Books for the First Cold Night of Autumn
RL-001 - When windows close, light fades, and summer has departed.
For the first properly cold evening of the season, the right book needs the right atmosphere: an old house, a darkening coastline, a library after hours, or the feeling that something has changed.
Spanning nearly 170 years, these five books are suited to that particular night.
The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry (2016)
In the late nineteenth century, widow Cora Seaborne leaves London for the coastal village of Aldwinter, where reports of a mysterious creature in the surrounding marshes have revived a local legend. Her interest in natural history draws her into this community, where she finds division among perceptions and facts.
Fog, marshland, tidal water, specimens, letters, and an unsettling atmosphere make this an especially fitting book for the first cold night of the season.
Read it for: coastal gothic · folklore · Victorian atmosphere
Possession by A. S. Byatt (1990)
Two young scholars uncover evidence of a previously unknown connection between a pair of Victorian poets. Their discovery leads to an investigation through letters, manuscripts, diaries, poetry, biography, and literary history.
It belongs on an autumn list for the particular pleasure of disappearing into research while the outside world grows darker.
Read it for: archives · letters and poetry · literary mystery
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (1959)
Four people arrive at Hill House to investigate its reputation for supernatural activity. The house is described as having strange proportions, unsettling rooms, and an atmosphere that is difficult to explain away.
Few settings suit a cold autumn night better than an isolated old house whose ordinary details gradually begin to feel wrong. This buildup makes the unease more effective than anything particularly gruesome.
Read it for: old houses · isolation · psychological unease
The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1851)
Hawthorne’s novel follows the Pyncheon family, whose history is tied to an old Salem house, a disputed inheritance, and the consequences of wrongdoing committed by earlier generations.
Its Salem setting makes it a natural inclusion, but the book also stands on its own as autumn reading: a decaying ancestral house, inherited secrets, old grievances, and a past that will not stay buried.
Read it for: Salem · ancestral houses · inherited secrets
The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield (2006)
A young biographer is summoned to the estate of a famously private author who has decided, after years of inventing stories about her past, to tell the truth about her life. This unfolds through memory, family history, books, and the secrets of an old house.
Although contemporary, the novel's setting is reminiscent of a Victorian gothic backdrop. An isolated estate, unreliable histories, libraries, and family secrets make it particularly well suited to a dark autumn evening.
Read it for: books about books · family secrets · gothic houses
...
While none of these books necessarily depend on autumn as a setting, they all share the kind of atmosphere that seems better once the evenings start arriving earlier.
The first cold night is as good a reason as any to choose one, close the windows, and stay in.