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Spooky Fall Reads

by Meghan Kowalski on 2021-10-25T09:00:00-04:00 | 0 Comments

Like books about things that go bump in the night? Do you love the jump scares of haunted houses? Are the shivers of terror exciting to you? Then you might like the books on this list!

Dracula by Bram Stoker; Maud Ellmann (Editor)

ISBN: 0192833863

Publication Date: 1998-06-25

Take the papers that are with this, the diaries of Harker and the rest, and read them, and then find the great Un-Dead, and cut off his head and burn his heart or drive a stake through it, so that the world may rest from him. Bram Stoker's classics vampire story has haunted and disturbed the modern imagination for a hundred years. Set in Transylvania, London, and Whitby, it pits the sinister but seductive Count Dracula against a team of Vampire-hunters armed only with typewriters, phonographs, and syringes. They must obstruct his plan to conquer London before the forces of madness and depravity overwhelm them all. Vividly presented in the form of diaries and letters, the narrative blends ancient superstitions with modern technologies, and pulsates with obsessive fears of foreignness and sexuality. Blood, information, and hypnotic energy circulate furiously among the characters until he tale reaches its violent climax. This new edition has an introduction and bibliography which draw on the latest scholarship, and detailed notes which explain literary, geographical, and technological allusions in the novel.

The Monster with a Thousand Faces by Brian J. Frost

ISBN: 0879724595

Publication Date: 1989-06-15

Brian Frost chronicles the history of the vampire in myth and literature, providing a sumptuous repast for all devotees of the bizarre. In a wide-ranging survey, including plot summaries of hundreds of novels and short stories, the reader meets an amazing assortment of vampires from the pages of weird fiction, ranging from the 10,000-year-old femme fatale in Robert E. Howard's Conan the Conqueror to the malevolent fetus in Eddy C. Bertin's "Something Small, Something Hungry." Nostalgia buffs will enjoy a discussion of the vampire yarns in the pulp magazines of the interwar years, while fans of contemporary vampire fiction will also be sated.

Blackwood Farm by Anne Rice

ISBN: 0345443683

Publication Date: 2003-09-30

In her new novel, perennial bestseller Anne Rice fuses her two uniquely seductive strains of narrative -- her Vampire legend and her lore of the Mayfair witches -- to give us a world of classic deep-south luxury and ancestral secrets. Welcome to Blackwood Farm: soaring white columns, spacious drawing rooms, bright, sun-drenched gardens, and a dark strip of the dense Sugar Devil Swamp. This is the world of Quinn Blackwood, a brilliant young man haunted since birth by a mysterious doppelgänger, “Goblin,” a spirit from a dream world that Quinn can’t escape and that prevents him from belonging anywhere. When Quinn is made a Vampire, losing all that is rightfully his and gaining an unwanted immortality, his doppelgänger becomes even more vampiric and terrifying than Quinn himself. As the novel moves backwards and forwards in time, from Quinn’s boyhood on Blackwood Farm to present day New Orleans, from ancient Athens to 19th-century Naples, Quinn seeks out the legendary Vampire Lestat in the hope of freeing himself from the spectre that draws him inexorably back to Sugar Devil Swamp and the explosive secrets it holds. A story of youth and promise, of loss and the search for love, of secrets and destiny, Blackwood Farm is Anne Rice at her mesmerizing best.

Fledgling by Octavia E. Butler

ISBN: 0446696161

Publication Date: 2007-01-02

"A master storyteller, Butler casts an unflinching eye on racism, sexism, poverty, and ignorance and lets the reader see the terror and beauty of human nature." -- The Washington Post This is the story of an apparently young, amnesiac girl whose alarmingly unhuman needs and abilities lead her to a startling conclusion: She is in fact a genetically modified, 53-year-old vampire. Forced to discover what she can about her stolen former life, she must at the same time learn who wanted-and still wants-to destroy her and those she cares for and how she can save herself.

Monster Island by David Wellington

ISBN: 1560258500

Publication Date: 2006-03-24

It's one month after a global disaster. The most "developed" nations of the world have fallen to the shambling zombie masses. Only a few pockets of humanity survive , in places rife with high-powered weaponry, such as Somalia. In New York City, the dead walk the streets, driven by an insatiable hunger for all things living. One amongst them is different though he shares their appetites he has retained his human intelligence. Alone among the mindless zombies, Gary Fleck is an eyewitness to the end of the world , and perhaps the evil genius behind it all. From the other side of the planet, a small but heavily-armed group of schoolgirls-turned-soldiers has come in search of desperately needed medicine. Dekalb, a former United Nations weapons inspector, leads them as their local guide. Ayaan, a crack shot at the age of sixteen, will stop at nothing to complete her mission. They think they are prepared for anything. On Monster Island they will find that there is something worse even than being undead, as Gary learns the true price of survival.

