It’s time to dust up your costumes and cultivate your spiderwebs, because Horror October is back.
It’s the best time of year to read all of those books you’ve been to scared to open, and curl up on the sofa to watch you favorite scary movie, so I’m dedicating a whole month to doing just that.
However, if you’re not a fan of horror, do not fret, I’m using the term quite loosely and hope that there will be something to suit everyone (it’s not like I could go a month without reading any Children’s or YA)!
Join me!
The Books
I clearly won’t get round to all of these within the month (especially considering how long it’s taking me to read Needful Things), but I’m going to give it a bloody good try.
Click on the images to for the Goodreads page
New & Upcoming Releases
Printer’s Devil Court
A mysterious manuscript lands on the desk of the step-son of the late Dr Hugh Meredith, a country doctor with a prosperous and peaceful practice in a small English town. From the written account he has left behind, however, we learn that Meredith was haunted by events that took place years before, during his training as a junior doctor near London’s Fleet Street, in a neighbourhood virtually unchanged since Dickens’s times.
Living then in rented digs, Meredith gets to know two other young medics, who have been carrying out audacious and terrifying research and experiments. Now they need the help of another who must be a doctor capable of total discretion and strong nerves.
An English Ghost Story
A dysfunctional British nuclear family seek a new life away from the big city in the sleepy Somerset countryside.
At first their new home, The Hollow, seems to embrace them, creating a rare peace and harmony within the family. But when the house turns on them, it seems to know just how to hurt them the most—threatening to destroy them from the inside out.
Ice Massacre
A mermaid’s supernatural beauty serves one purpose: to lure a sailor to his death.
The Massacre is supposed to bring peace to Eriana Kwai. Every year, the island sends its warriors to battle these hostile sea demons. Every year, the warriors fail to return. Desperate for survival, the island must decide on a new strategy. Now, the fate of Eriana Kwai lies in the hands of twenty battle-trained girls and their resistance to a mermaid’s allure.
Wakening the Crow
With the looming shadow of Edgar Allan Poe falling over one family, Gregory takes the reader into a world of uncertainty and fear.
Oliver Gooch comes across a tooth, in a velvet box, with a handwritten note from 1888 to say it’s a tooth from the boy Edgar Allan Poe. He displays it in his new bookshop, and names the store Poe’s Tooth Books.
Oliver took the money from his small daughter Chloe’s accident insurance and bought a converted church to live in with his altered child and wife. Rosie hopes Chloe will came back to herself but Oliver is secretly relieved to have this new easy-to-manage child, and holds at bay the guilt that the accident was a result of his negligence. On a freezing night he and Chloe come across the crow, a raggedy skeletal wretch of a bird, and it refuses to leave. It infiltrates their lives, it alters Oliver’s relationship with Rosie, it changes Chloe. It’s a dangerous presence in the firelit, shadowy old vestry, in Poe’s Tooth Books.
Inexorably the family, the tooth, the crow, the church and their story will draw to a terrifying climax.
From the TBR Shelves
Needful Things
Leland Gaunt opens a new shop in Castle Rock called Needful Things. Anyone who enters his store finds the object of his or her lifelong dreams and desires: a prized baseball card, a healing amulet. In addition to a token payment, Gaunt requests that each person perform a little “deed,” usually a seemingly innocent prank played on someone else from town. These practical jokes cascade out of control and soon the entire town is doing battle with itself. Only Sheriff Alan Pangborn suspects that Gaunt is behind the population’s increasingly violent behavior.
Doll Bones
Zach, Poppy and Alice have been friends for ever. They love playing with their action figure toys, imagining a magical world of adventure and heroism. But disaster strikes when, without warning, Zach’s father throws out all his toys, declaring he’s too old for them. Zach is furious, confused and embarrassed, deciding that the only way to cope is to stop playing . . . and stop being friends with Poppy and Alice. But one night the girls pay Zach a visit, and tell him about a series of mysterious occurrences. Poppy swears that she is now being haunted by a china doll – who claims that it is made from the ground-up bones of a murdered girl. They must return the doll to where the girl lived, and bury it. Otherwise the three children will be cursed for eternity . .
Dark Satanic Mills
Set in a near-future Britain, Dark Satanic Mills tracks a young girl’s journey from the flooded landmarks of London to the vast, scorched and abandoned hills of the north. Framed for a murder she did not commit, the innocent and beautiful Christie has no other choice but to run for her life. Both a cautionary tale and a rip-roaring road trip, Dark Satanic Mills is altogether an intelligent, captivating and thrilling ride – The Wizard of Oz for a new generation, told in exhilarating shades of light and dark.
Killer Spiders
It is 2005 in Great Britain, and an invasion of venomous spiders has hit the country. Hitchhiking’ in imported food, the spiders are able to thrive in the changing climate. At first, coverage of the attack is overlooked in favour of world events, but soon the spiders begin to take over. They cover everything they come across in gigantic webs and kill everything in sight. Their favorite food? Humans. Immune to insecticides and pesticides, the spiders multiply and take over towns and villages, spreading outwards from the London sewers. Dire consequences ensue for many residents of Great Britain as they fight to keep the killer spider epidemic under control…
Ghostly Guest Posts /Features
I have some great features and guest posts lined up – here is but a taster (in other words the ones I can remember off the top of my head/the ones that are finished and ready to go).
Necro-nom-nom-icon: Cookbook of the Dead by Braineater Jones
Ever wondered how to feed your pet zombie? Braineater Jones himself stops by to give us some tips on how to keep the undead happy.#Cheerstobraineaterjones
Revisiting Point Horror
I take a look at some of my favorite Point Horror books and see how reading them today compares.
When the 90’s Come Back to Haunt You
Kimberly G. Giarratano, author of Grunge, Gods, and Graveyards takes us back to the 90’s with a haunting Halloween playlist.
You’ve Been Here Before
Think horror, and you can’t help but of Stephen King. I have a gander at some of the most King-esque non-King things there is. Try saying that when you’re drunk.
Forgotten Fangers
You might have missed these Vampire Movies. Shame on you!
