HOWL Society Book Club March 2025
Spring is in the air! So is one of the most deadly annual events, the hour we lose to Daylight Saving Time. Cope by reading horror! March also International Women In Horror Month! We help celebrate by rounding out the month with two books: one by master of horror, Shirley Jackson, and one by best-selling author Anne Rivers Siddons. Please enjoy these 4 lovely-horribly, terribly lovely-books to read in March.
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First we have Devil House by John Darnielle, frontman of the indie band The Mountain Goats. It features a true crime writer who moves to a house where a murder took place during peak Satanic Panic in the 1980s. This is our first haunted house book of the month! Thanks @joyrock for choosing this book!
The following week brings the Ides of March, and our next book, Monstrilio by Gerardo Sámano Córdova. This is a queer book that feature weird horror, making it quierd. This one is about a grieving mother who uses folk rituals to create a baby with a piece of lung she carves out of her own body. Of course it works, and of course it’s weird, and of course it grows up in to the carnivorous being that is the subject of the book. Thanks to @History Bot for this book selection.
Our third book marks the first days of spring, and what better way to celebrate than with Hangsaman by Shirley Jackson? Jackson is the preeminent and seminal horror writer who brought us such cheery tales as The Haunting of Hill House, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, and core-memory creating short, The Lottery. This book is fiction, with a bit of memoir. Loosely based on a true story from Jackson’s life, it features a young woman with narcissistic parents trying to find her place at college while she grapples with her identity. Thanks @Fossie for brining us this selection.
Ending the month of March and bringing us into April is House Next Door by Anne Rivers Siddons. What if you lived next door to the haunted house? Every time a new neighbor moves in, nothing good happens. The theme for this book was inspired by Women in Horror month! This book is a classic Southern Gothic, and Stephen King discussed it at length in his book Danse Macabre (he speaks at length on many things). This book was also made into a Lifetime movie featuring Laura Flynn Boyle and Mark-Paul Gosselaar, which brags a 27% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Our resident bird lover, @BookishBirdWatcher, brought us this selection.
Peter Ong Cook
Peter Ong Cook has published stories in 2 HOWLS anthologies so far: HOWLS from the Dark Ages and HOWLS from the Scene of the Crime. His short fiction can also be found in Cosmic Horror Monthly and the anthology Trouble In Paradise. His husky resembles a wolf, the wolf featured in the HOWLS logo, but receives no royalties. The husky would just spend it on the dog-equivalent of booze.