October is our favorite time of year here at Spiral Publishing!
Not only because of Halloween, which is clearly the best of all holidays.
We’re also cool and cold weather fans, and here in the Northern Hemisphere, that’s well and truly on the way once the months hit ten and up.
Combine that with the glorious trees putting on their party clothes and getting ready for a long nap, the decrease in pesky mosquitos and flies, and the start of wood-stove season? As far as we’re concerned, what’s not to love?
It seems like energy levels are through the roof, for people and animals alike. It’s time to get outside and explore and see what all we can discover!
When it comes to our special bundle of October Reads, we hope you find as many reasons to enjoy the stories as we do to love this time of year. We’ve certainly got a nice variety of tales picked out for you.
Jason A. Adams kicks things of with “Vampire Tap,” a story of sparking, nerding, and hacking set in Atlanta during the late 1990s.
As always, there are no problems a good neighbor with a pitcher of proper sweet tea can’t help with.
Then Kari Kilgore brings us “The Hazards of the Hysterical Society” with a different kind of small-town trouble. The head librarian thinks the quarterly meeting of the local historical society will be her biggest challenge of the day.
At least until she makes a shocking discovery in their normal meeting room.
Jason’s “Angel of Mercy” takes us into the past and way down south, all the way to New Orleans in the early 1920s. The newly minted chief of police tries to puzzle out a string of suspicious deaths that all seem to tie back to one person.
Someone who can’t possibly be the murderer, of course.
Another trip to the past comes with Kari’s “The Last Death of Angfil,” this time all the way back to the Nevada Gold Rush days. A curiously long-lived businesswoman encounters two travelers on the run.
The trouble is she’s known the truly evil person they’re running from for a very long time.
Jason brings us back to modern times, sort of, with “Harvest Bride,” set in late September, but with a nice Halloween feel. A little mountain community celebrating their unusual Harvest Day Festival prefers to keep to the old ways when it really counts.
And sometimes old ways are the best ways, after all.
And finally Kari brings our bundle to a romantic close with “When the Fog Clears.” A small-town high school reunion brings two best friends together for the first time in years.
And neither one ever quite got over wondering what might have been between them.
We hope you enjoy this collection of autumnal tales! And we wish you plenty of cozy reading days to come!