Ever since I can remember, I wanted to be a ghostbuster. I was the kid with the stack of ghost books and horror film obsession, sparked full of adrenaline and excitement. I knew about ouija boards and poltergeists before I knew my times tables and even now - older, more cynical, less drawn to graveyards - I still feel that same thrill when I am holding a horror novel in my hands. I write about discomfort, about fear. I’m well-acquainted with it. I like the feeling of being unnerved and want to evoke that in the stories I tell and the ones I read, like the books below. Hope you enjoy!
I wrote...
The Silence
By
Daisy Pearce
What is my book about?
Stella Wiseman was a child TV star, but there’s nothing glamorous about her life now. Alone in her thirties, she’s lost her parents and her friends and she’s stuck in a dead-end job. But just as she hits rock bottom she meets Marco, a charismatic older man who offers to get her back on her feet. He seems too good to be true.
She appreciates the money he lavishes on her. And the pills. But are the pills just helping her sleep, or helping her avoid her problems? With Stella’s life still in freefall, Marco whisks her away to a secluded cottage where she is isolated from everyone except him. No longer sure what’s real and what’s not, Stella begins to question whether she was wrong to trust Marco.
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The Books I Picked & Why
A Head Full of Ghosts
By
Paul Tremblay
Why this book?
A book that frightened me so much I genuinely had to sleep with the lights on. I love domestic horror and the discomfort of a family setting and Tremblay’s novel digs deep into this. A Head Full of Ghosts centres around a fourteen-year-old girl displaying signs of acute schizophrenia and the methods her family uses to exorcise her demons. At a time when I’d grown weary of so much modern horror this book really got under my skin.
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The Apparition Phase
By
Will Maclean
Why this book?
So good! A ghost story rich in texture, set in Britain during the seventies. Twins Tim and Abi live in an insular world, obsessed with the paranormal. After they prank a school friend with a fake ghost photograph events start to spiral out of control. Nostalgic without being syrupy, this book felt like stepping back into my own ghost-obsessed childhood. It’s that familiarity, as well as the slow burn of the strange and unnerving events, that kept me absolutely hooked.
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Between Two Fires
By
Christopher Buehlman
Why this book?
My God, this book. This book. It was so unsettling, so eerie, and yet so lyrically deft that I often found my jaw open in wonder. A mediaeval horror set in France during the Black Death, it tells of a young girl who believes she has seen the Angels of God. I picked it up expecting to drag my way through it and instead found it so absorbing and hallucinatory that I couldn’t read it fast enough. Worth noting also that it manages to be both apocalyptic and very funny which is quite a feat!
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Hex
By
Thomas Olde Heuvelt
Why this book?
I was obsessed with this book for a long time because I love a narrative built around curses and witches. A small Hudson Valley town is haunted by the Black Rock Witch, a seventeenth-century woman whose eyes and mouth are sewn shut. In parts both chilling and profound, it works on a deeper level than your average ghost story and is richer for it.
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Witch Bottle
By
Tom Fletcher
Why this book?
Although this is a slow-burning horror with an air of menace throughout Witch Bottle is a very human book. It is a story about grief and loss and loneliness and conjures up a deeply unsettling atmosphere that stayed with me long after I’d turned out the light. Uncanny, in the truest sense of the word.
