With the weather cooling and the days getting shorter, fall is officially here. I find fall to be perfect for reading, the falling leaves and slow, creeping nights building the atmosphere of the right book in your hands. So, once again, we look at a few random book recommendations for the season!

The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson

     Four people who have had experiences with the paranormal go to spend some time at Hill House, hoping to find evidence of the supernatural. The main of these four being Eleanor Vance, a shy young woman who had been made into a recluse by her sick, invalid mother, and resents her for it. Slowly, the house begins to make its inner presences known.
     I wrote on Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived In The Castle in my previous recommendations list, which I would say is still a perfect must for fall and should be read if you haven’t already.
The Haunting of Hill House is The Haunting of Hill House. There isn’t a whole lot more to say. Any haunted horror film or book you come across obviously owns a lot to this story, with Jackson laying much of the groundwork that has come since. Great horror explores areas of the human condition, and Jackson has utilized this wonderfully, building on what would happen to character’s psyche when placed in such an environment and the pressures one could feel, and using it to underlay the novel with tense unease and general creepiness. With multiple moments that have gone down as some of the best of their kind, including the most famous one which still stands as one of the best instances of horror in my mind, it is a classic that deserves its status and it’s easy to see why it was so influential to what came after it.
     The best type of horror is one that puts their characters through their own personal hell, so to speak, and makes the things they go through easy to relate to, in certain ways. Like We Have Always Lived In The Castle, Hill House has an ending worth discussing. Of course, it was also adapted into one of the greatest horror classics in the 60s, titled The Haunting. With Halloween season here, it’s perfect to read and watch them together.

Coraline - Neil Gaiman

     Coraline Jones and her family move into an old, big building that has been divided into lofts. She has a few oddball neighbours and, with no other children around, finds herself incredibly bored. Until she finds a passageway that leads her to a loft identical to her own, with her other mother and father. They’re incredibly nice, and sweet, and loving, and look almost the same as her own parents, except for having big, black buttons for eyes. And the fact that the Other Mother is tall, and pale, with long, red fingernails...
     Neil Gaiman’s Coraline is exactly the type of children’s work I love, one that doesn’t treat the children as children, in the sense others would. Children most times seem to focus on things as a whole instead of little moments the way we might. Sure, something may be creepy, but hey, everything turned out good in the end and the evil was defeated. Nothing else to worry about. Coraline is a horror/dark fantasy children’s book that follows that pretty well and has multiple instances in it that are legitimately unnerving. The book actually holds quite possibly one of my favourite exchanges in a novel. Not spoiling anything, but there comes a moment where Coraline has to bargain with her Other Mother, rightly not finding her to be the most trustworthy, Coraline asks how she will stay true to her word. The Other Mother’s response is one that I initially remembering having to re-read a couple of times just to make sure I read it right. It is so disturbing and horrifying when you actually think about it, it’s the kind of thing that would be immensely effective in a normal horror book, let alone one technically intended for children. If you haven’t read it for the sole purpose of it being a children’s book, change your mind-frame and attitude. It’s a book you’ll probably easily fall in love with.

And Then There Were None - Agatha Christie

     Eight people are invited to a remote house on a remote island through various pretenses. The only other people in the house are a couple that work as housekeeping, hired by the same man that invited each of them, who hasn’t arrived himself. While they mingle, a record mysteriously plays and reveals that they are all there for a reason, every one of them having escaped justice for murder in the past, and they are all there to finally pay for their deeds.
     Agatha Christie is still pretty much untouchable in the mystery genre and she constantly has you on your toes wondering about the possibility of there being another individual on the island responsible for the murders, or perhaps one of the ten isn’t exactly who they say there are. There are quite many Christie novels that you must read, ones I will undoubtedly get to down the line, but I felt as though the overall atmosphere of And Then There Were None fits perfect for the season. There is something incredibly sinister to the proceedings, mainly due to the circumstances and location.
     I don't want to say too much more about it, as this is a quintessential example of a book where you should go in completely blind. The amount of work that has gone into the novel iand its unravelings really shows (especially since people have been trying to replicate it since), and it never misses a beat in any way, shape, or form. You're hooked from the very beginning, like all Christie novels, and the ending is one that is so fantastically realized that there is no way for you to really be ahead of it. The novel may be incredibly obvious when talking about Christie, as it stands as one of her top masterpieces, but every single word of praise it has gotten is worthwile. It also helps that you could read it in a few hours, or less.

