All through October, we’ll be sharing spooky reading recommendations from authors and staff. Whether it’s a horrifying contemporary work or a tell-tale classic, these selections are sure to haunt you for years to come. We spoke with Susan Coll, author of the The Stager, about her favorite HallowRead.
It’s not ghosts or serial killers that keep me awake; it’s thoughts of spooky children, and there are enough books written on this subject that it could be a genre unto itself. Most memorable for me—and spooky!—was The Fifth Child, by Doris Lessing, about a gremlin-like baby born to an otherwise idyllic middle class family in Britain. In a similar vein is We Need to Talk About Kevin, by Lionel Shriver, and more recently The Dinner, by Herman Koch. And now, just in time for Halloween, is Keith Donohue’s The Boy Who Drew Monsters.
—Susan Coll