Winter, with its unsettling blend of the cosy and the sinister, has long been a popular time for gathering by the bright flame of a candle, or the warm crackling of a fire, and swapping stories of ghosts and strange happenings.
Now eight bestselling, award-winning authors – master storytellers of the sinister and the macabre – bring this time-honoured tradition to vivid life in a spellbinding collection of new and original haunted tales.
From a bustling Covent Garden Christmas market to the frosty moors of Yorkshire, from a country estate with a dreadful secret, to a London mansion where a beautiful girl lies frozen in death, these are stories to make your hair stand on end, send shivers down your spine and to serve as your indispensable companion to the long nights of winter.
So curl up, light a candle, and fall under the spell of The Haunting Season . . .
- Title: The Haunting Season: Ghostly Tales for Long Winter Nights
- Author: Bridget Collins, Natasha Pulley, Imogen Hermes Gowar, Kiran Millwood Hargrave, Andrew Michael Hurley, Jess Kidd, Elizabeth Macneal, Laura Purcell
- Publisher: Sphere
- Publication Date: 21 October 2021
- Genre: Anthologies
- Targeted Age Range: Adult
- Content Warnings: Suicide, Post-partum depression, Drug abuse, Grief & loss depiction, Death of a child, Paranormal Elements (Ghosts/Spirits)
- Rating: ★★★
There is a lot to love within The Haunting Season. A thrilling collection of eight short stories, each author has taken a lot of care to ensure their stories are different from the rest, and leave the reader wanting more. I picked up The Haunting Season while in Edinburgh this past October, and I couldn’t have picked a more suitable place to read this book. This book has a lot of elements that I love in it: mystery, intrigue and ghosts. I love ghost stories, and a lot of the short stories within this anthology hit the spot. It was a perfect Halloween read, and I’m glad I picked it up when I did.
My favourite thing about this anthology was the fact that each author had a different narrative style, and each story felt different than its predecessor. It was nice to almost sample each author’s writing style and decide from this book what ones I would be interested in picking up in the future.
Bridget Collins’ A Study in Black and White opened the collection, and what a strong opener it was. This story follows a man who moves into a black and white house, and immediately feels as if someone is watching him. He discovers a chess set and, after playing one move, the house begins to play back. While I wasn’t a fan of the Bridget Collins book I read (The Binding, for those curious), this short story was a masterclass in storytelling. Collins manages to cover a lot in such a small amount of time, and it left me on the edge of my seat throughout. I truly believe it delivered what the book was promising, and made me want to continue reading the rest of the short stories. It was very easy to visualise what she was writing, and I would love to read more of her work in a similar style. I think it was a great read, and if you were interested in picking up just a select number of stories from this anthology, this one would be a good shout.
Another favourite of mine was The Eel Singers by Natasha Pulley. This one was the one that kept me on the edge of my seat the most. Pulley successfully wrote a creepy, atmospheric and, well, haunting story in a short amount of pages, and I loved every second of it. This story follows a family of three, Mori, Six, and Thaniel, who get away from busy London to try and ease Mori’s clairvoyance. What they come across, however, is a small town full of unanswered questions, and the same tune being hummed on repeat. This story was chilling. Not a lot of questions get answered in this short story, but it was so enjoyable you can’t be mad. It was equal parts cozy and creepy, and I adored Pulley’s writing style. Natasha Pulley will definitely be a writer I look into further, and I hope their full length works are as charming as this short story was. Again, this would be my recommendation if you only wanted to read a select few from the collection.
To be honest, the rest of the stories were a bit forgettable. I don’t remember a lot of what happens in the rest of them, and they did not necessarily stand out as much as those above did. While they weren’t bad, they just weren’t memorable, which is a massive shame for such an interesting anthology concept. I wish I loved the rest of the stories, but sadly I didn’t. However, I will say that they were successful in that the entire book felt cohesive. None of them felt out of place, and each of them were as haunting as the others. They really took care into making sure the gothic vibe was felt throughout, and it has definitely piqued my interest in reading other gothic novels. It’s a genre I don’t read much, but I would love to explore it more.
All in all I think The Haunting Season is a good book to pick up during the chillier season, if you want something easy to read. I credit this book to be one of the few that I read that helped me get out of my reading slump, and I will always think of Edinburgh when I look at it. I can’t see myself reaching for it to re-read any time soon, but it would be on my list of recommendations should you want a winter read. The Haunting Season is a great introduction to some scarier stories, and I look forward to discovering some more.
Links for The Haunting Season Goodreads | TheStorygraph | Boomerang Books
