It’s getting towards October, and the weather’s cooling down, which makes me like to read things like Something Wicked This Way Comes and Our Lady of Darkness. And I will, obviously, but I’d like some suggestions for spooky books. Not horror, per se — certainly not cosmic horror, although of course I do read that. For this, I want books that are evocative of the cool October breeze twirling leaves in the moonlight, or the smell of the furnace as it gets turned on for the first time this fall. Mysteries dark and perhaps even dangerous, but ones that can be faced and foiled by folk of good heart. Books that have a good, if not always superficially reassuring, heart.
So, suggest away.
I’ll again mention Carousel Tides..
https://www.amazon.com/Carousel-Tides-Sharon-Lee/dp/1439133956
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Not sure it’s quite what you’re looking for here, perhaps a bit too summery for your seasonal taste.
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Nothing else springing to mind, though, so ..
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Mew
I recommend Wild Seed, by Octavia Butler. Her work is brilliant.
Also, you should read works by Christopher Paul Curtis to your kids. You and they will be entertained.
I’m sure you’ve already read American Gods. But whatever you do, avoid the Starz series the same way you would avoid all Highlander movies after #1.
I don’t know if you read classics, but Melville’s Moby Dick and Thomas Hardy’s “The Return of the Native” come to mind.
You already did “I Shall Wear Midnight” but I don’t think you ever put up “Wee Free Men”. I’m just saying…
A Night in the Lonesome October–Roger Zelazny’s last book. Told from the POV of Jack the Ripper’s dog as various monsters from book, film, and history converge and conspire to stop the end of the world, or to bring it about. With bonus material for fans of Sherlock Holmes. Lighthearted macabre.
Alternately, anything by Ray Bradbury, anything by Tim Powers, and anything by Neil Gaiman.
He’s revealed himself as an asshat in the past few decades, but Seasons of the Wolf by Stephen King has the feel you want, and I second the nomination of anything by Neil Gaiman.
particularly this Gaiman
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18635092-the-truth-is-a-cave-in-the-black-mountains
If you’re looking for Gaiman up your alley you can hardly do worse than: http://neilgaiman.com/mediafiles/exclusive/shortstories/emerald.pdf
I read it in one of his short story collections. The advertisements are just icing on a delicious, mysterious cake.
Good LUCK trying to find a copy of Seasons of the Wolf for something resembling a reasonable price, though.
Story please? I don’t know anything about it being out of print or rights-locked in legal limbo.
I have no idea; but even paperbacks start in the mid-twenties, which is more than I’m willing to pay for a book I just want to reread. 🙂
Local library and ILL are your friends.