If you are here for something to read for Halloween, I have plenty for you. These are my MM Halloween books, and they go from the very cosy to the properly frightening.
So: are you team cosy and light, or team spooky and scary? There is a bit of both on this page. Haunted houses, witches in love, cozy mysteries, a boy sharing his body with a dead one, and the classics of the season with a vampire or two.
Each section points to the full list behind it, if that one turns out to be for you.
On this page
Cosy Magic and Witches
The gentlest corner of the season. Spells that go wrong, curses that need undoing, councils of witches with opinions about your career. Nobody dies unpleasantly in this section and the worst thing that happens to anyone is a badly written poem.
Sorcery and Small Magics
Leovander Loveage is very good at small magic. He can call butterflies with a song and turn your hair pink by snapping his fingers, and anything larger has a habit of exploding in his face, so he stopped trying years ago. Then a forbidden spell goes sideways and leaves him obliged to obey every instruction given by Sebastian Grimm, his talented, respected and thoroughly insufferable rival. Neither of them can report it without ending both their careers, so they head into the Unquiet Wood to find the one sorcerer who might undo it, and the wood is full of outlaws and things with teeth.
Listen to it for free with the Audible trial, if you have not been a member in the past year.
Extraordinary Quests for Amateur Witches
Kieran writes a poem bad enough to be magically hazardous, and it makes him invisible to his own boyfriend. He comes home to find the Witches Council sitting in his living room demanding he finish his training, panics, and announces that his thesis will be to find a cure-all capable of breaking any curse. He has no idea how to do that. He sets off anyway, with his twin sister, her girlfriend and a new crewmate called Sebastian who has not mentioned what he is carrying.
Listen to it for free with the Audible trial, if you have not been a member in the past year.
Breeze Spells and Bridegrooms
Fae and humans are back in London for the Season, and the gap between them is widening, since humans who score badly on magic are sliding into poverty. Roger Barnes proposes a fairer way of testing magical ability and gets paired with Wyndham Wrenwhistle, a fae who has disliked him since they were children. Their truce lasts until somebody spreads a lie about them, and then a gossip column announces their engagement, which neither of them can deny without ruining both families. So they plan a wedding and a piece of policy at the same time.
Listen to it for free with the Audible trial, if you have not been a member in the past year.
Funny and Not Remotely Frightening
For the evenings when you want the costume and none of the dread. A zombie ferret, a god of the underworld who became a funeral director, and a werewolf pack that adopts a starving vampire because nobody could think of a better plan.
Moonlit Nights & Northern Lights
Rory’s missing ex-boyfriend’s phone comes back online in the one place he swore he would never return to: the pack he left years ago. The gathering he has been invited to is obviously a trap, and the man sent with him is Theodore, the telepathic detective who once locked him in a cell through a full moon. They have to pass as a couple long enough to find out what is happening to the missing shifters, which means Rory has to stop thinking insults at a man who can hear them. Freddy the zombie ferret comes along.
Listen to it for free with the Audible trial, if you have not been a member in the past year.
The rest of Killigrew Street
A different couple and a different case each time, with the same team of supernatural detectives.
Dearly Departed
Hayden Harlow used to be the god of the underworld. He now runs a funeral home in a small town, keeps to himself and has arranged a long immortal life around being left alone. Levi Wilder is the florist, he is cheerful, and he has no intention of letting that arrangement stand. Underneath the grumpy and the sunshine there is a lot about grief, which the author wrote while losing his own father.
Listen to it for free with the Audible trial, if you have not been a member in the past year.
Adopt a Vampire
A newborn vampire, starving and entirely useless at being a vampire, gets spotted by two werewolves. The alpha decides the sensible thing is to keep him. Most of the book is a pack working out the logistics of feeding someone whose diet they do not understand, and it is about as soft as anything on this page.
Listen to it for free with the Audible trial, if you have not been a member in the past year.
Ghosts
Two gentle ones, because the dead are not always a threat. If this is what you came for, the whole shelf is in my MM ghost romance list, haunted houses and murder cases included.
Cemetery Boys
Yadriel’s family will not accept that he is a brujo, so he performs the ritual himself to prove it, and summons a ghost he then cannot get rid of. He was aiming for his murdered cousin. He gets Julian Diaz, the school’s resident troublemaker, who has loose ends of his own and no intention of going quietly. They strike a deal: help Julian finish his business, and he will let himself be released. Yadriel keeps finding reasons to take longer.
Listen to it for free with the Audible trial, if you have not been a member in the past year.
My Inherited House Might Be Haunted
Rhett inherits a Victorian house and discovers that the previous occupants never left. Nobody warned him about the familiars either, or the magic he turns out to have. He would like a boyfriend as well, if that can be arranged.
Listen to it for free with the Audible trial, if you have not been a member in the past year.
