Castle Macabre is a Year Old! Celebrating with a winner's choice {Giveaway}!

Today is Castle Macabre's one year Blogoversary and I would like to thank all of you for making this year so amazing!!

I have some great events coming up this Fall.  October brings Castle Macabre's Season of the Witch.  I'll be posting full details soon, but here's a little preview.  I'll be looking for guest posts from authors and/or bloggers and if any authors want to donate a book for a spotlight/guest post/giveaway, please let me know.  The focus is going to be witches, but anything scary is game! I will be focusing my reading in October on witch related books and I would love for people to join me.  And of course, there will be a giveaway.  Stay tuned for details!

The FrightFall Read-a-Thon is coming October 1-7.  I will be hosting over at Seasons of Reading, but I think I will participate via this blog this time.  Poor CM is feeling neglected! Details and sign-ups will be coming soon over at Seasons of Reading.  Hope you will join me!

****GIVEAWAY****

Now...it's time for the blogoversary giveaway! I've picked four of my favorite horror/scary novels and I'm going to give one winner their choice out of the four.  Since I'll be using Better World Books, this will be an INTERNATIONAL giveaway! Please keep in mind that these will be used books, but Better World Books has a great selection of used books.  I've ordered many from them and I've never been disappointed.  Please fill out the rafflecopter form to enter.  Giveaway ends on 8/31/12 at 11:59pm CST.  Good luck!

Here are the books (covers shown may not be the cover you receive).  Interview with the Vampire is the first book in Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles.  If you've already read it and would like one of the other books in the series (see the entire list HERE), that will not be a problem.

Duma Key by Stephen King
Dracula by Bram Stoker
Ghost Story by Peter Straub
Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice
a Rafflecopter giveaway



Quick shout out to my friend, Kate (Read 2 Review) for helping me put this post together. =O)

Book Review: Ghost Story by Peter Straub

My thoughts:
I loved this book! I can easily see why Straub and Stephen King have collaborated because the feelings this book evoked in me are very similar to what I have felt while reading some of King's works.  King and Straub are definitely kindred spirits.  I just love the creepy and this book delivers big time in that regard.  It's really hard to believe (well, not really) that the 1981 film based on this book is from this book at all.  There is so much here that would have made the film better, but I digress.  Straub takes his ghost story and turns it outside, inside, upside down.  We have ghosts that are 'werewolves' and 'vampires', figuratively.  It is alluded to in the book that perhaps ghosts such as these are where the old legends come from.  We have mutilated livestock/horses drained of all blood...and humans too.  Then there are seemingly benign girls and women who, with a certain knowing smile or look, give the chills as well.   It's the subtlety of the writing, I think, that makes what would not normally be scary really damn scary.  I think the tenets of this story are 1) if you do something bad, it will come back to haunt you and 2) don't sit around telling ghost stories.  You just might find yourself in one.

I can't believe this is the first Peter Straub book I've ever read.  It certainly will not be my last (since I own all/most of his books, reading them won't be a problem).  If you haven't read Ghost Story, I recommend that you do posthaste!

About the book:
In life, not every sin goes unpunished.

For four aging men in the terror-stricken town of Milburn, New York, an act inadvertently carried out in their youth has come back to haunt them. Now they are about to learn what happens to those who believe they can bury the past -- and get away with murder.

Peter Straub's classic bestseller is a work of "superb horror" (The Washington Post Book World) that, like any good ghost story, stands the test of time -- and conjures our darkest fears and nightmares.

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