In this Unabridged episode, which has become an annual tradition, Sara, Jen and Ashley share our latest thriller and spooky recommendations with you, perfect for fall mood reading. Our recommendations include Alex Michaelides’s The Maidens, Shea Ernshaw’s A History of Wild Places, and Riley Sager’s Survive the Night. We talk about the best ways to enjoy thrillers and wrap up our episode by sharing some of our favorite Halloween memories.
Bookish Check-in
Ashley - Stephen Graham Jones’s My Heart is a Chainsaw (Amazon | Bookshop.org)
Jen - Joan He’s Descendant of the Crane (Amazon | Bookshop.org - Audio Link)
Sara - Michelle Zauner’s Crying in H Mart (Amazon | Bookshop.org)
Our Spooky Reads Recs
Ashley - Alex Michaelides’s The Maidens (Amazon | Bookshop.org)
Jen - Shea Ernshaw’s A History of Wild Places (Amazon | Bookshop.org)
Sara - Riley Sager’s Survive the Night (Amazon | Bookshop.org)
Mentioned in Episode
Elizabeth Lim's Six Crimson Cranes (Amazon | Bookshop.org)
Shea Ernshaw's Winterwood (Amazon | Bookshop.org) and The Wicked Deep (Amazon | Bookshop.org)
Our Previous Spooky Reads Episodes
Looking for more spooky read recs? You can listen back to our spooky read recommendations from prior years, and check out this book review!
Give Me One - Favorite Halloween Memory
(A note to our readers: click on the hashtags above to see our other blog posts with the same hashtag.)
Interested in what else we're reading? Check out our Featured Books page.
Loving what you see here? Please comment below (scroll ALL the way down to comment), share this post using the social media buttons below (scroll down for those as well!), and find us on social media to share your thoughts!
Bookish Check-in
Ashley was reading . . .
Stephen Graham Jones’s My Heart Is a Chainsaw (Amazon | Bookshop.org)
"'Some girls just don’t know how to die.'
"Shirley Jackson meets Friday the 13th in My Heart Is a Chainsaw, written by the author of The Only Good Indians Stephen Graham Jones, called 'a literary master' by National Book Award winner Tananarive Due and 'one of our most talented living writers' by Tommy Orange.
"Alma Katsu calls My Heart Is a Chainsaw 'a homage to slasher films that also manages to defy and transcend genre.' On the surface is a story of murder in small-town America. But beneath is its beating heart: a biting critique of American colonialism, Indigenous displacement, and gentrification, and a heartbreaking portrait of a broken young girl who uses horror movies to cope with the horror of her own life.
"Jade Daniels is an angry, half-Indian outcast with an abusive father, an absent mother, and an entire town that wants nothing to do with her. She lives in her own world, a world in which protection comes from an unusual source: horror movies, especially the ones where a masked killer seeks revenge on a world that wronged them. And Jade narrates the quirky history of Proofrock as if it is one of those movies. But when blood actually starts to spill into the waters of Indian Lake, she pulls us into her dizzying, encyclopedic mind of blood and masked murderers, and predicts exactly how the plot will unfold.
"Yet, even as Jade drags us into her dark fever dream, a surprising and intimate portrait emerges…a portrait of the scared and traumatized little girl beneath the Jason Voorhees mask: angry, yes, but also a girl who easily cries, fiercely loves, and desperately wants a home. A girl whose feelings are too big for her body. My Heart Is a Chainsaw is her story, her homage to horror and revenge and triumph."
Jen was reading . . .
Joan He’s Descendant of the Crane (Amazon | Bookshop.org - Audio Link)
"Tyrants cut out hearts. Rulers sacrifice their own. Princess Hesina of Yan has always been eager to shirk the responsibilities of the crown, but when her beloved father is murdered, she's thrust into power, suddenly the queen of an unstable kingdom. Determined to find her father's killer, Hesina does something desperate: she enlists the aid of a soothsayer―a treasonous act, punishable by death, because in Yan, magic was outlawed centuries ago.
"Using the information illicitly provided by the sooth, and uncertain if she can trust even her family, Hesina turns to Akira―a brilliant investigator who's also a convicted criminal with secrets of his own. With the future of her kingdom at stake, can Hesina find justice for her father? Or will the cost be too high?
"In this shimmering Chinese-inspired fantasy, debut author Joan He introduces a determined and vulnerable young heroine struggling to do right in a world brimming with deception."
Sara was reading . . .
Michelle Zauner’s Crying in H Mart (Amazon | Bookshop.org)
"In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humor and heart, she tells of growing up one of the few Asian American kids at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother's particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother's tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food.
