13 More Spine-tingling Titles for Halloween 2021

Halloween is under a week away, and if you’re anything like our Digital Editor Jen Rawlinson, you’re craving books on the spookier side of things. That’s why she scoured the darkest depths and creepiest corners to bring you 13 More Spine-tingling Titles for the scariest time of year.

The Listeners

by Jordan Tannahill

“A propulsive literary page-turner about a family torn apart by a mother’s obsession with a sound that no one else can hear

One night, while lying in bed next to her husband, Claire Devon suddenly hears a low hum. This innocuous sound, which no one else in the house can hear, has no obvious source or medical cause, but it begins to upset the balance of Claire’s life. When she discovers that one of her students can also hear the hum, the two strike up an unlikely and intimate friendship. Finding themselves increasingly isolated from their families and colleagues, they fall in with a disparate group of people who also perceive the sound. What starts out as a kind of neighbourhood self-help group gradually transforms into something much more extreme, with far-reaching, devastating consequences.

The Listeners is an electrifying novel that treads the thresholds of faith, conspiracy and mania. Compelling and exhilarating, it forces us to consider how strongly we hold on to what we perceive, and the way different views can tear a family apart.”

*Alternate Plains.* eds. Darren Ridgley and Adam Petrash. Great Plains Publications. $21.95, 160 pp., ISBN: 978-1-773370-64-4

Alternate Plains: Stories of Prairie Speculative Fiction

edited by Darren Ridgley and Adam Petrash

“A man runs for his life from the promise of death held by trees; a lost VHS tape offers footage of a lost, grisly history; a diaspora clings to magical shards of home and more in this collection of speculative fiction by authors from across the Canadian Prairies.

Featuring stories from: Linda Trinh, Sheryl Normandeau, S.M. Beiko, Rhonda Parrish, Patrick Johanneson, Lynne M. MacLean, David Demchuk, Bob Armstrong, Chadwick Ginther, Wayne Santos, Sheldon Birnie, and Premee Mohamed.”

Suture

by Nic Brewer

“To make her films, Eva must take out her eyes and use them as batteries. To make her art, Finn must cut open her chest and remove her lungs and heart. To write her novels, Grace must use her blood to power the word processor.

Suture shares three interweaving stories of artists tearing themselves open to make art. Each artist baffles their family, or harms their loved ones, with their necessary sacrifices. Eva’s wife worries about her mental health; Finn’s teenager follows in her footsteps, using forearm bones for drumsticks; Grace’s network constantly worries about the prolific writer’s penchant for self-harm, and the over-use of her vitals for art.

The result is a hyper-real exploration of the cruelties we commit and forgive in ourselves and others. Brewer brings a unique perspective to mental illness while exploring how support systems in relationships – spousal, parental, familial – can be both helpful and damaging.

This exciting debut novel is a highly original meditation on the fractures within us, and the importance of empathy as medicine and glue.”

Red X

by David Demchuk

“A hunted community. A haunted author. A horror that spans centuries.

Men are disappearing from Toronto's gay village. They're the marginalized, the vulnerable. 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. As he tries to make sense of the relationship between queerness and horror, what it means for gay men to disappear, and how the isolation of the LGBTQ+ community has left them profoundly exposed to monsters that move easily among them, fact and fiction collide and reality begins to unravel.

A bold, terrifying new novel from the award-winning author of The Bone Mother.”

*Haunting British Columbia.* Mike McCardell. Harbour Publishing. $34.95, 224 pp., ISBN: 9781550179552

Haunting British Columbia: Ghostly Tales from the Past

by Mike McCardell

“Broadcaster and bestselling author Mike McCardell haunts British Columbia’s past in order to summon spellbinding tales of Western Canada.

Reprising his 2013 bestseller Haunting Vancouver, Mike McCardell summons the ghost of real-life pioneer Jock Linn to provide hair-raising and humorous versions of what really happened during some of the formative events that shaped British Columbia. In Haunting British Columbia, McCardell’s ghostly narrator explains how Victoria became BC’s capital (spoiler, it’s all because Governor James Douglas couldn’t stand waiting for a ferry); how Gassy Jack gave birth to Vancouver by running a beloved saloon, and more importantly how gassy he really was; and much, much more.

