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A Chilling Halloween Read: Mexican Gothic

28 Oct

So with Halloween close upon us, it’s about the time that many of us start seeking out reads that will send a chill up our spines, something that makes us stay up at night or look over our shoulder. There are quite a few different types of horror one can explore and for many, they may want something with a gothic, creepy feel rather than something that’s filled with gore.

That’s where Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia comes in. After receiving a desperate letter from her newly wed cousin, Catalina, Naomi Taboada heads out to High Place, an ancient English Mansion in the center of the Mexican countryside to investigate and bring Catalina home. From the moment she arrives, everything about High Place unsettles her, from the manor itself to the members of the Doyle family that live within, save one, the gentle and shy Francis Doyle, brother to Catalina’s husband.

Through the book, we are woven a narrative of dark family secrets, ghosts that roam the halls, and everything one would look for in a gothic-horror novel. The fear factor slowly creeps in on you with well crafted prose and pulls you into a world that keeps you looking over your shoulder. While a good chunk of the novel is spent focused on the creepier side of things, there are parts that will bring in blood, its handled in a way that doesn’t come of as merely shock factor.

So if you’re looking for something spooky to read to put you in the mood for Halloween or the Mexican holiday Día de Muertos, Mexican Gothic is one that is highly recommended. It is available as ebooks and digital audiobooks from eLibraryNJ and eBCCLS!

Written By:
Lauren Lapinski
Circulation Assistant

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Thought Provoking Tales: The Fiction of Andy Weir

14 Oct

In Andy Weir’s fiction, each chapter throws you into a new world not knowing what to expect next! He is most well known for The Martian, which was originally self-published and was adapted as a movie in 2015.

The Egg and Other Stories by Andy Weir is a collection filled with unforeseen twists on every page. Here are intros to the stories that bewitched me the most from the collection. 

“Access” 
A young woman is looking for a job and stumbles upon an office. She tells the man sitting in the office chair behind the desk about her special powers and how they will help him if he hires her. 

“Anti-Hypoxiant” 
A brilliant medical inventor creates the first and only known universal Anti-Hypoxiant. A chemical that protects your body cells from the harmful effects of oxygen starvation. Ultimately curing drowning, lung diseases, and even stall death itself. 

“Meeting Sara”
A woman interviews the famous 24 year old Daniel Stilts. Mr. Stilts is asked about the nature of his reports on time manipulation and why he stopped production on his infamous project.

“The Egg”
A man is driving home when suddenly he is caught in a car accident, twisting, out of control and crashing.  He wakes up in a void of nothingness, then a familiar figure walks up to him to tell him the inevitable truth. 

I found myself immersed in each story, just to be at the end faster than anticipated. It feels like Andy Weir has this ability to paint optical illusions with his words which makes the reading experience the other worldly.

You can borrow novels by Weir as ebooks including The Martian, about an astronaut on Mars, and Artemis, about the first city on the Moon, from eBCCLS and eLibraryNJ.

Written by:
Andre Lebron
Circulation Assistant

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