"As she grew up, moving to the East Coast for college, finding work in the restaurant industry, and performing gigs with her fledgling band--and meeting the man who would become her husband--her Koreanness began to feel ever more distant, even as she found the life she wanted to live. It was her mother's diagnosis of terminal cancer, when Michelle was twenty-five, that forced a reckoning with her identity and brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had given her.
"Vivacious and plainspoken, lyrical and honest, Zauner's voice is as radiantly alive on the page as it is onstage. Rich with intimate anecdotes that will resonate widely, and complete with family photos, Crying in H Mart is a book to cherish, share, and reread."
Be sure to listen to hear their initial thoughts!
Main Segment - Spooky Reads Recs
Ashley recommended . . .
Alex Michaelides’s The Maidens (Amazon | Bookshop.org)
"Edward Fosca is a murderer. Of this Mariana is certain. But Fosca is untouchable. A handsome and charismatic Greek tragedy professor at Cambridge University, Fosca is adored by staff and students alike―particularly by the members of a secret society of female students known as The Maidens.
"Mariana Andros is a brilliant but troubled group therapist who becomes fixated on The Maidens when one member, a friend of Mariana’s niece Zoe, is found murdered in Cambridge.
"Mariana, who was once herself a student at the university, quickly suspects that behind the idyllic beauty of the spires and turrets, and beneath the ancient traditions, lies something sinister. And she becomes convinced that, despite his alibi, Edward Fosca is guilty of the murder. But why would the professor target one of his students? And why does he keep returning to the rites of Persephone, the maiden, and her journey to the underworld?
"When another body is found, Mariana’s obsession with proving Fosca’s guilt spirals out of control, threatening to destroy her credibility as well as her closest relationships. But Mariana is determined to stop this killer, even if it costs her everything―including her own life."
Jen recommended . . .
Shea Ernshaw’s A History of Wild Places (Amazon | Bookshop.org)
"Travis Wren has an unusual talent for locating missing people. Hired by families as a last resort, he requires only a single object to find the person who has vanished. When he takes on the case of Maggie St. James—a well-known author of dark, macabre children’s books—he’s led to a place many believed to be only a legend.
"Called Pastoral, this reclusive community was founded in the 1970s by like-minded people searching for a simpler way of life. By all accounts, the commune shouldn’t exist anymore and soon after Travis stumbles upon it…he disappears. Just like Maggie St. James.
"Years later, Theo, a lifelong member of Pastoral, discovers Travis’s abandoned truck beyond the border of the community. No one is allowed in or out, not when there’s a risk of bringing a disease—rot—into Pastoral. Unraveling the mystery of what happened reveals secrets that Theo, his wife, Calla, and her sister, Bee, keep from one another. Secrets that prove their perfect, isolated world isn’t as safe as they believed—and that darkness takes many forms.
"Hauntingly beautiful, hypnotic, and bewitching, A History of Wild Places is a story about fairy tales, our fear of the dark, and losing yourself within the wilderness of your mind."
Sara recommended . . .
Riley Sager’s Survive the Night (Amazon | Bookshop.org)
"It’s November 1991. Nirvana's in the tape deck, George H. W. Bush is in the White House, and movie-obsessed college student Charlie Jordan is in a car with a man who might be a serial killer.
"Josh Baxter, the man behind the wheel, is a virtual stranger to Charlie. They met at the campus ride board, each looking to share the long drive home to Ohio. Both have good reasons for wanting to get away. For Charlie, it’s guilt and grief over the shocking murder of her best friend, who became the third victim of the man known as the Campus Killer. For Josh, it’s to help care for his sick father—or so he says.
"The longer she sits in the passenger seat, the more Charlie notices there’s something suspicious about Josh, from the holes in his story about his father to how he doesn’t want her to see inside the trunk. As they travel an empty, twisty highway in the dead of night, an increasingly anxious Charlie begins to think she’s sharing a car with the Campus Killer. Is Josh truly dangerous? Or is Charlie’s jittery mistrust merely a figment of her movie-fueled imagination?
"One thing is certain—Charlie has nowhere to run and no way to call for help. Trapped in a terrifying game of cat and mouse played out on pitch-black roads and in neon-lit parking lots, Charlie knows the only way to win is to survive the night."
Listen to the episode to hear why we recommended each one!
Want to support Unabridged?
Check out our Merch Store! Become a patron on Patreon. Follow us @unabridgedpod on Instagram. Like and follow our Facebook Page.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Check out our Teachers Pay Teachers store. Follow us @unabridgedpod on Twitter. Subscribe to our podcast and rate us on Apple Podcasts or on Stitcher. Check us out on Podbean.
Please note that we a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. We also are proud to partner with Bookshop.org and have a curated Unabridged store as well as affiliate links.
Comments