Top Ten Tuesday – 10 Creepy & Atmospheric Reads to Get You in the Mood for Halloween
Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. Top Ten Tuesday has been one of my favorite memes ever since I started blogging, so huge thanks to Jana for taking over the hosting duties!
This week’s TTT topic is Halloween/Creepy Freebie. This topic was a bit challenging for me since I don’t typically read scary books. Yes, I know. I’m a chicken, lol. Even though I don’t read horror, I do, however, enjoy books that are a little creepy and a lot atmospheric. Those just make for perfect fall/Halloween reads for me.
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10 Creepy & Atmospheric Reads to Get You in the Mood for Halloween
THE WICKED DEEP by Shea Ernshaw
So Atmospheric!
Goodreads Synopsis: Welcome to the cursed town of Sparrow…
Where, two centuries ago, three sisters were sentenced to death for witchery. Stones were tied to their ankles and they were drowned in the deep waters surrounding the town.
Now, for a brief time each summer, the sisters return, stealing the bodies of three weak-hearted girls so that they may seek their revenge, luring boys into the harbor and pulling them under.
Like many locals, seventeen-year-old Penny Talbot has accepted the fate of the town. But this year, on the eve of the sisters’ return, a boy named Bo Carter arrives; unaware of the danger he has just stumbled into.
Mistrust and lies spread quickly through the salty, rain-soaked streets. The townspeople turn against one another. Penny and Bo suspect each other of hiding secrets. And death comes swiftly to those who cannot resist the call of the sisters.
But only Penny sees what others cannot. And she will be forced to choose: save Bo, or save herself.
AND THEN THERE WERE NONE by Agatha Christie
Positively eerie!
Goodreads Synopsis: irst, there were ten—a curious assortment of strangers summoned as weekend guests to a private island off the coast of Devon. Their host, an eccentric millionaire unknown to all of them, is nowhere to be found. All that the guests have in common is a wicked past they’re unwilling to reveal—and a secret that will seal their fate. For each has been marked for murder. One by one they fall prey. Before the weekend is out, there will be none. And only the dead are above suspicion.
THIS SAVAGE SONG by Victoria Schwab
Who knew music could be so beautiful yet so deadly?
Goodreads Synopsis: There’s no such thing as safe in a city at war, a city overrun with monsters. In this dark urban fantasy from author Victoria Schwab, a young woman and a young man must choose whether to become heroes or villains—and friends or enemies—with the future of their home at stake. The first of two books.
Kate Harker and August Flynn are the heirs to a divided city—a city where the violence has begun to breed actual monsters. All Kate wants is to be as ruthless as her father, who lets the monsters roam free and makes the humans pay for his protection. All August wants is to be human, as good-hearted as his own father, to play a bigger role in protecting the innocent—but he’s one of the monsters. One who can steal a soul with a simple strain of music. When the chance arises to keep an eye on Kate, who’s just been kicked out of her sixth boarding school and returned home, August jumps at it. But Kate discovers August’s secret, and after a failed assassination attempt the pair must flee for their lives.
1984 by George Orwell
Big Brother is watching you. Enough said.
Goodreads Synopsis: Among the seminal texts of the 20th century, Nineteen Eighty-Four is a rare work that grows more haunting as its futuristic purgatory becomes more real. Published in 1949, the book offers political satirist George Orwell’s nightmare vision of a totalitarian, bureaucratic world and one poor stiff’s attempt to find individuality. The brilliance of the novel is Orwell’s prescience of modern life–the ubiquity of television, the distortion of the language–and his ability to construct such a thorough version of hell. Required reading for students since it was published, it ranks among the most terrifying novels ever written.
THE TELL-TALE HEART by Edgar Allan Poe
All of his stories are deliciously creepy, but this one is my favorite.
Goodreads Synopsks: A murderer is convinced that the loud beating of his victim’s heart will give him away to the police.
THE HAZEL WOOD by Melissa Albert
If the main story isn’t creepy enough for you,
the Tales from the Hinterland embedded within the story are some of the eeriest I’ve read in recent years.
