Here are some shiny things that caught my eye recently:
♦ All Hallow’s Read.
Ah, it’s October again, and time for recommending books for Hallowe’en and All Hallow’s Read. Each Monday this month I’ll recommend something spooky or scary to give to someone you love. Our starter is one of my favorite fairy-tale novels, Fitcher’s Brides by Gregory Frost, part of The Fairy Tale series created by Terri Windling. The novel is based on two dark fairy tales: “Bluebeard” by Charles Perrault and, mostly, “Fitcher’s Bird,” collected by the Brothers Grimm. The horror here is a slow build, and Frost packs a lot of detail into a realistic world that’s not quite right. The back cover copy:
1843 is the “last year of the world,” according the Elias Fitcher, a charismatic preacher in the Finger Lakes district of New York State. He’s established a utopian community on an estate outside the town of Jekyll’s Glen, where the faithful wait, work, and pray for the world to end.
Vernelia, Amy, and Katherine Charter are the three young townswomen whose father falls under the Reverend Fitcher’s hypnotic sway. In their old house, where ghostly voices whisper from the walls, the girls are ruled by their stepmother, who is ruled in turn by the fiery preacher. Determined to spend Eternity as a married man, Fitcher casts his eye on Vernelia, and before much longer the two are wed. But living on the man’s estate, separated from her family, Vern soon learns the extent of her husband’s dark side. It’s rumored that he’s been married before, though what became of those wives she does not know. Perhaps the secret lies in the locked room at the very top of the house—the single room that the Reverend Fitcher has forbidden to her.
If you like horror films, drop by my friend Cameron Cook’s blog. Every day in October he’s going to post a review of a different horror film he’s never seen, and he’ll have some guest posts, too. I can’t believe 31 horror films exist Cameron hasn’t seen, so I’ll be tuning in daily to see what makes the cut.
Speaking of horror, enjoy 11 legendary monsters of Asia. Gotta love the monsters.
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