Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Top Ten Tuesday - Creep Week

Halloween is in two days time folks, so it's officially Creep Week! 

I am a total scaredy cat, so I try to avoid truly creepy/scary books.  Bring on all things witchy, supernatural, ghostly etc...


1.  The Ghost of Thomas Kempe by Penelope Lively.  My first ghost story.  I loved this, and last Christmas gave a copy to my niece, she loved it to (she says).

2.  Dark Matter by Michelle Paver, a recent read, very creepy and from about half way through I could only read during the day.

3.  The Magic Cottage by James Herbert.  My Aunt loved horror stories and thought I might enjoy them too... Thought I'd give this one a read, scared me silly as a teenager.

4.  Needful Things by Stephen King.  I read this in 2002, on a beach in the caribbean.  It's brilliant, but I hated it, way too scary for me.  I forced myself to finish it or I'd still be thinking about it now.  If you like to be scared you should definitely try this one.

5.  The Daylight Gate by Jeanette Winterson, this months book club read.  Based on actual court records of 1612 Pendle Witch Trials.  Review to come soon(ish).

6.  The Boonsboro Inn trilogy by Nora Roberts.  Not remotely scary, and only moments of light creepiness.  Ms Roberts recently renovated an old Inn in the town of Boonsboro in real life, and decided to write a trilogy based on the renovation.  The heroes are the men who renovated it and their romantic relationships.  The Inn has a resident mystery ghost which along with the renovation works tied the books together.  Ms Roberts writes rather a lot of trilogies, and I have to say that her supernatural stories are my favourites.  See also - the Three Sisters Island trilogy,  Key trilogy, In the Garden trilogy, the Circle trilogy, the Sign of Seven trilogy,

7.  The Woman in Black by Susan Hill.  Hmmm, not bad.

8.  Dark is Rising Sequence by Susan Cooper.  Good magic vs Bad magic.  I've read only the first three so far, and they are fantastic.  I've heard great things about the last two books which are on my shelf.

9.  The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman.  Brilliant.  not at all scary, but a wonderful story about a boy raised by ghosts.  Neverwhere was excellent too, also by Neil Gaiman.

10.  Harper Connelly series by Charlaine Harris.  They aren't brilliant fiction, not too well written, but easy reads and cheap to buy.  I kind of enjoyed this mystery series about a young woman who can sense the dead and how they died.

This meme is courtesy of The Broke and The Bookish

4 comments:

  1. I'm a bit of a scaredy cat too. I haven't read any of the books on your list!

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  2. I'm not all that crazy about reading horror, but some covers just happen to catch my attention. Great picks and thanks for stopping by! :)

    Andy @ Owl Always Be Reading

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  3. The Dark Is Rising series was a fave of mine as a kid. I think Seaward was my favourite - I remember some of it terrifying the pants off me, though! Good call. I am also a huge fan of The Graveyard Book, which I'm currently re-reading in honour of Halloween - because I'm too much of a pussy to read anything truly terrifying. Even if I were on a beach in the Caribbean, I don't think I'd go near Needful Things!

    Excellent list!

    M @ Backlist Books

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  4. LOL - I'm a scaredy cat, too, which is reflected in my list this week - no gory or really scary books :-) I'm seeing the Woman in Black on quite a few lists. I have to read this book!

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