The leaves are falling, the pumpkin men are dancing and it’s currently the most socially acceptable season to read as much horror as you can get your hands on. Obviously, I’m a year-round horror kind of gal, but for those who save their scares for spooky season, I have some recommendations of horror novels, new and old, that will get you in to the Samhain spirit.
Just to keep it simple, I’ve stuck to books published in the last five years, and I’ve left out the obvious heavy hitters like Stephen King because I figure if you’re interested in the horror classics you can probably find them yourselves. But if you do want some recommendations by the masters and from the back catalogue, give me a shout.
What to read if… you’re new to horror
I was thrilled that my book club allowed me to suggest a horror novel recently, and The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas was a big hit. This lush, atmospheric novel is as much romance as it is horror, and the beautiful writing will draw you in even if you’re hesitant about the scares.
There are no jump scares in The Bog Wife by Kay Chronister, only a sense of melancholy and decay that is potentially as scary as any ghost or demon. For those who love folk tales, family drama, and climate anxiety (maybe “love” is the wrong word), this book is the one.
What to read if… you’re all about the vibes
If you know me, I’ve probably already told you to read Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield. But in case I haven’t, please read Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield. Weird, watery, beautiful and devastating.
Lee Mandelo is a master of the modern southern gothic, and Summer Sons is my favorite of his books. It’s visceral and compelling, and the sweat practically drips off the page.
What to read if… you’re in your “good for her” era
The pregnant teenage characters in Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix are due a win as they’re sent to a miserable mother and baby home in 1970s Florida to be hidden away until they give birth. And if that win is getting tangled up in some seriously shady witch business? So be it.
If you’d rather your heroines just to be deranged for no reason, then Victoria Feito’s cheerful murderess Winifred Notty is your girl. Victorian Psycho, indeed. This book is wild and gory and so much fun.
What to read if… you want a recent book that’ll be remembered as a classic
The Reformatory by Tananarive Due and The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones have a lot in common. They’re both deeply inspired by true historical evils (abusive reformatory schools in the Jim Crow era Deep South for the former, the Marias massacre of Blackfeet peoples in the latter), they both bring supernatural elements to these real-life horrors, and they’re both written by authors who I’m confident will be regarded as integral parts of the literary canon for the genre in years and decades to come. Two powerful, frightening, incredible books.
What to read if… you like your stories short and sweet scary
Spanning a variety of genres and drawing inspiration from folklore and myth, Never Have I Ever by Isabel Yap is a short story collection that will appeal to horror and non-horror fans alike. A strong debut and I hope we’ll see more from Yap soon.
One for the weird girls, She’s Always Hungry by Eliza Clark reminds us that there’s nothing better than a really fucked up short story. A must-read for “The Shadow Over Little Chitaly” alone, which is formatted as a series of meal delivery app reviews.
What to read if… forever sounds like a scarily long time
Nobody does immortality quite like a vampire, and Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab follows three vampiric women across their long, long lives, from 1500s Spain to 1800s London to 2000s Boston. Schwab’s story has all the timeless elements while also bringing something new to the classic tropes.
There’s an old myth that someone taking your photo can steal your soul, and a similar horrifying concept serves as the conceit of Old Soul by Susan Barker. As much as I love horror, I rarely feel genuinely shaken when reading, but this book definitely did it.
What to read if… you think fact is scarier than fiction
I think that, maybe more than in any other genre, most people who love horror can pinpoint exactly when they became fans. Why Horror Has a Hold on Us by Anna Bogutskaya explores those moments, as well as why the horror genre gets so many of us in its grips.
For a more academic take on the topic, Jeremy Dauber’s American Scary: A History of Horror, from Salem to Stephen King and Beyond provides an exhaustive but fascinating look at similar themes, with a focus on the way horror has held up a mirror to American society and history.
Bonus: what I’m reading this October (and beyond)
2025 has been a ridiculously good year for horror, with new books from big names, fresh faces, and scary stories across every sub-genre. I already wrote about my favorite horror books published in January-June of this year, and since then I’ve read plenty more that I’ll share about later.
