13 Spine-tingling Titles for Halloween 2020

This year will be a Halloween unlike any other. Whether you’re going out for socially distanced trick-or-treating, or staying in, make the most of your Halloween by cozying up and scaring yourself silly with Digital Editor Jen Rawlinson’s list of 13 spine-tingling titles to help you celebrate the spookiest time of year.

The Ghost Tree

by Christina Henry

“When people go missing in the sleepy town of Smith’s Hollow, the only clue to their fate comes when a teenager starts having terrifying visions, in a chilling horror novel from national bestselling author Christina Henry.

When the bodies of two girls are found torn apart in the town of Smiths Hollow, Lauren is surprised, but she also expects that the police won't find the killer. After all, the year before her father's body was found with his heart missing, and since then everyone has moved on. Even her best friend, Miranda, has become more interested in boys than in spending time at the old ghost tree, the way they used to when they were kids.

So when Lauren has a vision of a monster dragging the remains of the girls through the woods, she knows she can't just do nothing. Not like the rest of her town. But as she draws closer to answers, she realizes that the foundation of her seemingly normal town might be rotten at the center. And that if nobody else stands for the missing, she will.”

Daniil & Vanya. Marie-Hélène Larochelle, trans. Michelle Winters. Invisible Publishing. $20.95, 224 pp., ISBN: 9781988784571 — *Daniil & Vanya.* Marie-Hélène Larochelle, trans. Michelle Winters. Invisible Publishing. $20.95, 224 pp., ISBN: 9781988784571

Daniil and Vanya

by Marie-Hélène Larochelle trans. Michelle Winters

“We Need to Talk About Kevin meets Goodnight Mommy in this outrageous modern family thriller.

Emma and Gregory have a perfect life – a gorgeous home, a successful design firm – except for their inability to start a family. Following a traumatic failed pregnancy, they decide to travel to Russia to adopt a pair of twin boys. From the moment they board the plane in St. Petersburg, the twins begin to demonstrate perverse behaviour that grows increasingly ominous, driving a wedge between Emma and Gregory, and alienating their friends and family. The two brothers show worrying signs of lack of empathy, and seem to leave behind a trail of disturbing incidents, and rumours persist as the boys grow into teenagers – even as Emma continues to cling to her dream of the perfect family. A dark, violent, and tense novel, Daniil and Vanya shows the bond between parent and child gone horribly awry.”

Primary Obsessions

by Charles Demers

“The endearing and unflappable Dr. Annick Boudreau regularly confronts a myriad of mental health issues in her psychology practice at the West Coast Cognitive Behavioural Therapy Clinic in Vancouver, British Columbia. But even Annick is stunned when Sanjay, a young patient who suffers from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, is arrested for the brutal murder of his roommate. While Sanjay is tortured by repeated violent thoughts, everything Annick knows about her patient and his illness has her convinced that he’s innocent. But the police and prosecutor are convinced that they have caught the perpetrator and aren’t interested in looking very hard. Unable to talk to the authorities because of doctor-patient confidentiality, Annick feels compelled to investigate on her own, finding herself drawn into the darker side of her postcard-perfect city in the process.

Primary Obsessions is the first book in a series of mysteries starring Dr. Annick Boudreau and involving themes of mental health. Author (and longtime CBT patient) Charles Demers deftly reveals a particular aspect of psychology practice in each book, illuminating shadowy subject matter with masterful sensitivity and sharp wit. Primary Obsessions is an engrossing page-turner and a refreshing reboot of the sleuth genre.”

The Unlocking Season

Gail Bowen

“The ‘queen of Canadian crime fiction’ (Winnipeg Free Press) returns with a new installment in the Joanne Kilbourn series that is perfect for readers of Louise Penny, Ruth Rendell, and Peter Robinson.

On a Saturday bright with harbingers of spring, Joanne Kilbourn-Shreve, her husband, Zack, and their family prepare to celebrate the season. Joanne’s life is full, and at 60, she has been given the chance to understand a part of her history that for years was shrouded in secrecy.

Living Skies is producing Sisters and Strangers, a six-part TV series about the tangled relationships between the families of Douglas Ellard, the father who raised Joanne, and Desmond Love, her biological father. Joanne is working on the script with Roy Brodnitz, a brilliant writer and friend. The project’s future seems assured, but before the script is completed, Brodnitz disappears while scouting locations in northern Saskatchewan. Hours later, he’s found – sweat-drenched, clawing at the ground, and muttering gibberish. He dies in a state of mortal terror.

