Join us! And dive in to even more folk and pastoral recommendations from our library community in celebration of the Study Break of the Unknown Tome event. This time we have literature, music, graphic novels, photography, maps, and manga. If you were here for Part 1, then you've probably already used our film databases, Swank and Kanopy, for streaming. But also, the Music Library curates databases like the Oxford and Smithsonian Music Online, the Met Opera on Demand, and databases for watching theater and dance. For funsies reading, we also have our Overdrive collection for listening to audiobooks or e-reading (you may be familiar with the app, Libby). Nevertheless, we still recommend coming in for a wander though the stacks. It smells like books. And you'll definitely find something you never even imagined existed...
Music
Album cover courtesy of Discogs.com
The Unquiet grave ; American tragic ballads
O'er his grave the grass grew green : [tragic ballads]
Abattoir blues ; The Lyre Of Orpheus / Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds
Sinners : original motion picture soundtrack
Graphic Novels, Photography, Maps, and Manga
Image courtesy of Kobo.com
The Summer Hikaru Died / Mokumokuren ; translation, Ajani Oloye ; lettering, Abigail Blackman
Two boys lived in a village: Yoshiki and Hikaru. The two did everything together...until the day Hikaru was encompassed by a mysterious light. That was when everything changed–Hikaru most of all. Yoshiki still wishes from the bottom of his heart to always stay by his side...but is there even a Hikaru left to be with?
With a minimal tableau of familiar objects and a gentle rhythm suited for reading aloud, a farm and all its items—a horse and its hay, a truck, a stool, a fence—are assembled, ending with bedtime as the sun goes down.
In a land far away, there were two kingdoms: the Outside, where twisted beasts roamed that could curse with a touch, and the Inside, where humans lived in safety and peace. The girl and the beast should never have met, but when they do, a quiet fairytale begins
Garlic and the Vampire / Bree Paulsen
When Garlic’s village of vegetable folk learns that a bloodthirsty vampire has moved into the nearby castle, they all agree that, in spite of her fear and self-doubt, Garlic is the obvious choice to confront him. And with everyone counting on her, Garlic reluctantly agrees to face the mysterious vampire, hoping she has what it takes.
Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1768. It is a dark and foreboding night when the boat arrives from Europe, bringing three shadowy figures to shore. The María sisters have come to take the New World by storm. At once righteous and menacing, the sisters will exert their insidious powers over generations, leaving a wreckage of shattered spirits in their wake.
Beautiful Darkness / story by Marie Pommepuy and Fabien Vehlmann
Join princess Aurora and her friends as they journey to civilization's heart of darkness in a bleak allegory about surviving the human experience.
Meatyard’s staged images—set in abandoned spaces and often using masks and props—are at once familiar and enigmatic, reflecting the artist’s fascination with the uncanniness of ordinary life.
The figures, mostly of old women, float in or fall from the air, walk with a cane, sit at a table or lie asleep on the ground, fight with or tempt one another, and play tambourines or castanets. By means of these activities, and in a tone wavering between mockery and the lugubrious, the album displays emotions of joy, mirth, fear, despondence, forlornness, and anger.
Be Kind, My Neighbor / Yugo Limbo
It's 1973, the town of Baths, cozy middle-of-nowhere American heartland. Traveling musician Wegg rolls in, content to busk for a beat and be on his merry way once more. That is, until he meets Mr. Neighbor, the disarmingly sweet man made of cloth who offers him company and a place to stay. As the two grow closer, they click together just right, each harmonizing with the other's most secret self. Yet their growing romance is haunted by uncertainty and mystery...
In the Black Fantastic / Ekow Eshun
Image courtesy of MIT Press
A richly illustrated exploration of Black culture at its most wildly imaginative and artistically ambitious... assembles art and imagery from across the African diaspora. Embracing the mythic and the speculative, it recycles and reconfigures elements of fable, folklore, science fiction, spiritual traditions, ceremonial pageantry and the legacies of Afrofuturism.
World within the World : [collected short comix 2010-2022] / Julia Gfrörer
World Within the World features 30 of Gfrörer's short stories, culled from a decade of writing and drawing at the bleeding edge of the art form. Her tales of desire, despair, and the universal need for connection span centuries, continents, and cultures from prehistoric teenagers in love to Christian martyrs in the making to modern-day vampires on the make.
