Recent Read: Through the Woods

Through the Woods by Emily Carroll

In one story from Emily Carroll’s Gothic collection of graphic short stories, a new bride arrives at a manor house that is now hers. At night she hears a sad song:

"I married my love in the springtime, but by summer he'd locked me away. He'd murdered me dead by the autumn, and by winter I was naught but decay. It's so cold where I am and so lonely but in loneliness I will remain, unloved, unavenged, and forgotten, until I am whole once again." 

She goes searching through the house--in the walls, under the floor. And this is what she finds:

It gets creepier, as do all of Emily Carroll’s stories in this haunting collection. The beautiful illustrations, as you can see, contribute to the eerie tone. I half expected some ghostly hand to reach out and pull me into its depths. A must for fans of horror and another great read for Halloween.

Recent Read: Witches

Witches: The Absolutely True Tale of Disaster in Salem by Rosalyn Schanzer

Ever wonder what really happened in Salem all those years ago? I realized that my knowledge of it was limited to (1) The Crucible and (2) the offhand comment my high school history teacher made about the possibility they were all high. Rosalyn Schanzer takes us through the blow-by-blow of what we know happened—the fits, the accusations, the hysteria, the biased judges, the tragic executions.

Spoiler alert, but I imagine many of your questions will go unanswered, as mine were. What was fake and what was real? What was honest and what was false? What were the motivations? Schanzer gives an overview of the various theories scholars have come up with to answer these questions, but we don’t really know. Still, this makes for a very interesting read, and helped me distinguish between tales and reality.

And then there are the illustrations. Fantastic! Dynamic black and white scratch board illustrations, with little red accents add real pizzazz.