Midnight Pleasures

Fourteen classic tales of terror by the author of Psycho


Midnight Dreams (1987) collects some of Robert Bloch’s best tales from later in his career, featuring his trademark blend of spine-chilling terror and gallows humor and an eclectic mix that includes three Halloween-themed stories, a Christmas horror story, and a previously uncollected tale first published in Weird Tales in 1939.


In “Pumpkin,” a boy wanting to carve a Halloween jack-o’-lantern finds the perfect pumpkin in an unkempt garden, not suspecting whose garden it is or the horror that will follow. In “The Night Before Christmas,” an adulterous couple looks forward to a quiet evening decorating the tree, but the woman’s sadistic husband has other plans. And in “Pranks,” trick-or-treaters get more than they bargained for when they visit the house of a kindly old couple with a dark and deadly secret. These and eleven other stories represent some of the best of the prolific Bloch’s later work. This new edition, the first in decades, features a new introduction by Bloch scholar Bill Gillard.