Deas Leaves: 9 Tales from the Witching Season

For today's countdown to Halloween's post, another reading suggestion: Dead Leaves by Kealan Patrick Burke. Subtitled: "9 Tales from the Witching Season". My favourite horror discovery so far this year. I loved it. Burke is a Stoker Award-winning author and boy I can see why. While the stories are modern, there is something very classic about them. There is fairly little display of gore (although there is most definitely some) and evil here is an unsettling presence that rarely comes in full display. Halloween sometimes takes the center stage, but is often merely in the background, a setting more than anything else, which enhances the feeling of unease. In all of them, the narrative ends before the big reveal and the climax is never completed with the last line. Nothing is fully explained, nothing is fully resolved. You finish the book and it should haunt you for the rest of the month and beyond.