Naturally, late-September through October is peak publishing season for horror, and some of the new and upcoming releases I’ve got on the tbr this month are Midnight Timetable by Bora Chung, Good Boy by Neil McRobert and King Sorrow by Joe Hill.
I’ve also been eager to read The End of the World As We Know It, an anthology of short stories set in the world of Stephen King’s epic The Stand, but I realized it’s been at least 16 years since I read the novel so I want to revisit it first. Anyway, what’s October without some Stephen King?
On the nonfiction side I’m looking forward to reading Somebody is Walking on Your Grave by Mariana Enriquez and Ghosted by Alice Vernon.
Apparently all I want to do is write book reviews, but I’m just going to go ahead on keep on doing it. This is a book I received as an ARC late last year, but it was just published on Tuesday so I wanted to share my review here in case you’re looking for a solid non-fiction book to pick up this week. Support your favourite indie bookstore!
When a demon inhabits a body, it takes ownership of a person, a monster is temporarily housed inside of its victim, our body invaded, repossessed. The ghost does the same with s house: it breaks into it, takes possession of what is yours, and you can no longer trust the place you trusted the most. What’s more frightening than your own home turning against you?
A look at the haunted house in both fiction and non-fiction, Sick Houses by Leila Taylor is an interesting exploration of what happens when the place that, by definition, we feel most at home in becomes something Other, something not quite right. Each chapter looks at a different kind of house, from houses of witchcraft (real or alleged) to houses in miniature, dollhouses or dioramas that reflect or influence their life-size counterparts.
First of all, I appreciated the parameters that the author put on her subject. She says in the introduction that “I’m not talking about plantation houses because 1) fuck them, and 2) I don’t consider slave quarters homes,” and she avoids prisons and hotels as well. By offering a clear focus on homes and not just houses/buildings, it creates an immediate connection with the reader — we will of course consider our own homes, the feeling of safety and comfort we feel in them, and we will contemplate the horror we would feel if that sense of safety was pulled out from under us.
I was also very interested in her discussion of the contradictory nature of the ideals of the American Dream: “Manifest destiny told us to ‘go west, young man,’ but this part of the American ideology is in direct contradiction with the long-term mortgage that locks you not only to a city or state but to a specific property for decades.” This contrast relates to a tension that often appears in horror films — a family moves into a dream home and is loath to leave it even when the going gets bad, or a family moves into a home that turns out to be haunted, but they don’t necessarily have any other option other than to try to see it through — and the tying of classic horror movie tropes to broader societal concepts is always interesting, especially when laid out well and backed by solid examples, as is seen in this book.
Some chapters are more thorough than others — the Witch Houses chapter has many more references than the chapter on Brutalism, for example — but overall there is a good amount of evidence and a good balance between real-life and fictional examples. The chapter on houses in miniature was particularly interesting. The author writes about the dioramas in Ari Aster’s Hereditary, and the way that the film’s sets were built to evoke the feeling that the actors, too, are moving (or, more accurately, being moved) within a diorama. On the real-life side of things, the discussion of the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death, a diorama series of crime scenes used to improve forensic investigation, was fascinating.
I did have a few issues with the book. For one, the author spoils the ending of several films in instances where I don’t feel that it’s necessary to support her thesis. Obviously in some cases of books like this, you have to give away the major plot points of your examples in order for them to be relevant — if you’re discussing antagonistic father-son relationships you can’t really use Star Wars as an example unless you tell anyone in your audience who isn’t yet aware of the connection between Luke and Vader.
However, in this book, regarding films discussed like The Others and His House, I think that enough information about their plots could have been given to make the intended point while still leaving some mystery for those who haven’t seen them. I know that I often use this type of book as a way to add to my to-watch or to-read list, offering more examples of a trope I am interested in, so spoiling the endings of books or films I haven’t seen yet is frustrating.
It also felt in some places that more time was spent cataloguing the “contents” of the houses (i.e. the plots of the films set there or, in the case of the real life examples, the crimes committed there) than the houses themselves.
