Fall Reading List
North Woods by Daniel Mason
One of the best books I’ve picked up this year, North Woods tracks a single home in the woods of New England over several centuries—from its foundation by two lovers who flee a Puritan colony to an apple farm to a haunted mansion. It is beautifully written, with a rich cast of interconnected characters (both human and nonhuman) and striking descriptions of the surrounding environment. The spinster twins were my favorite.
Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh
Dark, strange, and eerily timely (eat the rich), Lapvona is a fall read that leans all the way into the grotesque. Ottessa Moshfegh crafts a medieval fable that follows Marek, a pious and physically disfigured boy growing up in a plague-ridden village (another theme of this list, apparently) with his abusive father. When a sudden act of violence brings Marek into the orbit of the village’s egomaniacal lord, his life takes a sharp turn—and so does the novel, diving into a world of surreal power dynamics, blurred morality, and quiet horror. It’s part fairytale, part fever dream, unsettling in the best way.
Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy
The titular wild, dark shore of this novel is along a remote island near Antarctica. There, a small family watches over the world’s most remote seed bank. The island was once a research hub, but now the father and his three children are the sole residents, until a woman washes up on shore. Is she who she says she is? Is the family? Everyone has something up their sleeves, including Mother Nature.
Charlotte McConaghy is known for her themes of the natural world and the climate crisis, written in a way that feels gripping and urgent. May I recommend this one as an audiobook—the Australian accents really add to the sense of place.
Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell
A back story about William Shakespeare set in a small English town feels quintessentially fall in Maggie O’Farrell’s historical fiction. The plague is running rampant in 1580 when a young Latin tutor, Shakespeare, falls in love with the town’s strange and eccentric young woman, Agnes. In spite of their families’ wishes, they marry and have three children, who are still young when their father’s playwright career in London is taking off. While he’s away, their 11-year-old son, Hamnet (the name of Shakespeare’s actual son), succumbs to the Black Death, possibly inspiring Shakespeare’s most famous play. It’s a heartbreaking story about a marriage marred by grief, best read with a cup of tea and some tissues nearby.
If you can’t bring yourself to pick up the book, perhaps Paul Mescal can tempt you with the cinematic adaptation.
Mary: An Awakening of Terror by Nat Cassidy
Falling squarely in the horror genre, Mary is about an average, middle-aged woman going through a change. Yes, that involves hot flashes and body aches, but also voices in her head and terrifying visions. After being fired from her mediocre job in New York, she returns to her hometown to care for her ailing, estranged (and incredibly cruel) aunt, where things become exponentially worse. Looking for a story involving serial killers, ghosts, unexplained phenomena, and murder? Mary has all that, plus social commentary on what it means to be an aging woman in our world.
Bunny and We Love You, Bunny by Mona Awad
I haven’t shut up about author Mona Awad since I first read Bunny five years ago, and have now devoured everything she’s written. Her books are perfect for spooky season, blending comedy, horror, and mystical magic to create a world that’s entirely unique and perfectly weird. Someone described Bunny as “if Stephen King wrote Mean Girls,” and that’s pretty on the nose. The novel follows Samantha Heather Mackey, an outsider pursuing an MFA at a prestigious New England university. Everything changes when a clique of cool girls, who are tremendously annoying and call each other “Bunny,” decides to befriend Samantha. From there it gets...strange, but in a gripping way. Can’t get enough? The sequel, We Love You, Bunny, just hit bookshelves.
All the Colors of the Dark by Chris Whitaker
This one’s for my true crime girlies. It’s the 1970s, and an awkward boy named Patch intervenes in an attempted kidnapping of Misty Meyer, a wealthy, popular girl from school. He saves her, but is abducted in her place. His best friend, Saint, devotes herself to investigating his disappearance with an obsessive fervor. I won’t spoil anything for you, but it’s a wild ride with twists and turns you won’t see coming.
The History of Sound: Stories by Ben Shattuck
Similar to North Woods in style, The History of Sound is also a series of interconnected stories, though this one spans three centuries in New England. A friend of mine noted that, while North Woods is plot-driven, The History of Sound strums on your heartstrings. The chapters are often love stories, but even more often loss stories, with the occasional murder mystery sprinkled throughout. Author Ben Shattuck is married to actress Jenny Slate, and they live in Massachusetts, where Ben and his brother run a historic 18th-century general store. Which is to say, it’s no surprise a book like this would come from a man like that.
The film version (also starring Paul Mescal…sensing a theme here) is out now.