Goodreads Synopsis: Seventeen-year-old Alice and her mother have spent most of Alice’s life on the road, always a step ahead of the uncanny bad luck biting at their heels. But when Alice’s grandmother, the reclusive author of a cult-classic book of pitch-dark fairy tales, dies alone on her estate, the Hazel Wood, Alice learns how bad her luck can really get: her mother is stolen away―by a figure who claims to come from the Hinterland, the cruel supernatural world where her grandmother’s stories are set. Alice’s only lead is the message her mother left behind: “Stay away from the Hazel Wood.”
Alice has long steered clear of her grandmother’s cultish fans. But now she has no choice but to ally with classmate Ellery Finch, a Hinterland superfan who may have his own reasons for wanting to help her. To retrieve her mother, Alice must venture first to the Hazel Wood, then into the world where her grandmother’s tales began―and where she might find out how her own story went so wrong.
THE OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE by Neil Gaiman
Magical Realism at its most atmospheric.
Goodreads Synopsis: Sussex, England. A middle-aged man returns to his childhood home to attend a funeral. Although the house he lived in is long gone, he is drawn to the farm at the end of the road, where, when he was seven, he encountered a most remarkable girl, Lettie Hempstock, and her mother and grandmother. He hasn’t thought of Lettie in decades, and yet as he sits by the pond (a pond that she’d claimed was an ocean) behind the ramshackle old farmhouse, the unremembered past comes flooding back. And it is a past too strange, too frightening, too dangerous to have happened to anyone, let alone a small boy.
Forty years earlier, a man committed suicide in a stolen car at this farm at the end of the road. Like a fuse on a firework, his death lit a touchpaper and resonated in unimaginable ways. The darkness was unleashed, something scary and thoroughly incomprehensible to a little boy. And Lettie—magical, comforting, wise beyond her years—promised to protect him, no matter what.
A groundbreaking work from a master, The Ocean at the End of the Lane is told with a rare understanding of all that makes us human, and shows the power of stories to reveal and shelter us from the darkness inside and out. It is a stirring, terrifying, and elegiac fable as delicate as a butterfly’s wing and as menacing as a knife in the dark.
JANE EYRE by Charlotte Bronte
Gothic spookiness and a mad woman in the attic. What more could you want?
Goodreads Synopsis: Fiery love, shocking twists of fate, and tragic mysteries put a lonely governess in jeopardy in JANE EYRE
Orphaned as a child, Jane has felt an outcast her whole young life. Her courage is tested once again when she arrives at Thornfield Hall, where she has been hired by the brooding, proud Edward Rochester to care for his ward Adèle. Jane finds herself drawn to his troubled yet kind spirit. She falls in love. Hard.
But there is a terrifying secret inside the gloomy, forbidding Thornfield Hall. Is Rochester hiding from Jane? Will Jane be left heartbroken and exiled once again?
THE LANTERN’S EMBER by Colleen Houck
(So much Halloween goodness here. If this doesn’t get you in the mood for Halloween, nothing will.)
Goodreads Synopsis: Welcome to a world where nightmarish creatures reign supreme.
Five hundred years ago, Jack made a deal with the devil. It’s difficult for him to remember much about his mortal days. So, he focuses on fulfilling his sentence as a Lantern—one of the watchmen who guard the portals to the Otherworld, a realm crawling with every nightmarish creature imaginable. Jack has spent centuries jumping from town to town, ensuring that nary a mortal—or not-so-mortal—soul slips past him. That is, until he meets beautiful Ember O’Dare.
Seventeen, stubborn, and a natural-born witch, Ember feels a strong pull to the Otherworld. Undeterred by Jack’s warnings, she crosses into the forbidden plane with the help of a mysterious and debonair vampire—and the chase through a dazzling, dangerous world is on. Jack must do everything in his power to get Ember back where she belongs before both the earthly and unearthly worlds descend into chaos.
THE WOMAN IN WHITE by Wilkie Collins
An atmospheric Gothic mystery with some scary bits along the way.
Goodreads Synopsis: ‘In one moment, every drop of blood in my body was brought to a stop… There, as if it had that moment sprung out of the earth, stood the figure of a solitary Woman, dressed from head to foot in white’
The Woman in White famously opens with Walter Hartright’s eerie encounter on a moonlit London road. Engaged as a drawing master to the beautiful Laura Fairlie, Walter becomes embroiled in the sinister intrigues of Sir Percival Glyde and his ‘charming’ friend Count Fosco, who has a taste for white mice, vanilla bonbons, and poison. Pursuing questions of identity and insanity along the paths and corridors of English country houses and the madhouse, The Woman in White is the first and most influential of the Victorian genre that combined Gothic horror with psychological realism.
