See Some Evil, Read Some Evil with 6 Horror Movie–Book Matchups

October 1 2020
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October is upon us, which means that it’s time to bring out all the spooky books that have been waiting for just the right time of year to be read. Unless you’re like me, of course, then you’ve been reading scary stories all year round and are ready to share some recommendations with the world. But the fun of the Halloween season is not just in reading terrifying tales, but also in watching movies that will have you sleeping with the lights on for days on end. So let’s make the most of October by pairing up some spine-tingling novels with movies that will have you running for cover.

This post was originally published on GetLiterary.com.

Magic Lessons
by Alice Hoffman

Practical Magic

Start off the spooky season with a little romance and drama to ease you into the darkening days. Practical Magic is a classic, mixing elements of horror with a romantic plot full of witches, the living dead, and spells gone awry. At the heart of the film is a curse set on their family by Maria Owens, who had her heart broken by a man. Alice Hoffman, who wrote the eponymous book the film is based on, has been expanding this magical universe and has just released her second prequel to it, Magic Lessons, all about the origin tale of Maria Owens. Maria is abandoned in the snow as a child, only to be taken in by Hannah Owens to raise as her own, and taught magic. But Maria’s world is thrown into chaos when the man she loves abandons her, causing her to follow him all the way to the New World. That New World, in the late 17th century, is no less a place than Salem, Massachusetts, and the curse is only the beginning of the story. This book will haunt you as it explores themes of love, heartbreak, and what it means to understand and harness one’s own power.

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Magic Lessons
Alice Hoffman

In an unforgettable novel that traces a centuries-old curse to its source, beloved author Alice Hoffman unveils the story of Maria Owens, accused of witchcraft in Salem, and matriarch of a line of the amazing Owens women and men featured in Practical Magic and The Rules of Magic.

Where does the story of the Owens bloodline begin? With Maria Owens, in the 1600s, when she’s abandoned in a snowy field in rural England as a baby. Under the care of Hannah Owens, Maria learns about the “Unnamed Arts.” Hannah recognizes that Maria has a gift and she teaches the girl all she knows. It is here that she learns her first important lesson: Always love someone who will love you back.

When Maria is abandoned by the man who has declared his love for her, she follows him to Salem, Massachusetts. Here she invokes the curse that will haunt her family. And it’s here that she learns the rules of magic and the lesson that she will carry with her for the rest of her life. Love is the only thing that matters.

Magic Lessons is a celebration of life and love and a showcase of Alice Hoffman’s masterful storytelling.

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Everything's Eventual
by Stephen King

1408

There’s nothing like a good horror anthology to really make the season come alive, and Stephen King is a master of the horror short story. And while there are plenty of King film adaptations to choose from, I wanted to go with something a little more under the radar. In his short story anthology Everything’s Eventual, there is the story “1408” about a writer, Mike Enslin, who ends up spending the night in a haunted hotel room in order to write about it. However, the room is far more sinister than anything he’s ever encountered, and soon the stay becomes a nightmarish ordeal that leads to his physical and mental anguish. The film version of 1408 is also a treat, following the King story fairly closely until the end, with John Cusack trying to sort nightmare from reality as his hotel room begins to warp his perception and bring up dark memories from his past. The story collection also has other great entries, like “Lunch at the Gotham Café” and, my personal favorite, “Autopsy Room Four,” which will merely make you paranoid for the rest of your life.

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Everything's Eventual
Stephen King

Includes the story “The Man in the Black Suit”—set in the fictional town of Castle Rock, Maine

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Stephen King, the iconic, spine-tingling story collection that includes winners of an O. Henry Prize and other awards, and “Riding the Bullet,” which attracted over half a million online readers and became the most famous short story of the decade, as well as stories first published in The New Yorker, “1408,” made into a movie starring John Cusack.

“Riding the Bullet” is the story of Alan Parker, who’s hitchhiking to see his dying mother but takes the wrong ride, farther than he ever intended. In “Lunch at the Gotham Café,” a sparring couple’s contentious lunch turns very, very bloody when the maître d’ gets out of sorts. “1408,” the audio story in print for the first time, is about a successful writer whose specialty is “Ten Nights in Ten Haunted Graveyards,” or “Ten Nights in Ten Haunted Houses,” and though Room 1408 at the Dolphin Hotel doesn’t kill him, he won’t be writing about ghosts anymore. And in “That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is in French,” terror is déjà vu at 16,000 feet.

