Five Books For Spooky Season, free edition
From sweet to sinister, I’ve got you covered.
Welcome to the October edition of Five Books For, the newsletter for people who love great stories. This month I thought we’d go with a theme of spooky books. One of the things I often try to do is to read seasonally - so winter books over the winter, summery books in the summer - and that also means I usually try to read a few spooky books in October. It helps me feel more in tune with the seasons, which are less defined here in Spain than they are in the UK, where I grew up, and I also love having seasonal traditions.
The books below represent a good selection of Halloween reads whether you love horror or prefer that the real-life spiders in your house should be the scariest part of your autumn, and with that in mind I’ve listed them from fun to scary. What all these books do have in common is some kind of supernatural element, regardless of which genre they fall into.
Let’s dive in!
The Ex Hex by Rachel Hawkins
“Never mix vodka and witchcraft. Vivi knew that.”
If you fancy something a little more on the fun side of things, then this second-chance Halloween romcom might be just the thing.
So what’s it about? Our protagonist Vivi is left broken-hearted after a brief but passionate fling with Rhys Penhallow. Both Vivi and Rhys are witches and an ancestor of Rhys’ founded Graves Glen, the town where Vivi lives - imagine a Halloween-themed Stars Hollow. Vivi and her cousin Gwyn jokingly curse Rhys after the break-up but inadvertently invoke a much older, more sinister curse which lays dormant until Rhys returns to town nine years later. Can they work together to save Graves Glen as Halloween approaches?
What’s great about it? Essentially, it’s a lot of fun. It’s quite tongue-in-cheek and there’s humour threaded throughout. The love story is nicely done and there’s a neat feminist twist to the story as the facts around the curse become known.
Give it a try if: you like romcoms; you want to read something spooky but not remotely scary; you like anything to do with witches; you like idyllic, quirky small-town settings; you love Halloween.
A Discovery Of Witches by Deborah Harkness
“Whoever can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead.”
If you want to get engrossed in a story of love, magic and mystery this spooky season, then A Discovery Of Witches is the perfect option. The first novel in the trilogy, it’s primarily a love story but there is also a bookish mystery to solve. A bonus is that the accompanying TV series is a great watch - but I’d definitely recommend reading the books first. The TV series misses or skims over a few subplots which are much more rounded in the novels, although the series is an excellent adaptation. The costumes, particularly in the Elizabethan period, are spectacular, and the settings and cinematography are gorgeous.
So what’s it about? Diana Bishop is a witch, but she doesn’t use her magic. Instead she works hard to blend in with her human colleagues at the University of Oxford, where she is a visiting historian specialising in the study of old alchemical texts. When she calls up Ashmole 782, a mysterious book with magical properties, from the depths of the Bodliean Library, she finds herself at the centre of creature politics as vampires, witches and daemons have been hunting this lost book for centuries - and some of them will stop at nothing to get it.
In the meantime, Matthew de Clermont, an ancient vampire, has been studying creature DNA in an effort to understand why creatures seem to be on the brink of extinction. Witches are losing their powers, vampires can no longer sire successfully and demons are succumbing to mental illness and instability in droves.
Can Diana and Matthew solve the mystery of Ashmole 782 and evade all the looming threats that pursue them?
What’s great about it? This is one of my all-time favourite books/series. The characters are so well-drawn and the plot is fantastic. Oxford, city of dreaming spires, comes alive, particularly in the first novel, and in the second Diana and Matthew have to travel back in time to Elizabethan London to hide from their pursuers and find more clues to solve the mystery. The books move between Oxford, London, France, Venice, New Orleans and New England as well as 16th century Prague, France and London. There's a reasonably large cast of characters but this is handled deftly and you find yourself attached to many of them, not just Diana and Matthew. The love story between Diana and Matthew is beautifully done and avoids the clichés you often find in vampire love stories while the subplots are immensely satisfying too. The logic of how the supernatural aspects of the story work is convincing and the series also really brings the past to life, not just through the time travel sections but through Diana’s work and I found that to be one of the great pleasures of the series. Harkness is a historian and it shows - her love of history shines through and I learned lots of things reading the books without even trying.
The series, while primarily a love story wrapped around a mystery, also deals with themes of prejudice, knowledge, family and chosen family, power and its abuse, and of course history itself.
Give it a try if: you like vampires or witches; you love reading about history or historical novels; you love beauty (it features lots of beautiful books and artefacts); you love books and libraries; you want to read something with a happy ending; you love romcoms or love stories; you’re interested in family dynamics.
The Wine Of Angels by Phil Rickman
“Through the deep, oak-sunk window, the crooked, picture-book roofs of the village snuggled into a soft and woolly pale night sky.”
The Wine Of Angels is the first book in the Merrily Watkins series of mystery/detective novels by Phil Rickman. The series is another of my all-time favourites - it has great characters, fantastic plotting and a beautiful setting in rural Herefordshire.
So what’s it about?
This first book in the series opens with an autumn wassailing gone horribly wrong. Merrily is visiting the village of Ledwardine (one of the few imaginary places in the series) as she is under consideration for the post of local vicar. Before long, Merrily finds herself living in a potentially haunted vicarage and investigating the possibility of a centuries-old ghost as well trying to get to the bottom of a much more current murder mystery.
What’s great about it?
