Five for Halloween - Highlights, 10/27/10

“By the pricking of my thumbs,
something wicked this way comes.” (Macbeth, Act IV, scene i)

Something wicked this way comes / Ray Bradbury
Sometime after midnight, a week before Halloween, the carnival rolls Green Town, IL. “Cooger & Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show has come. . . to destroy every life touched by its strange and sinister mystery. And two boys will discover the secret of its smoke, mazes, and mirrors; two friends who will soon know all too well the heavy cost of wishes. . . and the stuff of nightmare.” (from the cover)

And then there were none / Agatha Christie
From the Queen of Crime, one of her best-selling mysteries. Ten guests arrive on an island and one by one, are mysteriously murdered. See also, By the pricking of my thumbs.

Complete stories and poems of Edgar Allan Poe
Specializing in the macabre, Poe was the father of the modern detective story.

In “The Fall of the House of Usher”, the narrator receives a desperate letter from Roderick Usher, a "boyhood friend" requesting a visit. The visit to the old mansion becomes a Gothic horror story.

In “The Masque of the Red Death,” Prince Prospero seals one thousand royals in a castle in an attempt to escape the Red Death that has killed half the kingdom’s population.

In “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the narrator describes and carries out his plan to kill an old man and hide his dismembered body beneath the floorboards. The plan goes well until the killer hears his victim’s heart beating.

Killer Stuff / Sharon Fiffer
Jane Wheel, former business woman, is now a picker for an antique dealer, scrounging yard sales and auctions for treasures. When she stumbles on two dead bodies and winds up a murder suspect, Jane finds herself sleuthing for killers rather than killer stuff.
Fiffer is a native of Kankakee and a Bishop Mac grad whose books are set in Illinois and incorporates many local references. Her fifth Jane Wheel mystery will be published soon.

The girl who loved Tom Gordon / Stephen King
Nine-year-old Trisha McFarland wanders away from her brother and mother while hiking on the Appalachian Trail. When night falls, she finds solace listening to the Boston Red Sox game, following the performance of her hero, relief pitcher Tom Gordon. She imagines Gordon is with her as she tries to survive a night in the woods hiding from “an enemy known only by the slaughtered animals and mangled trees in its wake.” (from the inside cover)