 13 seems like the right number for this product. Hey, stop that. Do you want me to scream? Wow, I wish I had written this book. You could probably read this all in one creepy, long, dark, rainy night. There are fall reads and there are dark reads and then there are dark fall reads. Today I have 13 books for you because 13 seems like the right number for this product. 13 books that I think that both evoke fall and that are kind of dark. First book I have is The Eyes of the Dragon by Stephen King. This book I have likened before to reading the Farsier trilogy by Robin Hobb. It's not exactly like that. No reader like ever is exactly like that, but there is a cozy medieval castle atmosphere with some young protagonists who are growing up in the castle, which to me does remind me of following Fitz Chivalry as he grows up at Buckkeep. However, it is a Stephen King book and there is a pretty dark sinister villain figure. So the book does, it doesn't get as dark as sort of adult horror of Stephen King. This is a fantasy book, but it does get quite creepy and quite dark, especially as the plot progresses and the villains' motivations become clearer and in general. I think it's a great standalone and really immersive. I guess fun read, fun seems like a weird word to use for any of these books because they are dark, but I had a really good time reading this and I think fall is a great time to read it. Next up I have Rebecca by Daphne de Morier. This book is one of the most atmospheric books that I've ever read in my life. Truly, if you do not like a slower pace book, if you want all plot and action and stuff happening, then maybe don't read Rebecca because Rebecca's darkness, a lot of it comes from how it immerses you in the setting and in the headspace of the main character. You don't have to think about Rebecca. This is about a young woman who has not named Rebecca. She is very young and she marries an older man who's very rich and lives in this huge estate. And he was married once before to a woman named Rebecca. So his ex-wife has sort of left her mark on the house and she, everybody who knows this young woman's husband, everyone who comes to the house, everyone who knows them, knew Rebecca. A lot of the stuff at the house is monogrammed. All of her old possessions are there. The housekeeper keeps referencing Rebecca. Rebecca, Rebecca used to do this. Rebecca used to have this. This is how Rebecca used to do things. So in a non-supernatural sense, nevertheless our main character is very in a real sense haunted by Rebecca. And this book's slow creeping and unfolding of the mystery of who Rebecca was and what happened between her and this young woman's husband when she was alive. It's a slow moving plot, but it is very immersive and dark and very atmospheric. And I think follows a perfect time to read it. Next up I have a fave that appears on all these lists every year and that is The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein by Kristen White. This book definitely, it helps if you've read Frankenstein because it is very, very much in conversation with the original Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. I should have probably put Frankenstein on this reading list, but I didn't. So just pretend like this counts for two. If this assumes you've read Frankenstein, if you haven't, well then read Frankenstein and read The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein. This book is one of the best examples of how to do a retelling, how to do a re-imagining, how to recontextualize an existing story, how the idea of taking a story and telling it from a different perspective can actually do more than just be that. The telling the story from the perspective of Elizabeth Levenza was a masterstroke. This is one of the best books I've ever read in my life and the way that it recontextualizes the events of Frankenstein by changing the perspective from which you are told the story is brilliant and it is dark and it is creepy and it is immersive and it is just wonderfully done and it's pretty short. So you could probably read this all in one creepy, long, dark, rainy night. Next up I have Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Lenny Taylor. Now most fall book lists, at least on my channel tend to include The Name of the Wind. This list does not include that because The Name of the Wind is not dark in the way that I mean this list to be. However, it appears by reference because the back of this book was blur by Patrick Rothfuss who says, wow, I wish I had written this book. So Daughter of Smoke and Bone is a difficult book to explain because to tell you what it is about is to give away a major plot twist that happens quite early on in the book. This is the problem with most Lenny Taylor books because she likes to do that. So Daughter of Smoke and Bone at the outset is about a young art student who lives in Prague and the setting of Prague, it's heading into sort of the colder season so it is quite cold, quite chilly. They go to these historic places, they go to historic eateries where they eat goulash. The family of our main character, Karu or at least the people that she lives with are not normal. They are not humans. So the atmosphere of where she lives, who she lives with, the city that she lives in and just who she's surrounded by is a little bit eerie, a little bit creepy, the weather's a bit dark and once the story tells, once you actually get to when the story starts to be the story that it's going to be, it is one of the most immersive reads in my entire life. I felt utterly sucked into the pages of this book and I felt like I had to recover after I had finished reading it. Like I didn't know what to do with myself because I had been living in the pages of this book which I think is a great thing to experience in fall, wrapping up with a blanket and some tea and just getting completely lost in the world of a book. And this is a great choice for that. Next up I have The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman. This book is actually a lot shorter than this copy looks. This is the Illustrated Edition. It is a very short read, you could very easily read it in one evening and one lovely dark fall evening. Ocean at the End of the Lane is a story that follows a main character who he I believe is in his 40s or thereabouts, that he's an adult man. He comes back to the neighborhood in which he spent part of his childhood where he lived because there was a funeral. So he's