Here is a new Halloween tradition I think we should all get behind – All Hallows' Read. It's a simple concept: give someone – friend, child, random stranger – a scary book on Halloween. Dreamed up by Neil Gaiman last year ("I was on a flight home last night, and I thought, You know, there aren't enough traditions that involve giving books … And then I thought, Halloween's next weekend…"), it's expanded into something really quite impressive this year, with book drops in New York, tons of tweeting and lots of lovely, scary suggestions.

It is a great idea – I particularly like the fact that children are being included in the scary giving, with some wonderful recommendations from Gaiman (Diana Wynne Jones, Ray Bradbury, RL Stine) – and it has really got me in the mood for some horrifying autumn reading. I am most definitely a horror fan, but I've not been in horror mode of late so I'm hoping I might be the recipient of a few All Hallows gifts.

As for me, what shall I be giving? I've recently been terrified by Adam Nevill's The Ritual (friends get lost on a walking trip in a Swedish forest), and loved both SL Grey's The Mall, a deliciously evil take on a shopping trip, and Rhys Thomas's On the Third Day, an enjoyably bleak zombie apocalypse. All shall be pressed on the unwary come the 31st. Spread the terror, as Gaiman says.