Whether writing about encounters with the dead, the near dead, or about the mundane dreads of life, from quitting smoking to yard sales, Stephen King is at the top of his form in the fourteen “brilliantly creepy” (USA TODAY) tales assembled in Everything’s Eventual. Intense, eerie, and instantly compelling, they announce the stunningly fertile imagination of perhaps the greatest storyteller of our time.

Stories include:
-Autopsy Room Four
-The Man in the Black Suit
-All That You Love Will Be Carried Away
-The Death of Jack Hamilton
-In the Deathroom
-The Little Sisters of Eluria
-Everything's Eventual
-L.T.'s Theory of Pets
-The Road Virus Heads North
-Lunch at the Gotham Café
-That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is in French
-1408
-Riding the Bullet
-Luckey Quarter

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The Twisted Ones
by T. Kingfisher

The Cabin in the Woods

Once upon a time, cabins in the woods were cozy retreats that were places of rest and relaxation away from the weary world of responsibilities and modernization. But thanks to decades of horror media, cabins in the woods are now the sites for gruesome murders and horrible tragedies. Case in point, the creepy novel The Twisted Ones. Mouse’s task should be simple: clean out her recently deceased grandmother’s house in the woods of rural North Carolina. But when she finds a notebook detailing some dark and mysterious creatures lurking, things get eerie very quickly. Reminiscent of Arthur Machen’s classic horror story “The White People,” this book is a layered folktale of dark forces and heart-stopping fear. And when you’re done vowing to never stay in the woods overnight again, why not watch Drew Goddard’s The Cabin in the Woods? The movie follows five college students who rent an isolated retreat, only to find haunted objects in its basement. But just as with The Twisted Ones, there are layers to this story that make it all the more gruesome, and all the harder to look away from.

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The Twisted Ones
T. Kingfisher

Winner of the RUSA Award for Best Horror

When a young woman clears out her deceased grandmother’s home in rural North Carolina, she finds long-hidden secrets about a strange colony of beings in the woods in this chilling novel that reads like The Blair Witch Project meets The Andy Griffith Show.

When Mouse’s dad asks her to clean out her dead grandmother's house, she says yes. After all, how bad could it be?

Answer: pretty bad. Grandma was a hoarder, and her house is stuffed with useless rubbish. That would be horrific enough, but there’s more—Mouse stumbles across her step-grandfather’s journal, which at first seems to be filled with nonsensical rants…until Mouse encounters some of the terrifying things he described for herself.

Alone in the woods with her dog, Mouse finds herself face to face with a series of impossible terrors—because sometimes the things that go bump in the night are real, and they’re looking for you. And if she doesn’t face them head on, she might not survive to tell the tale.

From Hugo Award–winning author Ursula Vernon, writing as T. Kingfisher, The Twisted Ones is a gripping, terrifying tale bound to keep you up all night—from both fear and anticipation of what happens next.

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Video Palace: In Search of the Eyeless Man
by Maynard Wills

V/H/S

What is it about creepy uses of old technology that just really gets under your skin? Mark Cambria and his girlfriend, Tamra Wulff, run the popular podcast Video Palace, in which they hunt down the origins of a series of weird videotapes. When Mark goes missing after hearing of a creature known as the Eyeless Man, folklore professor Maynard Wills looks to collect stories surrounding the myth, and finds some terrifying secrets along the way. The Video Palace anthology, which pubs on October 13, has great stories by Bob DeRosa, Gordon B. White, Rebekah and David Ian McKendry, and others, all around one central ghoul that looms ever closer. If you’re looking for a film that can match that eerie energy, check out V/H/S. A group of kids finds a series of disturbing videotapes after breaking into a man’s house, each tape exploring different creatures that consume and murder its victims. However, it’s not the tapes these kids have to worry about—it’s what they can’t see that’s the real threat.

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Video Palace: In Search of the Eyeless Man
Maynard Wills

A collection of chilling stories from the leading writers in horror and suspense exploring elusive urban legends.

In the popular podcast Video Palace, Mark Cambria, aided by his girlfriend Tamra Wulff, investigated the origins of a series of esoteric white videotapes. Cambria went missing in pursuit of these tapes, but not before hearing whispers of an ominous figure called the Eyeless Man.

Fascinated by the podcast and Cambria’s disappearance, Maynard Wills, PhD, a professor of folklore, embarks on his own investigation into the origins of the tapes and the Eyeless Man, who he believes has lurked in the dark corners of media culture and urban legends for at least seventy-five years. As part of his study, he has invited popular writers of horror and gothic fiction to share their own Eyeless Man stories, whether heard around the campfire or experienced themselves.

