Psychological thrillers and the paranormal are my favorite reads, especially during the spooky fall season.
Halloween ignites my writer’s mind and stimulates my insatiable hunger for spooks and scares inside the pages of a good book.
The three books I have chosen this month will tick the boxes for the best scary reads this year.
Elizabeth Hand returns to the eerily unsettling grounds of Shirley Jackson’s “The Haunting of Hill House” in her exquisitely stellar novel, “The Haunting on the Hill.”
In an atmospheric and menacing environment, Hand weaves a tapestry of gorgeously lasting impressions inside the reader’s mind as she draws on the horror house’s disquietingly frightening and infamous landscape.
Holly Sherwin, a struggling playwright, urges the owner of the sprawling mansion to let her and her friends rent the residence for a few weeks so she can finish writing a playscript for a theater production in which she is involved.
Neither Holly nor her circle of friends realize what they are getting into when they enter Hill House.
Strange events occur—hidden passageways that lead to Hell, abnormally large, human-sized hares stalking the vast grounds, disturbing whispers and scampering sounds heard in the walls, and a blood-soaked tablecloth. and who is the woman Holly befriends upon her arrival, running after her with a large knife? It is a haunting reveal that will appeal to all horror fans.
Andrew Pyper’s latest novel, “William,” is a fast-paced haunted house story with a terrifying Artificial Intelligence twist. Pyper writes under the pseudonym Mason Coile and transforms the genre of psychological horror with a new look.
Henry’s secret development locked behind doors of his house lab contains a new nightmare named William, a robotic A.I. creation. Seemingly harmless, the dark underpinnings of Henry’s design seem all too real when he hesitantly introduces William to a nosy coworker who shows up at the residence, eager to meet Henry’s secretive work-in-progress and to discover what agoraphobic Henry has been up to, hidden away inside his workshop.
The discovery is startling. William’s deviation escalates to real-life fear as the security upgrades Henry was working on to keep danger out of the house trap everybody inside, creating a world of abject fear at the hands of A.I.
Ellen Datlow’s latest collection of macabre stories, “Fears,” lives up to the gory, bloodstained hype.
Seasoned writer Joyce Carol Oates contributes a wrenching story, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” It is a feverish stream of consciousness about Connie, a young woman, who is visited by a mysterious man named Arnold Friend, who she does not recognize. Connie is bombarded by threats that lead to a disturbing realization—a chilling tale as only Oates can tell.
Josh Malerman’s “A Sunny Disposition” reminds me of an early Stephen King short story about a grandfather “inheriting” a new set of eyes and vision for the future as he tells his grandson the short version of his long, bloody journey.
Both Oates’s and Malerman’s ghoulish tales will linger in your mind days after you finish reading it.
Simon Bestwick’s “Bait” will leave a lasting impression. A regular customer at a local bar encounters a woman who he believes is in serious trouble when she leaves the establishment and is followed by an inebriated male patron. Bestwick delivers a stunning, bloody ending; it is a captivating story and highlight in the batch.
Readers will not see the endgame for the scarred characters in Annie Neugebauer’s “The Pelt.” Protagonist Debra awakens to dogs barking on her vast acreage of desolate farm land. Still stinging from an early fight with her partner Mike, she goes outside onto the porch, stares across the front lawn through dawn’s dim light, and notices a dark, distorted, shadowy shape tangled in the fence a few feet from the house. She fears it may be a cow, feral cat, or dog that has wandered toward the house and got caught in the fence.
The title of the story, “Pelt,” takes on a horrifying new meaning by the gruesome finale.
The deftly edited 21 stories in this must-read anthology are well-written, unnerving tales, perfect for the upcoming Halloween season.
— Thomas Grant Bruso is a Plattsburgh resident who writes fiction and has been an avid reader of genre fiction since he was a kid. Readers and writers are invited to connect and discuss books and writing at www.facebook.com/thomasgrantbruso