An important precursor to the Expressionists, Friedrich once wrote that an artist must "close your bodily eye so that you may see your picture first with the spiritual eye. Then bring to the light of day that which you have seen in the darkness so that it may react upon others from the outside inwards.
Wilder Mann : the image of the savage / Charles Fréger
For two years in 2010 and 2011, Charles Fréger criss-crossed Europe from north to south, from Finland to Portugal, passing through Romania, Germany and Slovenia, in search of the figure of the savage as it survives in local popular traditions.
Monsters in America : a cryptozoological map of the United States
Includes indexed illustrations of animal and humanoid monsters.
Novels
Image courtesy of Goodreads
A Green and Pagan Land : myth, magic and landscape in British film and television / David Huckvale
British literature often refers to pagan and classical themes through richly detailed landscapes that suggest more than a mere backdrop of physical features. The author analyzes the evocative language and esthetics of landscapes in literature, film, television and music, and how "psycho-geography" is used to explore the influence of the past on the present.
Shivering skeletons, ghostly pirates, chattering corpses, and haunted graveyards...all to chill your bones! Share these seven spine-tingling stories in a dark, dark room.
Of Mud & Flame : the Penda's Fen sourcebook / edited by Matthew Harle & James Machin
In 1974, the BBC broadcast the film Penda's Fen, leaving audiences mystified and spellbound. Of Mud and Flame brings together writers, artists, and historians to excavate and explore this unique cornerstone of Britain's uncanny archive.
Slewfoot : A tale of bewitchery / Brom
Connecticut, 1666. An ancient spirit awakens in a dark wood. The wildfolk call him Father, slayer, protector. The colonists call him Slewfoot, demon, devil. To Abitha, a recently widowed outcast, alone and vulnerable in her pious village, he is the only one she can turn to for help.
The bewitching / Silvia Moreno-Garcia.
“Back then, when I was a young woman, there were still witches”: That was how Nana Alba always began the stories she told her great-granddaughter Minerva—stories that have stayed with Minerva all her life. An academic career can be a punishing pursuit, but it might turn outright deadly when witchcraft is involved.
Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms & Superstitions of Ireland, with Sketches of the Irish Past
Drawing from oral lore and ancient custom, Lady Wilde preserves tales of banshees and blessings, charms and curses, sacred wells, and the rites of the hearth and field.
Folk Horror : hours dreadful and things strange / Adam Scovell
Charts the summoning of these esoteric arts within the latter half of the twentieth century and beyond, using theories of psychogeography, hauntology, and topography to delve into the genre's output in film, television, and multimedia as its "sacred demon of ungovernableness" rises yet again in the twenty-first century.
One Leg on Earth : a novel / 'Pemi Aguda
All over Lagos, rumors of a strange phenomenon has captured the city's imagination and held its residents in fear -- pregnant women are walking into water and drowning. In this eerie and evocative tale, Pemi Aguda mixes myth, folklore, and history with an incisive portrait of a city and a people.
Lone Women : a novel / Victor LaValle
The year is 1915, and Adelaide is in trouble. Her secret sin killed her parents, forcing her to flee California in a hellfire rush and make her way to Montana as a homesteader. Dragging the trunk with her at every stop, she will become one of the “lone women” taking advantage of the government’s offer of free land for those who can tame it—except that Adelaide isn’t alone. And the secret she’s tried so desperately to lock away might be the only thing that will help her survive the harsh territory.
Our Share of Night : a novel / by Mariana Enriquez ; translated by Megan McDowell
Image courtesy of Penguin Random House
Gaspar is six years old when the Order first come for him. For years, they have exploited his father’s ability to commune with the dead and the demonic, presiding over macabre rituals where the unwanted and the disappeared are tortured and executed, sacrificed to the Darkness. Now they want a successor. Nothing will stop the Order, nothing is beyond them. Surrounded by horrors, can Gaspar break free?
Casting the Runes and Other Ghost Stories / M.R. James ; with a new introduction by Michael Chabon
The stories here represent the best of James's work, set in the leisurely, late-Victorian, middle-class world of country houses, seaside inns, out-of-the-way railway stations, and cathedral closes, where gentlemen of independent means and antiquarian tastes suddenly find themselves confronted by terrifying agents of supernatural malice.
