Why am I passionate about this?
I have a passion for novels with creepy settings, because I grew up in a haunted house and also spent my summers at a cottage on a lake with a long history of hauntings. I’m very familiar with the sensation of someone coming up behind you but when you turn around, nobody’s there, with lights flickering and the sound of unaccounted for footsteps, with shadowy corners, and chills running down your spine. As a child I loved to explore dark woods, abandoned buildings, and hold seances. As an adult I still explore these kinds of settings through my own writing and through the reading of some very creepy novels.
Jessica's book list on with creepy settings
Why did Jessica love this book?
Sager’s novel Home Before Dark is set in a large Victorian mansion in the Vermont woods. Nicknamed the House of Horrors, the creep factor for this setting is high. Our protagonist, Maggie, returns after twenty-five years away to learn the truth of what drove her family out of the house late one night when she was only a child. Was the house really haunted as her mother and father had told her for all of those years or is there a logical explanation for the horrible things that had happened there? This novel gets my recommendation because it has three of my favourite things, ghosts, an old, abandoned building, and a protagonist returning to learn the truth.
2 authors picked Home Before Dark as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
In the latest thriller from New York Times bestseller Riley Sager, a woman returns to the house made famous by her father’s bestselling horror memoir. Is the place really haunted by evil forces, as her father claimed? Or are there more earthbound—and dangerous—secrets hidden within its walls?
What was it like? Living in that house.
Maggie Holt is used to such questions. Twenty-five years ago, she and her parents, Ewan and Jess, moved into Baneberry Hall, a rambling Victorian estate in the Vermont woods. They spent three weeks there before fleeing in the dead of night, an ordeal Ewan later…