Like Christmas and Thanksgiving, Halloween has been merchandized to death—but in its case, death is the operative word. In Haunted Nights, editors Ellen Datlow and Lisa Morton collect 16 previously unpublished stories by contemporary authors. “Halloween’s always been the night where rules don’t hold, hasn’t it?” asks the narrator in Stephen Graham Jones “Dirtmouth,” after beginning to realize that the scratching at his cabin door, where he retreated with the kids after his wife’s death, wasn’t caused by raccoons. Jonathan Maberry’s masterfully constructed “A Small Taste of the Old Country” sets suspense on simmer as an old Austrian refugee confronts a couple of suspicious-looking Germans on Halloween in post-World War II Argentina.
