Spell the Month in Books October 2024 (Spoooky Edition)
Afternoon all!!
A very spooky wooky welcome to October’s Spell the Month in Books!
Just like last year, instead of normal books I picked some spooooky books! Most of these are on my TBR, but one of them is a book I read (Opgesloten). I thought I would have a hard time finding books, but instead I had quite an easy time picking some delightfully spooky books (which I hope to read very soon).
Let’s get started!
The original creator of this tag is Reviews From The Stacks!
A teen girl’s attempt to make amends with her former friend group takes a sinister turn during a weekend getaway at an ancestral Irish estate in this atmospheric, literary horror from the author of Those We Drown.
There’s something in the lake at Wren Hall.
At least, that’s what the locals say. Not that Meg cares much about the rumors. When she’s asked to spend Halloween weekend at the Ireland retreat of the wealthy Wren twins, she recognizes the invitation for exactly what it her last, and only, chance to save her spot at Greyscott’s, the exclusive British art school she attended on scholarship until last summer. Clever, beautiful, and talented, the twins are the pride of Greyscott’s, and kindhearted Lottie Wren was once Meg’s closest friends. But not anymore.
None of Meg’s old friend group have talked to her since she left school—and they especially don’t talk about the incident that resulted in her suspension. Now, Meg is willing to do whatever it takes to earn their forgiveness.
But Wren Hall turns out to be far from the idyllic country manor Meg was expecting. The house is damp and drafty, the mirrors are all covered, and the weed-choked lake is at the center of legends that haunt the property to this day—a tainted legacy the estate seems unable to shake.
The truth is, people aren’t the only ones who keep secrets. Places can keep them too—and Wren Hall is drowning in them. When the past bleeds into the present and ancient sins rise to the surface, Meg must ask herself how well she really knows her one-time best friends…or whether any of them will survive the weekend..
The Walter Award Honor–winning author of Root Magic returns with a terrifying story in the Southern Gothic tradition, inspired by the hoodoo practice of hair burning. At night, Roddie still dreams of sitting at his mother’s feet while she braids his Afro down. But that’s a memory from before. Before his mom died in a tragic accident. Before he was taken in by an aunt he barely knows. Before his aunt brought him to Dogwood House, the creepiest place Roddie has ever seen. It was his family’s home for over a hundred years. Now the house—abandoned and rotting, draped in Spanish moss that reminds him too much of hair—is his home too. Aunt Angie has returned to South Carolina to take care of Roddie and reconnect with their family’s hoodoo roots. Roddie, however, can’t help but feel lost. His mom had never told him anything about hoodoo, Dogwood House, or their family. And as they set about fixing the house up, Roddie discovers that there is even more his mother never said. Like why she left home when she was seventeen, never to return. Or why she insisted Aunt Angie always wear her hair in locs. Or what she knew of the strange secrets hidden deep within Dogwood House—secrets that have awoken again, and are reaching out to Roddie…
The third book in The Trapdoor Mysteries, a series about Tally, a code-breaking, animal-loving servant girl and her best friend, a squirrel named Squill, who solve mysteries with the help of a secret library…
Orphan Tally is the servant girl at Mollett Manor – and she’s also the Secret Keeper of the magical library hidden beneath a trapdoor, underneath the manor’s grounds. Along with Squill the squirrel, she uses the enchanted books to solve crimes.
So when ghostly noises start haunting the lady of the manor in the middle of the night, she’s terrified and turns to Tally for help. But can the library help Tally catch something that no one can see?
Sixteen-year-old Nora still struggles daily with the disappearance of her twin sister Emma. It has been four years since Emma disappeared from the face of the earth. Every year on that day, Nora goes to the spot in the forest where her sister’s bicycle was found. But this year she is not alone. In the distance, a man is watching her and everything about this man sharpens her senses. The next day, Nora receives a note. The man knows what happened to her sister and asks Nora to meet him. But is it wise to meet him? What if she faces the same fate as her sister?
Eleven-year-old Jo loves Halloween and all things horror, but she doesn’t believe anything bad could ever happen in Fels, her small German hometown. When Hektor, her annoying older brother, disappears on his way home from school, Jo assumes he is playing a prank on her. But then both her father and grandma forget Hektor’s name, and his stuff mysteriously disappears from his room.
With the adults of no help whatsoever, Jo starts an investigation of her own, uncovering an old legend that has haunted the children of Fels for centuries. A monster lives in the rye fields, and draws children into its world under the roots. With two days until the gate between their worlds closes, and only Hektor’s obnoxious best friend to help her, Jo must figure out a way to rescue her brother, or lose him forever.
Haunted Mansion meets the ultimate escape room in this tense and twisty middle grade horror following four kids who must beat a series of games to make it out of a haunted house.
The creepiest place in Barret Eloise’s small town is the abandoned Raithfield Manor, a decrepit house surrounded by rumors of ghosts and kids going missing. So she certainly never planned on stepping foot inside. But when her history teacher gives her a group project to research a local landmark, the manor is the location her group chooses. Determined to ace the project and fix her awkward first impression on her assigned partners—which include her former friend Helena, smart and confident Wayne, and school basketball star Ridge—Barret Eloise isn’t about to let some tall tales scare her off.
When the kids first enter the house, it seems to be nothing more than an empty building. But when the sun goes down, the doors and windows lock, sealing them inside. Even worse, the room they’re in transforms into an all-too-real game of The Floor is Lava. It doesn’t take long for the group to realize the mansion is a maze of childhood games. Win the game and you keep moving forward, lose and you disappear. And complicating it all is a worrying revelation—they are not alone in the house.
If Barret Eloise wants to make it home, she and her dysfunctional group are going to have to learn to work together quickly.
A young musician finds himself locked inside a gas station bathroom in the middle of the night by an unseen assailant, caught between the horrors on the other side of the door and the horrors rapidly skittering down the walls inside.