In particular, some of the examples focusing on true crime started to feel too tangental, straying away from the connection to the houses/homes and delving too much into the events themselves. For example, I understood what the author was going for in connecting the novel Room and the tragic real-life story of “feral child” Genie, but in the case of the latter there was little connection to the thesis of the book.
Furthermore, at the start of the book the authors understandably says she won’t include places like slave’s quarters because these were not “homes” to the enslaved people living there, but then it follows that surely a place of imprisonment for Genie (or, in fiction, for the kidnapped inhabitants of Room) was not a “home” to be discussed either.
From the second half of the subtitle, “the Architecture of Dread,” I was hoping for more on the design of houses themselves. While this aspect does certainly get coverage in some sections of the book, looking at architectural oddities on screen and in reality, the trope of architecture that is Not Quite Right — houses that are bigger on the inside, stairways that don’t lead where they’re supposed to — is one of my favorites and I would’ve liked a deeper dive into some of these given the supposed secondary premise of the book.
That said, the sections looking at strange and unusual architecture did have some good moments, most interestingly in dispelling myths about the Winchester Mystery House (no, Sarah Winchester wasn’t taking her orders from ghosts; she was just a hobby architect). On the fiction side of things, I enjoyed the brief foray into one of my favorite books of all time, Susannah Clarke’s Piranesi, as a particularly good example of both impossible architecture and a false home (although I found it odd that one of the other most well-known examples of these tropes, Mark Danielewski’s House of Leaves, did not get a mention).
This book is a catalog of houses that have gone wrong and the ways our built environment can evoke terror and dread. But more so this is a book about the home, and the idea of home, and how horror perverts and manipulates one of the most personal and intimate experiences we have as human beings.
I think that Sick Houses will appeal mostly to readers who already have an interest in the topic. At points it feels as though the author has cornered you at a party and is explaining her research project to you. For me, that’s fine, as it’s a long-standing interest of mine as well. But it may not work as well for readers who aren’t already fascinated by architectural horror or the unheimlich feeling of a haunted house.
But if the above quote draws you in, then this is definitely one to keep an eye out for. Many thanks to the author, publisher, and Netgalley for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.
Also, if this sort of book is right up your alley, you might also enjoy Feeding the Monster by Anna Bogutskaya (link to my review), American Scary by Jeremy Dauber (link to my review on Goodreads), and of course Danse Macabre by Stephen King.
2024 was a great year for non-fiction — the majority of books on my non-fiction list are new releases, with a few from 2023 and a couple of older classics. I love listening to non-fiction on audiobook, so most of these books were ones I listened to, and there was some great narration as well (particularly for the first book on the list).
I was so blown away by this book by writer and social scientist Matthew Desmond that I immediately went and found his previous book Evicted, which is only not also on this list to cover more ground. An accessible, impactful read that makes the searing case for the abolition of poverty in the United States, lays out how to do it, and explains why it benefits the ruling class not to do so. This reads more like a manifesto than anything else at times, but I think that’s appropriate considering the topic and its most workable solutions.
I also have to give a shoutout to the narrator of the audiobook, Dion Graham. Although he’s an incredibly prolific audiobook narrator, this was the first time I had encountered his wonderful voice, and now I’m always excited when I start an audiobook and hear that he’s reading it (he narrated several other books I listened to this year including Evicted, also by Matthew Desmond, and The Wager by David Grann).
The Quiet Damage: QAnon and the Destruction of the American Family by Jesselyn Cook (2024)
Some QAnon adherents are obvious suspects: lifelong conspiracy theorists who already believed every rumor in the book, devotees of certain political groups primed to believe everything their dear leaders tell them, etc. But some victims of this delusion are more unexpected, and its these subjects that Jesselyn Cook studies in her incredible book.
In The Quiet Damage, Cook looks at five families who have been torn apart by one member’s belief in the conspiracy, the vulnerabilities and rabbit holes that brought them there, and the effects on the relationships as a result. In some cases, the family manages to pull their loved one back from the ledge; in others, the conspiracist is still in too deep and the relationship is fractured irreparably.
