A pile of fairy tales reimagined in the kind of darkness their original forms hinted at, before the advent of happy endings for children.

A debauched priest tugs along this manic story through short paragraphs of insane thoughts that piece together a frolicsome adventure.

A collection of short stories from authors of varying levels of fame covering everything from dystopian futures to school shooters to creatures in lakes to zombies. It wasn't very scary, only a little bit gory, and most of them lacked the necessary level of suspense to overcome the first two. I really liked Chillers, and Stephen King's story, but overall it was a forgettable collection.

Just as mediocre as the main books, but I did like Persephone being so tricksy.

Caro is a lady after my own heart, an American who loves history and delicious food and is bored by crowds and dungeons. Her book takes you through 800 years of French history through places that are all an hour or less from Paris by train. It's a combination guidebook and history book that tells you the most interesting things to look for in each place (and she would know, since she is a historian herself). My only complaint is that there is so much history it is hard to keep track of which Louis is which, so a little timeline or something would have been helpful.

If I had my choice of guests at a dinner party full of dead authors, H P Lovecraft would be sitting at my right hand and I'd be shushing everyone else. So I was pretty excited to find that this book took two descendants of Lovecraftian lore and stuck them in the middle of some mind-bending fuckery. It was spooky and twisted and fresh. The pacing was solid and the characters were interesting (though for christ's sake can we lay off the attempted rape plot scheme, it's ridiculous) and there wasn't any forced romance to get in the way of the story. Would recommend to any fans of Lovecraft.

I laughed, I was inspired, I want to buy a trench coat.

The phenomenon of Night Vale is like a combination of one of those Tumblr gothic posts and the thoughts you get randomly in the shower, only it explains those thoughts and doesn't see the need to explain its own insanity. It is the definition of insanity. Read this for a laugh, read it for the mystery, read it for the feel of a dead tree in your unwieldy human hands, read it because someone on the internet is telling you to.

Welcome to Night Vale.

This book winds between philosophy and a man's road trip with two friends and his son. He deftly weaves his views on the world into the story in a way that makes sense and prevents it from feeling like a textbook. I couldn't stop highlighting sentences so I could talk about them later, and he definitely opened my eyes and made me really think about the world in a different way.