October Book Options | Chapters & Chai Book Club
It’s time for my favourite season of all! October is approaching, which means it’s time for a horror read. But don’t worry, if horror isn’t your thing there’s a dark academia read for you instead.
All five of these horror books have been on my list for a little while now, and I am so excited about each of them. I can’t wait to see which one we’ll be reading!
The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones
Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Readers' Favourite Horror (2025)
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Only Good Indians comes a tale of the American West, written in blood.
This chilling historical novel is set in the nascent days of the state of Montana, following a Blackfeet Indian named Good Stab as he haunts the fields of the Blackfeet Nation looking for justice.
It begins when a diary written in 1912 by a Lutheran pastor is discovered within a wall in 2012. What is unveiled is a slow massacre, a nearly forgotten chain of events that goes back to 217 Blackfeet dead in the snow, told in the transcribed interviews with Good Stab, who shares the narrative of his peculiar and unnaturally long life over a series of confessional visits.
This is an American Indian revenge story, captured in the vivid voices of the time, by one of the new masters of literary horror, Stephen Graham Jones.
Genre: Horror, Historical, Vampires, Indigenous
Average Rating (Goodreads): 3.96
Pages: 448
The Possession of Alba Diaz by Isabel Canas
Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Readers' Favourite Horror (2025)
When a demonic presence awakens deep in a Mexican silver mine, the young woman it seizes must turn to the one man she shouldn’t trust… from bestselling author Isabel Cañas.
In 1765, plague sweeps through Zacatecas. Alba flees with her wealthy merchant parents and fiancé, Carlos, to his family’s isolated mine for refuge. But safety proves fleeting as other dangers soon bare their teeth: Alba begins suffering from strange hallucinations, sleepwalking, and violent convulsions. She senses something cold lurking beneath her skin. Something angry. Something wrong.
Elías, haunted by a troubled past, came to the New World to make his fortune and escape his family’s legacy of greed. Alba, as his cousin’s betrothed, is none of his business. Which is of course why he can’t help but notice her every time she enters a room or the growing tension between them… and why he notices her deteriorate when the demon’s thirst for blood grows stronger.
Genre: Horror, Historical, Gothic, Romance, Paranormal, Mexican
Average Rating (Goodreads): 3.85
Pages: 369
She Is a Haunting by Trang Thanh Tran
A house with a terrifying appetite haunts a broken family in this atmospheric horror, perfect for fans of Mexican Gothic.
When Jade Nguyen arrives in Vietnam for a visit with her estranged father, she has one goal: survive five weeks pretending to be a happy family in the French colonial house Ba is restoring. She’s always lied to fit in, so if she’s straight enough, Vietnamese enough, American enough, she can get out with the college money he promised.
But the house has other plans. Night after night, Jade wakes up paralyzed. The walls exude a thrumming sound, while bugs leave their legs and feelers in places they don’t belong. She finds curious traces of her ancestors in the gardens they once tended.
And at night Jade can’t ignore the ghost of the beautiful bride who leaves her cryptic warnings: Don’t eat.
Neither Ba nor her sweet sister Lily believe that there is anything strange happening. With help from a delinquent girl, Jade will prove this house—the home her family has always wanted—will not rest until it destroys them. Maybe, this time, she can keep her family together. As she roots out the house’s rot, she must also face the truth of who she is and who she must become to save them all.
Genre: Horror, YA, LGBTQ
Average Rating (Goodreads): 3.34
Pages: 352
Model Home by Rivers Solomon
The three Maxwell siblings have kept their distance from the lily-white gated enclave outside Dallas where they grew up. It wasn’t being the only Black kids in the neighborhood that pushed the children to flee, but rather the strange and inexplicable things that began to happen in the house as soon as they moved in. Was it some cosmic trial, a demonic rite of passage into the upper-class? Whatever it was, the Maxwells, steered by their formidable mother, stayed put, unwilling to abandon their home, terrors and trauma be damned.
As adults, the siblings finally got away from the horrors of home, leaving their parents all alone in the house. But when news of their parents' death arrives, Ezri is forced to return to Texas with their sisters, Eve and Emanuelle, to reckon with their family’s past and present, and to find out what happened while they were away.
Rivers Solomon has turned the haunted-house story on its head. Unbridled, raw, and daring, Model Home is the story of secret histories uncovered and of a family battling for their right to live, grieve, and heal amid the terrors of contemporary American life.
Genre: Horror, LGBTQ, Haunted House
Average Rating (Goodreads): 3.67
Pages: 286
Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng by Kylie Lee Baker
Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Readers' Favourite Horror (2025)
Cora Zeng is a crime scene cleaner, washing away the remains of brutal murders and suicides in Chinatown. The bloody messes don't bother her, not when she's already witnessed the most horrific thing possible: her sister being pushed in front of a train.
Before fleeing the scene, the murderer whispered two words: bat eater.
Months pass, the killer is never caught, and Cora can barely keep herself together. She pushes away all feelings, disregards the bite marks that appear on her coffee table, and won't take her aunt's advice to prepare for the Hungry Ghost Festival, when the gates of hell open.
Cora tries to ignore the rising dread in her stomach, even when she and her weird co-workers begin finding bat carcasses at their crime scene clean-ups. But Cora can't ignore the fact that all their recent clean-ups have been the bodies of East Asian women.
Soon Cora will learn: you can't just ignore hungry ghosts.
Genre: Horror, Paranormal, Mystery
Average Rating (Goodreads): 4.06
Pages: 304
If you don’t want to read a horror book that is absolutely fine! I’ll be selecting a non-horror option for you to read instead.
I can’t wait to see what you choose… Have your say via our Google Doc
- Keeley