5 new bloodcurdling reads to keep you up at night

Spooky season is here. That means it’s time to bust out the creepy home décor and brainstorm costumes for all your Halloween festivities. To help get into that frightful mood, consider these five new hair-raising books.

“Stay Buried”

Employing a dual timeline, Florida author Jennifer McMahon tells a bone-chilling tale about the local knackerman, a person who disposes of dead or dying farm animals, in remote Boone’s Ferry, Vermont. In 1919, the knackerman dies from a strange illness killing off all the horses, only to later return among the living to wreak havoc and attack residents. In 2016, his spirit still haunts the town when siblings Ashley and Malcolm arrive to take possession of a mysterious property they inherit from their recently deceased grandmother. Determined to find out what happened to their mother, who disappeared from there two years earlier, they search for clues while dealing with the standoffish townspeople and their peculiar tradition of leaving offerings for a vengeful spirit. (Gallery Book, out now)

“Never Whistle At Night Part II: Back for Blood”

The second volume of an anthology of scary short stories by Indigenous writers, this collection edited by Shane Hawk and Theodore C. Van Alst Jr. delivers a variety of chills ranging from psychological thrillers to gory tales of horror. Among the contributors is Tommy Orange, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for his 2018 novel “There, There.” His story “Little Tree” follows the disturbing adventures of two boys who escape a house fire, tangle with an ogre-like truck driver and encounter hairy, flesh-eating monsters. The tale is a commentary on the literary hoax surrounding the 1976 publication of “The Education of Little Tree” by Forrest Carter, a pseudonym for Asa Earl Carter, a segregationist and former Ku Klux Klan member who falsely claimed to be Native American. (Vintage, out now)

“The Sisters of Crimson House”

Coming from a long line of women with psychic abilities, Charley Bryde is frustrated by her lack of soothsaying skills in this debut novel by Melissa Anderson Sweazy, host of the podcast “You Can See Me in the Dark.” But Charley is going broke so she pretends to have the supernatural gene and turns Crimson House, her family’s Memphis, Tennessee, mansion, into a haunted tourist attraction. When the arrival of a skeptic intent on exposing Charley as a fraud coincides with the return of Charley’s estranged sister Miranda, long-buried secrets about their family and Crimson House are revealed, threatening to destroy the siblings. (Sourcebooks Landmark, out now)

“The House Built on Alligator Bones”

The wealthy Greer clan on Amelia Island, Florida, is haunted by a family curse, a malevolent spirit and a monstrous mythical alligator in this debut novel by Sophia Huneycutt. After her mother dies unexpectedly, Dartrine Beaumont travels to the dark side of the Sunshine State where a grandmother Dart never knew existed lives in a Gilded Age mansion called Greer House. There Dart discovers she’s in line to inherit a 125-year-old network of alligator farms, and along with it, a rival who wants control of them. As Dart settles into the mansion and starts working at one of the farms, her excitement over meeting long-lost family members begins to diminish when a variety of threats arise, including a shadowy creature that creeps around the house at night and odd occurrences at the farm where alligators only hiss at members of the Greer family. (Dutton, out now)