Charlotte Stein's Reading Recommendations For Spooky Season

Guest post written by Falling for a Villainous Vampire author Charlotte Stein
Charlotte Stein is the RT- and DABWAHA-nominated author of over fifty short stories, novellas and novels, including When Grumpy Met Sunshine, a book The New York Times called “a triumph”. When not writing deeply emotional and intensely sexy books, she can be found eating jelly turtles, getting way too excited over a million movies and TV shows, and occasionally lusting after moustaches. She lives in Leeds with her family.

About Falling for a Villainous Vampire: The third standalone in Charlotte Stein’s Sanctuary for Supernatural Creatures series, featuring a blood-pumping enemies-to-lovers romance for the ages! Released October 27th 2026.

There are lots of things I love about Fall. The leaves, obviously. The misty dark cold nights, of course. The sudden abundance of soups and hot chocolate, the layers of clothes you can now wear, the corduroy, the Halloween goodies, the spookiness. It’s almost the entire reason I wrote my paranormal romcom series, The Sanctuary For Supernatural Creatures, and the latest book in it, Falling For A Villainous Vampire. If I could live in a town like Hollow Brook right now, I would. Despite the presence of demonic dogs, jock werewolves who want to kill you, and mean old assholes who want to ban books from libraries.

But what I most love about this time of year is something else altogether.

It’s not the little things. It’s all the films and books I save up for this scariest of all months, and dole out to myself in great big delicious dollops. I plan all my watching and reading around the fantastical, the terrifying, the gothic, the spookily cozy. And every year I invariably come across some absolute bangers.

So without further ado, here are my top nine (sometimes) deliciously sexy and (often) delightfully spine tingling and fantastical recent reads:

A Witch’s Guide To Magical Innkeeping by Sangu Mandanna

I just love everything about these charming, emotional, perfectly judged books. The tropes we all adore creep up on you, organically, and then hit with the force of a thousand suns.

Good Spirits by BK Borison

This is kind of more of a Christmas book than a Halloween book, but the world of ghosts and reapers is so well drawn I had to include it. Borison constructs set ups with such technical brilliance I can only look on, in envy.

Love You To Death by Jenna Levine

When you write a book as good as My Roommate Is A Vampire, you’d be forgiven if you never wrote anything quite as brilliant. Fortunately for all of us, Levine not only did but has now delivered a whole new type of banger. Amazing.

Hexy Beast by Avery Flynn

I need people to read this awesome series more. It’s fun and so funny and features a place you want to live in. Flynn is a legend. What are you waiting for?

Deja Brew by Celestine Martin

Every one of the books in this series are awesome, and much as with Flynn, more people need to read them. Martin perfectly creates a world and characters that are both incredibly real, and wonderfully magical.

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones

Okay this isn’t a romance, just to warn you. But it is one of the best horror novels I’ve ever read in my LIFE. Shook me to my core. If you want to be truly scared and also probably bawl your eyes out, this one is it.

The Last Thorn by Talia Hibbert

Not technically a Halloween kind of book, but I got to read it early and it’s so good you’re gonna have to endure me screaming about it forever. I could be asked to write about my favourite groceries and I would somehow work this masterpiece in there.

How (Not) To Renovate A Haunted House by Jenny L Howe

Not only is Howe a passionate advocate for fat girls in fiction, but she writes the best books. I was utterly delighted to see her dip her toe into supernatural shenanigans, and this book fully delivers.