Heartsick and perplexed, Joanne resolves to learn what happened in the last hours of Roy’s life. What Joanne discovers threatens Brodnitz’s legacy, and the decision about whether or not to reveal the truth is hers to make. The Unlocking Season is another deeply satisfying and thought-provoking novel from one of Canada’s finest crime writers.”

ARBORESCENT

By Marc Herman Lynch

“In the beltline of a run-of-the-mill Canadian metropolis, an apartment complex called Cambrian Court has become the focal point of an outlandish unfurling, where even the laws of physics are becoming questioned. Embroiled within this psychic plot are three neighbours – Nohlan Buckles, Hachiko Yoshimoto, and Zadie Chan – complete strangers whose ordinary lives have become rife with bizarre antagonists: an ogrish landlord, a fanatical romantic, a psychic horticulturalist. The further they are drawn into this otherworld the more reality becomes suspect: Nohlan is convinced he's turning into a tree; Hachiko's staging of a kabuki comes to life; and Zadie unwittingly begins to produce doppelgangers. Distant at first, they come to realize just how dependent and intertwined their lives are.

In Marc Herman Lynch's debut novel, some people explode, and others come back to life, but at the heart of it all are the fleeting yet indelible connections we make with one another. Darkly funny, lyrically charged, and gothically absurd, Arborescent is a raw and brilliantly imagined depiction of our disconnected contemporary world.”

TELL ME MY NAME

by Erin Ruddy

“A roller-coaster domestic thriller for fans of Ruth Ware and Shari Lapena featuring a rustic cottage retreat, a suspicious new neighbour, a violent kidnapping, and a wife who learns her husband isn't telling her the whole truth.

Ellie and Neil Patterson are eager to enjoy some quality time at their new cottage. It’s the first time in ten years they’ve been alone … or are they?

When a friendly encounter leads to their violent kidnapping, they awaken to a living nightmare. Insisting he is Ellie’s soulmate, the kidnapper gives her three chances to say his name. If she guesses wrong, it’s Neil who will suffer the consequences. This propels Ellie into a desperate trip down memory lane to dredge up the dubious men of her past.

Only after discovering the man's true identity and sacrificing her own safety to save Neil does Ellie finally learn the truth – that everything she thinks she knows about her husband and their decade-long love story is a lie.”

The Loop

By Dan Sanders

“Alan is unsure if he is dead or dreaming, he only knows that he is stuck in a loop. He finds himself being forced to walk along a straight path through an unending pine forest where any deviation from the path causes him to black out and begin again. Dipping in and out of an endless purgatorial walk, Alan relives key moments in his life where he missed the opportunity to learn, escape, and change: The death of his mother, an abusive relationship with his father, and the opportunity to connect with his only real friend, a neighbour he never speaks to named Edgar.

The Loop chronicles the life of an alcoholic who is unable to escape his past to explore the ways in which abuse can shape someone into their abuser and the ways trauma can transfer from one generation to the next. How much of who we are is who we are? How much of it is someone else? What if this has all happened before?”

THE BOOK OF SAM

Rob Shapiro

“A hell-bound fantasy starring demons, damsels, and an unlikely hero.

Sixteen-year-old Sam Sullinger lives in the shadow of adolescence. He's lost among his overachieving siblings, constantly knocked down by his harsh father, and bullied daily. His only solace is his best friend and crush, Harper.

In a grand plan designed to help him confess his love to Harper, Sam accidentally sets off a series of events that lead to her being kidnapped and taken to Hell. Racked with guilt, Sam makes a bold decision for the first time in his life: he’s going to rescue his only friend.

Sam is thrust into a vivid world fraught with demons, vicious beasts, and a falling city. And every leg of his journey reminds him that he isn’t some brave knight on a quest – he’s an insecure teenager yearning to make his mark on at least one world.”

Watching the Devil Dance: How a Spree Killer Slipped Through the Cracks of the Criminal Justice System

by Will Toffan

“The unbelievable true story of Canada’s first known spree killer, told by a veteran of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

In June 1966, Matthew Charles Lamb took his uncle’s shotgun and wandered down Ford Blvd in Windsor, Ontario. At the end of the bloody night, two teenagers lay dead, with multiple others injured after an unprovoked shooting spree. In his investigation into Lamb’s story, Will Toffan pieces together the troubled childhood and history of violence that culminated in the young man’s dubious distinction as Canada’s first known spree killer – at which point the story becomes, the author writes “too strange for fiction.” Travelling from the border city streets, to the courtroom, to the Oak Ridge rehabilitation centre, and finally Rhodesia, Watching the Devil Dance is both a thrilling narrative about a shocking true crime and its bizarre aftermath and an insightful analysis of the 1960s criminal justice system.”

