TandeWrites

Spooky season is well and truly upon us, and I thought I’d take some time today to recommend some of my favourite horror and horror-adjacent books, focusing on books I read this year, organised from shortest to longest. Some of these are heavier on the horror while some have more of a lightly spooky vibe, so hopefully there is something here for everyone.

Let’s begin!

The Woods All Black by Lee Mandelo (150 pages)

Leslie is assigned to the backwoods township of Spar Creek by the Frontier Nursing Service under its usual mandate: vaccinate the flock, birth babies, and weather the judgements of churchy locals who look at him and see a failed woman. Something ugly festers within the local congregation, and its malice has focused on a young person they insist is an unruly tomboy who must be brought to heel. Violence is bubbling when Leslie arrives, ready to spill over, and he’ll have to act fast if he intends to be of use. But the hills enfolding Spar Creek have a mind of their own, and the woods are haunted in ways Leslie does not understand.

The Woods All Black is equal parts historical horror and trans romance, set in 1920s Appalachia. The tone of the novella is unsettling from the start and draws on real historical facts to flesh out the world and conflicts, following a trans nurse who tries to blend in by adopting more feminine attire and attitudes, but the town insists on punishing anyone who they suspect may be “different”. It’s a story of passion, prejudice, and power that explores reproductive justice and bodily autonomy, the terrors of small-town bigotry, and the necessity of fighting tooth and claw to live as who you truly are.

My Throat an Open Grave by Tori Bovalino (230 pages)

In the small town of Winston, Pennsylvania, they fear the Lord of the Wood almost as much as they fear God. According to the legend, ghosts of the forest steal unwanted babies, leaving wood and bone in their place. Leah thinks the legend is just a way to scare the local kids until her baby brother disappears and the weight of the town’s judgment forces her to cross into the Lord of the Wood’s domain to bring him back. But the Lord isn’t what she expects. He tells her she can have her brother back for a price. Their bargain uncovers secrets Winston has tried to keep buried for decades, and what Leah unearths has her questioning everything she has been taught to fear.

This little book has had a notably big impact on my life. It’s so much more than just a spooky read: it’s full of redemption and learning to accept yourself and discovering that maybe you don’t have to constantly adapt to your current life. I’m always very interested in folklore-influenced books featuring religious towns and archaic views of women, mostly because it’s not something I’ve grown up around, and it usually results in me supporting women’s wrongs and female rage. This book did a wonderful job at showcasing how the women in this town are the ones who face the consequences of men’s actions, and the emotional change it takes to resist what you’ve been taught and enact your own beliefs. How the author weaves in these journeys of self-discovery through dark moments and lighting the way with hope is what I love most about the book.

The Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher (340 pages)

Freshly divorced and living back home, Kara becomes obsessed with words scrawled in a mysterious bunker that she discovered behind a hole in the wall of her uncle’s house. She starts exploring this area, only to discover that it holds portals to countless alternate realities, and these places are haunted by creatures that seem to hear thoughts, and the more one fears them, the stronger they become.

This book is kind of like Annihilation (2018) and Kate Alice Marshall’s Our Last Echoes had a child that was funny and gave me nightmares. The heart and humour T. Kingfisher brings to her stories are refreshing in the horror space, and I think she’s truly mastered this super weird, super quirky style that I find can be hard to nail. And it was Kara’s character that made it a lot easier to keep reading this book with the lights turned off: the humour and heart is fed through her, and she was somehow a welcome comforting presence throughout a horrific story.

Don’t Let the Forest In by C.G. Drews (350 pages)

High school senior Andrew finds refuge in the twisted fairytales that he writes for the only person who can ground him to reality – Thomas, his best friend who turns his stories into whimsically macabre art. And, with his twin sister, Dove, inexplicably keeping him at a cold distance upon their return to boarding school, Andrew finds himself leaning on his friend even more. But something strange is going on with Thomas. His abusive parents have mysteriously vanished, and he arrives at school with blood on his sleeve. Thomas is haunted by something. Desperate to figure out what’s wrong with his friend, Andrew follows Thomas into the off-limits forest one night and catches him fighting a nightmarish monster—Thomas’s drawings have come to life and are killing anyone close to him. To make sure no one else dies, the boys battle the monsters every night. However, as their obsession with each other grows stronger, so do the monsters, and Andrew begins to fear that the only way to stop the creatures might be to destroy their creator.