The Lottery and other stories / Shirley Jackson
Unites "The Lottery" with twenty-four wonderfully strange and equally terrifying short stories from the legendary Shirley Jackson. Together they demonstrate Jackson's remarkable range--from the hilarious to the horrible, the unsettling to the ominous--and showcase a true master at the height of her haunting powers.
Tales of the Supernatural / Algernon Blackwood
From werewolves and vampires to unknown demons and ghosts that stalk their victims through the night, the supernatural beings will disturb and enthral readers as they struggle to distinguish between the real villains of the world and the hallucinations of the fragile psyche.
Dead House / Billy O'Callaghan
Ireland is a country haunted by its past. In Billy O'Callaghan's hands, its terrible beauty becomes a force of inescapable horror that reaches far back in time, before the Famine, before Christianity, to a pagan place where nature and superstition are bound in an endless knot.
In the north of England, far from the intrusions of cities but not far from civilization, Silvie and her family are living as if they are ancient Britons, surviving by the tools and knowledge of the Iron Age. The ancient Britons built ghost walls to ward off enemy invaders, rude barricades of stakes topped with ancestral skulls. When the group builds one of their own, they find a spiritual connection to the past. What comes next but human sacrifice?
The Loney / Andrew Michael Hurley
When the remains of a young child are discovered during a winter storm on a stretch of the bleak Lancashire coastline known as the Loney, a man named Smith is forced to confront the terrifying and mysterious events that occurred forty years earlier when he visited the place as a boy.
The Only Good Indians : a novel / Stephen Graham Jones
Follows the lives of four American Indian men and their families, all haunted by a disturbing, deadly event that took place in their youth. Years later, they find themselves tracked by an entity bent on revenge, totally helpless as the culture and traditions they left behind catch up to them in a violent, vengeful way.
In seventeenth-century Denmark, Christenze Kruckow, an unmarried noblewoman, is accused of witchcraft. She and several other women are rumored to be possessed by the Devil, who has come to them in the form of a tall headless man and gives them dark powers: they can steal people’s happiness, they have performed unchristian acts, and they can cause pestilence or even death. They are all in danger of the stake.
Animal Ghosts; or Animal Hauntings & the Hereafter / by Elliott O'Donnell
The mere fact that there are manifestations of "dead" people proves some kind of life after death for human beings; and happily the same proof is available with regard to future life for animals; indeed there are as many animal phantasms as human - perhaps more; hence, if the human being lives again, so do his dumb friends.
Ghostland : an American history in haunted places / Colin Dickey
Dickey, piqued by a house hunt in Los Angeles that revealed derelict foreclosures and "zombie houses", embarks on a journey across the continental United States to decode and unpack the American history repressed in our most famous haunted places.
A House with Good Bones / T Kingfisher
"Mom seems off." Her brother's words echo in Sam Montgomery's ear as she turns onto the quiet North Carolina street where their mother lives alone. Sam's excited for this rare extended visit, and looking forward to nights with just the two of them, but stepping inside, she quickly realizes home isn’t what it used to be. To find out what’s got her mom so frightened in her own home, Sam will go digging for the truth.
Wuthering Heights / Emily Brontë
Catherine, forced to choose between passionate, tortured Heathcliff and gentle, well-bred Edgar Linton, surrenders to the expectations of her class. As Heathcliff's bitterness and vengeance at his betrayal is visited upon the next generation, their innocent heirs must struggle to escape the legacy of the past.
From the moment the charismatic Perly Dinsmore arrives in town and starts soliciting donations for his auctions, things begin slowly and insidiously to change in Harlowe. As the auctioneer carries out his terrible, inscrutable plan, the Moores and their neighbors will find themselves gradually but inexorably stripped of their freedom, their possessions, and perhaps even their lives ...
Sorrowland : a novel / Rivers Solomon
Image courtesy of MCD Books
Vern—seven months pregnant and desperate to escape the strict religious compound where she was raised—flees for the shelter of the woods. To understand her metamorphosis and to protect her small family, Vern has to face the past, and more troublingly, the future—outside the woods. Finding the truth will mean uncovering the secrets of the compound she fled but also the violent history in America that produced it.