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Question: What are some of your favorite creepy/atmospheric reads?
Top Ten Tuesday: My Bookstore Bucket List -10 Bookstores I’ve Always Wanted to Visit
Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. Top Ten Tuesday has been one of my favorite memes ever since I started blogging, so huge thanks to Jana for taking over the hosting duties!
This week’s TTT topic is Bookstores/Libraries I’ve Always Wanted to Visit. I could only think of one library, the New York Public Library, so I decided to go with bookstores. I’ve pretty much never met a bookstore that I didn’t want to wander through, but the bookshops below are what I would call my Bookstore Bucket List. I’d really love to visit all of these some day.
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10 Bookstores I’ve Always Wanted to Visit
1. SHAKESPEARE AND COMPANY, PARIS
Isn’t this the cutest shop? I really blew this one too because I was in Paris
just a couple of years ago and forgot all about this gem. Oh well, it’s an excuse to go back some day, right?
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2. THE STRAND, NEW YORK CITY
I actually have visited The Strand before but it was a rushed shopping excursion, so I’d love to go back.
Why? 18 MILES OF BOOKS! Oh and lots of fabulous author events.
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3. THE LAST BOOKSTORE, LOS ANGELES
Another fail on my part because I’ve been to L.A. twice and didn’t know this bookstore existed until after my trips.
They sell new and used books and they also sell vinyl records. And how amazing is that book arch?!
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4. POLITICS AND PROSE, WASHINGTON D.C.
This one is actually pretty doable since I live in Virginia, but what appeals to me about this bookstore is that it has a great mix of literary and political events. Alan Greenspan, for example, is speaking there on October 16th and Tahereh Mafi has an event there the next evening. Plus, you just never know who you might run into while you’re browsing. You might turn the corner one day and find one of the Obamas shopping for a new read.
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5. LIBRERIA ACQUA ALTA – VENICE
So much failing on my part because, again, I have traveled to Venice, Italy but because we were only there for a day, bookstore visiting was just not in the cards. If I ever make it back to this incredible city, I will make time to visit this shop. The store’s name means “Book Store of High Water” and, accordingly, they store many of their books in bathtubs, boats, and other waterproof basins.
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6. LIVRARIA LELLO E IRMAO, PORTUGAL
How beautiful is that? This is a bookstore where I could actually see myself wandering around
and gawking at the beautiful building rather than browsing the book offerings.
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7. BART’S BOOKS, OJAI, CALIFORNIA
I don’t even know exactly where in California this bookstore is, but it advertises itself as the largest outdoor bookstore in the world.
The idea of an outdoor bookstore intrigues me so I’d definitely be interested in visiting if my California travels happened to take me anywhere near it.
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8. BARTER BOOKS, UK
This is another shop where I just think the architecture is so cool. Barter Books is also supposed to be one of the
largest secondhand bookshops in Britain so I bet a bookworm could score some pretty great deals here.
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9. THREE LIVES & CO., NEW YORK CITY
Three Lives & Co. is a neighborhood bookstore located in Greenwich Village.
It has been around since 1968 and I just love how wonderfully old fashioned it looks.
If I ever visited, I could see myself not wanting to leave.
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10. THE BOOK ESCAPE, BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
This is one I’ve been meaning to visit since Baltimore is only a couple of hours away from me, but I just haven’t quite made it yet.
It just looks like such a cute shop and I hear they have a great selection of used and rare books.
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Question: What are some shops on your Bookstore Bucket List?
Backlist Briefs: Mini Reviews for BONE GAP & GIRL OUT OF WATER
Bone Gap by Laura Ruby 
Published by Balzer + Bray on March 3, 2015
Genres: Young Adult Fiction, Fantasy
Pages: 345
Source: Purchased
Amazon
Goodreads
GOODREADS SYNOPSIS:
Everyone knows Bone Gap is full of gaps—gaps to trip you up, gaps to slide through so you can disappear forever. So when young, beautiful Roza went missing, the people of Bone Gap weren’t surprised. After all, it wasn’t the first time that someone had slipped away and left Finn and Sean O’Sullivan on their own. Just a few years before, their mother had high-tailed it to Oregon for a brand new guy, a brand new life. That’s just how things go, the people said. Who are you going to blame?
