5 Books at the Top of my Spooky Season TBR

Fall is right around the corner! I didn’t think I was ready for summer to be over and I will definitely miss those warm sunshiny days, but there’s something so magical and fabulous about Fall. Readers Imbibing Peril begins on September 1st and I’m accustomed to Wicked Good Reads starting too, so I’ve pulled my Spooky Season stack together. Here are 5 books that are at the top of that list…

Clown in a Cornfield, Adam Cesare

Kettle Springs is caught in a battle between old and new, tradition and progress. It’s a fight that looks like it will destroy the town. Until Frendo, the Baypen mascot, a creepy clown in a pork-pie hat, goes homicidal and decides that the only way for Kettle Springs to grow back is to cull the rotten crop of kids who live there now.

Are clowns on your bingo card? This is at the top of my list because I always love adding some YA horror to my spooky season stack. I also meant to read this last year but never got to it. I think it’s now or never! I’m ready for some good, slasher fun!

Ghost Station, S.A. Barnes

Psychologist Dr. Ophelia Bray has dedicated her life to the study and prevention of ERS—a space-based condition most famous for a case that resulted in the brutal murders of twenty-nine people. When she’s assigned to a small exploration crew and the pilot is discovered gruesomely murdered, Ophelia begins to wonder if her worst nightmare is starting—a wave of violence and mental deterioration from ERS? Or is it something more sinister?

After reading and really getting into Dead Silence, I knew I had to give this one a try. I love a mix of sci-fi and horror! Dead Silence was creepy af. Combined with the unknown and isolation of space, and it made for a fantastically scary psychological read. I’m expecting this to be similarly unsettling.

Murder Road, Simone St. James

July 1995. April and Eddie have taken a wrong turn. When they spot what appears to be a lone hitchhiker along the deserted road, they stop to help. But not long after the hitchhiker gets into their car, they see the blood seeping from her jacket and a truck barreling down Atticus Line after them. When the hitchhiker dies at the local hospital, April and Eddie find themselves in the crosshairs of the Coldlake Falls police.

I’m so excited to have another Simone St. James book to read this fall! I love how her books have a paranormal twist that’s never quite what it seems. Her books are more moody and mysterious and I kind of love that.

How to Sell A Haunted House, Grady Hendrix

When Louise finds out her parents have died, she dreads going home. She doesn’t want to deal with her family home, stuffed to the rafters with the remnants of her father’s academic career and her mother’s lifelong obsession with puppets and dolls. Most of all, she doesn’t want to deal with her brother, Mark, but she needs his help to get the house ready to sell. Except some houses…just don’t want to be sold.

Bookish friends keep telling me to read this one so I’m bumping it up my list. I’ve never read anything from Grady Hendrix but friends have described it as “creepy, funny, quirky…with RL Stine Slappy vibes” so I’m intrigued!

The Gathering, C.J. Tudor

In a small Alaska town, a boy is found with his throat ripped out and all the blood drained from his body. The inhabitants of Deadhart haven’t seen a killing like this in twenty-five years. But they know who’s responsible: a member of the Colony, an ostracized community of vampyrs living in an old mine settlement deep in the woods.

C.J. Tudor is an automatic yes for me and it’s been awhile since I read a vampire book. Really looking forward to this one!

So what do you think? Are you adding any of these to your Fall reading TBR? I’d love to know what’s at the top of your list right now.