The Woods All Black / Lee Mandelo
Something ugly festers within the local congregation, and its malice has focused on a young person they insist is an unruly tomboy who must be brought to heel. Violence is bubbling when Leslie arrives, ready to spill over, and he'll have to act fast if he intends to be of use. But the hills enfolding Spar Creek have a mind of their own, and the woods are haunted in ways Leslie does not understand.
The Lamb : a novel / Lucy Rose
Margot and Mama have lived by the forest ever since Margot can remember. They spend quiet days together in their cottage, waiting for strangers to knock on their door. Strays, Mama calls them. People who have strayed too far from the road. Mama loves the strays. She feeds them wine, keeps them warm. Then she picks apart their bodies and toasts them off with some vegetable oil. But Mama's want is stronger than her hunger sometimes, and when a beautiful, white-toothed stray named Eden turns up in the heart of a snowstorm, Margot must face the possibility that her life is changing for good.
She Made Herself a Monster : A novel / Anna Kovatcheva
A heady, dark-hued Gothic gem of a debut novel: in nineteenth-century Bulgaria, a self-proclaimed vampire slayer—in truth, a traveling con artist—joins forces with a teenage girl to create a monster deadly enough to vanquish their own demons.
Monstrilio : a novel / Gerardo Sámano Córdova
Grieving mother Magos cuts out a piece of her deceased eleven-year-old son Santiago’s lung. Acting on fierce maternal instinct and the dubious logic of an old folktale, she nurtures the lung until it gains sentience, growing into the carnivorous little Monstrilio she keeps hidden within the walls of her family’s decaying Mexico City estate.
The Salt Grows Heavy / Cassandra Khaw
You may think you know how the fairy tale goes: a mermaid comes to shore and weds the prince. But what the fables forget is that mermaids have teeth. And now, her daughters have devoured the kingdom and burned it to ashes. On the run, the mermaid is joined by a mysterious plague doctor with a darkness of their own. Deep in the eerie, snow-crusted forest, the pair stumble upon a village of ageless children who thirst for blood, and the three “saints” who control them.
Japanese Gothic / Kylie Lee Baker
In this lyrical, wildly inventive horror novel interwoven with Japanese mythology, two people living centuries apart discover a door between their worlds.
Diavola : a novel / Jennifer Thorne
Image courtesy of Goodreads
Jennifer Thorne skewers all-too-familiar family dynamics in this sly, wickedly funny vacation-Gothic. Beautifully unhinged and deeply satisfying, Diavola is a sharp twist on the classic haunted house story, exploring loneliness, belonging, and the seemingly inescapable bonds of family mythology.
The Book of Lost Things / John Connolly
High in his attic bedroom, twelve-year-old David mourns the death of his mother, with only the books on his shelf for company. But those books have begun to whisper to him in the darkness. Angry and alone, he takes refuge in his imagination and soon finds that reality and fantasy have begun to meld.
Fever Dream : a novel / Samanta Schweblin ; translated by Megan McDowell
A young woman named Amanda lies dying in a rural hospital clinic. A boy named David sits beside her. She's not his mother. He's not her child. Together, they tell a haunting story of broken souls, toxins, and the power and desperation of family.
Thirst : a novel / Marina Yuszczuk ; translated by Heather Cleary
In the nineteenth century, a vampire arrives from Europe to the coast of Buenos Aires and, for the second time in her life, watches as villages transform into a cosmopolitan city, one that will soon be ravaged by yellow fever. She must adapt, intermingle with humans, and be discreet. In present-day Buenos Aires, a woman finds herself at an impasse as she grapples with her mother's terminal illness and her own relationship with motherhood. When she first encounters the vampire in a cemetery, something ignites within the two women - and they cross a threshold from which there's no turning back.
On a cool evening in Kolkata, India, beneath a full moon, as the whirling rhythms of traveling musicians fill the night, college professor Alok encounters a mysterious stranger with a bizarre confession and an extraordinary story. Tantalized by the man's unfinished tale, Alok will do anything to hear its completion. So Alok agrees, at the stranger's behest, to transcribe a collection of battered notebooks, weathered parchments, and once-living skins.
The Starving Saints : a novel / Caitlin Starling
Aymar Castle has been under siege for six months. Food is running low and there has been no sign of rescue. But just as the survivors consider deliberately thinning their number, the castle stores are replenished. The sick are healed. And the divine figures of the Constant Lady and her Saints have arrived, despite the barricaded gates, offering succor in return for adoration. As the castle descends into bacchanalian madness, three women see their situation for what it is. But they are not immune from the temptations of the castle's new masters, or each other.
