I’m behind on all the things. In the first of several catch-up posts, I’ll take a quick look back at the other spooky reads I picked up last month. This is my third post for Readers Imbibing Peril, after one on scary story collections and another on two East Anglian horror novels.

Kissing the Witch by Emma Donoghue (1997)

This is a terrific set of retellings of European fairytales, some I recognized (Cinderella, Rapunzel, Hansel and Gretel, The Little Mermaid) and some I didn’t. Each of the 13 stories is a first-person testimonial, and they all run into each other in a satisfying way because there are no speech marks and at the end the narrator of one asks a question that sparks a character to tell the next one, and so on. Many of them have cautionary elements (“In the days when wishing was having, I got what I wished and then I wished I hadn’t”) so there is sometimes an air of regret, but elsewhere there is defiance of convention. Maids lord their power over princesses and witches manipulate feuding spouses. As the title suggests, there is a queer slant to many to these familiar narratives. Witches aren’t evil hags to be shunned but alluring sexual creatures, making for some cheeky twist endings. This was a random choice from Donoghue’s back catalogue but might actually be one of my favourites from her oeuvre. (Secondhand – Awesomebooks.com with voucher)

The Greatcoat by Helen Dunmore (2012)

{SPOILERS IN THIS ONE}

I’m always surprised by how much Dunmore published, especially in a life cut short by cancer; her bibliography is full of titles I’ve never heard of. So this commissioned horror novella was an unexpected discovery. Isabel is a newlywed in 1952 Yorkshire. Her husband, Philip Carey, is a doctor who’s often away on emergency house calls. Until she fulfils everyone’s expectations by falling pregnant, she will have little to occupy herself beyond cooking and cleaning, with the landlady always stomping about overhead. It’s a bitter winter and one day she pulls an old RAF greatcoat from the back of a wardrobe to put over the bedclothes. The garment seems to summon the soldier who once wore it at a local airfield, Alec, and as he starts to visit more frequently, Isabel channels the memories of the woman who carried on an affair with him. The ghost lover is nothing novel, but possession by the past experiences of another person who’s still alive was a new one on me. I wasn’t sure Dunmore always demarcated the real and the imaginary effectively; then again, that’s part of the point of horror. Anyway, a quick and easy read, and what happened to Isabel’s parents during the war is a good way of pointing up the everyday trauma that many were living with in that decade. (Little Free Library)

The Time of the Witch by Mary Downing Hahn (1982)

This might be the first book I ever got signed at an author event, aged 10. I don’t specifically recall reading it as a child, but I think it must be a reread for me. (Some of Hahn’s other titles listed inside the book ring a bell, anyway.) Laura and her little brother Jason come from the Washington, D.C. area to stay with Aunt Grace in West Virginia for the summer while their parents finalize their divorce. When Laura learns that there is a nearby witch, an old woman named Maude who goes around with a crow on her shoulder, she decides to ask for a spell to bring her parents back together. But, as happens with these sorts of stories, her request has unforeseen consequences and she soon wants to take it all back. This was so very ’80s, the names and descriptions of the locals are stereotypical “hick” fodder, and it’s a pretty predictable message to accept what you cannot control and trust that adults know what they’re doing. I’m sure I found it suspenseful as a kid, but I doubt this one has stood the test of time. (Gift – purchased new by my mother at a Bowie Library event in 1994)

Sheets & Lights by Brenna Thummler (2018; 2023)

I finished off this teen graphic novel trilogy (the middle book is Delicates) by rereading parts of the first volume that I missed out on when my NetGalley download expired, and finding the third book I never got to. Middle schooler Marjorie Glatt works in her family’s laundromat in small-town Pennsylvania. Since her mother died, it’s just been her, her little brother, and their absent-minded father. When she starts seeing the ghost of a little boy named Wendell – and ghosts in this world are literally just sheets with eye-holes – he makes her life more complicated but also acts as a bridge to another dimension she’s been denying. With his mischief, he also helps her to resist the buyout offer of awful Mr. Saubertuck, who keeps threatening to turn the laundromat into a yoga retreat center.

In the other two volumes, Marjorie makes friends with Eliza, a ghost photographer, and they help Wendell investigate his own untimely death. Whereas Eliza is bullied and feels like an outcast, Marjorie makes some friends among the popular girls and tries to bring her two friend circles together, with mixed results. I like the pastel, kitsch 1980s-90s vibe of these comics, though Thummler can’t really draw noses, at least not on white people. I would recommend the series for younger teens. (Public library)

Any stand-out creepy reading for you this year?