Wicked Selections
Spirited picks from our members of staff

Wicked Selections

From chilling tales and gothic poetry to witches and ghost stories, our staff have picked a few highlights that help them get into the Halloween spirit.

Take a look and see if something special grabs you!  

To see the full list of available items, please scroll to the end of this article.

All items can be bought directly from our website, but for any questions or enquiries, please contact [email protected].

His face white in the moonlight, his hands raised in horror, glaring helplessly at the frightful thing which was hunting him down.
Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles
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Fuchsia
Travel

It’s late October in the American Midwest, and a strange carnival has just rolled into town. Two best friends see their anticipation turn quickly to fear, as the malevolent intentions of the troupe become apparent...

Surely one of the all time greatest Halloween novels, this book lives rent free in my head. As the evenings draw in, it's a good one to read aloud.

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Euphemia
Far East – China & Japan

During the Second World War the Japanese artist Sekino Junichiro produced a small number of extremely beautiful books using the limited supplies he had to hand. Printed in an impressive combination of woodblock, etching and letterpress, this book is Sekino's interpretation of the Edo-period classic, the Ugetsu Monogatari or 'Tales of Moonlight and Rain’. Each spread is a different ghost story, paired with a haunting etching. A chilling book produced at a chilling time.

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Rainey
Travel

"Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary, over many a quaint and curious volumes of forgotten lore -- while I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping ...".

So begins one of the great gothic poems, its rhymes and repetition ratcheting up the tension as the tale unfolds. John Rea Neill's green and white illustrations are delightfully creepy and an excellent companion to these classic poems.

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Alice
Autographs & Modern Books

My highlight is a rather eccentric tome, "Bones and I" Or, The Skeleton At Home by G. J. Whyte-Melville. I love the title and the distinctive 'yellowback' cover design, with the smoking skeleton. Also, the fact that it is a curiously meandering yet meditative book that uses conversations between a skeleton and a recluse to probe some of the big questions of life. Plus, it has a chapter on vampires!

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Hazel
Early European Books & Illuminations

My pick for Spooky Season this year is this hauntingly illuminated manuscript leaf, from the Office of the Dead portion of an early sixteenth-century Italian processional. The spectral skull and bones decorating the opening initial are truly chilling and immediately catch the eye. It's maybe a little morbid, but I always enjoy reaching the Office of the Dead in liturgical manuscripts and their printed counterparts - it's a section of the liturgy that is almost always interestingly and arrestingly illustrated.

As well as featuring in this year's spooky catalogue, this manuscript is item no.3 in our Ars Moriendi list, also available to view in the 'catalogues' section of our website. Happy Halloween!

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Ben
Private Press, Illustration & Fine Binding

"Though this be madness, yet there is method in't" - A striking, unsettling and meticulously executed binding on the Tallone edition of Hamlet by Glenn Bartley.

I have always been fascinated by the connection between books and bodies. We both have spines, we both wear clothes, think of jackets or chemise, and the term for the earliest printed books, incunabula, translates literally as a baby's 'cradle' or 'swaddling clothes'. Seeing the face of poor Yorick staring out from the flesh-coloured leather of Glenn Bartley's binding, stained with a swathe of blood red, one wonders whether the connection is even closer than I thought. Perhaps too close...

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Hugo

Nothing else frightens me like the evil of our fellow man. The source of much devastating misery, our treatment of one another is often much more terrifying than the fictional monsters we create. This novel, based on Dostoevsky’s exile and imprisonment in Siberia, offers one of the most striking psychological analyses of human evil. Best known under the title House of the Dead, it evokes the raw brutality of Dostoevsky’s life in prison camp. This edition is the first in English and was the only of Dostoevsky’s works to appear in English translation during his own lifetime.

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Author
Maggs Bros.
28 Sep, 2026

Catalogue

Something Wicked!
Items
80
Relevance Date Added Title Author Year Price

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