Finn knows that’s not what happened with Roza. He knows she was kidnapped, ripped from the cornfields by a dangerous man whose face he cannot remember. But the searches turned up nothing, and no one believes him anymore. Not even Sean, who has more reason to find Roza than anyone, and every reason to blame Finn for letting her go.
As we follow the stories of Finn, Roza, and the people of Bone Gap—their melancholy pasts, their terrifying presents, their uncertain futures—acclaimed author Laura Ruby weaves a heartbreaking tale of love and loss, magic and mystery, regret and forgiveness—a story about how the face the world sees is never the sum of who we are.
Review:
I purchased Laura Ruby’s Bone Gap on a whim last year at a local bookfair. I had no idea what it was about but the cover with its bee and honeycomb just really drew me in. I finally sat down and read it recently and, wow, what a gem of a book it turned out to be! It’s also one of those books that it’s hard to say much about without giving away its secrets, and because those secrets are really the heart and soul of Bone Gap, I’m going to keep my remarks brief and vague. I’ll just say that what starts out as a straightforward mystery about a young woman who goes missing in a rural town takes a major turn for the unexpected.
Because I grew up in a similar environment, I had tremendous sympathy for the characters in this story. It’s hard to have secrets when you live in a tiny town where everyone makes it their business to know your business, and where the gossip/rumor mill always runs rampant. Clearly the underdog of the story, Finn O’Sullivan captured my heart immediately. He and his brother Sean were abandoned by their mother and are trying to live on their own. Both brothers are beloved by those in their town, but everyone thinks Finn is an odd duck so when he comes forward one day to say that he saw a young woman named Roza kidnapped, no one believes him. Finn knows Roza’s life is on the line and my heart just broke for him as he tried and tried to get people to believe him with no luck. And it’s when Finn takes matters into his own hands that the story takes a walk on the wild and unexpected side. I don’t want to say anything more, so I’ll just say think Neil Gaiman, or maybe even Maggie Stiefvater or Alice Hoffman and you’ll have a feel for the truly magical direction this small town tale takes.
I loved Finn’s brother Sean too, who has had to put his dreams of working in the medical field on hold to be the head of the household since their mom left them. Sean is a great big brother and a good friend to all. Petey, one of Finn’s female friends, is a hilarious addition to the cast. She’s tough and sassy and gives every guy in town a run for their money, and I just loved every scene she was in. Lastly, there’s Roza, the young woman who has gone missing. Roza has a very painful past that she is running away from, but her arrival on the scene just after Finn and Sean’s mom left them, fills a void in both boys’ hearts. When she then goes missing, both boys are heartbroken all over again, which is another reason why Finn so desperately wants to find her.
My only real complaint about the story is that the ending felt a little rushed, but I still wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Bone Gap to anyone who is looking for an unpredictable tale filled with endearing characters and also to anyone who is a fan of magical realism. 4 STARS
Girl Out of Water by Laura Silverman Also by this author: You Asked for Perfect
Published by Sourcebooks Fire on May 2, 2017
Genres: Young Adult Fiction, Contemporary Fiction
Pages: 350
Source: Purchased
Amazon
Goodreads
GOODREADS SYNOPSIS:
Anise Sawyer plans to spend every minute of summer with her friends: surfing, chowing down on fish tacos drizzled with wasabi balsamic vinegar, and throwing bonfires that blaze until dawn. But when a serious car wreck leaves her aunt, a single mother of three, with two broken legs, it forces Anise to say goodbye for the first time to Santa Cruz, the waves, her friends, and even a kindling romance, and fly with her dad to Nebraska for the entire summer. Living in Nebraska isn’t easy. Anise spends her days caring for her three younger cousins in the childhood home of her runaway mom, a wild figure who’s been flickering in and out of her life since birth, appearing for weeks at a time and then disappearing again for months, or even years, without a word.
Complicating matters is Lincoln, a one-armed, charismatic skater who pushes Anise to trade her surfboard for a skateboard. As Anise draws closer to Lincoln and takes on the full burden and joy of her cousins, she loses touch with her friends back home – leading her to one terrifying question: will she turn out just like her mom and spend her life leaving behind the ones she loves?
