Spooky Season is officially HERE 🎃

It’s spooky season, which means it’s time for our annual spooky reads roundup!

First, our evergreen recommendation, Roger Zelazny’s A Night In Lonesome October. Look, we’re going to bang this drum until the end of time; you might as well just read it! Famous fictional characters spend October racing against each other in a sliiiightly arcane competition; we get to see the action from the POV of their familiars. It’s the best, most autumnal, Halloweeny book out there.

Second, our own The Shocking Experiments of Miss Mary Bennet, by Melinda Taub: yes, it’s drab, forgotten Bennet sister Mary from Pride & Prejudice… she finally gets her due. Which is to say, she accidentally becomes a, shall we say, mad scientist, raises the dead, and falls in love. (Not with the dead guy.) HUGELY recommended.

Next, if you haven’t met Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s newest, The Bewitching, yet, there’s no better time. Witches, curses, and foggy New England college campuses…

Finally, an old-school recommendation, Thinner by Richard Bachman (Stephen King’s alter-ego for when he wanted to write really grim stuff). With The Long Walk out in cinemas, this is a great time to read a Bachman if you haven’t yet. I read Thinner when I was still in my tweens and it’s lived rent-free in my head ever since. It’s very much an artifact of its time, but spooky as can be, and with an incredibly dark ending.

Happy reading!

Anne Perry

Publishing Director, Arcadia Books