The month of October is finally here! You may find yourself in the mood to curl up with a warm blanket and a spooky read.
If you do, here’s a reading list you may want to consider. Click on the title to order the book from the library catalog. Happy reading!
The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas. Mexican Gothic meets Rebecca in this debut supernatural suspense novel, set in the aftermath of the Mexican War of Independence, about a remote house, a sinister haunting, and the woman pulled into their clutches.
A Black and Endless Sky by Matthew Lyons. When estranged siblings Jonah and Nell Talbot head out on a cross-country road trip back to their hometown of Albuquerque in the wake of Jonah’s divorce, the last thing they expect to discover in the Nevada desert is an abandoned industrial site built around a hole in the earth that seems to go on and on forever. Exploring it, they soon discover an underground cavern filled with corpses both fresh and ancient, indecipherable writing covering the stone walls, and a ghastly altar square in the middle of it all.
Dead Silence by S.A. Barnes. Claire Kovalik is days away from being unemployed when her beacon repair crew picks up a strange distress signal. With nothing to lose and no desire to return to Earth, Claire and her team decide to investigate. What they find is shocking: the Aurora, a famous luxury spaceliner that vanished on its maiden tour of the solar system more than twenty years ago. A salvage claim like this could set Claire and her crew up for life. But a quick search of the ship reveals something isn’t right.
The Devil Takes You Home by Gabino Iglesias. Agreeing to one final job—hijacking a cartel’s cash shipment before it reaches Mexico—hitman Mario, to salvage what’s left of his family, travels across the border and back with two other men whose hidden motivations are laid bare alongside nightmarish encounters that defy explanation.
Woman, Eating by Claire Kohda. Lydia is hungry. She’s always wanted to try Japanese food. Sashimi, ramen, onigiri with sour plum stuffed inside – the food her Japanese father liked to eat. And then there is bubble tea and iced-coffee, ice cream and cake, and foraged herbs and plants, and the vegetables grown by the other young artists at the London studio space she is secretly squatting in. But, Lydia can’t eat any of these things. Her body doesn’t work like those of other people.
The Resting Place by Camilla Sten. Eleanor lives with prosopagnosia, the inability to recognize a familiar person’s face. When Eleanor walked in on the scene of her capriciously cruel grandmother, Vivianne’s, murder, she came face to face with the killer―a maddening expression that means nothing to someone like her. With each passing day, the horror of having come so close to a murderer―and not knowing if they’d be back―overtakes both her dreams and her waking moments, thwarting her perception of reality. Then a lawyer calls.
Hide by Kiersten White. Fourteen contestants, including Mack, a homeless shelter resident who lost everything, embark on a seven-day competition and the chance to win $50,000 if they can successfully play hide-and-seek in an abandoned amusement park without being found and eliminated.
Road of Bones by Christopher Golden. Kolyma Highway, otherwise known as the Road of Bones, is a 1200 mile stretch of Siberian road where winter temperatures can drop as low as sixty degrees below zero. Under Stalin, at least eighty Soviet gulags were built along the route to supply the USSR with a readily available workforce, and over time hundreds of thousands of prisoners died in the midst of their labors. Their bodies were buried where they fell, plowed under the permafrost, underneath the road. Felix Teigland, or “Teig,” is a documentary producer, and when he learns about the Road of Bones, he realizes he’s stumbled upon untapped potential.
My Dearest Darkest by Kayla Cottingham. When transfer student Finch Chamberlin and popular senior Selena St. Clair accidentally wake something terrifying and ancient in the depths of their school, they must work together to stop the horror they unleashed before it consumes the town.
Leech by Hiron Ennes. In an isolated chateau, as far north as north goes, the baron’s doctor has died. The doctor’s replacement has a mystery to solve: discovering how the Institute lost track of one of its many bodies. For hundreds of years the Interprovincial Medical Institute has grown by taking root in young minds and shaping them into doctors, replacing every human practitioner of medicine. The Institute is here to help humanity, to cure and to cut, to cradle and protect the species from the apocalyptic horrors their ancestors unleashed.
The Witch in the Well by Camilla Bruce. When two former friends reunite after decades apart, their grudges, flawed ambitions, and shared obsession swirl into an all-too-real echo of a terrible town legend. Centuries ago, beautiful young Ilsbeth Clark was accused of witchcraft after several children disappeared. Her acquittal did nothing to stop her fellow townsfolk from drowning her in the well where the missing children were last seen. When author and social media influencer Elena returns to the summer paradise of her youth to get her family’s manor house ready to sell, the last thing she expected was connecting with—and feeling inspired to write about-Ilsbeth’s infamous spirit.
It Looks like Us by by Alison Ames. Shy high school junior Riley Kowalski is spending her winter break on a research trip to Antarctica, sponsored by one of the world’s biggest tech companies. She joins five student volunteers, a company-approved chaperone, and an impartial scientist to prove that environmental plastic pollution has reached all the way to Antarctica, but what they find is something much worse… something that looks human.
The O'Fallon Public Library News 