Anthony Vacca is a librarian with 16 years of experience. It’s his firm belief that for every promising new book released, there are a hundred older books even better. He is the host of the O’Neal Library’s ongoing series, Under the Mountain, a monthly celebration of all things spooky in books, movies, music, even comics. For more information, follow @undrmtn on Instagram or visit oneallibrary.org/utm. Here, Anthony offers his five, favorite spooky reads in time for Halloween.
All Heads Turn When the Hunt Goes By
By John Farris | Horror Fiction
Set on a crumbling plantation, the novel begins with a wedding cut short by a bloodbath, and then it moves agitatedly through several feverish possessions before culminating in a fiery raid on a voodoo ritual. Combining elements of adventure stories, gothic family sagas, 1980s creature features and a cast of vibrant eccentrics worthy of a Tennessee Williams’ play, this is escapist bliss written with true panache.
The Comfort of Strangers
By Ian McEwan | Romance/Thriller
Taking place in a decadent city that may or may not be Venice, we meet Mary and Colin, a bored English couple looking for anything exciting. Unfortunately for them, they meet Caroline and Robert, a mysterious couple who make for lovely company, until they reveal a much darker appetite for experience with which our protagonists are ill-prepared. This novel is a quick and evocative nightmare that makes a good case for staying home next vacation.
The House Across the Way
By Brian McNaughton | Horror Fiction
Set near a sleepy college campus and concerns a professor of medieval ballads, her philandering husband, their two young kids and his blind, but formidable, mother—all of whom become the playthings for a court of malevolent fairies. Snappy prose, great dialogue, deceptively dense storytelling and a spectacularly creepy atmosphere make this one of the finest horror novels of the 20th century.
The Woodwitch
By Stephen Gregory | Psychological Fiction
This novel is entirely absent of witches, but like the song, “Neverland,” by The Knife, says, “Nothing is more fatal than an angry man.” Andrew Pinkney is a young English solicitor’s clerk, who is forced to take a leave of absence following disturbingly aggressive behavior at work and at home. He retreats with his dog to an isolated cabin in the Welsh countryside, where he discovers the titular strand of mushroom and quickly becomes obsessed with cultivating the foul-smelling fungus. This impressive novel is a psychological study that reads like occult body horror.
The Last House on Needless Street
By Catriona Ward | Horror Fiction
“The Last House on Needless Street” wastes no time presenting an upsetting scenario. In the titular house lives Ted, a hulking man barely capable of functioning in society, and Lauren, the disabled child he keeps captive as his daughter. Things only get weirder from there. Outside, a young woman obsessed with revenge keeps an endless watch of Ted’s house; inside, a housecat named Olvia wishes to help Lauren escape, but knows that to do so she will need the help of a dangerous shadow animal that lives inside her feline body. What at first seems like a book not for the faint at heart reveals itself to be a deeply compassionate fantasia that rewards you for reading every nerve-wracking page.
