Spooky Books for Dark Nights
It’s actually almost the end of August as I write this - summer is barely over and already I feel that pull towards shorter nights, sweater-weather and, where I live, lots of rain. I don’t mind the rain anymore but, I do like to look forward to winter shenanigans when things dry up a bit. And of course, the veils grow thinner as Samhain looms around the corner.
I don’t usually include fiction in my featured book lists (because I don’t read much of it), but I thought these two books by Ami McKay were fitting because, well I LOVE them, and also they’re so damn seasonal - familiars, witches & demons oh my! And oh Perdu! How we love you Perdu!
Witches of New York is older - 2017 I believe, but I’ve read it twice now and will read again. For those of you who love gothic fiction, you’ll like it. It’s not horror by any means, rather, a darkling, intriguing little fairy-tale down a back-lane in the middle of 19th c New York.
The year is 1880. Two hundred years after the trials in Salem, Adelaide Thom (Moth from The Virgin Cure) has left her life in the sideshow to open a tea shop with another young woman who feels it's finally safe enough to describe herself as a witch: a former medical student and gardien de sorts (keeper of spells), Eleanor St. Clair. Together they cater to Manhattan's high society ladies, specializing in cures, palmistry and potions--and in guarding the secrets of their clients.
Half Spent Was the Night
How I loved this little Christmas special. This book continues the story of the 3 Witches of New York, with a masquerade ball (exactly the kind I would attend), demon-lovers, divination and a few sweet and magical holiday recipes from the author’s own family lineage. I totally enjoyed it and wished it was longer as it’s just a wee thing.
Did you know that roasting chestnuts was once a form of divination? I did not! Another interesting form described in the book that I had not heard of: Molybdomancy, and old European tradition where molten lead or tin is dropped into cold water and in the resulting shapes your fate is read.
“During the nights between Christmas and New Year’s, the witches of New York—Adelaide Thom, Eleanor St. Clair and the youngest, Beatrice Dunn—gather before the fire to tell ghost stories and perform traditional Yuletide divinations. ”
While we’re on the subject of gothic fiction, I think I have another for you. Wow! So much fiction! Must be Fall. I thoroughly enjoyed this little book that was given to me by a friend in passing. I think he got it from our neighbourhood book exchange and all the better! I love being surprised by a book.
Strange Practice by Vivian Shaw isn’t any kind of serious scholarship - but if you like graphic novels and comic-book style storytelling - and you like tales about the undead and vampires and you know, Lucifer in a white suit thrown in there, then you’ll love this one. You could read it in a sitting or two, when you’re cozy by the fire. From the website:
Strange Practice introduces readers to a world adjacent to our own, in which monsters are entirely real – and entirely vulnerable to a whole host of ills.
Greta Helsing has inherited the family’s highly specialized, and highly peculiar, medical practice. She treats the undead for a wide range of conditions – vocal strain in banshees, arthritis in barrow-wights, and entropy in mummies.
It’s a quiet, supernatural-adjacent life, until a sect of murderous monks emerges, killing human and undead Londoners alike. As terror takes hold of the city, Greta must use her unusual skills to stop the cult if she hopes to save her practice, and her life.
You see? Fun!
And just to stay in this spooky autumn theme, here’s one I picked up in my travels this summer written in my own neck of the woods. The Haunting of Vancouver Island by Shannon Sinn is a NOT fiction book about local stories from the depths of the northern rainforest.
Vancouver Island is known to us locals and even perhaps abroad to those of more ‘delicate’ senses, as a power-spot. It’s much wilder than the mainland and much more… well there’s an ineffable quality that you can’t quite put into words there.
What I love about this book is that it seems to encapsulate that feeling: the forest, the back logging roads, the cryptids and creepy folklore. Oh and the ghosts! I love me a good ghost.
Investigating 25 spellbinding tales that wind their way from the south end of the island to the north, Sinn explored hauntings in cities, in the forest, and on isolated logging roads. In addition to visiting castles, inns, and cemeteries, he followed the trail of spirits glimpsed on mountaintops, beaches, and water, and visited Heriot Bay Inn on Quadra Island and the Schooner Restaurant in Tofino to personally scrutinize reports of hauntings. Featuring First Nations stories from each of the three Indigenous groups who call Vancouver Island home―the Coast Salish, the Nuu-chah-nulth, and the Kwakwaka’wakw―the book includes an interview with Hereditary Chief James Swan of Ahousaht.
Enjoy!
