Halloween will be here before you know it. Here are some sure-fire shivers to prep you for the big day.
The House of Last Resort : a Novel by Christopher Golden (2024)
Ever dream of buying a $1 house in Italy? That’s a real thing, which started in 2008 to attract ex-pats to Italy’s dying towns. Author Christopher Golden makes horror hay out of the phenomenon with The House of Last Resort. Young marrieds Tommy and Kate Puglisi achieve what seems like an impossible dream—purchasing a dilapidated but formerly opulent villa in the Puglisi family’s ancestral Italian town. Tommy’s own grandparents still live there, and he and his wife look forward to developing deep roots in their beautiful Sicilian village. After extensive renovation of their new home, the couple attempts to coax their American friends to snag similar $1 deals. But soon, unsettling events occur that scare off more American newcomers—strange rat infestations, a newly discovered series of catacombs that snake underneath the town, the presence of entombed mummified bodies, and rampant rumors about what the Catholic church had once used Tommy and Kate’s villa for. Soon, the couple begins to view their dream home as a candy-coated nightmare that they’d been lured to swallow.
Recommended for those who enjoy the nexus of religion and horror.
My Best Friend’s Exorcism by Grady Hendrix (2016)
From an author who has quickly become one of my favorites, there’s My Best Friend’s Exorcism by Grady Hendrix. Hendrix is a master at achieving the perfect mixed-genre balance of comedy and horror. Like the other winners I’ve read by Hendrix (Horrorstör and How to Sell a Haunted House), he gives the reader just enough giggles to lighten the mood, but not so many as to quell the shivers.
The book is set during the 1980s, providing readers of a certain age with a delightful nostalgia trip. The titular big-haired best friends—high school sophomores Abby and Gretchen—are joined at the hip, like so many of us were with our besties at that age. When Gretchen begins exhibiting odd behaviors, Abby is the only person in Gretchen’s life who perceives that something otherworldly is going on, while Gretchen’s parents and school officials insist that drugs are the real problem—and suspect Abby of supplying them. As Gretchen becomes more and more unhinged, Abby is left as her sole protector and the only person who can lead Gretchen to what she really needs: an exorcist, in this case a truly outlandish one.
Recommended highly for mixed-genre fans
Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke, and Other Misfortunes by Eric LaRocca (2022)
Eric LaRocca’s Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke, and Other Misfortunes is a collection of three psychologically centered horror tales. The title story—long enough to be considered a novella—is accompanied by two shorter works: “The Enchantment” and “You’ll Find It’s Like That All Over.”
Set on a remote island, “The Enchantment” concerns a husband, James, and wife, Olive, and their very religious son, Milo. Six months after a family tragedy, the couple takes on the winter caretaking duties for an isolated seaside hotel called the Enchantment (shades of the Overlook!). The focus in this story, however, is less about ghosts than it is about religious belief, and how different ways of believing—Olive’s, James’ and Milo’s—might play out in a bizarre kind of afterlife.
What would you do if a troublesome neighbor invited you to make a series of bets? “You’ll Find It’s Like That All Over” focuses on a fragment of bone a man named Gerald Fowler finds in his back yard—a fragment with the initials of that troublesome neighbor carved into it. The strange, escalating wagers that result when Mr. Fowler takes the bone next door to ask why it’s there will leave you intrigued as well as horrified.
Although both of the above short stories are compelling in a Shirley-Jacksonian manner, it’s the title novella that is most memorable—and horror filled. Set in the beginning of the internet age, the story is written as a series of chat-room messages between two women, Agnes Petrella and Zoe Cross. When Agnes posts a lengthy, personally revealing message for the purpose of selling her grandmother’s antique apple peeler, it attracts Zoe’s attention. The women start what at first appears to be a warm virtual friendship that quickly evolves into an online romance—and then devolves into an obsession so gut-wrenchingly horrifying, LaRocca’s story went viral as a stand-alone piece.
Recommended for those who enjoy psychological, body-centered horror.