My Autumn Reading List

With cooler weather and longer nights starting to set in, I thought I'd share the books I'm most looking forward to reading this Autumn. Fair warning, all of them have been carefully selected for the way that they feature some form of spookiness or the gothic - these are my favourite genres after all, and what better time to start reading them than in the Halloween month?

The Haunting Season

I love reading atmospheric books in the season and place that they are set, so I'm excited to dig in to this anthology of wintery gothic and ghost stories. Also, how pretty is the cover?

Hare House - Sally Hinchcliffe

This book pitches a classic gothic premise; a remote manor house (this time located in Scotland), strange landlords and rumours of supernatural activity. What more could you want from an autumn read?

The House on the Strand - Daphne Du Maurier

Daphne Du Maurier is one of my all time favourite authors, so as soon as I saw this in Waterstones I bought it immediately. I've loved all four of her Cornish novels, and I'm willing to read anything she produces. Du Maurier has such a talent for conveying the gothic and general creepiness in the exact way that I like, so I'm really looking forward to reading this.

Queens of the Abyss - edited by Mike Ashley

I started reading this last year after having read an anthology of Cornish horror stories published in the same series. Unfortunately I did not finish it before the spring, so I'm excited to resume reading. The great thing about anthologies is that you can take a break from reading and jump back in whenever you want!

Madhouse at the End of the Earth - Julian Sancton

I originally bought this in January but ran out of time to read it. The book follows an expedition to Antarctica that goes wrong when the ship gets stuck in ice, leaving the crew to survive months of polar night and the madness that comes with it. It reminds me a little of the protagonist of Donna Tartt's The Little Friend and her fascination with the story of Captain Robert Scott and his fate to freeze to death alone in an antarctic wasteland, and I'm hoping that this book evokes the same tragic and chilling (pun intended) vibes described by Tartt. It also makes me think of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, so I have high expectations from Sancton's work!