10 Spooky Book Recommendations from your Favorite Ex-Librarian
Now that I’m not a Librarian anymore I really miss recommending books to people, and since Halloween is my favorite time of year, I thought I’d made some recommendations of my favorite Halloween-appropriate spooky books! Below, you’ll find a list of ten of my favorites – I’ve tried to spread them out in terms of genre and style as much as possible so that everyone can find something they like!
1. My Favorite Thing is Monsters, Emil Ferris (2017)
Spoiler alert: this is already my Book of the Year, and for good reason. Ferris’ semi-autobiographical comic is half coming of age story, half post-Holocaust mystery adventure, and her unique ink sketch illustrations are interspersed with old horror movie posters against a backdrop of 1960s Chicago.
Read if you like: Harriet the Spy, the Universal monster movies, lesbians, stores about outcast preteen girls finding confidence, stories about outcast preteen girls trying to solve mysteries, stories about outcast preteen girls having crushes on other preteen girls, hippies, the 1960s, monster theory
2. White is for Witching, Helen Oyeyemi (2009)
A supernatural story from one of my all-time favorite authors, White is for Witching is told through a litany of voices. It is about Miranda, a late-teen girl, and her twin Eliot, and their dead mother Lily, and the house-turned-bed and breakfast that their mother and her mother and, eventually, Miri herself, haunt; featuring: Miri goes to Oxford and vampirizes her cute girlfriend for a while. I sound flippant, but there’s something very haunting to the novel, a kind of late-fall-emptiness to the resonance of it that you can’t easily shake.
Read if you like: haunted houses, dead mothers, lesbians, witches, mirror selves, Oxford, magical realism, African folklore, co-dependent twins, maternally inherited curses
3. House of Leaves, Mark Z Danielewski (2000)
I think this one makes it onto most spooky book lists, but the feeling I got when I read it almost ten years ago still sticks with me, so I can’t pass it up. The book is the transcript of a documentary about a house that is bigger on the inside than on the outside (in a terrifying way, not in a Doctor Who way), which has been footnoted by a literary scholar writing about the film, which has been found by a drug-addled tattoo artist who scribbles his own story in the margins. Notorious for it’s typography, there is no right way to read House of Leaves, but you should absolutely give it a shot.
Read if you like: haunted houses, documentary horror, literary theory, footnotes, getting very dizzy while reading, post-structuralism
4. The Changeling, Victor LaValle (2017)
I think the newest release on this list, but possibly already one of my favorites – LaValle’s latest tells the story of a new father, Apollo Kagwa, who was abandoned by his own father as a child, and his search to understand the unthinkable actions of his wife both right after she gives birth, and several months down the line after she has disappeared. It’s a little heavy-handed on the “social media is Bad” undertones, but well worth it for a particularly good joke about a bad iPhone app.
Read if you like: warrior women who live in secret hidden islands, distrusting social media, Scandinavian folklore, contemporary stories, complicated characters, unexpected twists, not trusting men, being afraid to have children
Don’t read if: you just had a baby. Seriously, don’t do it.
5. Through the Woods, Emily Carroll (2014)
A graphic novel that collects several discrete stories, Through the Woods is a quick read and delightfully macabre. If you’re unsure, read a couple of Carroll’s online comics (linked below) to get a feel for her – especially “His Face All Red,” which is included in the collection as well as available online.
Read if you like: a sense of general unease, creepy folk tales, being afraid to look under your bed, bold colors, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, body horror, scaring the bejeesus out of children, any of Emily Carroll’s other work
6. The Girl With All the Gifts, M R Carey (2014)
Not your typical zombie story, Gifts is a zombie apocalypse story that focuses on a young girl, Melanie, who is both a zombie and not-a-zombie. While most of the zombies (called Hungries, in the novel’s parlance) are mindless eating machines with no higher cognitive functions, human scientists study the learning capabilities of an unusual group of zombie children who, aside from an irascible hunger for human brains, are perfectly normal, thank you very much. Set primarily in the English countryside, the novel follows a scientist, a solider, and a teacher, who are traveling to safety with Melanie in tow and trying to decide whether to see her as a person or as a monster.
Read if you like: who-is-the-real-monster stories, questions of scientific ethics, precocious children, survival horror, the-earth-wins-out post-apocalyptic fiction
Bonus tip: Gifts was made into an excellent movie in 2016 with one of the best soundtracks I think I’ve ever heard – worth a watch if you like a good zombie movie. A follow-up novel, The Boy on the Bridge, was also released this year, but if you’ve read Gifts, check out my article on why you shouldn’t bother with Bridge.
7. Harrow County, Cullen Bunn (2015-present)
The third graphic novel to make it onto this list, and an ongoing serial so there’s always more coming when you’ve caught up! Harrow County takes place in a haunted town in rural Southern America filled with all kinds of restless ghosts and ghouls and monsters; it follows a girl named Emmy who, on her eighteenth birthday, realizes she has a strange connection to these haints, along with a whole family of other mediums, psychopomps, and witches.
Read if you like: Southern Gothic, haunted forests, power struggles, uncertain pasts, whispers in the night, amazing but morbid character design, stunning artwork in muted colors
8. The Bloody Chamber, Angela Carter (1979)
A fairly famous collection of short stories, most of Carter’s works are feminist re-tellings of famous folk tales like Little Red Riding Hood, Beauty and the Beast, and Bluebeard. Carter’s use of language is exquisite and her stories are quick reads. Themes are about what you’d expect of late-70s feminist writing – female sexuality, marriage, coming of age, corruption, female relationships – and her prose has a distinctly Gothic feel that’s just right for this time of year.
Read if you like: Gothic fiction, more creepy folk tales, wolves, feminist reinterpretations, wolves, girls drinking blood, wolves
9. Mr. Splitfoot, Samantha Hunt (2016)
Two connected stories told interwoven together, part of Mr. Splitfoot is about Ruth and Nat, orphans adopted into a religious cult where they learn two things: co-dependency, and grifting strangers by pretending to communicate with ghosts. The other part of it is about Cora, Ruth’s niece, who finds herself first pregnant and second visited by her old, mute aunt who leads her on a strange and inexplicable road trip on foot.
Read if you like: the Fox sisters, unhealthy co-dependency, orphans converging timelines, strange and silent road trips, pseudo-religious cults, doomsday cults, upstate New York
10. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier (1938)
“Last night I dreamed I went to Manderley again” will always be my personal favorite opening line to a novel, and for good reason: even though Rebecca is known for its plot, primarily through Hitchcock’s film version of the story, the writing is gorgeous. It tells the story of the unnamed Second Mrs. de Winter, who joins her new husband in his mansion on the English coast and is haunted by the memory of his first wife.
Read if you like: stories about rich people, Jane Eyre, gorgeous prose, being the second wife of a rich man with a dark past and enjoying the lap of luxury even though his dead wife is haunting the shit out of you, Alfred Hitchcock, British mysteries, that late-1930s posh English aesthetic
Have any other good spooky October reads? Let me know! I’m always looking for more to read and recommend and I’d love to hear what books you revisit when the Halloween mood strikes–
