Mystery Suspense Halloween

There’s usually a chill in the air when Halloween arrives—but in these three novellas by beloved cozy mystery authors Leslie Meier, Lee Hollis, and Liz Ireland, the crimes are even colder than the haunted climate . . .

Halloween is still a week away, but disturbing things are already starting to occur in Sabrina Daley's picturesque hometown of Treasure Cove. First, a local restaurant burns down under strange circumstances. Next, one of Sabrina's regulars at Daley Buzz Coffee Company is found murdered. Can Sabrina solve both cases in time to treat herself to some candy, or will her Halloween night end with a deadly trick?

Every town has a history. Ours is just a little darker than most. For years, I've celebrated Halloween and Hollow Bridge's history with everyone else who lives here. Parades, festivals, and insane Halloween parties have always been a staple for us. Some bad behavior is expected, given what we're celebrating. But murder has never been on the table before. Someone in Hollow Bridge wants to bring the stories to life, and they're not firing any warning shots. When rumors of someone wearing a Halloween mask surface, it isn't long before the first person is killed.

This is the original classic story of Bram Stoker's undead monster. It has influenced Western portrayals (including Buffy and Angel) of vampires and vampirism for nearly a century. Even after all this time, Bram Stoker's Dracula remains the undisputed masterpiece of horror writing.

Halloween Hijinks: Amid a backdrop of zombies on the run and Halloween festivities, animal control officer Zoe Donovan is faced with losing something she loves in order to save someone she loves when she finds a dead body in the basement of a haunted house just two days before Halloween. With the help of her best friends, Levi and Ellie, and her dog Charlie, she delves into a mystery as complex and multilayered as the feelings she develops for her ex-nemesis Zak Zimmerman.

Popular children's author Patrick Carman has captured the imaginations of children everywhere with his Elliot's Park series. In Haunted Hike, playful squirrels Elliot, Chip, Twitch, and all their furry friends are dressed in Halloween costumes and ready for a squirrel hike in Camp Canyon. But the adventure takes a scary turn when the squirrels see a ghost along the way! So the curious bunch sets out to find out whether the ghost is real or just a hoax.

When five kids are invited to a cemetery at midnight, they think it's just a prank. When they find a gravestone that instructs them to dig up a grave, they think it's just a joke. It's no joke. An evil force is unleashed - a force that takes the shape of their worst fears. Once these fears are released, they won't go away. Not without a fight....

Halloween is coming to North Yorkshire, and the seaside town of Whitby is getting ready for its annual Goth Festival, where Goths of all ages descend on the town for a week of music, costumes, and spooky fun. When one of Liz McLuckie’s friends has a terrifying encounter with the Barghest—Yorkshire’s legendary Dog of Death—it sparks a series of mysterious fatalities in the town. Are supernatural forces at work, or is there another, more human, explanation?

For the town of White Eagle, Montana, the house that served as the subject of ghostly stories by the campfire was a huge old mansion built more than 50 years ago by a wealthy industrialist as a summer home for his wife and five children. The house, void of love and laughter, served as a sort of luxury prison far away from the hustle and bustle of Hartford Harrington’s full and busy life in San Francisco.

There's more to celebrate this Halloween when Bailey's college friend Raven prepares to walk down the aisle in spooky seasonal style. As a bridesmaid, Bailey is overwhelmed helping with wedding preparations while the annual holiday festival scares up business for her bookstore. She also finds herself playing peacekeeper between fellow bridesmaids Colby and Ivy, whose arguments add even more conflict to the already simmering tensions within the wedding party between the groom's traditional family and the bride's bohemian parents.

In book seven, Tess and Brady are planning a haunted house fundraiser so they can expand the shelter to include a top-of-the-art training facility, as well as a permanent residence for hard-to-place animals. During the decorating party, they find a skeleton—a real one—hidden behind a false wall in the attic. They turn the skeleton over to Mike, but once they do, everything starts going wrong, and Tess wonders if they haven't somehow managed to awaken an angry spirit. The deeper they dig, the more they find, including a second more recent body hidden within the creepy old house.

In the midst of the annual Halloween frenzy, TJ finds herself pulled into a series of events at the high school where she works. Not only must she help one of the girls on her team deal with a case of cyberbullying, but she must help a student who has recently suffered a personal tragedy. And as if TJ wasn't busy enough, in walks Samantha Colton, a reporter for Second Look, a television series that takes a look back at unsolved murders.

Four students travel to Ravencliffe, an eerie abandoned hotel perched on steep cliffs on the Welsh coast. After a series of unexplained accidents, only three of them leave. The fourth, Leo, disappears, and is never seen again. A decade on, the friends have lost contact. Oscar is fame-hungry, making public appearances and selling his story. Richard sank into alcoholism and is only just recovering. Bex just wants to forget – until one last opportunity to go back offers the chance to find out what really happened to Leo.

Everyone has heard the story of the Narrow. The river that runs behind the Atwood School is only a few feet across and seemingly placid, but beneath the surface, the waters are deep and vicious. It’s said that no one who has fallen in has ever survived. Eden White knows that isn’t true. Six years ago, she saw Delphine Fournier fall into the Narrow—and live.

Having suffered from anxiety attacks since she was eight years old, creating monsters has become a sort of therapy for Marion Jones. When she sculpts and paints, her fingers don’t tingle, the heaviness lifts from her chest, and she can actually breathe. So instead of grabbing pizza and milkshakes after school like most other kids in South Haven, Marion holes up in her room, working away on her monsters. And it’s paid off because she’s just finished her first full-face mask: a gruesome sea monster she’s named Winston.

Normally, spooky season is Bailey Briggs's favorite time of year, and her Halloween-themed small town's time to shine. But between managing Lazy Bones Books, working on her graphic novel-in-progress, and running the Spooky Season Literary Festival, Bailey hardly has a moment to enjoy Elyan Hollow's spot-on seasonal vibes. Not to mention, at every turn she seems to be tripping over the contentious crew of Gone Ghouls, a ghost-hunting reality TV show currently filming around town.

Vincent waited lifetimes to find me, but in an instant our future together has been shattered. He was betrayed by Violette, someone we both called a friend, and I lost him. Now Violette is determined to rule over France's immortals, and she's willing to wage a war to get what she wants. It shouldn't be possible, none of it should be, but this is my reality. I know Vincent is somewhere out there, I know he's not completely gone, and I will do anything to save him.

Sammy and her friends are startled when they interrupt what seems to be an attempted murder on Halloween. While trick-or-treating at a spooky old, house, they find the door open, and inside a man is tied to a chair while a fire rages on the floor. A robbery? But what valuable could be missing from the home of a reclusive old man?

It’s autumn in New England and Truly and her fellow Pumpkin Falls Private Eyes are gearing up for the annual Halloween Festival. Aunt True and her new husband, Rusty, have bought Ethel and Elmer Farnsworth’s dilapidated old farm on the edge of town, where they’re going to raise sheep and where Truly and her grandparents have volunteered to farm- and sheep-sit while the newlyweds are on their honeymoon. But as always, there are mysteries and secrets afoot in Pumpkin Falls. Jack-o’-lanterns outside the shops downtown are going missing—in broad daylight!

As the town of Greenwich, Connecticut, counts down to a spooky celebration on October 31st, a horrifying murder leaves Melanie Travis pawing for clues in a hair-raising game of trick-or-treat.