16 Oct Great reads for October
The weather is turning colder, Halloween is around the corner, so why not curl up with a good, spooky b
ook I’m not one for lots of blood and gore, but there are plenty of thrilling reads that will be leave you afraid of the dark!
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova This 2005 debut novel is perfectly balanced between the spooky and thrilling, between the historical Vlad the Impaler, 14th century ruler of Wallachia and Bram Stocker’s Count Dracula, a delightfully Victorian monster. This book is a wonderful homage to Stocker’s work, and though it’s not necessary that you first read Dracula, you’ll appreciate the full scope of Kostova’s work if you do.
The Terror by Dan Simmons In 1845, two ships – HMS Erebus and HMS Terror* – set out to explore the Northwest Passage. After spending years stuck in ice, relying on contaminated food supplies, while their crewmates – including Sir John Franklin, the expedition’s commander – die, the crews abandon the ships and attempt to make their way on foot across hundreds of miles of tundra to civilization. They never made it. Dan Simmons captures all the drama and terror as this outlook facing this company of men moves from dangerous to dire. Simmons takes the historic drama and adds elements of the supernatural, which work perfectly to make this book unforgettable.
Uninvited Guests by Sadie Jones When you start reading, you’ll think you’ve fallen into a nice Downton Abbey-esqe 
storyline – Edwardian Britain, financial problems and arranged marriages, servant/master dynamics. But the mood changes suddenly and things are not what they seem.
*And you just know that a story involving ships named Terror and Erebus (a region of Hades, in Greek mythology) is going to good.
