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Novels for a Dark Autumn Night

Once all my Halloween seasonal chores are done (frothing up pumpkin spice lattes, baking pumpkin bread, lighting apple pumpkin candles, admiring the Halloween decor), I like to sit my creaky old rocking chair and crack open a book (on Audible). This year I've love so many new and new-to-me novels and want to share some of my favorites:





Mexican Gothic

by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

A 1950s period piece set in a musty, cold and overgrown mansion in Mexico, one woman must find out what is happening to her cousin. The house is plagued by ghosts or some sort of force that manipulating her cousin – or her cousin is just crazy. Moreno-Garcia creates a richly detailed world where every bit of crumbling wallpaper is brought to life. The mystery unfurls delicately like a frond of a fern and the defiant heroine became one of my favorite literary characters.


The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware

Told as a first person account from the woman accused of killing a child, this riveting, twisty tale evokes Henry James' The Turn of the Screw but is deeply more sinister. Set in a remote English house, the new nanny must deal with petulant children, problematic parents, and a half-modern, half-Victorian home that seems to be haunted. The unreliable narrator draws you deeper into the mystery before the final twists and turns.


Lock Every Door

by Riley Sager

Walking around New York City, you look up and you see those old buildings with gargoyles in the corners and you wonder who would live in a place like that. The book invites a young apartment sitter into these clandestine walls to see just what is going and it's not good. Different chapters take place in different times of our protagonists journey, and it jumps around a lot so listen closely.


My Heart is a Chainsaw

by Stephen Graham Jones

This is a love letter to horror movie fans who see themselves as outsiders, and perhaps find true joy in the darker entertainment. he protagonist who has just about finished high school is witnessing a real life slasher scenario playing out before her eyes in the small Idaho town. Armed with encyclopedic information on slasher tropes, only she see what's coming next and no one will listen.


The Final Girl Support Group

by Grady Hendrix

In a world where final girls from horror movies actually exist, someone is targeting them one-by-one and its up to a plucky, broken heroine to put her years of experience in surviving to the test. This is such a campy, quick read but not at all what I expected especially when it took a 180 turn.


Gloria

by Bentley Little

From the first sentence, Bentley Little’s perplexing new novel, Gloria, is instantly captivating, and lays out out a creepy, affecting tale of love, loss and grief from a perspective that only Little could muster. This is probably his most emotional, approachable, and fantastical novel to date – a true feat – and quite different in tone from his other work.

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