CHECK IT OUT

Even if you’re past the age for Halloween haunting, you’re never too old

for literary and audiovisual horror. From tales of terror to classic

films, you can find a grab bag of ghoulish goodies on Newport library

shelves.

Among the newest fear-inducing offerings is “The Mammoth Book of Best New

Horror,” the ninth volume in the award-winning “Best New Horror” series.

Along with chilling contributions to the horror, science fiction and

fantasy fields, find genre news and the latest about Stephen King, Dean

Koontz and even Bram Stoker on his Dracula centenary in this bedtime book

with a bite.

There are excerpts from F. Paul Wilson’s horror oeuvre of the past two

decades in “The Barrens and Others,” the first new fiction collection by

the best-selling author (and practicing physician) in years. These

first-rate tales feature a wild cast of characters in entertaining

adventures involving strange, suspect and supernatural happenings.

Equally bizarre is the gothic fiction in “Night Shade,” a new anthology

showcasing 16 eerie tales by talented mistresses of the macabre. From a

middle-aged housewife who finds her hands morphing into tattoos and

martini olives to a young woman given the powers of shape-shifting on her

25th birthday, the heroines of these stories inhabit worlds, in which the

familiar is subverted and abnormality becomes the norm.

Since the publication of Bram Stoker’s classic, no horror hero has

endured longer in readers’ imaginations than Count Dracula. In manifold

disguises, his descendants star in “Blood Thirst: 100 Years of Vampire

Fiction,” a collection of terrifying tales by such terror-lit masters as

Anne Rice, Ray Bradbury and Stephen King.

You can listen to the confessions of one of the most sympathetic and

seductive bloodsuckers in contemporary fiction on 10 audiocassettes of

“Interview With the Vampire.” While ostensibly a simple story of

immortals preying on innocents, Rice’s now-classic work explores history,

faith and philosophical concerns about evil, mortality and the limits of

human perception.

There may be no better way to celebrate the spirit of darkness than to

settle in with a classic thriller on videotape. The best of all time

include “The Birds,” one of Alfred Hitchcock’s most startling films.

Beyond its superb effects, this tense study of violence, loneliness and

complacency is a psychologically complicated work by Hollywood’s master

of suspense.

If you’re still not scared silly, treat yourself to a viewing of “The

Fall of the House of Usher,” starring a sinister Vincent Price. This

acclaimed adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s eerie tale of bloodlines and

madness captures the terrifying nuances of the original chilling tale and

is bound to reverberate in your consciousness long after All Hallows Eve

has come and gone.

* CHECK IT OUT is written by the staff of the Newport Beach Public

Library. This week’s column is by Melissa Adams in collaboration with

Susie Lamb-Hubbs.