Howling Frog Books

 The Loneliest Place, by Lora Senf It's the new conclusion to the Blight Harbor trilogy, and the Clackity is BACK!  I enjoyed this just as much  the other two, and they're perfect spooky fall reading.  Go get your copy from the library today! Evie has been back from the Nighthouse for a few weeks now, and summer is almost over, but she still has one more thing to do.  Now that Evie knows that her parents are a) alive and b) trapped on the Dark Sun Side, she can't think about anything but rescuing them.  In true protagonist fashion, she doesn't want to endanger anyone else, so she leaves a note.  Evie thinks she's prepared, but the Clackity is a lot angrier this time around. In order to find her parents, Evie must run the gauntlet of the storybook her mother wrote for her, in which a little girl who loves herself some alone time looks for the loneliest place in the world.  The Clackity has set up a challenge for each page, and its goal is to first ...

 The Clackity, by Lora Senf The Nighthouse Keeper I was recommended this title by Leila at Bookshelves of Doom , who is on Substack now.  I'm so glad I read it, and I can't wait to get my hands on The Loneliest Place , the final book in the Blight Harbor trilogy, which comes out soon. Blight Harbor is the seventh-most-haunted town in America, so Evie has become familiar with the supernatural since she moved to town a few years ago to live with her Aunt Des.  But she's never been allowed to explore the old abattoir on the other side of town; that place is haunted in a very bad way.  Des, however, has a job to do there, and Evie witnesses her disappearance.  To get Des back, Evie has to make a deal with the Clackity, the monster that inhabits the place, and go through to the other side of reality on a quest. Under a dark sun, Evie has just hours to find her way through seven houses and rescue her aunt from the even worse monster pursuing her.  She has a few t...

 Here are some titles from my official TBR list that I just haven't written about yet!  Mexican Gothic, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia : I saved this one for October, for an official RIP read.  And wow, this is a spooky story!  It's the 1950s, and Noem í is a debutante out for a good time in Mexico City.  Her father sends her down to the countryside to check on her cousin Catalina, who married last year in a romantic whirl.  Noem í arrives at a classic Gothic scene: a mouldering family mansion on a misty mountain, and....this is a strange place.  The silver mine that gave the Doyle family their wealth has been closed down for years, the house is festooned with mold, and everyone is very strange.  Catalina seems to be ill.  Her husband Virgil is creepy, but not as creepy as his elderly father is.  Just one family member, Francis, seems friendly, if shy and something of a weak character.  As Noemi unravels the dark family history and the se...

 These are some bonus books I read in August.  They don't fulfill a single thing on my lists; they are not from other countries, or on my TBR piles, or anything; I just felt like reading them, which is the best reason of all.   The Way Home, by Peter S. Beagle: A short story and a novella set in the world of The Last Unicorn .  I only just got around to reading that, so I thought these would be good to read too.  They are both about Sooz, a little village girl.  In "Two Hearts," a griffin comes to terrorize the village, and eats not only sheep, but children.  Any knights who challenge it are killed, and Sooz sets off to see the king to convince him to come himself.  On the way, she meets Schmendrick and Molly Grue, and sees the king...who is Lir, now grown old and feeble.  Or is he?  Perhaps he's the only one who can challenge the griffin....and Molly tells Sooz to whistle a certain tune on her 17th birthday. In "The Way Home," Sooz kee...

80s callback cover art  The Sacrifice Box, by Martin Stewart I was intrigued by the description of this novel when I first saw it, and eventually I got a copy to read.  It's very appropriate for RIP season! On a small British island in the mid-1980s, September has been waiting his entire life to leave.  He's a misfit geek, and he has no friends, so he's put all his energy into earning a university scholarship so he can get to the mainland and start his life.  Four years ago, though, when he was 12, Sep did have friends.  For one perfect summer, he and four other kids ran around together.  They found an old stone box in the woods, and they decided to make sacrifices to it -- each of them would bring something important.  Then they made rules. Never come to the box alone.  Never open it after dark.  Never take back your sacrifice.  Once summer was over, the social forces of school kicked back in.  The kids dropped each other and nev...