come, returned to this physical place and when he returns there, suddenly he sort of unlocks memories about what happened to him when he was a child, when he was living there. And then basically the entire book is about him as a child and what happened to him in his period of his life that he had forgotten about. What happens to him in this period of his life is quite dark and eerie and spooky and immersive and because it's a very quite rural place that he lives and it has the sort of feeling of being out sort of in the boonies out in the middle of nowhere with darkly sinister things happening. Which to me is exactly the kind of thing that I want to read about in fall. Next up I have Ninth House by Lee Bardugo. This book did take me a minute to get into. Once I did, I did quite enjoy the read. I posted a review quite a while ago where I kind of explained how I thought the book could do a better job of hooking you and it's a missed opportunity in my opinion. But nonetheless, Ninth House is a book about a young woman who goes to Yale. This is not autobiographical but it is inspired by Lee Bardugo's own experiences at Yale. This is how she became to be aware of the secret societies that exist in Yale. So in this book she imagines what if those secret societies had other worldly powers at their disposal. So our main character sees the dead and she's part of the world, this sort of underworld of secret societies of Yale. Yes, my darling? What if you didn't do that? Could you not? Yes, my friend, yes my friend? Hey, stop that. Don't you think it's great? So as I was saying Ninth House follows our main character who is part of the secret societies based on that premise alone. We have an academic setting. We have dark secret societies with other worldly abilities. Our main character sees the dead. I don't think I really need to explain anymore why this is a dark fall read. But I do wanna warn anybody who's thinking of picking this up. This has just about every trigger warning you can imagine, so reader be warned. Next up I have The Atlas Six by Olivia Blake. This is quite on this list for quite similar reasons to Ninth House. This follows a sort of secret society of magic users who are brought into a secret society. Who would you like to get sprayed? This book follows some magic users who are all sort of invited into a secret society. There is a competition mystery element component to this. But it's quite dark, it's quite atmospheric and has a lot more twists and turns than I actually expected it to have. I had quite low expectations actually picking this up. It's quite a high take-talk book and I actually thought it was YA. This is not YA, although it does read a bit like YA. So it might be good to think that it is, but it actually isn't. And I expected it to be quite vapid and just maybe the best you could hope for is some vibes. So going in with that level of expectation I was pleasantly surprised by the sort of depth and nuance to the plot and to the debates and conversations that are introduced by this book to the nesting of the mysteries in this story. I kept thinking that I had figured out where this was going and that I had figured out what the twist is or what the secret is or what it is that we're doing here. And it would kept sort of turning and shifting and revealing new things to me that it kept surprising me for that reason. So I don't think this is like a brilliant book if you go in with really high expectations I'll be disappointed. But if you go in with like mediocre expectations it has surprising twists, surprising depth and surprising nuance considering. So I think this is a good time and I think fall is a perfect time to be reading a book like this. Next up I have The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware. This is a retelling of The Turn of the Screw. I actually don't really like The Turn of the Screw very much. I read it after this and I was like, well, The Turn of the Key was way better. This was my first Ruth Ware book and I thought that the atmosphere in this book was incredible. It had me at the edge of my seat. There aren't really a ton of like super gory or dark things like that, but the moments of tension, I think she does an amazing job of making them feel tense and making you feel like that sensation of like being alone and hearing a noise in the house and it scaring you. Like I think the atmosphere is amazing in this book and the mystery aspect to it also kept me turning the page. I kept wanting to know the answer. So again, fall is a great time to be reading a book like this because it takes place in a beautiful, huge estate in the countryside. So being in this big fancy house where there's a dark sinister mystery, I mean, what's more fall than that? Next up I have The Hazelwood by Melissa Albert. This also usually makes the list when I do fall Halloween spooky books on lists. This book follows our main character whose grandmother wrote a famous or infamous book of fairy tales and that book is basically impossible to find. It has a cult following. She and her mother have lived their lives sort of on the run and then her mother gets taken by ostensibly figures from the grandmother's story. So the girl, our main character has to return to the family estate, to the grandmother's house and to the wood from which these stories sprang in order to get her mother back. It's kind of magical realism. There is a game and ask quality to sort of the dark sinister characters that seem to have come from these stories and how that all unfolds. I think it's very atmospheric and moody and dark and creepy. And there's a forest and there's fairy tales and there's dark magic and things like this. So again, what's more fall than that? Next up, I have The Mary Shelley Club by Goldie Moldovsky. This is a recent addition to the rotation. I read this last year and in the fall, hoping that it would be a fall read and it is. I was warned that this was like really dark and really disgusting and sinister and horrifying. I did not find it to be so, although I mean it is horror, but it's YA. I also found the beginning to be a little sillier, a little more vapid, a little more straightforward, especially because I had been warned that it was so horrifying. I kept waiting to be horrified. And I was like, I mean, it's not nice what's happening, but like, I guess my expectations were too high. It's once whatever. Like I don't feel especially horrified by this or a great amount of suspense or anything like