Seven Spooky Books Written by Canadians to Read this Fall
Spooky vibes are in the air with Halloween, the weather is getting colder, and darkness is descending upon us earlier than usual—there is no better moment than a fall evening to wrap up in a blanket with a book. Thankfully Canadian fiction is bursting with fantastic titles in the horror genre, and here are seven that you shouldn’t miss.
The following book descriptions are from the publishers’ websites, and we encourage you to buy these books either directly from the publisher or your local indie bookstore.
THE SPIRITS UP
Todd Babiak
McClelland & Stewart
Benedict is an inventor whose life’s work is a clean energy machine. It has just made him an overnight sensation and his family is suddenly wealthy. Benedict’s wife, Karen, and his teenage daughters, Charlotte and Poppy, are proud of him, but there are problems Benedict is too busy to see. Benedict also holds a rather terrible secret about his clean energy machine.
Then, on Halloween night, an accident threatens to make everything far worse for the family. The Spirits Up is the story of a family haunted by the charmlessness of middle age and the cruelties of modern teenage life. Part social satire and part contemporary ghost story, it is an exploration of a timeless question: what happens when there’s nothing to believe?
QUEER LITTLE NIGHTMARES: An Anthology of Monstrous Fiction and Poetry
Edited by David Ly & Daniel Zomparelli
Arsenal Pulp Press
Throughout history, monsters have appeared in popular culture as stand-ins for the non-conforming, the marginalized of society. Creatures of myth and folklore seek belonging and intimate connection, cryptids challenge their outcast status, and classic movie monsters explore the experience of coming into queerness.
The characters in these stories and poems—the Minotaur camouflaged in a crowd of cosplayers, a pubescent werewolf, a Hindu revenant waiting to reunite with her lover, a tenderhearted kaiju, a lagoon creature aching for the swimmers above him, a ghost of Pride past—relish their new sparkle in the spotlight. Pushing against tropes that have historically been used to demonize, the queer creators of this collection instead ask: What does it mean to be (and to love) a monster?
RED X
David Demchuk
Strange Light
Men are disappearing from Toronto's gay village. One by one, stalked and vanished, they leave behind small circles of baffled, frightened friends. Against the shifting backdrop of homophobia throughout the decades, from the HIV/AIDS crisis and riots against raids to gentrification and police brutality, the survivors face inaction from the law and disinterest from society at large.
But as the missing grow in number, those left behind begin to realize that whoever or whatever is taking these men has been doing so for longer than is humanly possible. Woven into their stories is David Demchuk's own personal history, a life lived in fear and in thrall to horror, a passion that boils over into obsession.
EVERYONE KNOWS YOUR MOTHER IS A WITCH
Rivka Galchen
HarperCollins Canada
It is 1618 in the German duchy of Württemberg. In the small town of Leonberg, Katharina Kepler, an illiterate widow, is accused of being a witch. Katharina is known for her herbal remedies and the success of her children. Her eldest, Johannes, is the Imperial Mathematician and the renowned author of the laws of planetary motion.
So when the deranged and insipid Ursula Reinbold (or as Katharina calls her, the Werewolf) accuses Katharina of making her ill by offering her a bitter, witchy drink, Katharina is in trouble. Her scientist son must turn his attention from the music of the spheres to the job of defending his mother. Facing the threat of financial ruin, torture and even execution, Katharina tells her side of the story to her friend and neighbour Simon, a reclusive widower imperiled by his own secrets.
THE GIRLS ARE ALL SO NICE HERE
Laurie Elizabeth Flynn
Simon & Schuster Canada
Two former best friends return to their college reunion to find that they’re being circled by someone who wants revenge for what they did ten years before—and will stop at nothing to get it—in this shocking psychological thriller about ambition, toxic friendship, and deadly desire.
It seems that the secrets of Ambrosia’s past—and the people she thought she’d left there—aren’t as buried as she’d believed. Amb can’t stop fixating on what she did or who she did it with: larger-than-life Sloane “Sully” Sullivan, Amb’s former best friend, who could make anyone do anything. At the reunion, Amb and Sully receive increasingly menacing messages, and it becomes clear that they’re being pursued by someone who wants more than just the truth of what happened that first semester.
SODOM ROAD EXIT
Amber Dawn
Arsenal Pulp Press
It's the summer of 1990, and Crystal Beach in Ontario has lost its beloved, long-running amusement park, leaving the lakeside village a virtual ghost town. It is back to this fallen community Starla Mia Martin must return to live with her overbearing mother after dropping out of university and racking up significant debt. Soon enough, Starla must confront the unresolved traumas that haunt Crystal Beach.
Sodom Road Exit might read like a conventional paranormal thriller, except that Starla is far from a conventional protagonist. Where others might feel fear, Starla feels lust and queer desire. When others might run, Starla draws the horror nearer. And in turn, she draws a host of capricious characters toward her—all of them challenged to seek answers beyond their own temporal realities.
FIND YOU IN THE DARK
Nathan Ripley
Simon & Schuster Canada
Martin Reese is obsessed with murder. For years, he has been illegally buying police files on serial killers and studying them in depth, using them as guides to find missing bodies. He sees his work as a public service, a righting of wrongs that cops have continuously failed to do. Detective Sandra Whittal sees it differently. On a meteoric rise in police ranks due to her case-closing efficiency, Whittal is suspicious of the mysterious caller—the Finder, she names him—leading the police to the bodies. Even if the Finder isn’t the one leaving bodies behind, who’s to say that he won’t start soon?
When a crooked cop with a tenuous tie to Martin vanishes, Whittal begins to zero in on the Finder. Hunted by a real killer and by Whittal, Martin realizes that in order to escape the killer’s trap, he may have to go deeper into the world of murder than he ever thought.
Arjun Singh
is an emerging writer located in the Greater Toronto Area. He writes prose and screenplays and is currently hard at work on a novel, screenplay and a short story collection. Her is also an avid reader and has an ambitious goal of reading 60 books every year. Arjun was published in the Humber Literary Review's Spotlight edition in Spring 2022.