As the thousands who follow McCardell’s long-running human-interest features on the evening news know, he has a fascination with the provincial past as well as an uncanny ability to unearth captivating and forgotten stories. Richly illustrated with archival photos and ghostly doodles, Haunting British Columbia is as fun to read as it is a revealing tour of what really happened in those bygone days.

And it's all true... well, almost.”

Nothing But Blackened Teeth

by Cassandra Khaw

“Cassandra Khaw’s Nothing But Blackened Teeth is a gorgeously creepy haunted house tale, steeped in Japanese folklore and full of devastating twists.

A Heian-era mansion stands abandoned, its foundations resting on the bones of a bride and its walls packed with the remains of the girls sacrificed to keep her company.

It’s the perfect venue for a group of thrill-seeking friends, brought back together to celebrate a wedding.

A night of food, drinks, and games quickly spirals into a nightmare as secrets get dragged out and relationships are tested.

But the house has secrets too. Lurking in the shadows is the ghost bride with a black smile and a hungry heart.

And she gets lonely down there in the dirt.

Effortlessly taking the classic haunted house story and turning it on its head, Nothing but Blackened Teeth is a sharp and devastating exploration of grief, the parasitic nature of relationships, and the consequences of our actions.”

The Pump

by Sydney Warner Brooman

“A Gothic collection of stories featuring carnivorous beavers, art-eaters, and family intrigue, for fans of Alice Munro and Shirley Jackson

The small southern Ontario town known as The Pump lies at the crossroads of this world’s violence – a tainted water supply, an apathetic municipal government, the Gothic decay of rural domesticity – and another’s.

In Brooman’s interconnected stories, no one is immune to The Pump’s sacrificial games. Lighthouse dwellers, Boy Scouts, queer church camp leaders, love-sick and sick-sick writers, nine-year-old hunters, art-eaters – each must navigate the swamp of their own morality while living on land that is always slowly (and sometimes very quickly) killing them.”

*Gideon Falls.* Jeff Lemire, illus. Andrea Sorrentino. Image Comics. $49.99 USD, 432 pp., ISBN: 9781534319189

Gideon Falls (Deluxe Edition)

by Jeff Lemire, illus. Andrea Sorrentino

“The lives of a washed-up Catholic priest arriving in a small town full of dark secrets and a reclusive young man obsessed with a conspiracy in the city's trash become intertwined around the mysterious legend of the Black Barn – an otherworldly building alleged to have appeared in both the city and the small town throughout history, bringing death and madness in its wake.

Rural mystery and urban horror collide in this character-driven meditation on obsession, mental illness, and faith from the creators that writer BRIAN MICHAEL BENDIS said ‘will go down as one of the greatest comic teams of all time!’”

All’s Well

by Mona Awad

“From the critically acclaimed author of Bunny, a darkly funny novel about a theatre professor suffering chronic pain who, in the process of staging a troubled production of Shakespeare’s most maligned play, suddenly and miraculously recovers.

Miranda Fitch’s life is a waking nightmare. The accident that ended her burgeoning acting career left her with excruciating, chronic pain, a failed marriage, and a deepening dependence on painkillers. And now she’s on the verge of losing her job as a college theatre director. Determined to put on Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well, the play that promised—and cost—her everything, she faces a mutinous cast hell-bent on staging Macbeth instead. Miranda sees her chance at redemption slip through her fingers.

That’s when she meets three strange benefactors who have an eerie knowledge of Miranda’s past and a tantalizing promise for her future: one where the show goes on, her rebellious students get what’s coming to them, and the invisible, doubted pain that’s kept her from the spotlight is made known.

With prose Margaret Atwood has described via Twitter as ‘no punches pulled, no hilarities dodged . . . genius,’ Mona Awad has concocted her most potent, subversive novel yet. All’s Well is the story of a woman at her breaking point and a formidable, piercingly funny indictment of our collective refusal to witness and believe female pain.”

Yume

by Sifton Tracey Anipare

“A captivating fantasy novel about demons, dreams, and a young woman teaching English in Japan.

