There’s no better time to watch a slasher movie—or read a slasher book—than October, and if your idea of perfect Halloween entertainment involves villains like Michael Myers or Freddy Krueger, the book I’m recommending today is the Halloween read for you. Brian McAuley’s CURSE OF THE REAPER is a thriller tailor-made for, as his dedication so aptly puts it, the “Halloween people.” Bloody, meta, occasionally self-deprecating, and always wickedly entertaining, CURSE OF THE REAPER draws inspiration from the world of slasher films to tell a delightfully devious tale of an actor, the silver screen villain to which he devoted his entire career, and the grip that villain might just have on him in the real world. This book is all kinds of bloody fun, a perfect Halloween reading choice for anyone who has ever contemplated which Ghostface killer(s) they would be most likely to survive, attended a genre convention, or, yes, set a timer to buy tickets for Halloween Ends the moment they went on sale (guilty on all counts).