Merrily is one of my favourite ‘detectives’ - she’s not strictly a detective of course but she does solve mysteries. Merrily is a great character - she’s a vicar who also happens to be the deliverance minister (formerly known as the exorcist) for her diocese, she’s kind, she’s normal, she is the single mum of a teenage daughter, she doesn’t have any of the issues authors often feel the need to give their detectives (you know, alcohol addiction, ex-wives, family members murdered by serial killers, inability to follow rules or work with others, etc.) and she is very human. Her faith is treated matter-of-factly, without condescension or valorisation. I love that there’s a series with a woman vicar as the hero, let alone one who’s so human.
The sense of place and the beautiful descriptions throughout the book (and the series) are another standout for me. There isn’t any other crime/mystery series where I’ve highlighted so many passages just for their beauty, and I read a lot of crime novels. Rickman’s descriptions of landscape and place in particular are exceptional. Each book features local Herefordshire folklore and real places which are vividly brought to life so even if you’ve never visited Herefordshire you’ll feel you know it from reading the books.
The supernatural elements of the book(s) are also skilfully handled. We’re never expected to suspend too much disbelief; rather we see strange things happening which might or might not have a rational explanation, and we see Merrily asking the same questions that we would.
Give it a try if: you love the English countryside; you like an unconventional hero(ine); you love folklore; you feel like reading something which has a bit of a supernatural element but not a fantasy or horror novel; you love great detective stories.
Melmoth by Sarah Perry
“Only children think closing your eyes makes a thing go away.”
If you’re looking for something more literary, Melmoth is the book for you. It’s a masterpiece, beautifully written, atmospheric and deeply unsettling. A visceral sense of dread pervades the book and draws you forward, further into the mystery that lies at its heart until you almost expect to see Melmoth herself when you look up from the page.
So what’s it about? In this telling, the figure of Melmoth is one of the women who found Jesus’ empty tomb. However, she denies what she has seen and as a result is condemned to wander the earth until Christ returns, bearing witness to all of humanity’s evil, in the hope of achieving salvation at last. Our main character is Helen, a woman living in Prague who first hears about Melmoth from her colleague Karel, who hands her packet of papers for safekeeping before disappearing. Helen begins to trace the myth of Melmoth through the documents in the packet, which contains witness accounts of Melmoth’s appearance at various moments in history, where the actions of one person - and the moral choices they make - play into a wider evil being perpetuated. As Helen’s research progresses we learn more of her backstory and strange events begin to take place. Could Melmoth be drawing near?
What’s great about it? It’s a fascinating and beautifully written story with a mystery at its core; each of the histories contained in the packet are written as skilfully as the main narrative and it’s a thoughtful exploration of evil, ethics, and the importance of witnessing the things that distress us as well as the things that hide (and which we hide, from ourselves and others) in plain sight.
Give it a try if: you love literature; you like stories which explore ethics and morals; you like books which make you think; you love books which are genuinely creepy; you like historical mysteries; you love beautiful prose.
Carrie by Stephen King
“Sorry is the Kool-Aid of human emotions... True sorrow is as rare as true love.”
Whether you’ve seen the movie or read the book, you very likely already know the basic story of Carrie since it’s such a classic and has become a staple of pop culture since it was published in 1974. It was King’s first published book, originally intended as a short story, and he initially abandoned it before he’d gotten very far with it, finding it difficult to write a teenage girl as the main character. Apparently his wife Tabitha, also a writer, fished the discarded pages out of the bin and persuaded him to continue with the story, offering to help give him a female perspective where required and the story took off from there.
So what’s it about? Carrie is a teenager at a small-town high school, ostracised by her peers for her unusual clothes and ultra-religious background, who also happens to have telekinetic powers. When she gets her first period in the showers after gym class at school, her classmates mock her by throwing period products at her and shouting abuse. At home, she is subjected to further abuse from her mother, who accuses her of sinfulness and locks her in a cupboard. Full of remorse for the shower room incident, one of Carrie’s classmates arranges for her own boyfriend to invite Carrie to the prom with the intention of making amends. However, not all of Carrie’s classmates are equally remorseful and the prom night ends in tragedy for all involved. The book explores themes of ostracism and revenge through a supernatural lens.
What’s great about it? It’s a compelling story with a complex structure, told from multiple viewpoints and through a variety of documents, but it never gets messy or bloated - it’s on the shorter side for a novel at around 200 pages so it’s a relatively quick read. It has strong characterisation and it’s interesting to read something which likely helped to create the pop culture idea of high school and prom as we have it today. It’s also considered to be one of the books that shifted the horror genre into the mainstream and into a new style of horror writing that was more immediate and personal.
Give it a try if: you like reading classics; you like books with multiple viewpoints and documentary elements; you don’t need a happy ending; you don’t like gory horror but like other features of the genre; you want to read something on the shorter side.
Thanks for reading!
I hope this edition of the newsletter has given you some sufficiently spooky ideas for your October reading. I’d love to hear from you - have you read any of these books? If so, what did you think? What other spooky reads would you recommend?
If you have song suggestions for this month’s playlist I’d also love to hear from you! This goes out to paid subscribers in the second newsletter each month which also features my book prescription column and various other goodies. If you’d like to find out more about that, just click the button below.
Happy reading,
Kate