October is here, and it's time to pair that Pumpkin Spice Latte with a tasty, and terrifying read.
While every Reading Resolution challenge encourages you to step out of your comfort zone, picking up a horror novel can really feel that way. Of course, you're free to choose something a bit less scary. Cozy mysteries work just fine, as do thrillers, spooky classics, haunted histories, and true crime.
But if you're in the mood for a good scare, the horror fans among the Adult Services staff are happy to offer suggestions. Read on, if you dare. You can also visit our special online catalog to place an item on hold, or browse more selections on the pop-up display at the Main Library.
Be sure to check off this badge in the Reading Resolutions challenge in Beanstack, to be entered into our monthly drawing.
Curiously Creepy
Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage - Suzette loves her daughter Hanna, really, but after years of expulsions and strained home schooling, her precarious health and sanity are weakening day by day. As Hanna’s tricks become increasingly sophisticated, and Suzette's husband remains blind to the failing family dynamics, Suzette starts to fear that there’s something seriously wrong, and that maybe home isn’t the best place for their baby girl after all.
Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia After receiving a frantic letter from her newly-wed cousin, Noemí Taboada heads to High Place, a distant house in the Mexican countryside. She’s not sure what she will find—her cousin’s husband is both menacing and alluring. Even of the house begins to invade Noemí’s dreams with visions of blood and doom. For there are many secrets behind the walls of High Place. As Noemí digs deeper she unearths stories of violence and madness.
Twisted Twists
Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay - The lives of the Barretts are torn apart when fourteen-year-old Marjorie begins to display signs of acute schizophrenia. As their stable home devolves into a house of horrors, they reluctantly turn to a local Catholic priest for help. Father Wanderly suggests an exorcism; he believes the vulnerable teenager is the victim of demonic possession. He also contacts a production company that is eager to document the Barretts' plight. With Marjorie's father out of work and bills looming, the family soon find themselves the unwitting stars a hit reality television show. When events explode in tragedy, the show and the shocking incidents it captures become the stuff of urban legend. A mind-bending tale of psychological horror is unleashed, raising vexing questions about memory and reality, science and religion, and the very nature of evil.
I'm Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid - In this deeply suspenseful and irresistibly unnerving debut novel, a man and his girlfriend are on their way to a secluded farm. When the two take an unexpected detour, she is left stranded in a deserted high school, wondering if there is any escape at all. What follows is a twisted unraveling that will haunt you long after the last page is turned.
Horribly Humorous and Gloriously Gross
The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix Fried Green Tomatoes and Steel Magnolias meet Dracula in this Southern-flavored supernatural thriller set in the '90s about a women's book club that must protect its suburban community from a mysterious and handsome stranger who turns out to be a blood-sucking fiend.
Clown In A Cornfield by Adam Cesare - Quinn and her father moved to Kettle Springs to find a fresh start. But Kettle Springs has cracked in half. On one side are the adults, who are desperate to make Kettle Springs great again, and on the other are the kids, who want to get out of Kettle Springs as quick as they can. It’s a fight that looks like it will destroy the town. Until a creepy clown in a pork-pie hat, goes homicidal and decides that the only way for Kettle Springs to grow back is to cull the rotten crop of kids who live there now.
The Gates by John Connolly - A boy and his dog are trick or treating and witness strange goings-on at 666 Crowley Road. The Abernathys don't mean any harm by their flirtation with the underworld, but when they unknowingly call forth Satan himself, they create a gap in the universe. A gap in which a pair of enormous gates is visible. The gates to Hell. And there are some pretty terrifying beings just itching to get out. Can one small boy defeat evil?
Don't Turn Off The Lights!
It by Stephen King -Welcome to Derry, Maine. It’s a small city, a place as hauntingly familiar as your own hometown. Only in Derry the haunting is real. The seven friends were teenagers when they first stumbled upon the horror. Now they are grown-up men and women who have gone out into the big world to gain success and happiness. But none of them can withstand the force that has drawn them back to Derry to face the nightmare without an end, and the evil without a name
The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher - When Mouse’s dad asks her to clean out her dead grandmother's house, she says yes. After all, how bad could it be? Answer: pretty bad. Grandma was a hoarder, and her house is stuffed with useless rubbish. Mouse stumbles across a journal, which at first seems to be filled with nonsensical rants…until Mouse finds herself face to face with a series of impossible terrors—because sometimes the things that go bump in the night are real, and they’re looking for you.