films in 13 hours, one last great All Nighter… for now.

Hellraiser: Judgment
Blu-ray | DVD
Director: Gary J. Tunnicliffe
Screenwriter: Gary J. Tunnicliffe
Cast: Heather Langenkamp, Randy Wayne, Rheagan Wallace, Paul T. Taylor, Damon Carney
Distributor: Lionsgate
Not Rated | 81 Minutes
Release Date: February 13, 2018

Hellraiser: Judgment is the 10th (!) film in the horror franchise, a series that once dripped of promise. The original film, which celebrated its 30th birthday last year, was written and directed by Clive Barker, adapted from his own novella The Hellbound Heart. The original quickly became a horror classic and spawned a great sequel in Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988), and subsequently two more theatrical sequels, each with diminishing returns. The series fell into direct-to-video territory as the new millennium arrived, but at least iconic Doug Bradley remained as lead Cenobite, Pinhead. That was until the awful 2011 Hellraiser: Revelations, a film which Bradley passed on, made solely to keep the Hellraiser property at Dimension Films.

Hellraiser: Judgment debuted a pretty cool trailer and looked a lot more promising than what Hellraiser fans have come to expect from this once great franchise. Gary Tunnicliffe, an acclaimed makeup and effects wiz, wrote several Hellraiser shorts before scripting Revelations, and now serves as a jack-of-all-trades on this one. Judgment debuted on Blu-ray and digital last week, and while not a great film, it far surpasses Revelations, as well as the other direct-to-video sequels.

More below.

The Scarlet Gospels
Hardcover | Paperback | Kindle Edition | Audiobook
Written by Clive Barker
St. Martin’s Press
Release Date: May 19, 2015

Clive Barker still has it (was there ever any doubt?). The Scarlet Gospels, the last chapter of Pinhead the Cenobite’s story, has him face off against Harry D’Amour, his old foe. His ambitions are small – destroy the world and rule over Hell. That’s not too much ask, is it? The Hell Priest does have his trusty hooks, but uses them in the beginning to desiccate the most powerful magicians to gather their secrets, then does not rely on them so much for a lot of the novel. Barker succeeds in asking us what we are most afraid of, and then exponentially expanding it until we cannot even comprehend the terror we are reading. What can you expect when our setting is a desolate New York, followed by a journey through actual Hell?