Cat's Cradle/Breakfast of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut

     Breakfast of Champions: Dwayne Hoover is a Pontiac dealer in Midland City, he’s a charming man who also happens to be slightly deranged, believing that a science fiction story by author Kilgore Trout is actually fact. Trout, meanwhile, is making his way to appear at a convention in Midland City, where he is destined to meet Hoover. The results go as well as expected.
     Cat’s Cradle: A man named John tells us the story of how he started work on a book about what certain Americans were doing during the dropping of the bomb in Hiroshima, and how he got caught up with the family of a man who created a substance called ice-nine, which was intended to be used on the battlefield (I’m not going to reveal how here). He soon finds himself on a fictional Caribbean Island along with the family members and things quickly escalate in multiple ways.
     Fall may bring about very atmospheric reads, and I thought it would be a nice break to add in something a bit on the lighter side. I decided to go with two Vonnegut novels, not just because I couldn’t decide which one to choose, but I feel as though Vonnegut makes good reading for slow afternoons and evenings. His novels are relatively on the shorter side and paced amazingly, with lots of short chapters and not a lot of details that distract from where the story is going (Cat’s Cradle is cut into 127 ‘chapters’ but is still only 304 pages, with most breaks being as short as a few lines long).
     Vonnegut’s satire and quirky comedy still, and will always, hold up, which makes the readings even more of a breeze. One thing that I’ve always loved about his work is that there seems to come a moment a ways in that, in my mind, finds a way to subvert the idea of a story “taking a left turn.” This could involve either a plot point or just a random happening, and it’s the kind of moment that, if you were to describe the novel’s plot happenings verbatim to someone, they may question whether or not a specific moment took you out of the book (this is a good conversation topic in terms of an instance in Breakfast of Champions). But Vonnegut is so great at his quirky characters and small moments leading up to bigger moments that when you get around to a very specific moment in the book, you find yourself more-so thinking that you should’ve seen it coming (again, Breakfast of Champions has my favourite example of this). Either of these are great to curl up with and breeze through in a day or two.

Pet Sematary – Stephen King

     Louis Creed relocates his family to a small town near Ludlow, having just received a new job in Maine. The only negative of their new life is the location of the house, as it is right beside a busy highway. After some time, the family cat is hit and killed, and Louis, intrigued by stories he has heard of the area, buries the animal in an ancient burial ground that had been used by Micmac Indians. The cat soon returns home, alive, but it eventually becomes very apparent that it isn't quite the way it should be. Sadly, that is not the real horror the family will go through, as the certain events leads to Louis taking some drastic measures that may end up costing him more than he could ever imagine...
     I felt obligated to include a Stephen King novel in a recommendation list for the season, so why not go for my favourite. I adore Pet Sematary (as you can tell from my article dedicated to it here). I mentioned in The Haunting of Hill House that the best type of horror puts their characters through their own personal hell, and it’s incredibly easy to relate to here, as nothing can be more horrific to a parent than not being able to keep their children safe. I believe it’s one of King’s best novels as a whole, with the terror being very universal and, mostly, rooted in the real world, using supernatural elements to show just how far people will go when pushed. All of it leads to what I believe is possibly King’s best ending to any of his novels, and my favourite of all; a painful and believable hit that really resonates and stays true to what came before. While longer than the others on the list, it makes a perfect journey for the upcoming holiday.

Those are only a few books that would make great reads for the chilly fall weather, but what would you recommend? What are some of your favourites to read this time of the year?