The Appalachian Legend of the Wizard Clip : America's first poltergeist / Michael Kishbucher
In the early 1790s, a Lutheran family in Appalachia fell victim to a menacing spirit that Lutheran, Methodist and Episcopal clergy as well as Folk magic practitioners failed to remove. The entity, which came to be known as the Wizard Clip, was said to cut or slice anything made of cloth or leather. Was it a ghost or a demon? After years of torment, the deeply Protestant family finally found respite from a seemingly impossible ally, a Catholic exorcist.
Young Goodman Brown, and other short stories / Nathaniel Hawthorne
'Young Goodman Brown' is set during the Salem witch trials and features the sort of narrative ambiguities and troubling uncertainties over the reality of events that Hawthorne was known for, leading readers to ponder what they have read long after the last page has been turned.
I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast is Me / Jamison Shea
Image courtesy of Macmillan Publishers
Laure Mesny is a perfectionist with an axe to grind. Despite being constantly overlooked in the elite and cutthroat world of the Parisian ballet, she will do anything to prove that a Black girl can take center stage. To level the playing field, Laure ventures deep into the depths of the Catacombs and strikes a deal with a pulsating river of blood.
What Moves the Dead / T Kingfisher
When Alex Easton, a retired soldier, receives word that their childhood friend Madeline Usher is dying, they race to the ancestral home of the Ushers in the remote countryside of Ruritania. What they find there is a nightmare of fungal growths and possessed wildlife, surrounding a dark, pulsing lake. Madeline sleepwalks and speaks in strange voices at night, and her brother Roderick is consumed with a mysterious malady of the nerves. Aided by a redoubtable British mycologist and a baffled American doctor, Alex must unravel the secret of the House of Usher before it consumes them all.
Someone You Can Build a Nest In / John Wiswell
Image courtesy of Penguin Random House
Shesheshen is a shapeshifter, who happily resides as an amorphous lump at the bottom of a ruined manor. When her rest is interrupted by hunters intent on murdering her, she constructs a body using a metal chain for a backbone, borrowed bones for limbs, and a bear trap as an extra mouth. However, the hunters chase Shesheshen out of her home and off a cliff. Badly hurt, she's found and nursed back to health by Homily, a warmhearted human, who has mistaken Shesheshen as a fellow human. Homily is kind and nurturing and would make an excellent coparent: an ideal place to lay Shesheshen's eggs so their young could devour Homily from the inside out. But as they grow close, she realizes humans don't think about love that way. Shesheshen hates keeping her identity secret from Homily, but just as she's about to confess, Homily reveals why she's in the area: she's hunting a shapeshifting monster that supposedly cursed her family. Shesheshen didn't curse anyone, but to give herself and Homily a chance at happiness, she has to figure out why Homily's twisted family thinks she did. As the hunt for the monster becomes increasingly deadly, Shesheshen must unearth the truth quickly, or soon both of their lives will be at risk. And the bigger challenge remains: surviving her toxic in-laws long enough to learn to build a life with, rather than in, the love of her life.
The Unmothers : a novel / Leslie J. Anderson
Marshall, a journalist, is sent to a small town to look into an improbable rumor that a horse has given birth to a human baby. As she investigates, she discovers evidence of a murder and becomes drawn into an even deeper and stranger mystery than she expected.
Don't Let the Forest In / CG Drews
High school senior Andrew Perrault finds refuge in the twisted fairy tales that he writes for the only person who can ground him to reality–Thomas Rye, the boy with perpetually ink-stained hands and hair like autumn leaves. And with his twin sister, Dove, inexplicably keeping him at a cold distance upon their return to Wickwood Academy, Andrew finds himself leaning on his friend even more. But something strange is going on with Thomas.
The buffalo Hunter Hunter / Stephen Graham Jones
A chilling historical horror novel set in the American west in 1912 following a Lutheran priest who transcribes the life of a vampire who haunts the fields of the Blackfeet reservation looking for justice.
In a village in a medieval fiefdom buffeted by natural disasters, a motherless shepherd boy finds himself the unlikely pivot of a power struggle that puts all manner of faith to a savage test…