Cybelle teaches English in a small city in Japan. Her contract is up for renewal, her mother is begging her to come back to Canada, and she is not sure where she belongs anymore. She faces ostracism and fear daily, but she loves her job, despite its increasing difficulties. She vows to do her best – even when her sleep, appetite, and life in general start to get weird, and conforming to the rules that once helped her becomes a struggle.

Meanwhile, yokai feast and cavort around Osaka and Kyoto as the barrier between their world and the human world thins. Zaniel spends his nights walking the dream world and serving his demon ‘bodyguard,’ Akki. But there is a new yokai on the scene, and it has gotten on Akki’s bad side. When Cybelle gets caught up in the supernatural clash, she has to figure out what is real and, more importantly, what she really wants … before her life spirals out of control altogether.”

Like Me

by Hayley Phelan

“A propulsive psychological thriller that follows an aspiring model down a social media–fuelled rabbit hole of obsession, narcissism and self-destruction.

For nineteen-year-old Mickey, Instagram offers a tantalizing portal into the world she wishes she inhabited. Though beautiful, cunning and privileged, Mickey finds herself with a stalled modelling career, an escalating drinking problem, few friends and next to nothing in the bank. To numb her growing despair, she spends her days frantically refreshing her Instagram feed, obsessively tracking the movements of Insta-famous model Gemma Anton.

Gemma is a perfected version of Mickey, living a seemingly perfect life: a skyrocketing career, a famous photographer boyfriend and adoring followers – the life Mickey wants more than anything for herself. She studies every detail Gemma offers through the window of her phone, trying to absorb, learn, mimic, become the object of her growing fascination.

Then, a chance encounter thrusts Mickey into a world of opportunity, and she is met with surprising, and immediate, success. But as her online persona begins to take over her life, Mickey finds it increasingly difficult to separate reality from the façade of Instagram.

Engrossing, sharp and astute, Like Me is a shimmering portrait of infatuation, disconnection and identity in the digital age – and a dazzling introduction to a brilliant new voice in contemporary literature.“

Beneath Her Skin

by C.S. Porter

“When a small east coast town falls prey to a series of shocking murders, city homicide detective Kes Morris is called in to lead the case with the aid of the local precinct. As usual, she's the only woman in the room, and must draw on the lessons passed down by her detective father, a furtive and dangerous practice of going deep inside a killer's mind to put on their skin.

What Kes uncovers is a web of gruesome crimes reaching back decades, and a town that may have been complicit. With a reputation of being hard, relentless and unbending to authority, she finds herself on the hunt for a killer seeking brutal retribution, someone who takes sadistic pleasure in the death and wants their work seen. The farther she follows the trail, the more the line blurs between guilt and innocence, predator and prey.

An atmospheric thriller with complex characters, Beneath Her Skin signals the emergence of a bold new voice in crime fiction and a dark and thrilling new series.”

Velvet Was the Night

by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

“1970s, Mexico City. Maite is a secretary who lives for one thing: the latest issue of Secret Romance. While student protests and political unrest consume the city, Maite escapes into stories of passion and danger.

Her next-door neighbor, Leonora, a beautiful art student, seems to live a life of intrigue and romance that Maite envies. When Leonora disappears under suspicious circumstances, Maite finds herself searching for the missing woman – and journeying deeper into Leonora’s secret life of student radicals and dissidents.

Meanwhile, someone else is also looking for Leonora at the behest of his boss, a shadowy figure who commands goon squads dedicated to squashing political activists. Elvis is an eccentric criminal who longs to escape his own life: He loathes violence and loves old movies and rock ’n’ roll. But as Elvis searches for the missing woman, he watches Maite from a distance – and comes to regard her as a kindred spirit who shares his love of music and the unspoken loneliness of his heart.

Now as Maite and Elvis come closer to discovering the truth behind Leonora’s disappearance, they can no longer escape the danger that threatens to consume their lives, with hitmen, government agents, and Russian spies all aiming to protect Leonora’s secrets – at gunpoint.

Velvet Was the Night is an edgy, simmering historical novel for lovers of smoky noirs and anti-heroes.”