7 Books That’ll Give You That Fall Feeling

The Accident Season, by Moïra Fowley-Doyle
Cara is the daughter of a family afflicted every October by the “accident season,” when they’re dogged by disasters ranging from scrapes to death. In the waning days of this year’s accident season, she starts noticing dark omens: a mysteriously missing classmate who shows up in the background of all her photos, a malevolent man who looks like her long-gone stepfather following her through town. The brewing weirdness—and her need for a distraction from her feelings for her stepbrother—inspire Cara to take a risk, spending the last day of the accident season throwing a wild Halloween party in an abandoned house on the edge of town. It’s transporting magical realism that tackles dark themes and has a super-satisfying resolution.

The Raven Boys, by Maggie Stiefvater
Stiefvater’s addictive tetralogy (ending in 2016 with The Raven King) is full of confusing feels and dark portents and strange mythologies and alternately creeping and bombastic magic and everyday weirdness and pretty much everything I ever wanted in an autumn read. It’s set in the tiny town of Henrietta, Virginia, as well as the realm of Cabeswater, where trees breathe and a dead king sleeps and nothing is as it seems. Blue Sargent is the nonmagical daughter of an extended family of female psychics, and all-American boy Gansey is the leader of the Raven Boys, a quartet of private-school students looking for the resting place of deathless Welsh King Glendower, who will grant a wish to whoever wakes him. Stiefvater moves effortlessly between the mundane (but never that mundane) and the utterly magical, creating worlds where the boundaries between possible and im- are more like suggestions.

The Scar Boys, by Len Vlahos
This story of a boy horribly scarred in the aftermath of a childhood attack is suffused with a melancholy, autumnal vibe, but uplifted by the fresh-start hopefulness of rock fandom and musical creation. Covered in burn scars that have left him a social pariah, Harry Jones is transformed by friendship with Johnny McKenna, and the punk band they start with mutual crush Cheyenne. The band picks up momentum and the possibilities, for a moment, seem endless. The book is written in the form of a college entry exam, hinting at a future Harry learns to claim for himself.

Through the Woods, by Emily Carroll
Fairy tales can double as horror stories, full of murder, dismemberment, parental abandonment, and familial betrayal. Their brutality is muted by simple prose, which never dwells too long on the bloody chamber, the severed finger, or the slaughtered child. But in Carroll’s Grimm-inflected horror stories, which feel both canonical and new, spare text winds around sharply rendered, eerie illustrations that intensify the terror and remind readers to stay far, far away from the dark, dark woods.

Fake ID, by Lamar Giles
Starting a new school year is a timeworn/unavoidable autumn tradition, but Nick has it doubly bad: new school…and new identity. Again. His recidivist dad’s entanglements with a mob boss have chased the family through three fresh starts; the fourth, in a small Virginia town, is the last the government’s going to give them. But when Nick’s first new friend, an eccentric newshound on the trail of a dangerous story, is found dead, he pairs up with the victim’s beautiful sister to prove it wasn’t suicide. New start + bitter dark = perfect fall read.

Bone Gap, by Laura Ruby
In the flyspeck midwestern town of Bone Gap, the corn whispers, eccentrics abound, and the boundary between the real and the impossible is dangerously thin. A beautiful young woman named Roza, fleeing from some dark history, washes up inside Bone Gap’s borders, but it can’t serve as a refuge forever. When she’s stolen away, the town’s resident oddball, Finn, is the only one who has any chance of finding her, with the help of a fantastical horse, a bee-eyed girl, and his own strange way of viewing the world. The small-town rhythms, cornfields, and dark magic all spell autumn to me.

The Darkest Part of the Forest, by Holly Black
Fall is pretty much made for stories set in the unknowable woods. In Black’s first return to a dark faerie world since 2007’s Ironside, Hazel and Ben Evans live in the dangerous town of Fairfold, a human enclave on the edge of faerie-infested woods. There, a mysterious boy sleeps in a glass coffin, Ben’s best friend is a changeling, and the town’s tourists are occasionally cursed or killed. But the locals are mostly safe—until the boy is sprung from his coffin, a supernatural monster starts roaming the town, and Hazel learns the true terms of a dangerous bargain she struck years ago. Her relationship with Ben is the human heart of a supernatural tale, of first love, sacrifice, and dark, delirious magic.