For obvious reasons, I think this book is even more important now than it was on its publication date only six months ago. Cook’s research is in-depth and her writing is empathetic, both towards the believers and towards the loved ones their false beliefs affect. She also recognizes the environments that open people up to believing in conspiracy — the isolation of the pandemic, a misdiagnosis leading to mistrust of medical professionals — without ceding ground to the falsehood of their beliefs.
They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us by Hanif Abdurraqib (2017)
I genuinely think that Hanif Abdurraqib may be the best writer alive, or at least right up there. From his essays to his poetry, I just can’t get enough of his words. I think that one mark of a great nonfiction writer is how much they can make you care about things you don’t otherwise care about, and there’s no one that could make me care about basketball, emo music, or Ohio like Abdurraqib. And the loves we do have in common— poetry, Bruce Springsteen, social justice, and soccer— when he writes about those things the essays pierce directly into my soul. I’m so moved about the way he writes of the experiences I am so far removed from, mainly being Black and growing up Muslim in America, and I’m so moved when he writes of the experiences I deeply relate to, the universal experiences like love and grief and music.
I loved listening to the audiobook of this collection, where Abdurraqib not only narrates but also intersperses a few recollections and commentaries on the essays in the collection. A few highlights for me were: “The Return of the Loneliest Boys in Town,” an essay on loving a particular band (in this case Cute is What We Aim For) and revisiting them later and recognising the elements of their lyrics that haven’t aged well (in this case, the misogyny); “Defiance, Ohio is the Name of a Band” a stunning poem of an essay about getting out of the place you came from and whether the place you came from ever gets out of you; and “Brief Notes On Staying // No One is Making Their Best Work When They Want to Die,” which contains a paragraph I will probably carry with me for the rest of my life:
But the way I think about grief is that it is the great tug-of-war, and sometimes the flag is on the side you don’t want it to be on. And sometimes, the game has exhausted all of its joy, and all that’s left is you on your knees. But, today, even though I am sad, my hands are still on the rope. I am making my best work when my hands are on the rope, even if I’m not puling back. Life is too long, despite the cliché. Too long, and sometimes too painful. But I imagine I have made it too far. I imagine, somewhere around the corner, the best part is still coming.
Liliana’s Invincible Summer: A Sister’s Search for Justice by Cristina Rivera Garza (2024)
Liliana Rivera Garza, an architecture student in Mexico City, was murdered by her abusive ex-boyfriend in 1990. Her killer has never been brought to justice, and as corruption corrodes the criminal justice system and technology upgrades send old files into the void, her case was in danger of being lost to the sands of time. Unwilling to let this occur, Liliana’s sister Cristina Rivera Garza wrote this devastating and poetic memoir documenting her sister’s life and death, creating a record so beautiful and heart-wrenching that there is no way anyone who reads it will be able to forget Liliana.
Like her sister, Liliana was a writer, and Garza intersperses her own memories of her sister with Liliana’s letters and journal entries, detailing her hopes, her fears, her loves, her dreams, and creating a luminous portrait of a much-beloved sibling, and of the cruelty and complexity of the world around her. As tragic and terrible the reason why this memoir was written, it creates a beautiful portrait of a young woman and the sister who loves her.
Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska by Warren Zanes (2023)
Nebraska is one of my all-time favorite albums, and this book detailing its creation is almost as intimate and revelatory as the album it’s about. Before came The River and after came Born in the U.S.A., two albums that capture the essence of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. But in between was Nebraska, a quiet, lonely, album made in a quiet, lonely way.
Deliver Me from Nowhere is not just a story of the album, but also a story of a man at a crossroads, and of the creative process, and all three elements are recounted in a conversational yet thoughtful way thanks to Zanes’ narration; the author’s background as a musician himself offers extra insight. A must-read for Springsteen fans, but I would recommend this book to anyone interested in art and creation.
