I love the fall and especially October. The air is crisper and school is back in session….and Halloween is right around the corner. I love the fresh apples and pumpkins seen in all of the stores. The smell of cinnamon in the fall recipes fill the air and it’s the perfect time to curl up with an eerie tale…so here are a few selections to give you some creepy thrills.
The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry has the flavor of a Victorian gothic tale in the style of Shelly, Collins or even Dickens. It’s 19th century England and Cora Seaborne has just lost her husband…which in her case in not something to mourn. She is a naturalist at heart and once she has her freedom she throws aside Victorian convention and goes around wearing pants and digging in the dirt looking for fossils. She leaves London with her unusually obsessive 11-year-old son, Frances, and they decamp to Colchester where she begins to become intrigued by the tale of the Essex Serpent that roams the marsh and allegedly had taken the lives of multiple people in the past. This monster is back and the people of Colchester are afraid. Cora doesn’t believe in magic or religion…she is a practical person who thinks science will explain the Essex Serpent…she believes it may even be a lost species and she wants to be the one to present this new specie to the world. Follow Cora’s foray into the marshes of Colchester and discover if she is right.
If you are looking for some witchy fun try The Witches of New York: A Novel. The author, Ami McKay, discovered during her research for this book that one of her relatives had been hung for witchcraft and that made this book even more personal for her. She describes the work as “part Victorian fairy tale, part penny dreadful, part feminist manifesto” and that really captures the atmosphere. In 1880 New York there is a tea shop called Tea and Sympathy run by two very unusual women, Adelaide Thom and Eleanor St. Claire. They are looking for an assistant and 17-year-old Beatrice Dunn seems to fit the bill. Adelaide and Eleanor help their clients in multiple ways and seem to have a knack of knowing what is needed. The curiosity of the age has made séances a very popular entertainment and the public clamors to know more about science and magic. On the other side of the coin there is public hysteria about dark magic that is stoked by the sermons and guidance of the Reverend Francis Townsend. He and his followers are on the lookout for witches and his dark ideas are violent and misogynistic. It is into this world that the innocence and spiritual gifts of Beatrice are tested. This is the perfect tale for the month of October.
What says spooky haunted house more than gargoyles? The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson is a very unusual love story. The narrator remains unnamed but the reader learns of his descent into hell, after a horrifying car wreck that leaves him unmanned and burnt beyond recognition. Into this hell comes a beautiful slightly crazy sculptress of gargoyles, Marianne Engle, who leads him through hell and out the other side. Yes, Marianne has a similar role as Beatrice did in Dante’s masterpieces if you are familiar with them. Marianne explains that she and the narrator have been together for many lives and that their love is eternal, spanning the world from Japan, Italy, England, Iceland and Germany. But time is slipping away and she has very little time left to save him.
If you are looking for a far more modern spooky tale then look no further than The Things That Keep Us Here by Carla Buckly. Ann Brook lives in Ohio with her daughters, Maddie and Katie and her husband, Peter. Peter is a professor studying avian bird flu and the possibility of a pandemic in the USA. If you don’t know anything about H5N1 Influenza, it’s a highly pathogenic virus that can infect migratory birds and it is very possible that is could cause a widespread pandemic in the United States. In this story, the pandemic occurs and what ensues is chaos and fear, where choices have to made that will affect everyone’s future. Ann and Peter’s marital problems become less of focus for them as they try and deal with the life-threatening situation that forces them to lock their doors and try and keep from coming into contact with anyone who might infect them. There really is a surveillance of migratory birds ongoing in the USA so this is a very real threat. Buckly has done a wonderful job making the science of this threat very readable. It definitely had my heart thumping as I turned the pages and I think if you want something that strikes a bit closer to home this book will do the trick.
So, make sure you pick up some ghostly stories this fall. Happy Haunting this Halloween!