In honor of our month-long celebration of All Hallows Read here at the Library, this week’s Five Book Friday will be showcasing some of our favorite creepy, ghoulish, and eerie books that we have on display for you this month (scary books have the best adjectives). Some of these books are tried-and-true, staff-approved scary-stuff, and some are new, both to the library, and to us, but all of them are just itching to meet you, and to send chills down your spine….
Trigger Warning : Short Fictions and Disturbances: It would simply be poor form not to start our list with a book by the creator of All Hallows Read, and author of you loveliest nightmares, Mr. Neil Gaiman. Though this collection is a wild compendium that revisits several of Gaiman’s previous novels, like American Gods and The Ocean at the End of the Lane, and also provides plenty of new mysteries, adventures…and a really unsettling tale about Click-Clack the Rattlebag, who holds the secrets to all the things that make noise in the night….Newcomers to Gaiman’s marvelous imagination are sure to be enthralled, but for fans who have had a taste of his work, or who follow him on social media, there is a world of fun to be had in this book.
Through the Woods: As we mentioned in one of our posts with staff recommendations, Emily Carroll’s work is a chillingly beautiful blend of words and images that reinvents the graphic novel, and breaths new life into those wonderfully dark stories that kept you up at night as a child…monsters in the forest, voices in the shadows…The Irish Times raved “Carroll has a mainline to the reader’s psychic pressure points, the kind of fears and phobias that go all the way back to the cave. She also has the confidence to let her images do the work when it best serves the story … It’s a beautiful artefact, confidently written and lavishly designed. Just don’t bring it to bed.”
20th Century Ghosts: Joe Hill may be Stephen King’s son, but his work, without a doubt, stands on its own merits (he specifically took a pseudonym in order to let his work fly or sink on its own). This book of short stories has overtones of King’s more visceral horror stories, but also shown influences from Lovecraft, Kafka, and Poe, at times, as well. Overall, Hill tends to be a bit more aggressive in his storytelling than his Dad, but it’s clear he inherited the writer’s gift. These stories, which range from a human-turned-locust who plagues his Nevada hometown to a ghost who perpetually haunts an old theater, are moving, frightening, and powerful by turn, making it a read that is sure to linger, even after all the Trick-or-Treaters have gone home.
The Supernatural Enhancements: If you hadn’t been able to tell from the multiple posts on this book, Edgar Cantero’s debut novel is instantly addictive and thoroughly unforgettable, and a quick favorite among our library staff. When A, a youngish European man, inherits a house from an uncle he never met, he blindly moves to Point Bless, Virginia along with his enigmatic friend Niamh, who is mute, but far from silent. As the two begin to explore the odd house, and the legacy of A’s tortured family, readers are treated to a bit of a ghost story, a bit of a mystery, a bit of a thriller, and a surprise ending that leaps out and pounces. Told through letters, transcriptions, and descriptions from the video surveillance cameras Niamh sets up around the house, no one is quite sure what is going on, but this only enhances the suspense of this terrifically gripping tale.
The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Tales: We round off our list with the master of the horror genre, and the mascot of All Hallows Read himself, Edgar Allan Poe, whose stories have scared, fascinated,and disturbed generations of readers. While the titular tale is the perennially haunting one of a house that is gradually consuming its cursed inhabitant, this collection also features Poe’s Dupin stories, which helped inspire the creation of Sherlock Holmes, as well as The Narrative of A. Gordon Pym, an adventure tale straight out of your wildest nightmares. Mostly, though, these are Poe most well-known, and most unsettling stories to keep you up late tonight…
Happy Reading, Beloved Patrons, and Happy All Hallows Read!
