Oread Books continues Local Authors Series

Robin Wayne Bailey will be the next writer featured in Oread Books’ ongoing series of meet-the-author events.

Bailey, of Kansas City, Mo., has written numerous novels and short stories, including the “Brothers of the Dragon” series, the critically acclaimed “Shadowdance, Night’s Angel” (an omnibus collection of his “Frost” novels) and “Swords Against the Shadowland,” named one of the best seven novels of 1998 by Science Fiction Chronicle.

Bailey is a regular contributor to the best-selling anthology series, “Thieves World.” His most recent book, “Dragonkin,” is the first volume in a new fantasy trilogy.

He will be at Oread Books on level two of the Kansas Union from 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. Thursday. The public is invited to converse with him while enjoying complimentary coffee or tea. Several of his titles will be available for signing.

Halloween books offer ghosts, goblins and goofy costumes

Forget the one-armed man and other grade-school sleepover tales of horror. This Halloween, curl up in front of a crackling fire with a bowl of your favorite spooky treats and one of the following haunting tomes.

Materializing on shelves just in time for Halloween is “Real Ghosts, Restless Spirits and Haunted Places” by Brad Steiger (Visible Press, $24.95).

Magic-loving highbrows will appreciate “Witchcraft and Society in England and America, 1550-1750,” edited by Marion Gibson (Cornell University Press, $19.95).

More lowbrow in tone is “The Original Duct Tape Halloween Book” by Jim Berg and Tim Nyberg (Workman Press, $8.95). Along with 30-second costume ideas, practical jokes and other duct tape trivia, the book includes ideas for duct tape party games.

For a new twist on bobbing for apples, for example, wrap guests’ heads with sticky-side-out duct tape and send them headlong into a bin filled with plastic balls. The contestant who emerges with the most balls stuck to his or her headband wins.

Fans of Alfred Hitchcock’s classic films, or anyone old enough to remember his weekly television show, can revisit the master of suspense with a new biography, “Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light” by Patrick McGilligan (Regan Books, $39.95).