The leaves are changing, the days are getting shorter, the nights are growing chillier, and it can all only mean one thing: fall is upon us. Below are a handful of books that celebrate everything autumnal and spine-tingling, ranging from new editions of classic Halloween tales to explorations of divination practices throughout the ages and around the world. As we bid summer goodbye, curl up with a snug blanket and a cup of tea as you dive into these chilling works!

Nine Authentic Ghost Stories edited by Kirsty Logan
First published in 1886 and reprinted here with a bewitching introduction by Kirsty Logan, the spooky tales in this little book are guaranteed to send a tingle down your spine. These uncanny stories feature secret rooms, spinning wheels, phantom carriages, haunted portraits, hidden messages, unsolved murders, and thwarted love affairs. Set in Scotland, Cornwall, and Spain, each is told by an eyewitness narrator, including a gardener, a tutor, and a governess, but the identity of the author remains a mystery. The collection starts with a macabre house party and ends with a haunting on New Year’s Eve. And, of course, whatever you do, don’t read them after midnight!

Horror and Comics edited by Barbara Chamberlin, Kom Kunyosying, and Julia Round

Horror and Comics brings together an international collection of contributors to discuss how multiple aspects of comics (forms, cultures, histories) have contributed to the depiction and development of horror across many subgenres, including folk horror, ecohorror, gothic romance, and more. The essays also investigate how horror has informed the development of comics across multiple periods, places, and genres, spanning Brazil, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United States.

Divination, Oracles & Omens by Michelle Aroney and David Zeitlyn

In Divination, Oracles & Omens, Michelle Aroney and David Zeitlyn explore our need to appeal to powers beyond our realm for prediction and clarification.

The past, present, and future are full of tantalizing mysteries: questions about our own and other people’s lives that we long to answer. Across history, human cultures have devised a wide range of methods to discover what might lie ahead or to understand past events.

This fascinating book features twenty-four divinatory techniques from around the world that have been and are still used to uncover hidden information: from astrology, palmistry, and Tarot to egg divination and Chinese Yijing. From ancient times to the present day, this spellbinding collection explores our need to appeal to powers beyond the realm of our day-to-day understanding for prediction and clarification, and how the questions we ask can reveal more than the answers we are given.

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving, illustrated by Arthur Rackham, and with an Introduction by Jonathan Kruk

Set in the fall of 1790, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow tells the story of schoolteacher Ichabod Crane who hopes to woo the daughter of a wealthy farmer in New York’s Hudson Valley. Superstitious and gullible, Crane is a believer in the many supernatural tales circulating in the local Dutch community. Late one autumn night, as Ichabod rides home having lost the object of his affections to a rival suitor, he encounters his worst fear: the Headless Horseman, thought to be the ghost of a decapitated soldier from the Revolutionary War.

First published in 1820, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow became the inspiration for many adaptations ranging from silent film, animation, and blockbuster movies to musicals and graphic novels, solidifying its legacy as a touchstone of the horror genre and Halloween time. In this edition of Washington Irving’s classic tale, readers encounter the story of Ichabod Crane anew, here reproduced with beautiful illustrations by Arthur Rackham and an introduction by Jonathan Kruk.

Textual Magic: Charms and Written Amulets in Medieval England by Katherine Storm Hindley

Katherine Storm Hindley explores words at their most powerful: words that people expected would physically change the world. Medieval Europeans often resorted to the use of spoken or written charms to ensure health or fend off danger. Hindley draws on an unprecedented archive of more than a thousand such charms from medieval England—more than twice the number gathered, transcribed, and edited in previous studies and including many texts still unknown to specialists on this topic. Focusing on charms from 1100 to 1350 CE as well as previously unstudied texts in Latin, French, and English, Hindley addresses important questions of how people thought about language, belief, and power. She describes seven hundred years of dynamic, shifting cultural landscapes, where multiple languages, alphabets, and modes of transmission gained and lost their protective and healing power. Where previous scholarship has bemoaned a lack of continuity in the English charms, Hindley finds surprising links between languages and eras, all without losing sight of the extraordinary variety of the medieval charm tradition: a continuous, deeply rooted part of the English Middle Ages.

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