Fall Reading List 2022
Find the perfect scary books on the Cult of Weird Fall Reading List, a selection of creepy, paranormal and disturbing reads for the spooky season.
Tag Archive for: fall reading list
Fall Reading List 2021
Real ghost stories. Chilling true crime cases. Skulls with gruesome histories. These creepy fall reads will keep you up at night with fascination…or fright.
Fall Reading List 2020
Strange graves, messages from beyond the veil, bizarre legends and enduring mysteries. Find your next morbid must-read on the Cult of Weird fall reading list.
Morbid Must-Reads: 2019 Fall Reading List
Communing with the dead, the women who wrote monsters, eyeball-eating cats, and more weird books top this year’s morbid fall reading list.
The veil is thinning and nature is once again showing us how beautiful it is to die. That means it’s that time of year again when I dig up a new list of book recommendations to feed our insatiable need for the dark, weird, and disturbing this autumn.
This collection of morbid must-reads explores the dark side of life and lighter side of the afterlife, from Caitlin Doughty’s new masterpiece about kid’s death questions to LGBTQ+ tales of Gothic horror.
Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?
Mortician Caitlin Doughty answers death questions from kids like why do corpses groan? What causes bodies to turn colors during decomposition? Why do hair and nails appear longer after death? And if you’re wondering about the book’s title, the answer is yes, yes it will.
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Séance
Photographer Shannon Taggart explores the mysteries of spiritualism through her lens in this book full of truly haunting photographs. Séance includes a foreword by Dan Aykroyd, creator of Ghostbusters and fourth-generation spiritualist.
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Twelve Nights at Rotter House
Writer Felix Allsey makes a living publishing travelogues of the country’s most haunted places. But while staying in the infamous Rotterdam Mansion for his next bestseller, Allsey’s nonfiction turns into all out horror.
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Abandoned Palaces
From imperial residences and aristocratic estates to hotels and urban mansions, Abandoned Palaces tells the stories behind dilapidated structures all around the world.
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Exquisite Aberrations
The abandoned houses and shadowy cemeteries in this anthology of Gothic horror tales might seem familiar, but these stories are about the people who have been shunned and forgotten – trans, non-binary, and LGBTQ+ characters, people suffering from PTSD and other mental health conditions, and persons of color.
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Weird Wild West
Explore the stranger, darker side of the Old West, the ghost stories, unexplained deaths, bizarre murders, and peculiar burials that made the West weird.
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Monster, She Wrote
From Gothic ghost stories to psychological horror to science fiction, women have been primary architects of speculative literature of all sorts. And their own life stories are as intriguing as their fiction.
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Mostly Dead Things
Mostly Dead Things had me at “aggressively lewd art with the taxidermied animals.” I mean, what else do you need to know?
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Swamplandia!
Strange theme parks, swamp lore, ghosts and more comprise this mysterious and disturbing coming of age story about a family running a gator-wrestling attraction the Everglades.
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The Ghastling: Book Nine
The ninth installment of The Ghastling features chilling new tales of horror by contemporary authors. Don’t miss the “Strange Creatures” issue.
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Want more? Here are the fall reading lists from previous years:
2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013
Or you can find them all and more here: Cult of Weird Recommended Reading
Morbid Must-Reads: 2018 Fall Reading List
Dig into these morbid and fascinating book recommendations for the fall season from Cult of Weird.
It’s that time of year again: Falling leaves, the flickering grins of jack-o-lanterns, ghouls lurking around every turn and, of course, the Cult of Weird Fall Reading List of morbid must-reads to satisfy your dark autumn desires.
Curl up with one of these macabre recommendations and drift off through the thinning veil.
The Man from the Train
Bill James examines a series of seemingly unconnected axe murders across the country between 1898 to 1912 and makes a startling discovery: The murders were all committed by the same person, and he uncovered the identity of one of the deadliest serial killers in America. Thanks to Macabre Monday host Malia Miglino for this fascinating recommendation.
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Dreadful Places
Aaron Mahnke, creator of the Lore podcast, takes you on a tour of dark places where bad things have happened in the third installment of the World of Lore series.
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A Map of Days
Miss Peregrine’s peculiar children return with new wonders, dangers, and creepy vintage photos as Jacob uncovers more of his grandfather’s secrets that leads he and his unusual friends into the strange and untamed American peculiardom.
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The Penguin Book of Hell
Explore 3,000 years of Hell from the shadowy Sheol to Hades, Dante’s nine circles of Hell and more in this complete history of eternal damnation.
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Alice Isn’t Dead
After months of searching for Alice, she was presumed dead and had a funeral. But now she keeps turning up in the background of news reports from every major tragedy and accident across the country. From the mind of Welcome to Night Vale co-creator Joseph Fink, Alice Isn’t Dead is a new novel based on the popular podcast of the same name.
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The Sawbones Book
How did we go from eating powdered mummies, wearing radioactive underpants, and digging up corpses to modern medicine? The creators of the Sawbones podcast fill you in, complete with macabre illustrations to remind us just how horrific medical history can be.
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We Sold Our Souls
In this hard-rocking, spine-tingling supernatural thriller by Grady Hendrix, author of Paperbacks from Hell and My Best Friend’s Exorcism, the washed-up guitarist of a ’90s heavy metal band embarks on an epic road-trip across America and deep into the web of a sinister conspiracy.
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The Victorian Celebration of Death
An in-depth examination of Victorian mourning, from changing attitudes toward the dead to elaborate state funerals, cemetery architecture, and more.
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Madam Velvet’s Cabaret of Oddities
Vaudeville stories of the weird, absurd and bizarre cabaret. Step right up to meet a woman so determined to be a star, she’ll try anything in this collection of flash fiction oddities by Nancy Stohlman.
Available soon from Big Table Publishing
Servants of the Supernatural
Explore the dark side of the Victorian science: Mediums, psychics, spiritualism, and seances.
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Urban Legends
Did you hear about the kids who found a Ferrari buried in their garden? What about the man who sued Satan? Or the woman who woke up in the middle of her funeral? Do you know the legend of the Bunny Man?
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Coffins, Corpses, and Crypts
Did you know that winter in Madagascar was considered corpse-turning season? This book for children explores death and burial across the world with plenty of macabre and fascinating facts from six feet under.
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The Ghost: A Cultural History
Ghosts are woven into the very fabric of life. In Britain, every town, village, and great house has a spectral resident, and their enduring popularity in literature, art, folklore, and film attests to their continuing power to fascinate, terrify, and inspire.
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Hell’s Princess
Belle Gunness lured men to her “murder farm” in Indiana where they vanished without a trace. Until their butchered remains were later unearthed by authorities. This is the story of America’s most twisted female serial killer as told by the king of true crime, Harold Schechter.
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Spoon River Anthology
Deceased residents of the fictional town of Spoon River recount their often sad and tragic lives through a collection of free verse poems. “Where are Elmer, Herman, Bert, Tom and Charley, the weak of will, the strong of arm, the clown, the boozer, the fighter?” the first poem asks. “All, all are sleeping on the hill.”
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The Ghastling
The Ghastling features a collection of ghoulish short horror stories by contemporary authors. Book seven is a special issue dedicated to monsters in celebration of the Bicentenary of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
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Want more? Here are the fall reading lists from previous years:
2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013
Or you can find them all and more here: Cult of Weird Recommended Reading
