Spooky Stories with Topping & Co.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

I’ve spent the past fifteen years hunting for the same twinkling, spine-tingling eeriness I found in Coraline. My search was fruitless until I stumbled across this novel.

Shirley Jackson, whose other work includes The Haunting of Hill House, is a master of horror writing. In We Have Always Lived in the Castle, we join Merricat and her older sister Constance in their prairie-style home, estranged from the residents of the local village by the terrible mystery of their family’s murder, of which they are suspects. But they have become accustomed to their bizarre, occult routine – that is, until the arrival of a distant cousin threatens to conjure up the ghosts of their past.

Think of the clinging, dusty warmth of nostalgic Americana, with the unnerving psychedelia of forgotten childhood nightmares. Jackson’s quiet, folky spookiness subtly unravels her characters’ sanity, just as it will yours – long past finishing the novel.

Recommended by Ruby

An Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice

“In a darkened room a young man sits telling the macabre and eerie story of his life – the story of a vampire, gifted with eternal life, cursed with an exquisite craving for human blood”

You may have red Twilight or any of the dozens of vampire novels that sit on our shelves, but Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire is arguably the one that restarted our obsession with the vampire novel, and nearly 40 years later remains immensely popular. Anne took the genre and redefined it, giving our vampires their own story, hopes, and flaws. Louis tells a reporter, referred to only as ‘boy’, the story of his life as a vampire, turned by the radiant and horrifying Lestat. We journey with Louis through love and loss in a wonderfully baroque and evocative novel.

Dark, atmospheric, seductive horror, Interview with the Vampire is a book like no other.

Recommended by Amy

The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter

A murderous Marquis, Little Red Riding Hood, and Puss in Boots walk into a bar… well into The Bloody Chamber. Angela Carter’s collection of short stories subverts classical fairy tales and transforms them into dark and sensual stories. Carter explores different ideas of femininity, granting her protagonists agency to often out-wit and out-live their male counterparts, or, in the case of one ‘Countess,’ prey on men in her role as female Dracula reimagined. The Bloody Chamber is the perfect collection for anyone craving eerie, gothic twists on familiar tales, with just the right mix of terror, seduction, and dark magic for a haunting Halloween read.

Recommended by Anna-Marie