#5OnMyTBR is a bookish meme hosted by E. @ Local Bee Hunter’s Nook and you can learn more about it here or in the post announcing it. It occurs every Monday when we post about 5 books on our TBR. Thank you E. for the awesome graphic for these posts as well!

Hi everyone,

It’s offically September which means it’s finally getting warm again here in Australia!! Bring on Spring and sunshine! Even though this week’s theme is all about autumn, and I’m currently heading into Spring, there is one thing in common with autumn in the Northern hemisphere: SPOOKY SEASON. This week’s theme is all about autumn reads, and nothing feels more autumn to me than reading spooky, ghostly, horror reads for all of October. So here’s some autumny spooky reads I’ll be reading over the next few months.

This October I’m participating in the Gothtober readathon which is a readathon celebrating gothic fiction, and I’m planning to read a lot of gothic classics for that one which would work really well for this theme. However, I actually read the themes ahead for once and we have a classics week in two weeks! So I’m saving all my spooky autumn classics for that week.

Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi (translated by Jonathan Wright)

Okay but how terrifying and amazing does this sound: it’s a black humour Frankenstein retelling set in US occupied Baghdad where someone collects corpses and stitches them together and accidentally creates a monster who wants to feast on the flesh of criminals.

Vita Nostra by Marina and Sergey Dyachenko (translated by Julia Meitov Hersey)

This leans more to the dark academia lane than spooky, but there’s something about dark academia that feels very cosy and Autumny to me? I’ve been meaning to read Vita Nostra for years, finally picked up a copy this year and have still not read it because I am the worst. SOON. It’s all about a strange magic school where if you step out of line, your family pays the price.

The Deathless Girls by Kiran Millwood Hargrave

I’ve only read one book by Hargrave so far, The Mercies, and I absolutely loved it so I’m really keen to get to one of her YA books! The Deathless Girls is a sapphic book that tells the story of Dracula’s brides and thus is perfect for spooky season.

White is for Witching by Helen Oyeymi

In true spooky gothic fashion, White is for Witching is set at a creepy, mysterious house which does very mysterious things and has generations of women living in its walls. One of the household is more attuned to these spirits than the rest of her family and is slowly leaving them to join the spirits, and one night vanishes completely.

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

Last one for today is a book that comes out this month! Susanna Clarke is the author of Jonathan Norrell and Dr Strange and her new gothic novel is set in a strange labyrinth house where a terrible truth is unravelling.

That’s my top 5 Autumn reads on my TBR! What kind of books do you associate with Autumn? Let me know in the comments!