Every year when fall arrives, it seems like some people want to lean into the cozy sweaters and pumpkin spice coziness, while others embrace the macabre moodiness and bloody scares of Halloween. Personally, I’m on Team Spooky, so this month we’re talking about a variety of Halloween, Día de los Muertos, and generally horror-related books.
Mike Mignola is the creator of cult-favorite comic book character named Hellboy, a gruff demon with a heart of gold who comes to Earth to help protect humans from supernatural dangers. Mignola’s flair for expressionist gothic illustrations and bringing moody folk tales and scary legends to life takes center stage in his new non-Hellboy project, Bowling with Corpses & Other Strange Tales from Lands Unknown. Mignola and artist Dave Stewart spin stories of witches and ghosts, heroes and innocents, hidden libraries and deals with the devil. Good for setting a macabre tone for the holidays.
Bowling With Corpses & Other Strange Tales From Lands Unknown
The Invisible Parade is a fabulous new children’s picture book by best-selling fantasy author Leigh Bardugo and illustrator John Picacio. Young Cala and her family are preparing for Día de los Muertos, but her heart is not in it this year, as she is still mourning the recent loss of her grandfather. After meeting spirits and the four horsemen of the apocalypse, she is forced to think about things differently and finds some comfort. The lush art and tender story portray one girl’s experience of the holiday, but it also broaches a number of powerful thoughts about death, grief and community in a way that is accessible to young people.
I have a friend who gravitates towards horror books with highly eccentric premises, assuming that he’ll have a good laugh at their absurdity. But sometimes he’s surprised when the author turns that absurd premise into something legitimately scary. Case in point: Linwood Barclay’s Whistle, which is about the terror of… haunted model trains. The novel is being compared to older Stephen King stories, unpredictable and sinister. A widow and her son move away to start a new life, only to face mysterious happenings after the boy finds a train set in their new home. A local police chief investigates a series of missing persons and murders, that seems connected to the arrival of a new model train shop. Could these two scary events possibly be connected? (Yes, they could).
Although you might expect it to be popular, there are relatively few “space horror” novels. But it seems to be the favored niche of S.A. Barnes, who has now written several of them. Her latest, Cold Eternity, sounds a bit like The Shining on a space station. On the run from a political scandal, Halley Zwick takes a job as a caretaker on a creepy, aging space station that houses thousands of cryogenically frozen elites, waiting for their time to be awoken. Nearly alone in this oppressive environment, her “job” is to push a button every three hours. As her isolation and sleep-deprivation mount, so do the unsettling noises, shadowy figures and technological glitches. What has Halley gotten herself into?
Add a comment to: Spooky Reads for Fall