Halloween Season

For today's countdown to Halloween reading suggestion: Halloween Season by Lucy A. Snyder. She's a Bram Stoker Award-winning AND Shirley Jackson Award-nominated, so you know you can't go wrong. In any case, it's maybe my favourite horror discovery this year, even though not all the stories are centered around Halloween. There's a lot of direct Lovecraftian influences here, as the Cthulhu Mythos is often explicitly mentioned, or even integral to the plot (in fact I had read the short story Cosmic Cola in this book), but Snyder has a far more optimistic approach. Often evil does not triumph (although it sometimes does) and mankind's struggle against the Forces of Darkness is not ultimately doomed to fail. Or at least, there is some hope that we will overcome. There's often a surprisingly not irritating dose of humour. Also, you will find a few non horror stories and some others that are practically Christmas stories. I could have done without then, but then again I'm a purist. And on a side note: what a cover!