Category Archives: 07. Halloween Bingo

Halloween Bingo: Vintage Mysteries

This is a newish square for 2021. There was a suggestion from fellow blogger and long-standing HB player, Themis-Athena for a Golden Age Mystery square, or a Queens of Crime square, to focus on Agatha Christie & some of her contemporaries. Vintage mysteries is a journey(wo)man square that can take on all of the roles above. In order to qualify, the mystery must have been published prior to 1975. 

I read so much vintage mystery that I have endless possibilities for this square:

Peril at End House by Agatha Christie is the Appointment with Agatha group read for the month of September, and Lord Edgware Dies is the group read for October, so either of those can stand in here.

In addition, I’ve been really into the Inspector Littlejohn mysteries recently, which are available through the Kindle Unlimited library, or possibly a Maigret. My library has what appears to be a complete collection of the new Penguin translations available as kindle books for online checkout. I have been reading one or two of these a month in no particular order. I also have a near complete collection of the 87th Precinct mysteries, by Ed McBain – I’m up to Give the Boys a Great Big Hand, first published in 1960.

While this is a new square, I have read a number of vintage mysteries in years past for other squares, including:

2016:

  • Death in the Tunnel by Miles Burton (Genre: Mystery)
  • Hallowe’en Party by Agatha Christie (Pumpkin)
  • The Mystery of the Yellow Room by Gaston Leroux (Locked Room Mystery)

2017:

  • Behold, Here’s Poison by Georgette Heyer (Cozy Mystery)
  • Hickory Dickory Dock by Agatha Christie (Terrifying Women)
  • The Moving Finger by Agatha Christie (Terror in a Small Town)
  • Brat Farrar by Josephine Tey (Murder Most Foul)
  • The Bride Wore Black by Cornell Woolrich (Classic Noir)

2018:

  • The Mystery of the Blue Train by Agatha Christie (Terrifying Women)
  • The Thirteen Problems by Agatha Christie (13)
  • Penhallow by Georgette Heyer (Country House Mystery)

2019:

  • The Cat Among the Pigeons by Agatha Christie (Dark Academia)
  • The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allen Poe (Classic Horror)
  • The Hollow by Agatha Christie (Country House Mystery)

2020:

  • Dead Man’s Folly by Agatha Christie (Country House Mystery)
  • The Thirteen Problems by Agatha Christie (International Woman of Mystery)(yes, I apparently have read this TWICE for Halloween Bingo)
  • The Three Coffins by John Dickson Carr (Grave or Graveyard)
  • The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie (wildcard)
  • Corpse at the Carnival by George Bellairs (Creepy Carnivals)

If you didn’t already know, I am a huge Agatha Christie fan. Not only does she figure prominently in all of my past Halloween bingos (as she will again, I’m sure), but she is without question the author I have read the most throughout my life as a reader.

Halloween Bingo: Spellbound

I’m going to discuss the top row of my bingo card over the next several posts – the spaces and what I have planned for them.

The top right corner of the card is the Spellbound square. This square, in some capacity or another, has been around basically since the beginning of Halloween Bingo, back in 2016, although we just called it “Witches” that year. The definition is: books containing witches, warlocks, sorcerors and witchcraft;

I’ve previously read for this square on a number of different occasions: 

2016: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
2017: Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince
2018: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
2019: Blood Bound by Patricia Briggs
2020: The Year of the Witching by Alexis Henderson

Until I just looked back over my cards, I did not remember that, first, I’ve had it on my card in some incarnation for every single Halloween Bingo game, and, second, that I revisited Harry Potter three times for this square.

Anyway, this has long been a favorite square for me, and not just because Harry Potter is a beloved series. I love books which center on witches and witchcraft.

So, this year, there are at least three books I’m considering reading for the Spellbound square:

The 13th Witch by Mark Hayden: This book popped up on the GR feed of one of my friends and it looks really delightful. It is also, as a bonus, available on the Kindle Unlimited library, so I can read it for free. One of my goals for this year is to minimize the amount of money I spend buying books for HB, so that’s excellent.

Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman: This would be a reread for me. I read the prequel, The Rules of Magic, for the Relics and Curiosities square in 2019. I am a fan of magical realism generally, and Alice Hoffman specifically. This would be a library check-out for me. It’s in my holds list, and should pop up right around September 1.

The Widow of Pale Harbor by Hester Fox: This is a piece of historical fiction set in Maine, 1846. It’s been on my Halloween Bingo shelf for a couple of years, having been published in 2019, and there are 2 copies available from my library.

Halloween Bingo 2021

Every year for the last six years, I host a Halloween Bingo game in a secret group on Goodreads. This year I’ve decided that I am going to try to keep track of it over here, as well. The game runs for the 61 days between September 1 and October 31, with 61 potential squares. Each card, of course, only has 25 squares on it, including the center “free” square.

In order to qualify to mark off a square, the books need to fit the prompt and they also need to generally fit into one of for genres: mystery, suspense, supernatural or horror. These types of books have long “read” autumn to me, which is how the game got started.

My card for this year:

I have been working on choosing books for the squares over on GR, but will put up some posts over here as well. This is the time of year that I most heavily use the library as well, because most of the books that I read will be more “modern” books, although I have also read a lot of vintage mystery and classic horror over the years.