It's the spookiest time of the year, and it's also the perfect time to cuddle up in a blanket with a good book. So right on cue, our book reviewer Carole Barrowman joins us with her top picks for scary reads; and they all take place in creepy houses, so you may want to stay outside this Halloween!
For more information on Carole, visit BarrowmanBooks.com. And check out her picks below:
1. “The Haunting of Hill House” by Shirley Jackson - I love a good haunted house chiller and this is the one that set the bar high for all the others to come. The book is enjoying a resurgence thanks to a new Netflix series. Read the book and then binge the show. Four people spend the night in a haunted house to try to prove that spirits and ghosts exist. Are they real or just in their mind?
2. “The Elementals” by Michael McDowell - This book’s horror creeps up on you and I still get chills thinking about it. It riffs on Jackson’s classic and has become a cult favorite among those of us who love books about creepy houses. In this novel three houses sit together on the Alabama coast, each owned by different members of family with some seriously strange rituals. Oh, and the middle house is slowly filling with sand.
3. “The Cabin at the End of the World” by Paul Tremblay - This book opens with a long chapter that is the most subtly creepy as anything I’ve read in a very long time and that includes most of Stephen King. The book is a masterpiece of sinister and takes a turn toward the end that really will leave you stunned. A young girl, Wren, and her fathers are on vacation in a cabin in New Hampshire when a man approaches her and says, “None of what’s going to happen is your fault.”
4. “A House at the Bottom of the Lake” by Josh Malerman - This novella is short enough to read on Halloween after the kids go to bed. It’s a dark creepy love story, a fairy tale really, that slowly builds its suspense. It’s about two teenagers who go on a canoeing date and on the other side of a tunnel they find a house at the bottom of a supernatural lake. Next time take your date to Applebee’s!
