Horror – Carol's Notebook

Home Before Dark by Riley Sager

June 25, 2026June 25, 2026 by Carol2 Comments

The set-up is good. Twenty-five years ago, Maggie Holt's father wrote a book, House of Horrors, about their family's three weeks in the haunted Baneberry Hall. The book became a best seller, but now her father is dead and she's inherited the house. Maggie's convinced the book was fiction and remembers nothing from their time there, so she moves into Baneberry Hall to renovate it for sale and, hopefully, find out the truth of what really happened that summer. It turns out that the house is creepier than Maggie had expected. The book alternates between the present timeline and chapters from House of Horrors, using what her dad wrote to echo what she's living through. It turns out that more might be true than she thought. I listened to the audio and having two narrators, one for House of Horrors and one for Maggie's point of view, worked well. I don't read many horror books and this is my first...

The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas

November 4, 2025November 4, 2025 by Carol2 Comments

The Hacienda will probably be my last spooky story of the year. Newly-married Beatriz has just moved to her husband, Don Rodolfo's, hacienda, San Isidro, where she will live with her husband and sister-in-law. It's not long until Beatriz realizes something is wrong with the hacienda, aside from neglect. She begins hearing voices, having vivid hallucinations, and constantly feels like she is being watched. Fearing the house is haunted, she turns to a local priest, Padre Andrés, for help. The writing is beautiful and descriptive. The atmosphere is "hauntingly lovely" and oppressive. I listened to the audio and having two narrators worked well with the two viewpoints, Beatriz' and Andrés'. In print, I'm not sure their voices would have been as distinct. Overall, it was an enjoyable read: a bit of supernatural, a unique (for me) setting, a touch of romance. It did touch briefly on some tough topics but ended up skirting around them....

A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny

October 30, 2025October 31, 2025 by Carol2 Comments

I loved A Night in the Lonesome October. It's the late 1800s and a group of strangers have gathered in a village outside of London for The Game. We know them, of course: Jack (the Ripper), Larry Talbot (The Wolfman), the Great Detective (Sherlock Holmes), the Count (Dracula), the Good Doctor (Frankenstein) and others, along with their familiars. Our narrator is Snuff, Jack's mathematically-inclined dog, who is a very good boy. There are 31 chapters, one for each day in October, but I listened to most of it on a long car ride. We are dumped right in the middle of the action and left to kind of figure stuff out on our own. It's a light, fun book, but chockful of literary and cultural references and amazing dialogue. It's clever and funny and the characters, including the critters, are so well drawn. And the showdown at the end is fabulous. I will say i should have boned up on...

Play Nice by Rachel Harrison

October 29, 2025October 29, 2025 by Carol3 Comments

I don't read a lot of horror, and when I do, I tend to prefer the lighter side, and the horror aspect of Play Nice was fairly light. The family drama and unresolved childhood trauma were the heavier parts here. Clio is an influencer who seems to have the world at her feet. When she and her two sisters inherit their mother's house after her death, Clio insists on taking on the rehab and selling of the property, a house their mother always insisted was demon-possessed, thinking it will make great content. Clio is a difficult person to like. She is deeply affected by her past, no matter how much she believes she's past it. She's self-centered, stubborn, a bit chaotic, probably an alcoholic, but her character makes sense, given the family dynamics and I found myself rooting for her. Yes, I wanted her to make different choices, but that's part of the horror genre, isn't it? The relationships between her and her sisters...

The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre by Philip Fracassi

May 7, 2025May 7, 2025 by Carol2 Comments

It's always so weird saying I loved a book that's full of murder and torture, but The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre was fabulous. There's a serial killer stalking the residents of the Autumn Springs Retirement home, but the cops and the administrators seem to think that the deaths, at least the first couple, are just accidents. Old people die. Rose DuBois is convinced otherwise, and she and a few of her friends start investigating. Rose is a fabulous character. She's smart and tough. She has flaws, of course, but she makes a great final girl. All the residents we are introduced to are so well drawn, so full of life and character. I actually had to skip a chapter because I didn't want to read about that particular character's death. And a lot of them die. We get the requisite amount of blood and gore and terror for a slasher novel. It's funny and surprisingly emotional for me. We also...

Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng by Kylie Lee Baker

February 25, 2025February 25, 2025 by CarolNo Comments

I can't tell you why I picked up Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng. I don't read a lot of horror, I avoid serial killers, and I haven't been reading many pandemic books. But it was fabulous, in a gory, violent, haunting way. It's Summer, 2020 in New York City. In the opening scene, 24-year-old Cora Zeng and her sister Delilah are waiting for the subway when a man appears just as the train approaches. He calls Delilah a "bat eater" and pushes her onto the tracks. She is killed by the train and the man is never caught. resulting in her brutal death before Cora's eyes. Unfortunately, the man escapes. The second chapter picks up a few months later. Cora is now working as a crime scene cleaner, a job that fits Cora and her need for cleanliness well, but a disturbing number of the jobs have been cleaning the apartments of murdered Asian women. It's also Ghost...