Happy Halloween everyone!
Kim Beaussible reporting in on the spookiest day of the year! Wherever you are, I hope that your candy bowl is full for tonight and that your costume will keep you warm and toasty this evening. Here on the west coast, costumes are covered with coats or bolstered by several layers underneath, making my four-year-old nephew’s Spiderman costume look suspiciously buff this year. But this time of year is my favorite. As the summer burns away and the ghosts come out to play, I sink into my books, my spooky movies, and my wine that will eventually spill onto the page when I jump out of my skin. Even spies get scared sometimes.
This Halloween I’ve chosen a few books, paired with a bottle of wine, with something for every reader, from those who like a cozy mystery or a whimsical witchy tale to those who want to be looking over their shoulder after they put the book down.
This season is the one for book clubs if you ask me. My mother and her friends always seemed to revamp their club in the fall, each leaf on the ground like another page they would burn through. The Thursday Murder Club, from British TV personality Richard Osman, would be my pick for them this spooky season. Set in a retirement home with a diverse cast of characters, this cozy follows a group of retirees who have created a club to solve mysteries in their remaining free time, only to be embroiled a murder case on their doorstep. With humor and mystery, this offbeat cozy is perfect for anyone who’s looking for a spooky read that will make you think but won’t give you nightmares.
- I’ve paired this cozy mystery with the Phantom Chardonnay. White wines scream cozy to me, they’re easy to sip and not too heavy, and Phantom wine bottles always catch my eye.
Now, readers, what would Halloween look like without witches, or books about them for that matter? Practical Magic will always be on my spooky season watchlist or TBR list, with its romantic, whimsical interpretation of witches. Looking for something that fit into my obsession with the Owens witches’ greenhouse, I chose a Witch of Wild Things by Raquel Vasquez Gilliland, a romantic fantasy about Sage and her sisters that are figuring out their own unique magical powers. With family, romance, and a little bit of a Poison Ivy killer botany desires mixed in, this book will take you on an emotional, magical rollercoaster.
- If it’s romance, it’s got to be rosé. Our Halloween inspired pick, Banshee Rose, had to make the list. With notes of berry, light baking spice and dried herbs, this wine would be any witch’s pick.
If witches and magic haven’t always struck a chord for you because of the fantastical elements, The Lost Apothecary is a great alternative, as a female driven, historical fantasy. A haunted woman runs an apothecary for women in late 1700s London, doling out remedies and poisons for the ladies of the city, when she’s caught up in a scheme from one such lady and her maid. 200 years later, a woman facing the crossroads of her failing marriage finds a vial that once belonged to the apothecary, taking her on a wild goose chase to find out where it came from and to find what she’s been missing in her life. Light and dark all at the same time, this book balances apothecary magic with the real world feminine experience, where a woman’s magic might just set her free.
- With the misty fog of London as the backdrop and the ghosts following each character, Ghost Pines Pinot Noir seemed a fitting pair for this book. The label itself reminded me of the apothecary, Nella, making her trips across the Thames to collect supplies for her potions, and the mixture of blackberry and black pepper are perfect for the fall weather.
If you’re looking for a thriller that sounds like a soap opera drama to drink up with your wine, look no further than Ladies of the Lake from Beaufort Books. After a fight and then a horrific accident in an affluent neighborhood leaves a man dead, his second wife lives her life as if she can finally breathe but other wives start getting jealous and then other husbands start dying and the LAPD and their children turn suspicious. Filled with mystery, suspense, drama, and a little romance this book is the perfect mix for those who like reality TV this Halloween. This is another lighter read for those who aren’t looking to be too scared but rather spookily entertained.
- A wine that looks sweet and light but is much darker than it seems, just like this book, my pairing is the Willamette Valley Vineyards White Pinot Noir. While this wine looks like a rosé, it expresses both red and white wine characteristics — creaminess, rich mid-palate, bright aromas and flavors with balanced acidity.
This end of the spooky spectrum is where I like to read and live. Thrillers and Horror books are some of my favorites, purely because of their ability to surprise me. A Flicker in the Dark by Stacy Willingham is one of my favorite thrillers I’ve read this year; I couldn’t get to the end fast enough, reading the last 100 pages in one sitting. Chloe is afraid of the dark, and rightfully so after learning at 12 that her father was a serial killer. Now 20 years later, she downs her wine with a Xanax just to sleep at night, and when someone appears to become a copycat of her father’s crimes, she takes it upon herself to find the killer despite her fears.
- A dark red wine for a dark book, the Prayers of Sinners Red Blend is my favorite on this list as well, with the title sounding just like Chloe’s attempt at atonement for the sins of her father. With notes of coffee, fruit, and gunsmoke, the wine has a bold, elegant finish just like Chloe.
I love horror movies, even the bad ones (especially the bad ones). But I’ve found that I always find the “based on a true story” movies (and books) to be the scariest. Bryan Bertino’s The Strangers is definitely one of the scariest movies I’ve ever seen. As far as books go, there have been a few books that I have read that have kept me up at night. A couple of years ago, I was getting ready to go on vacation in New Hampshire with my family. As usual, picking out the books I would bring with me (this was pre-Kindle) was an important step in my packing process. I grabbed a couple of books that I had recently bought and hadn’t read before. When I finally got to New Hampshire, my reading binge began. Sitting on the sand at Onway Lake, I breezed through Atonement, which one of my best friends told me I would love (I didn’t, but my mom did). After finishing that, I decided to start reading In Cold Blood. I knew that it was a true-crime, hard-to-categorize “novel” about the murder of a family in Kansas…and that’s about all I knew. I started reading the book and was immediately drawn into the first section, which details the lives of the Clutter family in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas. Quickly, however, I began to regret the decision to read this book on my vacation.
