Thursday, October 18, 2018

Ten of the scariest haunted house books ever

Jeff Somers is the author of Lifers, the Avery Cates series from Orbit Books, Chum from Tyrus Books, and the Ustari Cycle from Pocket/Gallery, including We Are Not Good People. At the B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy blog he tagged ten of the scariest haunted house books ever, including:
Slade House, by David Mitchell

Mitchell has been quietly building a complex and compelling shared universe, tying his novels into one another in subtle ways. Slade House explicitly exists in the same universe as The Bone Clocks, so it’s helpful if you’ve read that one, though not necessary. It’s also less complicated in structure than some of his other work, but as a result is more viscerally scary. The titular house appears every nine years around the corner from a pub, presenting itself to a misfit, an outcast—someone who does not fit in with the rest of the world. The owners of the house, the Grayer Twins, welcome this person into their home and make them quite welcome. No sooner will the chosen person decide to leave than they’ll discover they are trapped—and that the twins have a nefarious purposes for luring the strangers in. It’s not technically not a ghost story, true, but it’s still a supernaturally scary read.
Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue