The holiday of Halloween is taking up an increasing amount of real estate in our cultural landscape.
I’ve seen advertisements for “Halloween in July” events. Costume shops set up in shopping centers in August. A friend recently recounted all the parties and haunted houses he was planning to visit across the region during this “spooky season.” With that in mind, here are some horror books to read to keep you good and spookified this fall.
Grady Hendrix has a true talent for writing books that take the themes and feel of 1980s horror movies and crossbreed them with other genres.
His latest, How to Sell a Haunted House combines grief and the drama of painful family history with humor and haunted puppets. Adult siblings Louise and Mark return to their family home upon the unexpected death of their parents to put the family’s affairs in order. Their already prickly relationship is pushed towards conflict as they mourn and fight while trying to go through a crowded house and prepare it for sale. But dark forces are at work. Maybe their parents’ possessions don’t want to leave. Maybe the house itself does not want to be sold?
For a generation that grew up on scary movies, lots of contemporary horror is forced to acknowledge that their characters are aware of the monsters and clichés of the genre.
An obsession with these movies is the basis of Kalynn Bayron’s You’re Not Supposed to Die Tonight.
The protagonist works at a slasher movie-themed summer camp. But the fake victims start becoming real victims, and the survivors have to seek out the killer for their own survival, amidst a flurry of plot twists and turns.
Mister Magic is a new horror novel by best-selling local author Kiersten White.
A group of five adults who once starred in a children’s TV program are reunited decades after the show was cancelled because of an enigmatic and tragic accident. What actually happened that day? Why is there no video evidence that the show ever existed? Who (or what?) was Mister Magic? This creepy tale combines the fears of childhood with ruminations about pop culture, nostalgia, and belonging.
Coming-of-age stories are about children who grow and change, becoming something different than they once were.
S.L. Coney’s short novel Wild Spaces stretches this concept of transformation in an unsettling direction. What if your transition was into something a bit more unknowable and sinister? An eleven year old boy living on a rural coast with his parents is visited by the boy’s estranged grandfather, causing family tension and differing influences on his ongoing metamorphosis.
You can get any of these books with assistance from your local library at: sdcl.org.
And if your kids need some school assistance, they can come by to our new program Homework Help at La Mesa Branch Library, Thursdays from 4 to 6 pm.
High school volunteers will help kids K-8 complete their assignments. Bilingual tutors are available, no appointments necessary.
Photo credit: Pixabay.com