If You Actually Want to Be Scared
The four below earn the season. Monsters that come out of a sketchbook, a spirit that takes a boy’s body and keeps it, a mother who will not leave the house she died in, and a library where the staff keep turning up dead. Check the content warnings on this section rather than the others.
Don’t Let the Forest In
Andrew Perrault writes twisted fairytales for one person, Thomas Rye, who illustrates them and whose parents have recently vanished without explanation. Thomas comes back to school with blood on his sleeve and says nothing about it. Andrew follows him into the forbidden forest one night and finds him fighting something that came out of his own drawings, and the creatures are killing anyone who gets close to him. So the two of them fight the woods every night, and the more attached they get to each other, the stronger the monsters grow.
Listen to it for free with the Audible trial, if you have not been a member in the past year.
The Corruption of Hollis Brown
Hollis lives in a town nobody can afford to leave, and the best things in his life are two friends and the occasional fight. Accused of injuries he did not cause, he takes a deal from a homeless boy who offers to help in exchange for food and a bed. The boy is Walt, he has been dead a long time, and once he is inside Hollis he takes the body and pushes its owner into a corner of his own mind. Walt has business in this town. What neither of them expects is to start liking the arrangement.
Listen to it for free with the Audible trial, if you have not been a member in the past year.
Hallowed Be Thy Name
Augustus Saint killed his mother, and her ghost has not left the house on North Lane since. This is the gothic end of the season: heavy on atmosphere, with the horror kept psychological, and the least comfortable book on the page.
Rath and Rune, Book 1: Unhallowed
A librarian is sure his colleague did not die by accident. The bookbinder brought in to replace the dead man opens an anonymous letter telling him to leave town. One of them saves the other from an attack, and after that they investigate together, which suits neither of their plans. Vesper is keeping a great deal to himself, and the library is keeping worse.
Listen to it for free with the Audible trial, if you have not been a member in the past year.
No Monsters, Just People
Two mysteries for the readers who want the season without anything too supernatural in it. A gothic mansion and a body, and a plumber whose only unexplained talent is knowing where things are buried. Both are cosy, and the worst thing in either book is somebody’s neighbour.
Mystery Magnet
Dashiell Dawson Dane moves to a coastal town in Oregon to be a famous novelist’s assistant, and she is murdered on his first night in her house. The police then find a secret passage running from his bedroom to hers, which makes him the obvious suspect. Clearing his name means doing the detective work himself, in a mansion called Hemlock House, with a deputy who is not as unimpressed by him as he pretends.
Listen to it for free with the Audible trial, if you have not been a member in the past year.
Pressure Head
Tom Paretski plumbs for a living and has a sixth sense for finding things that were meant to stay hidden, which is why the police call him out to help locate a body. Waiting at the scene is Phil Morrison, the private investigator on the case, Tom’s old school crush, and the closeted bully whose behaviour left Tom with a bad hip. Phil is openly gay now, sceptical about the psychic business, and very interested in both Tom’s talent and Tom.
Listen to it for free with the Audible trial, if you have not been a member in the past year.
New Collab Series for Halloween 2026
These are the collab series coming out this Halloween season, each one written by a group of authors in a shared world. I love this kind of thing, and my wallet usually does not survive it 🤭
ExorSquad is the series I am watching this season. Eight paranormal MM books, one released every Thursday from the start of September to the end of October. I have not read any of them yet, so take this as a heads up rather than a recommendation, and judge the titles for yourself. In release order:
Creepin U: Season 2 is set at Creelin University, where the students are monsters and the romances are between men. Eight standalones, each with a happy ending, from 1 to 16 October. In release order:
Mayhem Manuscripts Cryptids is built around cryptids, the creatures the locals warn you about and nobody believes in until one of them turns out to be real. Thirteen standalones, from 1 to 30 October. Going by the blurbs they look darker than the other two series. In release order:
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MM Halloween Reads: Frequently Asked Questions
Which one should I start with?
Sorcery and Small Magics is the easiest way in, cosy and funny with a curse to break. For something genuinely unsettling, go straight to Don’t Let the Forest In. And Mystery Magnet gives you the whole month of October with nothing supernatural in it.
Which of these are actually scary?
Three. Don’t Let the Forest In has real body horror, The Corruption of Hollis Brown is frightening in a quieter, psychological way, and Hallowed Be Thy Name is gothic and deeply uncomfortable. Everything else on this page aims for atmosphere.
I want witches, where do I start?
The first section is all yours. Sorcery and Small Magics for rivals and a cursed bond, Extraordinary Quests for Amateur Witches for a quest and a council of witches, Breeze Spells and Bridegrooms if you would rather have Regency fae and a fake engagement.
Before You Go
So, team cosy or team spooky? Tell me what you are planning to read for the season, I am always taking recommendations.
And if you have a favourite I have missed, tell me that too. I will read it.
New to the genre? Start with the map.
