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Warning! This post contains images of books that have been recycled into crafty decorations, which some readers might find disturbing. If you can’t stand the thought of a book being torn apart for decorative purposes, you may not wish to go on.

October is the month we’re basically made up of sugar, obsessed with watching as many horror movies as possible, and reading ALL the dark books. Throw in Halloween crafts plus putting together our costumes—did we mention all the Halloween candy we eat?!—and you can see why it’s our favorite month.

In the spirit of continuing the fun we decided to play a game: #HalloweenABook. Make sure to join us on Twitter!

The leaves are falling and there’s a nip in the air. But before we pull out our sweaters and switch over to a soup-only diet, we have to check in with some of literature’s dearly departed and wish them a happy Halloween. For those of you who don’t commune with dead authors on a regular basis, we’ve decided to check in with a few of our favorites as they showed us around the halls they still haunt.

[stills from Star Trek: The Next Generation, Paramount Television]

October, the month of Halloween, has long been the time to revel in fears and scares. For the crew of Starfleet vessels, however, they have no time for safe cathartic thrills when constantly threatened by hostile species, new forms of alien life and the harsh environment of space. It could seem counterintuitive to believe that Starfleet officers are afraid of anything when they so regularly prove themselves to be cool under pressure, calmly handling the week’s latest potentially deadly crisis. Yet these Starfleet officers have rather unconventional fears – nonplussed by a Romulan sneak attack, but intimidated by something far less deadly.

[still from Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, 20th Century Fox]

Stephen King once said, in the original foreword to Night Shift, that “the great appeal of horror fiction…is that it serves as a rehearsal for our own deaths.” With Halloween around the corner, scary stories are everywhere – on TV, on the bookshelves at your local indie, under your bed – but why do we get so excited about stories that give us goosebumps that we turn into something resembling brain-hungry zombies?

Have you ever wondered where the expression “monkey on my back” comes from? Fret no longer. Quirk Books is here to help with that dang monkey.