ME Recommends: Halloween Reads
The ME team have put together a list of spine-tingling book recommendations for you to get your teeth into this spooky season.
Juliet recommends…
The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones. Four Blackfeet childhood friends are haunted by a butchered hunt a decade earlier. A spirit wants vengeance - and she will stop at nothing to achieve her bloody ends. The prose is sinuous, the characters nuanced, and the sense of dread rises page by page.
Rachel recommends…
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. I’m not much for horror, (I think the last thing I read that would count was a Goosebumps choose your own adventure aged 12), but I do love gothic fiction! I read Jane Eyre at university and it’s one of the few classics that I could read again and again. I love the dark and mysterious atmosphere, as well as the original madwoman in the attic!
Kiya recommends…
Tell Me I’m Worthless by Alison Rumfitt. I read this maybe a year or two ago and still think about it. This is the haunted house as you’ve never experienced it before – tackling themes of trans identity and fascism, it’s a blazingly modern (and, warning: extremely graphic!) take on the classic horror story.
Alba recommends…
The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw. A killer mermaid travels a barren world eaten by her children with a plague doctor. This unlikely duo really works in a combination of Weird fiction and horror. One of the most unsettling novellas I’ve ever read, very worth reading in one go.
Catriona recommends…
Out There Screaming edited by Jordan Peele. I love Jordan Peele’s movies, so when I heard he was bringing out an anthology of Black horror stories, I knew I needed to read it. My favourites from the collection include ‘Reckless Eyeballing’ by N.K. Jemisin, about a cop who pulls over cars with blinking eyes, and ‘The Rider’ by Tananarive Due about a bus ride gone wrong for two activist sisters during the Civil Rights movement.