Zone One by Colson Whitehead

ISBN: 0385528078

Publication Date: 2011-10-18

In this wry take on the post-apocalyptic horror novel, a pandemic has devastated the planet. The plague has sorted humanity into two types: the uninfected and the infected, the living and the living dead. Now the plague is receding, and Americans are busy rebuilding civilization under orders from the provisional government based in Buffalo. Their top mission: the resettlement of Manhattan. Armed forces have successfully reclaimed the island south of Canal Street--aka Zone One--but pockets of plague-ridden squatters remain. While the army has eliminated the most dangerous of the infected, teams of civilian volunteers are tasked with clearing out a more innocuous variety--the "malfunctioning" stragglers, who exist in a catatonic state, transfixed by their former lives. Mark Spitz is a member of one of the civilian teams working in lower Manhattan. Alternating between flashbacks of Spitz's desperate fight for survival during the worst of the outbreak and his present narrative, the novel unfolds over three surreal days, as it depicts the mundane mission of straggler removal, the rigors of Post-Apocalyptic Stress Disorder, and the impossible job of coming to grips with the fallen world. And then things start to go wrong. Both spine chilling and playfully cerebral, Zone One brilliantly subverts the genre's conventions and deconstructs the zombie myth for the twenty-first century.

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Frankenstein by Harold Bloom (Introduction by)

ISBN: 0877547467

Publication Date: 1987-04-01

-- Presents the most important 20th-century criticism on major works from The Odyssey through modern literature -- The critical essays reflect a variety of schools of criticism -- Contains critical biographies, notes on the contributing critics, a chronology of the author's life, and an index

Beyond the Night by Nadine Farghaly (Editor)

ISBN: 1443877506

Publication Date: 2015-07-15

"Werewolves, witches, vampires, demons, gods, zombies, and shape-shifters; these are just a few examples of the monstrous that society is confronted with.Most people have some knowledge about these creatures, and have had fleeting contact with ghosts, fairies, vampires and goblins, either in their imagination, or while reading, watching, or interacting with other people (whether in reality or the online world). From Beowulf and Buffy, to Freddy Krueger and Frankenstein's Monster, this collection highlights different aspects of the monstrous, and discusses various ways in which they can be read, discussed, and understood. What does the mother in Beowulf really represent? How can the character of Zoey Redbird really be understood? What is the importance of memories in Buffy the Vampire Slayer? And what should we make of Terry Pratchett's undead creatures? And what role does the children-friendly vampire play?Beyond the Night offers a range of insights into these topics, as well as many more. It presents the reader with a vast array of old and new creatures in popular culture, analysing the significance they have for wider society. This collection will also help readers to understand their favourite monsters better in relation to questions concerning sexuality, gender, social change, and otherness."

Deliverance by James Dickey

ISBN: 038531387X

Publication Date: 1994-09-10

"You're hooked, you feel every cut, grope up every cliff, swallow water with every spill of the canoe, sweat with every draw of the bowstring. Wholly absorbing [and] dramatic."--Harper's Magazine The setting is the Georgia wilderness, where the states most remote white-water river awaits. In the thundering froth of that river, in its echoing stone canyons, four men on a canoe trip discover a freedom and exhilaration beyond compare. And then, in a moment of horror, the adventure turns into a struggle for survival as one man becomes a human hunter who is offered his own harrowing deliverance. Praise for Deliverance "Once read, never forgotten."--Newport News Daily Press "A tour de force . . . How a man acts when shot by an arrow, what it feels like to scale a cliff or to capsize, the ironic psychology of fear: these things are conveyed with remarkable descriptive writing."--The New Republic "Freshly and intensely alive . . . with questions that haunt modern urban man."--Southern Review "A fine and honest book that hits the reader's mind with the sting of a baseball just caught in the hand."--The Nation "[James Dickey's] language has descriptive power not often matched in contemporary American writing."--Time "A harrowing trip few readers will forget."--Asheville Citizen-Times "A novel that will curl your toes . . . Dickey's canoe rides to the limits of dramatic tension."--New York Times Book Review "A brilliant and breathtaking adventure."--The New Yorker

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