that. I know this sounds like I'm not recommending this book, but hang on. As it went on though, as I sort of was patient with it, it ended up going in directions that I did not expect and it ended up being quite surprising with lots of twists and turns that actually did have me, if not, I wasn't fully horrified the way I expected it to be based on the reaction I'd heard people had to this, but it did have me again at the edge of my seat, it had me gasping and going, oh my gosh, what is gonna happen? I did not see that coming. I did not see that coming. What is about to happen? What is about to happen? So it had me completely hooked and I like binged the second half of the book. I haven't explained that all what it's about. It takes place in a school setting, so already great fall vibes and there is a sort of a club, I guess, the Mary Shelley Club, they call themselves that. And these students are into horror films. I took issue with the naming of the club and the naming of the book. I feel like it was just done because it's catchy and it catches your attention to who Mary Shelley is, but the reason for them naming, the club has very little to do with Mary Shelley, so if you're hoping for that, which is what I was hoping for, there's not much of that. But the idea is they kind of want to recreate horror from horror films and that's sort of at the outset that's what they're about and that's what they're doing. And our main character is recently joined the school and recently joined the club. And from there, I don't wanna say anything because that would be spoilery. But yeah, I actually ended up enjoying this a lot more than I thought I was going to when I started reading it. The beginning is not that promising, but if you stick with it, I think it's pretty good. Next up, I have Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson. This entire trilogy really belongs on this list and it would be pretty easy to read the whole trilogy in the fall because they aren't very long books. But Truly Devious is a school setting. This is an elite boarding school. Boarding school already screams fall to me and there is a murder mystery both in the past and the present. Our main character is fascinated by an unsolved cold case from years and years ago that took place at the site of the school. So she's kind of at the school to kind of put, to try to figure out that cold case. But as she's trying to figure out that cold case, a fresh new case pops up in the present day at the school that also may or may not be connected to the cold case from the past. So our main character is with her friends is trying to solve it. And so you have an basically isolated closed circle mystery in the present as well as an isolated closed circle mystery in the past. And they are both happening and they are both a mystery and they are both quite sinister and atmospheric and they're happening like simultaneously in this story basically, or you're learning about them simultaneously. So it's like double the boarding school, double the closed circle, double the murder. And I think it's a great time. And the humor of this author's humor and thereby the character's humor does really, really work for me. If it doesn't work for you, you may not like this, but I found it quite charming, immersive and exciting to read. And again, a boarding school with a murder mystery, perfect for fall. Next up I have Small Favors by Erin A. Craig. This is the second book by Erin A. Craig. I liked both of her books. I tend, I have a grade two now. It's the endings that kind of like eludes me a little bit, but not enough to hate the book. I still like both books, but they've both been sort of like full five stars. And then you get to the ending and I'm like, okay, four and a half, four, four and a half. I tend not to like the romantic elements that she adds to her books. So there's a little of that in here, just FYI. What she excels at is mood and atmosphere. I could equally have put on this list her other book, House of Salt and Sarrows, but I like the sort of rural harvest kind of atmosphere of this, which to me is more screams fall. The other book is quite sinister and creepy, but it doesn't have that. So this does follow characters in a rural town and the dark events, the dark happenings have to do with a forest and with nature. And I mean with things that you would associate with fall, I think. I mean, there are dark creatures that come from the forest that are causing problems in this small town. It kind of is reminiscent to me of things like M. Night Shyamalan's The Village or a lesser known, but one of my personal fall favorites to watch is The Living and the Dead, which was a British series where you have a small isolated rural village and then a dark sinister forest and then possibly supernatural things happening that the town has to deal with. And that it becomes kind of like a isolated close circle mystery when this small town is plagued by this and everyone starts to suspect one another. I mean, the back of the book says, enter not the forest deep beyond the bells the dark friends keep. Sounds like fall to me. And last but not least, no fall reading list would be complete without The Secret History by Donna Tart. This is the OG dark academia and so far I've not read anything to beat it. This just is dark academia. Everyone else is a pretender so far. Maybe something will change my mind someday, but not yet. This follows classic students in an American university. They are studying the Greek classics and they are obsessive about the Greek classics and they do murder one of their own. This is not a spoiler. You know this at the beginning of the book. You just don't know how and why that happened. So we follow this obsessive student group as they are in school and doing academic things and having academic conversations and being pretentious as I'll get out. And there's also a murder and we witnessed the murder as well as the aftermath of the murder. Academia and school things I think are pretty fall and there's a murder which is dark. So, so that's my list of 13 dark fall reads. Let me know in the comments down below if you read any of these, if you wanna read these, if you have already read them and you hated them, if you have already read them and you love them. Whatever you wanna let me know. I post videos on Saturdays, other random times full of dark news Saturdays, so like and subscribe and join my Patreon if you feel so inclined and I'll see you when I see you.