DBF Authors Recommend Halloween Reads

We’re gearing up for a long Halloween weekend and while the kids play outside, we’d love nothing better than to be curled up by a hot, crackling fire with a book fit to send cold chills down our spines. If you need some reading inspiration for the season, here are a selection of books that some of our DBF 2022 authors promise will leave you suitably spooked!

Louise Kennedy recommends…

‘The Demon Lover’ is a 1941 short story by Elizabeth Bowen, which became the title story of a 1945 collection. During a break in bombing, Mrs Drover returns to her shut-up London house to collect some belongings. On entering she finds a letter, dated that day, from – you’ll have to read it to find out. Inspired by a seventeenth century border ballad sometimes referred to as ‘A Warning for Married Women’, these pages are also stalked by the spectre of war. Expect delightfully rich and strange language, and a screaming ending.  

You can hear Louise Kennedy speaking about her latest novel Trespasses (Bloomsbury) and more at our Arena festival opening night at the National Gallery of Ireland on Thursday November 10th.

TICKETS HERE.

Dave Rudden recommends…

Smoke & Mirrors by Neil Gaiman. Specifically, I want to recommend the short story ‘Feeders & Eaters’ in that collection (though, as per usual with Neil Gaiman, all of them are gorgeous). I read ‘Feeders & Eaters’ as a teenager, and it has never left me. Written in a conversational, anxious style, as if the author is confessing an experience even they do not quite believe, it is framed as if it really happened. A young man spends a night in a greasy spoon cafe, only to be ambushed by an old acquaintance who seems to be wasting away, desperate for one last moment of human connection before…

Well, I won’t spoil it, but the story feels like an old chain letter, a curse passed from person to person so they can be haunted. And if you read it, it’ll get you too.

Dave Rudden will be appearing twice at DBF 2022. Debut children’s authors can learn how plan and deliver a top quality book event at his Mic Drop workshop on Tuesday November 8th at MoLI TICKETS HERE while budding young writers can join him for his Write Now! Young Writers’ online workshop for children on Sunday November 13th at 3pm TICKETS HERE. 

Andrew Meehan recommends…

I read You Should Have Left by Daniel Kehlmann when I was finishing work on my new book, Instant Fires. I’d read Fame, Kehlmann’s 2010 novel, so I was prepared for his worldview. Bleak, let’s say. Smart, too. This one is very Get Out-y. It’s very Stephen King-y. And even as I was wishing I’d never gone near it, I couldn’t leave it alone. It’s short enough to gulp it down in one and, as soon as I did so, everything I was doing in my own work felt too normal and too nice by comparison. Too sane. You Should Have Left is presented as the journal of a screenwriter who’s trying to write a film called Besties 2. The narrator is losing his marbles, or fears that he’s already lost them.  Basically, he needs to find his marble. And there might not have been any marbles in the first place. 

Just don’t read this book if you’re trying to write a love story.

Ruth McKee recommends…

It’s been years since I read The Road, by Cormac McCarthy but I can still remember the overarching sense of foreboding, the deep vein of menace, and a chill of suspense running through it like a tightening bow. It’s not scary as much as it is profoundly unsettling and compelling, but along with all its darkness it’s also one of the most beautiful, elegant novels I have ever read.

Andrew Meehan and Ruth McKee will be taking to the stage together for our live Burning Books podcast event on Sunday November 13th at The New Theatre, Temple Bar TICKETS HERE.