Welcome to spooky season! If you are like me it has been spooky season since mid-August. However the weather is finally starting to feel like fall. I can’t wait to get some pumpkin candles, a warm beverage and curl up reading. I don’t know about you but I like to save my spooky books for this time a year. I’ve got quite a docket for this month that I want to cover. So lets get to it.
1. Night of the Living Queers
It seems this season I’m all about anthologies. Night of the Living Queers is a YA anthology that I really want to sink my teeth into. Pride month is in June but Halloween is essentially a queer high holiday. After all what group loves a night of transformation and being extra more than the gays. What’s more? Each story is done through a different BIPOC lens as the characters lives are changed forever by a Halloween Night.
2. Ghost Station
I don’t read much science fiction, however there is something about space horror that particularly appeals to me. I read Dead Space, a book with a similar premise last year and really liked it. So I decided to give Ghost Station a try. The idea is simple a doctor comes to the help a crew after they lose a crew member. Crews have to be watched closely when the lose someone. They need to be monitored due to a mysterious space sickness that can lead to murder.
But the crew isn’t interested in opening up to the doctor. The crew is instead focusing on the mysterious ancient planet. Also curious is the hasty retreat of the last group that tried to colonize the plant. But when a pilot ends up dead. When this killing seems like first the doctor and the crew must work together or end up dead.
3. The White Guy Dies First
I’ll be honest I got this at first just because of the title. As a fan of horror movies, this is a very true trope. Its great to see various BIPOC authors subverting it and talking about the dynamics of fear and power in horror.
It is of course another anthology. And I look forward to making notes about each story and reporting on it at the end of the month. It shares thirteen short stories that deal with everything from ancient terrors to modern villains.
4. White Smoke
Tiffany D. Jackson has certainly been on my list to read for quite awhile. This is also another case of where I prefer to read horror by a BIPOC woman. White Smoke is the story of Marigold who is running from the ghosts of her old life. She and her newly blended family settled down in small Midwestern Carterville after moving from the beach in California.
The family moved because her mom accepted a job to renovate an old house for a foundation. While the offer is a amazing one the family soon learns that the house has secrets. Items disappear, along with everything from lights turning on and off, to doors closing, and shadows appearing across their vision. Pair that with the wary neighbors and Marigold is seriously creeped out.
The idea of running from ghosts is just an expression right? Marigold isn’t so sure anymore after she learns more about the town and its secrets. The dream offer to renovate the house slowly turns into a nightmare.
5. The Unfinished
This book is horror with an Indigenous spin the vein of Bad Cree. Avery is an athlete in a small town. Her runs soon lead her to a mysterious pond in the middle of the forest. The pond is a secret that the town of Lost Creek has long forgotten.
The black water of the pond is always watching, waiting and hungry for souls. Avery has heard whispers of the powerful monsters from her Mohawk relatives. But she has never connected it to the pond’s existence.
However the same elders which she’s distanced herself from may be the sources of the answers she seeks. When Avery’s friend and long time crush Key is the next to disappear via the pond’s evil magic. Avery must choose whether or not to listen to her Elders and try and save the town. Or make a brazen attempt to follow her heart and get Key back.
What have you all got planned on your reading lists for October? Do you like horror or do you have something else that makes you feel like fall.
Rose's Book Garden 