🎃🧛Spooky Season 2025 Is Upon Us!! Share Your Seasonal Reading Plans!🧟🎃

It's almost October and we're on the brink of spooky season! For the last 8 years, it's become a tradition for me to plan my Spooktober reads far in advance. I love the anticipation of making a list of horror, gothic fiction, and other autumnal reads, and trying to hunt them down over the course of the year. I do read these genres at other points in the year too, but October is the month to dedicate to cosy spookiness!

Tell us about your spooky October reading plans! Do you dedicate the month to rereading favourites, or stick to new books you haven't read? Any genres or sub-genres you find especially hit the spot? Any spooky or autumn themed books you're really excited to dive into this month?

The books I've planned for this Spooky Season:

• Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon (1973) – I've already started this one. It's about a family moving from New York to a slower life in a rural New England community that seems frozen in the past. But the family doesn't mind the village's quaint veneration of tradition, at first. I'm just shy of 100 pages in so far, but enjoying it. I've previously read The Other and wasn't particularly taken by it, so far this one is more up my alley.

• Boys in the Valley by Philip Fraccasi (2023) – Very excited for this one! I've heard so many great things about it since it's publication and have been waiting for it to get to paperback!

• The Haar by David Sodergren (2022) – Another one I'm very excited for! I was hoping to read it last year, but as it's self-pub the only place I could find it was Amazon. This year I happily found it at my local independent horror bookshop.

• Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (2020) – Another I've been curious to read for a while.

• The Empty House and Other Ghost Stories by Algernon Blackwood (1906) – I always make sure to have at least 1 horror/gothic short story collection lined up for October! Usually some early 20th or 19th century stories that rarely disappoint. Have read some great collections the last couple years, and now excited to finally dive into some Algernon Blackwood.

• The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins (1868) – I've read Wilkie Collins's Woman in White and The Dream Woman during past Octobers, so figured I'd do the Moonstone too. Not sure it'll fit the season as well as the other two I've read, but figured I'd continue the tradition!

• Moon of the Turning Leaves by Waubgeshig Rice (2023) – Looking forward to a great, seasonal apocalyptic slow burn.

• Pine by Francine Toon (2020) – Was one of my backup reads last year, so hoping to get to it this year instead.

What about you? What do you plan to read this Spooky Season?