Club members’ spooky suggestions for the spooky season 🎃

Lydia is an aspiring artist, living away from her mother for the first time in her life and she can only eat blood. In Claire Kohda’s outstanding horror novel the main character has not only to overcome the struggles of coming of age and her mixed heritage but also being a vampire feeling drawn to human company. The book tackles topics of growing up, loneliness, heritage, and invulnerability adding vampirism to the mixture as well. This is especially your book if you like female rage mixed with incredible sadness and feeling lost and very graphic descriptions of eating dead … things.

Bonus recommendation if you are more in the mood for a movie and this is the vibe you’re searching for: Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person.

If you’re into gothic horror stories, late 19th century settings, and genderqueer characters, T. Kingfisher’s What Moves the Dead might be the perfect spooky read for you.

In this modern retelling of Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Fall of the House of Usher”, protagonist Alex Easton finds their childhood friend Madeline dying under mysterious circumstances in her ancestral countryside home. Madeline’s skin is turning paper-white, she’s sleepwalking after nightfall, and speaking in strange voices. Her brother Roderick is also befallen by a mysterious illness of his nerves. Alex joins forces with a British mycologist and an American doctor to investigate what haunts the family home, putting the whole group at risk of being consumed by this eerie force.

In this relatively short novel, you can expect fungal infestations, possessed wildlife, and a dark eerie lake. The novel finds a good balance between creepy elements and cosy character relationships. It doesn’t just follow Poe’s original plot but creates its own story with complex characters and rich worldbuilding that extends beyond the limits of this novel (this is the first novel of a series!). I also enjoyed that Alex’s (gender)queerness is integrated into the setting in a natural way, and the author avoided tying queerness to inherent tragedy. While this book will probably not creep out hardcore horror/gore fans, it does deserve a place on a Halloween reading list for readers who prefer more character-driven and introspective works.

This is best enjoyed under a blanket during a dark October night with your favourite kind of tea.

It is 1888, London is on edge, and Scotland Yard ships Inspector Ian Frey off to Edinburgh to quietly look into a murdered musician before anyone can ask uncomfortable questions about whether Jack the Ripper has inspired a Scottish copycat.

Our victim: a virtuoso violinist, butchered in his own locked practice room. No way in. No way out. Black magic symbols on the floor. A maid who swears she heard three musicians playing. And a suspicious number of suspects talking about a cursed violin once played by the devil himself.

Frey, our narrator, is a posh English dandy whose core investigative method is complaining about mud, blood, and Scotland. His new boss, the very Scottish Detective “Nine-Nails” McGray, heads up an occult subdivision—however, with little standing amongst his peers despite his intense personal history with the topic. Frey brings reason; McGray keeps the supernatural on the suspect list. Neither seems delighted by the work arrangement.

But here is the thing: you cannot stage a good haunted mystery just anywhere. You stage it in Edinburgh—a city so genuinely Gothic it doesn’t need a Halloween costume, it was born wearing one. Narrow gas-lit closes, kirkyards stacked with centuries of grudges and underground vaults where the city used to stash its problems. Drop in a body, a couple of investigators and a cursed violin—now we’re talking about the perfect spooky Halloween vibe!

At first glance, this novel appears to be historical fiction—set in Friendship, Wisconsin, just after the Civil War, narrated through the eyes of the community’s sheriff, pastor, and undertaker Jacob Hansen. The atmosphere is somewhat languid, a bit bleak perhaps, but nothing out of the ordinary. And Jacob is a man of conscience and compassion, doing his best for his people.

… until the nightmare of a spreading disease creeps over the community, causing horrible deaths, breeding hysterical desperation. Who else will try to handle the escalating situation and properly bury the dead, if not Jacob? But how can one do right in the face of horror?

A Prayer for the Dying has been called a “sunlit Gothic”—set in what could be a summer in history, but as relentlessly bleak and disturbingly sinister as fiction can be. This novel will unsettle you and might leave a lasting impression; proceed with this information at your own discretion.