Dark Harvest

This book is fast and punchy. It’s filled with twists and a high level of unnerving emotions. Set during autumn harvest, this is an absolutely perfect Halloween read. It is rather short, which means a fast reader or someone with some time could devour it in a day or two. There’s also an upcoming film adaptation.

Every Halloween night, all the teenage boys of this rural Everytown, USA take to the streets to hunt down the October Boy – a murderous scarecrow with a jack-o-lantern head. Killing him is the winner’s one-way ticket out of this dead-end town, but the October Boy has his own secrets and game to play… I love how Dark Harvest captures the autumnal atmosphere not just in the change of seasons, but in the evocation of this dying town. Rather than wistful or elegiac, though, Partridge summons up youthful rebellious discontent and lets it rip across the page. A vibrant mix… show more.

Every Halloween, a nightmare with a butcher knife named the October Boy rises from the cornfields to hunt the teenage boys of a small Midwestern town. Partridge won the Bram Stoker Award for this short novel and it’s easy to see why; his words conjure images that stick with us long after we’ve put the book down and pulled the blankets up over our heads. Chilling, tense, and fast-paced, this story takes us on a murderous thrill ride through a community that gives new meaning to the term “dead-end town.” At the same time, it’s also an artful coming-of-age story… show more.