For the weekend that’s in it.
October is the beginning of many things: the leaves are changing colours, it is finally cosy jumper season, it seems like there’s an abundance of sweets wherever we go.
And time to dive head-first into a month-long scareathon – it is nearly Hallowe’en, after all.
From supernatural mysteries to nail-biting thrillers, we have picked out 7 of our favourite scary books for a spook-tacular Halloween weekend.
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
On a trip to the South of France, a quiet young woman falls for widower Maxim de Winter – and while his proposal comes as a surprise, she agrees to marry him.
But as they arrive at her husband’s home, Manderley, a change comes over Maxim, and the young bride is filled with dread.
Friendless in the isolated mansion, she realises that she barely knows him. And in every corner of every room is the ghost of his first wife, Rebecca, and she suddenly realises she may not know him as well as she thought.
You can get it here.
Bird Box by Josh Malerman
Many people dismissed the reports on the news at first. But, after a bit of time, they became more and more frequent – and real.
The mystery force – only called The Problem – continues to sweep through the world’s popular, with only one thing remaining certain: if you see it, you die.
Set in three different time periods, it follows a young woman’s fight for survival as she tries to find refuge.
You can get it here.
The Silence Of The Lambs by Thomas Harris
FBI trainee Clarice Starling has an elusive serial killer to hunt – and only one man can help her: the psychopathic cannibal, Hannibal Lecter.
The killer, nicknamed Buffalo Bill, has been kidnapping and starving women, before killing them and skinning them. Clarice gets assigned to get help from Hannibal, whose insight into the depraved minds of serial killers is second to none.
However, in exchange for his assistance, Hannibal begins to try and get into the darkest corners of her mind – demanding knowledge of her childhood demons as the price of understanding Buffalo Bill’s.
You can get it here.
An Unwanted Guest by Shari Lapena
A group of guests arrive at the beautiful – and totally remote – Mitchell’s Inn, with only one thing on their mind: a relaxing weekend.
But as a violent storm hits the area, the guests soon find themselves snowed in to the Inn…and cut off from the rest of the outside world. Nobody can get in or out of the building.
Which is why it’s all that more alarming when the first body is found, leaving the guests with the realisation that three’s killer among them – and they’ve got nowhere to run.
You can get it here.
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
Four thrill seekers have arrived at Hill House: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of a ‘haunting’; Theodora, his lighthearted assistant; Eleanor, a friendless, fragile young woman with a dark past; and Luke, the future heir to the estate.
At first, their stay seems destined to be merely a spooky encounter with inexplicable phenomena.
But Hill House is gathering its powers – and soon it will choose one of them to make its own.
You can get it here.
The Strain by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan
A Boeing 777 lands at JFK and ‘goes dark’, coming to a stop in the middle of the runway for seemingly no reason with all lights off, all doors sealed. The pilots cannot be raised.
Once the hatch above the wing opens, it soon becomes clear that everyone on board has died – although there are no signs of a struggle or any kind of trauma. Dr. Ephraim Goodweather and his team from the Center for Disease Control must work quickly to establish the cause of this strange occurrence before panic spreads.
They find that four of the victims are still alive – the only good news of it all. And when all two hundred corpses disappear from various morgues around the city on the same night, things get worse – and quick. Soon Eph and a small band of helpers will find themselves battling to protect not only their own loved ones, but the whole city, against an ancient threat to humanity.
You can get it here.
Penpal by Dathan Auerbach
A young man begins to reconstruct his past in an effort to make sense of mysterious – and incredibly unsettling – childhood memories.
As he recalls the games from his childhood and the adventures he had with his friend, Josh, he begins to discover that his memories form a horrifying bigger picture.
Each one of the chapters completes a different piece of the puzzle for both the reader and the unnamed narrator – and at the end of it all, you’ll wish that you could forget what he never knew.
You can get it here.
A good book can do just about anything; from taking you on a wild and fantastical adventure to making you feel like an all-knowing super sleuth (if you figure out the killer twist).
Every week at #Bookmarked, we will be taking you through some of our all-time favourite books – as well as the newest novels hitting shelves in Ireland.