By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land by Rebecca Nagle (2024)
In this excellent and powerful book, Rebecca Nagle deftly connects threads both broad and intimate — the history of Native Americans’ forcible relocation by the U.S. government and their struggle for recognition and land rights, a number of specific legal cases that deal with jurisdiction and reservations, and aspects of her own family history — in a way that is accessible and very informative. Throughout the book, I was impressed by the way the author was able to contextualise and link all of the facets together without overwhelming the reader with too much legalese or too many disparate elements, while still giving a ton of information about all sides of this issue and the throughline that runs from pre-America to the present day.
One thing that really struck me is the importance of the fight for justice for all. In addition to the instances of obvious unfairness, in which an innocent had their land taken or their lives changed through no fault of their own and only the injustice of bigotry or the system, one of the key cases in the landmark ruling on tribal rights was that of a convicted murderer on death row. The appeal was not that the defendant was innocent, but one of jurisdiction; establishing the correct jurisdiction would help ensure Native rights over justice on their land. It was a reminder that we must fight for everyone’s rights, including those who have done great wrongs, to ensure fairness for all.
Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility edited by Rebecca Solnit and Thelma Young Lutunatabua (2023)
It’s easy to feel despair about the state of the world and the future of the environment; there’s a lot to despair about. But it’s also easy to get so caught up in hopelessness that it becomes a blockade — if we think that nothing can be done to improve our climate future, then nothing will be done. It also ignores the progress that climate activists have already made worldwide in pushing for a more sustainable future. Not Too Late is a balm for climate despair, with essays and interviews highlighting progress, forward thinking, and reasons to believe that it’s worth it to keep putting in the work.
This isn’t just a pollyanna book, though. Solnit and Lutunatabua and the contributors certainly don’t want you to put your head in the sand and think that everything is going to be okay. The facts in these essays aren’t all positive; the outlooks definitely aren’t all rosy. A better world is only possible if we fight for it, but Not Too Late proves that there is still a fight to be had, and almost single-handedly turned me away from climate doomerism and readied me to reengage.
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson (2010)
I went to MOMA last weekend, and one of the works that really struck me was a 1941 series of 61 paintings by Jacob Lawrence depicting the Great Migration of southern Black folks north in search of equality and economic opportunity. I immediately thought about Isabel Wilkerson’s landmark book The Warmth of Other Suns. This book is both vast and intimate, offering both an expansive look at the patterns of African Americans leaving the Jim Crow south for the north, west, and midwest, and intimate, focusing on the stories of three individuals who moved in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s.
For as in-depth and meticulously researched as this book is, it’s almost incredible how readable it is. Never feeling bogged down or slow, The Warmth of Other Suns is both a beautiful tribute to the resilience of the people it covers and an important record of the times. From the strife and injustice these migrants faced in their search for better lives, to the futures that lay ahead of them as they built their new communities, the book looks at every facet in a way that is both informative and compelling.
Cue the Sun!The Invention of Reality TV by Emily Nussbaum (2024)
Era by era, Emily Nussbaum’s book documents the rise and rise of reality TV. You don’t have to love reality TV (I don’t, if it’s not Top Chef) to love this book (I do). You just have to love engaging, thoroughly researched journalism and have a little bit of a voyeuristic streak when it comes to peeking behind the curtain of media production. How much of a certain decision came from the producers? Why did he get cast? Was that relationship real or “showmance”? Nussbaum’s reporting and interviews offer insight — and sometimes the people who wouldn’t provide a comment tell as much as those who do.
The first few chapters of the book are interesting as they cover the early days of reality TV as it transitions from radio and traditional gameshows to become more like the reality shows we know today. But where the story really picks up steam is the chapter covering the first season of Survivor, a juggernaut that impacted how every reality TV show is created, produced, and cast, and how every reality competition game is played by the best and most conniving contestants. Chapters covering Queer Eye and Big Brother were equally interesting. While there were a few iconic shows I felt were missing, I do understand that the breadth of reality tv is so large now that a book that kept every show in its scope would be never-ending. And on the whole, this is a fantastic dive into the genre that will leave you entertained and possibly despairing at its power.
