Eerie Tales for Halloween

The Penguin Book of Vampire Stories, edited by Alan Ryan (Penguin Books, 622 pages, $14.95). Thirty-two selections, from Lord Byron’s “Fragment of a Novel” (1816) to Tanith Lee’s “Bite-Me-Not or, Fleur De Feu” (1984), to Fritz Leiber’s “The Girl With the Hungry Eyes,” and stories by Algernon Blackwood, Richard Matheson, Charles Beaumont, Robert Bloch and the main man himself, Bram Stoker. Includes lists of vampire novels and vampire movies.

Haunted Places, the National Directory, by Dennis William Hauck (Penguin Books, 486 pages, $15.95). Descriptions, complete with directions and phone numbers, of more than 2,000”places where strange things happen.” Included along with the de rigueur haunted houses and graveyards are “vortexes of psychic energy” and spots known for UFO and Bigfoot sightings.

The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy & Other Stories, by Tim Burton (Rob Wiesbach Books, 128 pages, $20). Twenty-five twisted gothic tales written and illustrated by the filmmaker who brought us “Edward Scissorhands” and “The Nightmare Before Christmas.”

Passing Strange: True Tales of New England Hauntings and Horrors, by Joseph A. Citro (Houghton Mifflin, 320 pages, $13). True stories from the land of Nathaniel Hawthorne, H.P. Lovecraft and Stephen King.