Drews has a gorgeous writing style. The prose is beautiful (which I already knew as an avid lover of their other works) and I’d absolutely be willing to try another book by this author with these horror influences just because of that. This book is hugely atmospheric and dreamlike (or nightmarish?) with hauntingly beautiful imagery that I have taken infinite screenshots of so I can read my favourite lines over and over again. The spectrum of representation in this story is refreshing and touches on themes of identity, mental health, and disordered eating. These are not easy topics to discuss with equal parts honesty and sensitivity, but they are important to talk about, especially for the young adult target audience.

All the Dead Lie Down by Kyrie McCauley (370 pages)

Days after a tragedy leaves Marin alone in the world, the childhood best friend of her deceased mother offers her a nanny position at Lovelace House, the family’s coastal estate in Maine. Marin accepts and soon finds herself minding Alice’s peculiar girls. Thea buries her dolls one by one, hosting a series of funerals, while Wren does everything in her power to drive Marin away. Then Alice’s eldest daughter returns home unexpectedly, and she is every bit as strange as her younger sisters, and yet Marin is quickly drawn in by her compelling behaviour and ethereal grace. But Marin can’t escape the anxiety that follows her like a shadow. Dead birds appear in her room. The children’s pranks escalate. Something dangerous lurks in the woods, leaving mutilated animals in its wake. All is not well at Lovelace House, and Marin must unravel its secrets before they consume her.

This book is pitched as The Haunting of Bly Manor meets House of Salt and Sorrow so I knew that this book was written for me specifically before I picked it up. It has the unnerving tale of curses and family secrets against the backdrop of a gloomy seaside (or waterside) estate that these stories have. I love claustrophobic spooky houses and creepy little girls and how each character has a unique way of coping with their grief, and I love that the story lets you wonder how much of the ‘supernatural’ occurrences were real, or if they were the young girls messing with Marin. It’s spooky and sapphic and unexpectedly soft, and it’s a book that I still think about with fondness often.

All That Consumes Us by Erica Waters (420 pages)

The students in Corbin College’s elite academic society have it all, so when first-gen student Tara is offered a chance to enrol after a member dies, she doesn’t hesitate. Except once she’s started to settle into her new home, something strange starts to happen. She’s finally writing, but her stories are dark and twisted. Her dreams feel as if they could bury her alive. An unseen presence seems to stalk her through the halls. A secret awaits Tara at the heart of the society–one that just might turn her nightmares into reality; one that might destroy her before she has a chance to escape.

This is a dark and hypnotising story that blurs the lines of reality and shows that the addictive nature of ambition always claims its inevitable price. Usually, I’m 50/50 on dark academia as I find a lot of books pitched this way are light on academia, but I enjoyed this one a lot, especially as I am a writer. I really loved the side characters in this: each one of them felt unique and individual, and they felt like a true group of friends and real people with their lives on the line. There was a great found family vibe within the society that grew as the storyline progressed. If you crave a contemporary Gothic tale with dark academia traces and beautiful writing and spooky sapphic girls, this one is for you.

The Church of the Mountain of Flesh by Kyle Wakefield (490 pages)

This is a surreal fever dream of a book that is unapologetically queer and unhinged with writing that is so deliciously descriptive that I think I threw up in my mouth at one point. Church is an erotic cosmic horror about a trans sculptor who makes a deal with his eldritch god former lover to rebuild a church in exchange for his transition (in extreme summary), and I’m going to be eternally in awe of how ambitious this is for a debut novel, and how successfully it has been crafted. As much as I was drawn to it for fitting my definition of an ‘evil little book’ (body horror, sentient nightmare protagonist, a chance of tentacles), I fell in love with it for the moments of tenderness and light amongst the dark, specifically two boys stealing kisses in a dark corner and holding each other in the ocean until they fall asleep, and a best friend who will hypothetically help you hide a body without any questions asked.

I know we’re in a sensitive time for the authentic representation of transgender characters, and for those characters to act in ways that are deemed ‘acceptable’ to be likeable by a wider audience. However, the author presents his protagonist as irredeemably evil, a hellbent prophet rather than a saviour, and this is the defiant representation that I crave to be accepted.

So those are my spooky reads for the spooky season in varying lengths and degrees of spookiness. I loved all of these books, and some have made it onto my favourites list for the year so far, so I hope there’s something in there that you will love, too.