Get swept away in this thrilling and terrifying collection of tales from contributors including:
-Bob DeRosa
-Meirav Devash and Eddie McNamara
-Owl Goingback
-Brea Grant
-Merrin J. McCormick
-Rebekah and David Ian McKendry
-Ben Rock
-John Skipp
-Graham Skipper
-Gordon B. White
-Tamra Wulff and Mary Phillips-Sandy

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I'm Thinking of Ending Things
by Iain Reid

I’m Thinking of Ending Things

There’s nothing quite like going into a stressful situation and realizing that something is off. At first, it doesn’t seem like a big deal, but, slowly, the dread sets in and every nerve in your body is telling you to run. That’s the kind of white-knuckle suspense you’ll find in Iain Reid’s novel I’m Thinking of Ending Things. A woman goes with her boyfriend to visit his family in the middle of nowhere, even though she is thinking of ending her relationship with him. But as soon as they arrive, things begin to fall apart, and not in the typical emotional way. There are pictures of her as a child on the farmhouse’s wall, her boyfriend’s parents disappear for long periods of time, and the cashier at the Dairy Queen tells her to run as she avoids looking at the boyfriend. But whatever you think is happening, you’ll never see the ending coming. And once you’re done reading this short but intense novel, you can watch the adaptation on Netflix...with all the lights on, of course.

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I'm Thinking of Ending Things
Iain Reid

Now a Netflix original movie, this deeply scary and intensely unnerving novel follows a couple in the midst of a twisted unraveling of the darkest unease. You will be scared. But you won’t know why…

I’m thinking of ending things. Once this thought arrives, it stays. It sticks. It lingers. It’s always there. Always.

Jake once said, “Sometimes a thought is closer to truth, to reality, than an action. You can say anything, you can do anything, but you can’t fake a thought.”

And here’s what I’m thinking: I don’t want to be here.

In this smart and intense literary suspense novel, Iain Reid explores the depths of the human psyche, questioning consciousness, free will, the value of relationships, fear, and the limitations of solitude. Reminiscent of Jose Saramago’s early work, Michel Faber’s cult classic Under the Skin, and Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk about Kevin, your dread and unease will mount with every passing page” (Entertainment Weekly) of this edgy, haunting debut. Tense, gripping, and atmospheric, I’m Thinking of Ending Things pulls you in from the very first page…and never lets you go.

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Last Days
by Adam Nevill

Midsommar

Cults are one of the few things that are as terrifying in real life as they are in fiction, which is why I saved them for last. In the horror novel Last Days, indie filmmaker Kyle Freeman is tasked with creating a documentary on The Temple of the Last Days cult, which self-destructed years ago, killing off all its members. But as strange incidents begin to plague the production, Freeman realizes there’s a lot more to the story than anyone realized...and that he might not live to tell it. In this gripping, dark, and endlessly fascinating story, author Adam Nevill makes it feel like the crew is constantly being chased by a presence as they move from location to location, a dark cloud hanging over them that spells their doom. So what film to pair with this dark delight? Ari Aster’s Midsommar, of course. The film follows Dani—whose sister recently killed herself and her parents—as she follows her boyfriend and his friends to a strange summer festival in Sweden. As she processes her grief and loss, Dani becomes the central focus of the cult that runs the event, all while her boyfriend and the others find themselves meeting very different fates. If you’ll learn anything from this book-film matchup, it’s to stay as far away as you can from organized groups of people.

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Last Days
Adam Nevill

Midsommar Cults are one of the few things that are as terrifying in real life as they are in fiction, which is why I saved them for last. In the horror novel Last Days, indie filmmaker Kyle Freeman is tasked with creating a documentary on The Temple of the Last Days cult, which self-destructed years ago, killing off all its members. But as strange incidents begin to plague the production, Freeman realizes there’s a lot more to the story than anyone realized...and that he might not live to tell it. In this gripping, dark, and endlessly fascinating story, author Adam Nevill makes it feel like the crew is constantly being chased by a presence as they move from location to location, a dark cloud hanging over them that spells their doom. So what film to pair with this dark delight? Ari Aster’s Midsommar, of course. The film follows Dani—whose sister recently killed herself and her parents—as she follows her boyfriend and his friends to a strange summer festival in Sweden. As she processes her grief and loss, Dani becomes the central focus of the cult that runs the event, all while her boyfriend and the others find themselves meeting very different fates. If you’ll learn anything from this book-film matchup, it’s to stay as far away as you can from organized groups of people.

Amazon logo Barnes & Noble logo Books a Million logo Bookshop logo

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See Some Evil, Read Some Evil with 6 Horror Movie–Book Matchups

By Sara Roncero-Menendez | October 1, 2020

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