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In our third and final blog feature for this Halloween season, we’re featuring books that are filled with creatures and cryptids. In these books, you’ll find curses and family trauma, monsters of the deep and monsters of the mind, Bigfoot and deadly deer, anthropomorphic animals and Frankensteined children, mermaids and vampires. Happy Halloween, you lovely readers!

Lone Women

Victor LaValle is so good! Just — so good. His new book blends horror with the myth of the American West, in a story about Adelaide, a woman who will go to extraordinary lengths to protect both herself and the secret of her family's curse. This book is so inventive, so startling, so pleasantly strange, and has one of the most satisfying endings I've read in a long time. Already, I know it's one of the books that's going to get better the more I think about it. — Kelsey F.

Vampires of El Norte

The author of The Hacienda returns with a spooky and thrilling supernatural western that pits vampires against vaqueros. Vampires of El Norte is dripping in gothic goodness and a deep sense of the history of 1840s Mexico (thanks in no small part to Isabel Cañas’s deep well of knowledge and research of the area). Come for the vampires, stay for the love story. — Kelsey F.

Whalefall

The creature in question in this novel is the titular eighty-foot sperm whale, which our narrator (you guessed it) falls into while scuba diving, searching for his father’s remains. What follows is a tensely, deftly plotted novel — Jay only has so much time before his air runs out. In order to survive, he has to confront monsters, both literal (squid!!) and metaphorical (the guilt and trauma related to his father’s death). This book is truly one of a kind, guaranteed to keep you up reading late into the night. — Olive C.

Wild Spaces

This slim novella is anywhere but slim on story: set in South Carolina, a young boy’s idyllic childhood is disrupted by monsters, both literal and figurative, when his mom’s estranged, enigmatic father reappears. A heartache of a family drama, wrenched through with monsters and inner turmoil — you’ll swallow this book in one, fast gulp, guaranteed. — Olive C.

The Salt Grows Heavy

Without a doubt, the most insane thing (actually and in a good way) you'll read in 112 pages. The fairy tales got everything wrong. The kids are all frankensteined, the mermaid is eating discarded body parts, and the plague doctor is the hottest character ever written. Cassandra Khaw, I love you. — Stacy Wayne D.

The Beast You Are

The Beast You Are, the new story collection from horror legend Paul Tremblay, is filled with monsters and anthropomorphic animals, ghosts and spontaneously appearing buildings, mysterious letters and online communities. Through his reliably great writing, which fuses horror and psychological suspense, Tremblay explores grief, heartbreak, substance abuse, trauma, and the general horror of existing in our world today. Creepy, self-aware, and experimental — The Beast You Are is delightful. — Kelsey F.

Patricia Wants to Cuddle

This campy horror novel offers a surprisingly perfect match — reality TV show contestants and lesbian (?) Bigfoot! I had so much fun reading this one over the weekend while camping. The PNW setting is an excellent backdrop for the ensuing drama. — Charlotte S.

The Ballad of Black Tom

I am a proud card-carrying member of the Victor LaValle fan club (metaphorically speaking) (there’s a reason he’s appearing twice on this list). I always read any new book of his immediately; I remember when this one came out in 2016, I nabbed it day-of at my local bookstore and inhaled the pleasantly novella-sized book overnight. Delightfully and creepily Lovecraftian, The Ballad of Black Tom follows Thomas Tester, a musician doing his best to get by in 1920s Harlem. I don’t want to give too much away — saying the book is Lovecraftian is probably spoiler enough — so I’ll just finish this blurb by saying: you want to read this book. I promise you do. — Kelsey F.

The Only Good Indians

I managed to avoid any reviews that betrayed the plot of this one, and was rewarded with such a fierce, propulsive, unsettling read that I’m not about to spoil it for you. Just know this: Stephen Graham Jones’s latest novel is definitively not for the squeamish, and every bit of buzz swirling around it is warranted. — Tove H.

The Fisherman

The Fisherman is my favorite kind of horror: the kind the combines grief and existential fear alongside some truly terrifying and unnerving scares. When two men (their friendship founded on both having lives cratered by loss) find out about the Creek, a place that promises potential redemption, they decide to check it out, only for their venture to turn from mostly nice to bad to scary to increasing depths of worse-worse-worse. Filled by stories within stories within stories, like an unsettling Russian nesting doll, The Fisherman is a satisfying blend of cosmic, psychological, and monstrous horror that’s laced with dread and grief. Has to be read to be believed!! — Kelsey F.

The Book of Queer Saints (Vol. 2)

This book is, unfortunately, not yet available from Powell's (which is why we've linked to the publisher, Medusa Press), but we felt like we'd be remiss if we didn't include this anthology collection, which includes such incredible authors as Alison Rumfitt, Paula D. Ashe, and our very own Stacy Wayne Durham!! Put in your preorders now, this is a deliriously horrifying, gory, and erotic collection you won't want to miss.