The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore by Evan Friss (2024)
The Bookshop, despite its subtitle, is not an exhaustive history of the American bookstore. In some ways, it reads more like a series of essays, each chronicling a notable bookstore — the big (The Strand), the bigger (Barnes & Noble), and the small (sidewalk booksellers on the streets of New York City). It looks at bookstores notable not only for their wares but for their cultural influence, like the Oscar Wild Bookshop that sold LGBTQ literature and promoted activism in same, and those with much more sinister aims like the antisemitic Aryan Bookstore. And, of course, it looks at the impact of Amazon on indie and big box booksellers alike, and how the magic of physical bookstores still hopes to combat the pull of buy-it-now consumerism (usually with the assistance of some deep although-not-as-deep-as-Jeff-Bezos’ and far more altruistic pockets, as with Ann Patchett’s Parnassus bookshop).
I enjoyed this approach more than a strictly linear take on the history of bookselling. It was extremely engaging, and the bookshops selected to feature were a good cross-section of the different types of bookstores that have risen and fallen and risen again throughout America’s literary history. With plenty of trivia and stories woven in to the pages, The Bookshop is sure to appeal to fellow bookstore enthusiasts as much as it did me.
Hi hello long time no write. It’s been a busy year, but the truth is that I just haven’t made time for this blog. That’s going to change in 2023 though — I’m changing jobs, and at the job I’ve just left (as of today) I was writing three blog posts a week. I figure I should be able to translate into at least one post per week over here, and I’m going to stick to that resolution no matter what. And of course, I’ll start off with my favourite books I read last year.
One thing I’ll start by saying is that there are a few major faves missing from this list. It was such a good year for horror that I’m going to be doing a separate post on my favourite horror reads of the year next week or thereabouts. So stay tuned for that and some great spooky reads, and in the meantime read on for my favourite books from non-horror genres that I read in 2022.
I absolutely loved Station Eleven but then was a bit cold on The Glass Hotel, so when Emily St. John Mandel’s next book was released in 2022 I was incredibly curious but mildly hesitant. I needn’t have worried, because Sea of Tranquility turned out to be one of my favourite novels of the year. For a story with a vast setting, spanning galaxies and millennia, it is close and intimate, a thoughtful work of speculative fiction that offers a puzzle where, over the course of the story, each piece is put delicately, carefully, poetically into place.
Due to a combination of things (lockdown, no social life, a really good to-read list), I completely obliterated my yearly goal of 52 books. I hit my goal by the end of May, and by the end of 2021 I had read (or listened to on audiobook, it was around a 70/30 split) 100 books. And folks, most of them were very good.
I’m pretty much a pro at only choosing books I’ll enjoy these days. This is good, because I hate to DNF (did not finish) a book. Luckily, I know whose reviews I trust, both among friends and pros, which tropes I love and hate, which authors I’ll follow to the end of the earth, and so on. That doesn’t mean I never pick up a dud, or that I never take a risk with something that may (or may not) surprise me, but when you look at my Goodreads and see heaps of 4- and 5-star reviews, it’s more because I know how to pick ’em than because I’m not discerning.
Speaking of Goodreads, I’m trying to transition to Storygraph this year, or at least use it in addition to GR, although I’m not sure how I feel about it yet. So if anyone’s on it, add me!
Anyway, my best books of the year. I couldn’t narrow it down further than 15 fiction and 10 nonfiction favourites, so here they are:
First of all, I managed another successful NaNoWriMo this November, writing 50111 words over the course of the month. Hopefully this will finally be the year I actually stick with the story and continue working on it. Because of NaNo, I didn’t do as much reading as I usually might, but I still managed to read a couple of the best books I’ve read all year. Plus, plenty of reading from October. Choosing my end-of-year best-ofs is going to be tough this year for sure.
I’ve split them between fiction and nonfiction and put them roughly in order of how much I liked them.
thebestpossibletime 