Our October Books | Chapters & Chai Book Club
Our October Books
Spooky Season is so close! To celebrate the season, we have two books to choose from this month...
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
And if you're more into the classics and something a little more tame, then you could read...
Carmilla by J. Sheridan Le Fanu
In an isolated castle deep in the Austrian forest, Laura leads a solitary life with only her ailing father for company. Until one moonlit night, a horse-drawn carriage crashes into view, carrying an unexpected guest—the beautiful Carmilla. So begins a feverish friendship between Laura and her mysterious, entrancing companion.
But as Carmilla becomes increasingly strange and volatile, prone to eerie nocturnal wanderings, Laura finds herself tormented by nightmares and growing weaker by the day… Pre-dating Dracula by twenty-six years, Carmilla is the original vampire story, steeped in sexual tension and gothic romance.
Genre: Gothic, Vampires
Average Rating (Goodreads): 3.86
Pages: 107
Both books are available at Waterstones Worthing with our Book Club Discount! Grab your copy, or read both, and join us for the discussion at our October meet up later this month.
Happy Reading!