Review:
Laura Silverman’s Girl out of Water is an engaging coming of age story about family, friendship, love, and sacrifice. It follows teen Anise Sawyer, the quintessential California girl who loves the ocean and spends every free moment surfing with her friends. When the novel opens, Anise is busy planning her last summer with most of her friends who are going off to college soon. All of her plans come crashing down around her, however, when her aunt is nearly killed in a car accident, and Anise and her dad have to travel to Nebraska to care for Anise’s young cousins until her aunt is well enough to do so herself. Anise is torn: California and the ocean are her happy place and she can’t think of anything worse than being separated from her friends and stuck in Nebraska all summer. At the same time, however, having lost her own mother, who abandoned her years ago, Anise knows how important family is and knows that going to Nebraska is the right thing to do. But, boy is it going to be the longest summer ever…
This book worked well for me on a lot of levels. I loved the focus on family and seeing Anise bond with and take care of her cousins. In many ways, Anise needed them just as much as they needed her and it was nice to watch them all interact. Anise is terrified that she’s going to somehow end up just like her mother and leave all her loved ones behind one day. Having Anise work through those fears about her mother and abandonment really gave what could have been just a light summer read some added depth that I very much enjoyed. The friendship dynamic also really kept me turning the pages. Anise’s friends are all so fantastic and I loved that they were constantly trying to maintain contact with her even though she was halfway across the country. She also makes a great friend/maybe more than friend named Lincoln while she’s in Nebraska and he was just too precious for words. Lastly, I loved Silverman’s vivid descriptions of the ocean. She makes it such a full sensory experience that I felt like I was on the beach watching the waves crash and smelling the salty air.
If you’re looking for a beautiful story about the importance of family and friendship and a young woman’s journey to find herself, I’d definitely recommend Girl out of Water. 4 STARS
About Laura Ruby
Raised in the wilds of suburban New Jersey, Laura Ruby now lives in Chicago with her family. Her short fiction for adults has appeared in various literary magazines, including Other Voices, The Florida Review, Sycamore Review and Nimrod. A collection of these stories, I’M NOT JULIA ROBERTS, was published by Warner Books in January 2007. Called “hilarious and heart-wrenching” by People and “a knowing look at the costs and rewards of remaking a family,” by the Hartford-Courant, the book was also featured in Redbook, Working Mother , and USA Today among others.
Ruby is also the author of the Edgar-nominated children’s mystery LILY’S GHOSTS (8/03), the children’s fantasy THE WALL AND THE WING (3/06) and a sequel, THE CHAOS KING (5/07) all from Harpercollins. She writes for older teens as well, and her debut young adult novel, GOOD GIRLS (9/06), also from Harpercollins, was a Book Sense Pick for fall 2006 and an ALA Quick Pick for 2007. A new young adult novel, PLAY ME, is slated for publication in fall of 2008. Her books have sold in England, Australia, Italy, France, Germany, Denmark, Serbia and Montenegro. THE WALL AND THE WING is currently in development with Laika Studios for release as an animated feature.
Ms. Ruby has been a featured speaker at BookExpo, the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) annual convention, the Miami Book Festival, the Florida Association of Media Educators (FAME) convention, the Midwest Literary Festival, the International Reading Association’s annual convention, and Illinois Reading Council annual conference, among other venues, and she has presented programs and workshops for both adults and children at numerous schools and libraries.
Currently, she is working on several thousand projects, drinking way too much coffee, and searching for new tunes for her iPod.
About Laura Silverman
Laura Silverman currently lives in Atlanta, Georgia. She is a writer and freelance editor, and spends way too much time hugging dogs instead of working.
Silverman’s debut novel, GIRL OUT OF WATER, is a summery coming-of-age story about a California surfer girl sent to landlocked Nebraska for the entire summer. It debuted in May 2017. Her second novel, YOU ASKED FOR PERFECT, is about the effects of intense academic pressure on a teenage Valedictorian-to-be. It comes out March 2019.
Silverman has degrees in English and Advertising from the University of Georgia, and an MFA in Writing for Children from the New School. While she lived in NYC, she interned at Penguin and two different literary agencies. In addition to writing, Silverman also freelance edits manuscripts and query letters.