Spooky Books!
Hey friends! There was a chill in the air this morning and I am LIT UP about it. Put a sweater on for the entire day and everything. Good stuff.
This is my favorite time of the year (obviously) and I’m going to get all the joy I can squeeze out of it. I thought it’d be fun to round up some spooky fall times books and stuff that I’ve personally really enjoyed. Hopefully you’ll find something interesting. Maybe share your faves with me too, please? I’d love that.
Here we go:
For younger readers:
The Bunnicula Series - GREAT FUN to read aloud and has a perfect combination of sinister mystery without being scary. A family finds a bunny abandoned in a movie theater and they bring him home to be part of their family. Turns out this bunny has some…peculiar tendencies that parallel a certain famous vampire. The story is told form the perspective of the dog, Harold, and mostly details the cat, Chester, as he tries to get the new houseguest found out. It’s great.
The House with a Clock in It’s Walls, by John Bellairs - Also great fun to read aloud and a genuinely perfect introduction to horror and suspense while being age appropriate. This was a really fun one my kids enjoyed and remembered and want to reread. There’s a clock in the house that -might- destroy humanity. Other odd things might be going on as well. Great fun. It’s part of a series but we didn’t end up going past this one for whatever reason. Spookier than Bunnicula.
Pumpkinheads, by Rainbow Rowell - Adorable graphic novel about a pair of friends who are working their last season at the local pumpkin patch. It is as charming as you want it to be and the illustrations are so so so cute. It’s heart warming and will make you want some cider immediately.
For you!
If you like werves (werewolves) and other monsters, some romance, and steampunk adventure times, go grab The Parasol Protectorate series - starts with Soulless, by Gail Carriger. It’s delightful and has that steamy chilly moodiness of a fall evening outside under the glow of a full moon. It’s excellent on audio and I’m thinking of a reread. The fun thing about this series is that it’s got that great combination of clever banter, characters that, while mostly supernatural, have deep real problems and are also engaging, and the plots escalate in fantastic ways through the books. The romance here is really phenomenally written too if you’re looking for that. It’s just a big good time and I love it lots for an escape.
Dracula, by Bram Stoker - Y’all, I read this every year. I just enjoy how moody and ridiculous it is. I’m annoyed there is no good movie about it, it’s ripe for this timeline’s level of compressed feeling and overreaction, not to mention sense of impending doom and recipe collection. A classic for a reason, even if that reason is absurdity.
All of Tana French - she is the queen of thick cold mysteries that read like a cold discarded brick wall or soupy wet sand. If you want to curl up with a hot beverage and discover small town Irish secrets, this is what you need. All her stuff is great, and perfect for the thick biting cold of the fall/winter times when you don’t know what might be around the corners. Start with In the Woods, the first book in her Dublin Murder Squad series. I also really enjoyed The Witch Elm, from a year or two ago. It’s thick and worked really well for me. Where her other books usually take the perspective of the detectives and their process, The Witch Elm examines the civilian involved. In this book there’s a creepy old tree and things take a really unexpected turn. It impressively examines the confines of one’s own mind, and how the limits of logic and feeling and family trauma saturate. It’s a thick book. I find it impressive that she’s able to write conversations as they would actually happen, while expressing the manipulative and doubt filled twists and turns of misunderstanding that happen in real life too. I find her writing incredible.
Riley Sager - Final Girls specifically - in my opinion this is his best book. It deals with a woman who is known as a “final girl” - the last woman remaining from a terrible massacre. Suddenly another “final girl” appears in her life and her world is completely turned inside out. There are twists and turns and the writing is compelling. I don’t think Sager is doing anything revolutionary, but it’s a very entertaining story if you like those slasher movies and the concept of the final girl. His other books are along the same lines and are entertaining, but for me they weren’t as successful as this one was. But, maybe they’ll work for you! I’d love to know.
Ruth Ware - In a Dark Dark Wood - her first and best. I feel about Ware the way I do about Sager. In a Dark, Dark Wood was propulsive and clever enough for me that I read it really fast, and felt compelled to finish it and see what happened. It was a great fit for me. The rest of Ware’s books were less of a personal hit, but again, they might do the trick for you! In a Dark, Dark Wood deals with a group of almost friends who haven’t seen each other in quite a while. They end up doing a weekend thing deep in the woods and then weird things start happening. It’s sharp and I think it’s very well plotted and structured.
The Return, by Rachel Harrison - this book starts as a mystery and takes a swift turn into horror during the last third of the story. It’s worth looking at if you wanna be spooked. A woman disappears for two years and then shows up again with no memory of what happened. Quite bizarre, but also might be exactly the bit of a mind bender you’re looking for.
The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson - in my opinion this is a classic for a reason. Expect thick tension, sentences where you know what the words mean but your brain doesn’t get how one thing leads to another. That type of confusion and atmospheric strangeness is part of the plan and brilliance of the story in which you watch a woman completely unravel because of a house. I was so impressed. Might need to reread this one too. It was great.
Speaking of spooky houses, read Slade House by David Mitchell. Once you’re in past the garden gate, things get wonky quick and mess with spacetime in really fun ways. This is written like the last nightmare you had where you knew and remembered exactly what happened but could not articulate any part of it. it’s great. I read this a few years ago and legitimately tripped out of reality for a while after I finished it, worried I’d stumbled into an alternate timeline. It’s also pretty short if that matters, I think I read it in a three hour chunk.
Finally, There’s Someone Inside Your House, by Stephanie Perkins. This is actually a bit of a teen/YA pick, but if you like slasher movies, or those cheesy halloween ones where something ridiculous happens and a group of friends must band together to save the town from getting chopped to bits you need to read this. Is a blast of an entertaining read. The writing is compelling and engaging and fast paced. I loved it. I remember jumping from the words, like the things written down spooked me into being startled the same way I would be if something popped up out of nowhere in a movie. If that sounds good go grab this.
Non-fiction books about death!
All of Caitlin Doughty. Start with her memoir, Smoke Gets In Your Eyes, about her time working at a crematory in San Francisco. She details all the things that go into the process of preparing a body and what happens with you once you’re dead. From her experiences she starts a journey to create a process of a better death, focusing on more natural procedures and hopes to help educate people about death itself so it’s not so taboo and unknown. Then go read From Here to Eternity, in which she details the death practices of other cultures around the world. It’s fascinating and educational and should give you a different perspective to consider. Finally, her most recent book, Will the Cat Eat My Eyeballs?, answers questions about death that kids have asked her - honestly it’s the stuff we bigger kids want to know too. She answers these questions with science and information and honesty without being traumatic or too over their top. I appreciated this book, and think it’s a great level of information for us regular non-morticians to enjoy and learn from.
Bonus!
There’s a great little docu-series on Netflix called The Casketeers about these morticians in New Zealand. Each episode follows a bit of time as the team processes and helps people grieve. It’s a tremendous show. I cried almost every episode and found it helps a lot for approaching death from a place of comfort and joy rather than something scary or gross. The tenderness in each of the 20 minute episodes is incredible and lovely. So. If you’re wanting something like that right now, an avenue for healthy tears, or something to regain faith in the world, check this out and then let me know. I’d love to talk about it with you. It’s so delightful.
Happy fall, friends! Go decorate a gourd and tell me what you’re reading.