Fall 2021 Reading List

September is nearly gone and I’m still struggling with the reading/ blogging blues that first showed up for me in July. Still, a reading list for Fall 2021 for this week’s Top 10 Tuesday seemed doable — even if I (probably) won’t end up reading through. 🙁

The reading list is tailored for:

► The R.eaders I.mbibing P.eril (RIP) XVI Reading Challenge 2021 hosted @perilreaders on Twitter and Instagram, where you get to try out spooky stuff, at least once a year (in my case), and

► The Treason & Plot #WitchWeek2021 Challenge hosted by Calmgrove and LizzieRoss Writer, where you get to try out books involving gothic mayhem and dark magic.

If these reading challenges interest you, here are a few suggestions!

1 / Wakenhyrst by Michelle Paver

From the blurb: 1906: A large manor house, Wake’s End, sits on the edge of a bleak Fen, just outside the town of Wakenhyrst. It is the home of Edmund Stearn and his family – a historian, scholar and land-owner, he’s an upstanding member of the local community. But all is not well at Wake’s End.

2 / Cuckoo Song by Frances Hardinge

From the blurb: When Triss wakes up after an accident, she knows that something is very wrong. She is insatiably hungry; she keeps waking up with leaves in her hair, and her sister seems terrified of her. When it all gets too much and she starts to cry, her tears are like cobwebs.

3 / The Bride of Newgate by John Dickson Carr

From the blurb: Dick Darwent brooded in a dark cell of Newgate Prison – waiting to be hanged. Lady Caroline Ross, rich, cold and beautiful, prepared a champagne breakfast to celebrate her marriage. How were the fates of these two people intertwined?

4 / Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton

From the blurb: A foundling, an old book of dark fairy tales, a secret garden, an aristocratic family, a love denied, and a mystery. The Forgotten Garden is a captivating, atmospheric and compulsively readable story of the past, secrets, family and memory.

5 / The Witness for the Dead by Katherine Addison

From the blurb: As a Witness for the Dead, Celehar can, sometimes, speak to the recently dead: see the last thing they saw, know the last thought they had, experience the last thing they felt. It is his duty … to find the killers of the murdered.

6 / The Ashes of London by Andrew Taylor

From the blurb: London, September 1666. The Great Fire rages through the city, consuming everything in its path… In the aftermath of the fire, a semi-mummified body is discovered in the ashes of St. Paul’s, in a tomb that should have been empty.

7 / The Poison Thread by Laura Purcell

From the blurb: When Dorothea’s charitable work brings her to Oakgate Prison … she meets one of the prisoners, the teenaged seamstress Ruth, she is faced with another strange idea: that it is possible to kill with a needle and thread.

8 / What’s Bred in the Bone by Robertson Davies

From the blurb: From the well-hidden family secret of his childhood to his mysterious encounters with a small-town embalmer, an expert art restorer, a Bavarian countess, and various masters of espionage, the events in Francis Cornish’s life were not always what they seemed.

9 / The Red House Mystery by A.A. Milne

From the blurb: Far from the gentle slopes of the Hundred Acre Wood lies The Red House, the setting for A.A Milne’s only detective story, where secret passages, uninvited guests, a sinister valet and a puzzling murder lay the foundations for a classic crime caper.

10 / The Hollow Kingdom by Kira Jane Buxton

From the blurb: The Secret Life of Pets meets The Walking Dead in this big-hearted, boundlessly beautiful romp through the Apocalypse, where a foul-mouthed crow is humanity’s only chance to survive Seattle’s zombie problem.

So which books are on your Fall 2021 Reading List? Are you participating in the RIP XVI and Treason & Plot Challenges too? What’s been your reading experience for September?