Novel and Nosh

Five Thrilling Reads to Revive Spooky Season Wonder

• Courtney • Season 1 • Episode 7

Share episode

The first chill hits, wood smoke threads the air, and suddenly the world feels a little stranger—in the best way. We lean into that feeling with a cozy, grown-up spooky season: five gripping reads, simple rituals, and small adventures that make October feel enchanted again without tipping into gore or overwhelm.

We start by reviving your senses with Bird Box by Josh Malerman, where Mallory’s blindfold turns every sound into suspense. Then we pivot to the plausible fear of Our House by Louise Candlish, a domestic thriller that unfolds through documents and an embedded podcast, raising goosebumps because it could happen on your street. Julie Clark’s The Ghostwriter brings psychological tension and family secrets into sharp focus as a daughter is hired to capture her estranged father’s fading memories—and the truth behind a long-ago tragedy. For bonus chills, we add Peter Swanson’s Her Every Fear, a smart apartment-swap mystery, and Neal Shusterman’s Scythe, a speculative page-turner that sparks big conversations across ages.

Books are only half the magic. We share one small dare for the week: choose a ritual that fits your life. Wander a moonlit corn maze, take a ghost tour through your town’s old streets, or keep it simple at home with a candle, a warm drink, and a spooky-but-cozy movie. Along the way, we highlight how local haunts, farms, and conservancies turn seasonal thrills into community support, so your night out (or night in) feels meaningful and memorable.

If you’re ready to trade busyness for wonder, press play and pick your path. Subscribe, share with a friend who loves October, and leave a quick review to help more listeners find their version of mystery this season.

Join my community over on Skool: Novel and Nosh Community

or head to my website www.novelandnosh.com

SPEAKER_00:

There's a moment every October, maybe it's the first chill in the air, with the smell of wood smoke, when something shifts. The world feels just a little bit more mysterious. Shadows stretch longer, the leaves crunch louder, and suddenly it's spooky season. When we were kids, this time of year felt enchanted. There were ghost stories whispered under blankets, the thrill of costumes, the taste of caramel apples, and that delicious mix of fear and excitement walking home in the dark. But somewhere along the way, as adults, we traded that sense of wonder for to-doodlists and busyness. The magic of spooky season quietly slipped through our fingers. Maybe it's time we bring it back. This year, I want to invite you to lean into it again in your own cozy, grown-up way. Go get lost in a corn maze under the moonlight. Take a ghost tour and listen to the stories that linger in your town's old streets. Watch a scary movie with popcorn and candlelight or curl up with one of these three beautiful novels. Let this season be your permission to play, to wonder, to wander, to feel that little rush of mystery again. Because the magic was never lost. We just stopped looking for it. So today I want to share with you three books that I would recommend to help you get that spooky season feeling again. The first one is Bird Box by Josh Mallerman. If you saw the Netflix movie of this, I would encourage you to go read the book. This was a favorite of mine. This is an apocalyptic story where something unseen drives people to madness and death. Mallory is the main character, and she is trying to survive with her two young children while also trying to determine how to escape this life. This was such a sensory experience where you held your breath the whole time, and it's a short novel, but I could, I just the whole story is told behind this blindfold because Mallory has to wear a blindfold every time she leaves her house. So you're holding your breath each time she steps outside, and you'd hear like a quig crunch under your foot, and then my heart would start racing. I love this book. And uh if you are one who loves sensory experiences, I highly recommend this. The second one is called Our House by Luis Candlish, I believe. This is a slow burned domestic thriller where Fiona returns home only to find her estranged husband missing, her belongings gone, and strangers are moving into her home. I listened to this one as an audiobook, and there's a podcast aspect within the novel that just really was a great one for me. This was scary because of how you could see this actually happening in real life. I enjoyed it. I thought it was a great, great time, and I would definitely recommend this one as well. The third one I want to recommend is one I recently read, and this is called The Ghostwriter by Julie Clark. And this is where Olivia Dumont is a ghostwriter that is struggling with work after speaking out against an author. So she is not getting many opportunities. She is offered a job that she doesn't want to take because the horror author, Vincent, and her have a past. He is actually her father that she's never told anyone about. And he has never told anyone about her as well. Her father is stricken with sundowning dementia, and she is tasked with writing his memoir and is working to piece together his past, where he was the sole survivor of an incident in his home where both his siblings were found dead. And this is him trying to talk to her, but also struggling with this sound sundowning dementia, where in the evening he starts to lose his memory, and she's trying to piece together like a puzzle. What exactly happened? What is he telling that is the truth? What is he telling that are possibly lies or inaccuracies due to his dementia? And this was one of those psychological thrillers that made me very nostalgic for those 90s style movies, um, where you know those kind of movies were really popular. Uh, Kate Fears, the um sleeping with the enemy, those type of movies. This one was very reminiscent of that for me. And I'm actually gonna give you two more novels that I found really enjoyable. Um, the next one is Her Every Fear by Peter Swanson. This is another one of those psychological thrillers. Those tend to be the books that I love when it comes to scary books. I'm not a big scary book reader, so these are ones that I kind of can handle. And this is where Kate is um dealing with a lot of stress in her life. Um, some things have happened in her past that have created some anxiety. So she is offered an opportunity to um swap apartments with a long-distant cousin of hers, where he is um going to swap with her. His house is in Boston, her house is in London. So she comes over to Boston and is staying in his home and finds out that the girl living next door was murdered. And it is about her, you know, trying to figure out um just like what eerie things might be occurring, and um starts to kind of question what exactly went on next door. She's also meeting other characters within the apartment complex and starting to try to figure out the story as how to things unfolded, and um it was just one of those thrilling where you didn't know, you know, you're you're unraveling everything with her in time. And I really enjoyed this one as well. The last one I want to share with you is called Scythe by Neil Schusterman. This is one of those books that I think can hit all different ages. My son read it in middle school, and same with my daughter, and I read it recently, and I felt like it hit just as well for me as it did for them. And this is where Citra and Rowan, they are chosen to be um as apprentices to a scythe. And why there are scythes in this world is because we have learned how not to die. We are living in this world where people no longer die, and obviously that creates some problems because of overpopulation, and therefore these people are learning how to determine how to end people's lives, and they're tasked with deciding whose lives are lost. And you know, there's there's good scythes and there's bad scythes, and it is about their experience um learning this role, and I just thought it was a great book, um, and highly would recommend it. I think it is one of those books that is very timely in the sense that, you know, it doesn't matter where you are in your life, um, you will find something to gain from this book. So those are the five books that I am recommending to you. Now, as much as I love curling up with a haunting story, not the spooky ones, thrillers, there's something special about living the season too. So I'm giving you a little homework for the week. This week, I want you to choose one way to step into the magic of spooky season. You can go wander through a corn maze under the stars. You can take a ghost walk or a haunted tour in your town. These are great opportunities to support your local community. That is one thing that I am striving to do more of. One, to live more in life rather than consume more, but also support my local community rather than these big box companies. And, you know, those ghost tours are usually um supporting your local community. Um, even thinking of like we have a haunted maze, corn maze, that's a local farmer that we are supporting. So that is an opportunity for you as well. I know that um in a nearby town, they also do haunted walks through uh nature trails. So again, um supporting conservancies and things like that. So look for that opportunity to support someone in your local community, or if you know, if maybe they too they do tend to be more expensive if that is not something you um are financially able to do right now. Take this time to stay home, light a candle, make a warm drink, and watch a spooky but coo cozy movie. Let yourself feel a little thrill, a little wonder, because we don't outgrow magic. We just forget to make time for it. This October, find your version of spooky season. Not to scare yourself, but to remind yourself that life still holds mystery, and mystery makes everything a little more alive. Make sure to also check out our show notes because I want to make sure that you join me in my community. It is a book and bait club or book and cook club where we share things just like the activities that you do here that I recommend you do. We share pictures of things that we're doing, and then we also cook and bake through books that we are reading.