Screech! Ghost Stories from Old Newfoundland

by Charis Cotter, illus. Genevieve Simms

“A spooky, illustrated collection of Newfoundland ghost stories by award-winning author of The Ghost Road.

There is no dark like the Newfoundland dark. These ominous words beckon young readers onward in this spooky collection of ghost stories by celebrated ghost story–teller and award-winning middlegrade author Charis Cotter. Reimagined from family stories told across Newfoundland and passed down over generations, these 10 spine-tingling tales traverse centuries and introduce readers to the Rock’s nooks and crannies. From a ghostly blueberry-picker on the barrens to a visit from the notorious Old Hag, from a mysterious ballet troupe in a St. John’s mansion to a haunted house in an outport community on the cusp of resettlement, these stories bring the island of Newfoundland to vibrant new life (and death) as the thread of these years-old yarns is unravelled for a whole new generation.

Featuring ghostly black-and-white illustrations from Newfoundland artist Genevieve Simms, as well as an overview of the Newfoundland storytelling tradition, and a Story Behind the Story for each tale including context on the story’s history, its original teller, its featured ghost, and setting, along with tips for spooky storytelling and a Glossary of Newfoundland terms, Screech! is equal parts eerie and educational, making it a riveting read as well as a great resource for budding historians and storytellers.”

You Were Never Here

By Kathleen Peacock

“Cat hasn’t been to Montgomery Falls, the town her family founded, since she was twelve years old. Since the summer she discovered she could do things that no normal twelve-year-old could do. Since she had her first kiss with Riley Fraser. Since she destroyed their friendship.

Now, five years later, she’s back and Riley has disappeared.

When Noah, Riley's brother, asks for help in discovering what happened, Cat is torn between wanting to learn the truth and protecting the secret that she’s been guarding ever since that summer she and Riley stopped speaking. Only one choice will put her in a killer’s sights…”

The Shadow

by Melanie Raabe, trans. Imogen Taylor

“Ruth Ware meets Shari Lapena in this gripping psychological thriller about the slippery nature of truth and destiny.

Norah Richter has recently moved from Berlin to Vienna, hoping to put her old life behind her. While walking to her new office one morning, Norah is approached by an elderly homeless woman who utters these chilling words:

On the eleventh of February, you will kill a man called Arthur Grimm. . .With good reason. And of your own free will.

Norah is unnerved – many years earlier, something terrible happened to her on February 11 – but she chooses to shrug off the encounter as mere coincidence, until a few days later when she meets a man named Arthur Grimm.

Soon Norah begins to have a dreadful suspicion: Does she have a good reason to hate this man she’s never met? Could he be responsible for the tragic event in her past? And can Norah make sure that justice is done without committing murder?”

Plain Bad Heroines

by Emily M. Danforth, illus. Sara Lautman

“The award-winning author of The Miseducation of Cameron Post makes her adult debut with this highly imaginative and original horror-comedy centered around a cursed New England boarding school for girls – a wickedly whimsical celebration of the art of storytelling, sapphic love, and the rebellious female spirit

Our story begins in 1902, at the Brookhants School for Girls. Flo and Clara, two impressionable students, are obsessed with each other and with a daring young writer named Mary MacLane, the author of a scandalous bestselling memoir. To show their devotion to Mary, the girls establish their own private club and call it the Plain Bad Heroine Society. They meet in secret in a nearby apple orchard, the setting of their wildest happiness and, ultimately, of their macabre deaths. This is where their bodies are later discovered with a copy of Mary’s book splayed beside them, the victims of a swarm of stinging, angry yellow jackets. Less than five years later, the Brookhants School for Girls closes its doors forever – but not before three more people mysteriously die on the property, each in a most troubling way.

Over a century later, the now abandoned and crumbling Brookhants is back in the news when wunderkind writer Merritt Emmons publishes a breakout book celebrating the queer, feminist history surrounding the “haunted and cursed” Gilded Age institution. Her bestselling book inspires a controversial horror film adaptation starring celebrity actor and lesbian it girl Harper Harper playing the ill-fated heroine Flo, opposite B-list actress and former child star Audrey Wells as Clara. But as Brookhants opens its gates once again, and our three modern heroines arrive on set to begin filming, past and present become grimly entangled – or perhaps just grimly exploited – and soon it’s impossible to tell where the curse leaves off and Hollywood begins.

A story within a story within a story and featuring black-and-white period-inspired illustrations, Plain Bad Heroines is a devilishly haunting, modern masterwork of metafiction that manages to combine the ghostly sensibility of Sarah Waters with the dark imagination of Marisha Pessl and the sharp humor and incisive social commentary of Curtis Sittenfeld into one laugh-out-loud funny, spellbinding, and wonderfully luxuriant read.”