Spooky Book Club is a monthly reading group for the macabre-curious. The genres we explore are often horror, horror-adjacent literature, thriller, supernatural, gothic & more. We meet every LAST Friday of the month.

Sign up for book clubs at Glendora Bookshop by email, call/text, or just stop in and inquire. Spooky Book Club also mingles on FB so be sure to join our group to keep in touch.

June’s Spooky Book Club selection is So Thirsty by Rachel Harrison. Be sure to snag your copy at Glendora Bookshop (book club members take 10% off book club reads!) and join us in June to discuss!

*****

A woman must learn to take life by the throat after a night out leads to irrevocable changes in this juicy, thrilling novel from the USA Today bestselling author of Such Sharp Teeth and Black Sheep.

Sloane Parker is dreading her birthday. She doesn’t need a reminder she’s getting older, or that she’s feeling indifferent about her own life. Her husband surprises her with a birthday-weekend getaway—not with him, but with Sloane’s longtime best friend, troublemaker extraordinaire Naomi. Sloane anticipates a weekend of wine tastings and cozy robes and strategic avoidance of issues she’d rather not confront, like her husband’s repeated infidelity.  

But when they arrive at their rental cottage, it becomes clear Naomi has something else in mind. She wants Sloane to stop letting things happen to her, for Sloane to really live. So Naomi orchestrates a wild night out with a group of mysterious strangers, only for it to take a horrifying turn that changes Sloane’s and Naomi’s lives literally forever. The friends are forced to come to terms with some pretty eternal consequences in this bloody, seductive novel about how it’s never too late to find satisfaction, even though it might taste different than expected. https://bookshop.org/p/books/so-thirsty-rachel-harrison/20975203?ean=9780593642542&next=t

Outside/Underground Book Club is a bi-monthly reading group for those who want to learn more about the fascinating world around us . O/U explores topics around science and nature through memoir, poetry, non-fiction & more. We meet every other LAST Thursday of the month.

Sign up for book clubs at Glendora Bookshop by email, call/text, or just stop in and inquire.

This month’s O/U Book Club selection is Other Minds by Peter Godfrey-Smith. Be sure to snag your copy at Glendora Bookshop (book club members take 10% off book club reads!) and join us in July to discuss.

*****

Philosopher Peter Godfrey-Smith dons a wet suit and journeys into the depths of consciousness in Other Minds

Although mammals and birds are widely regarded as the smartest creatures on earth, it has lately become clear that a very distant branch of the tree of life has also sprouted higher intelligence: the cephalopods, consisting of the squid, the cuttlefish, and above all the octopus. In captivity, octopuses have been known to identify individual human keepers, raid neighboring tanks for food, turn off lightbulbs by spouting jets of water, plug drains, and make daring escapes. How is it that a creature with such gifts evolved through an evolutionary lineage so radically distant from our own? What does it mean that evolution built minds not once but at least twice? The octopus is the closest we will come to meeting an intelligent alien. What can we learn from the encounter?

In Other Minds, Peter Godfrey-Smith, a distinguished philosopher of science and a skilled scuba diver, tells a bold new story of how subjective experience crept into being—how nature became aware of itself. As Godfrey-Smith stresses, it is a story that largely occurs in the ocean, where animals first appeared. Tracking the mind’s fitful development, Godfrey-Smith shows how unruly clumps of seaborne cells began living together and became capable of sensing, acting, and signaling. As these primitive organisms became more entangled with others, they grew more complicated. The first nervous systems evolved, probably in ancient relatives of jellyfish; later on, the cephalopods, which began as inconspicuous mollusks, abandoned their shells and rose above the ocean floor, searching for prey and acquiring the greater intelligence needed to do so. Taking an independent route, mammals and birds later began their own evolutionary journeys.

But what kind of intelligence do cephalopods possess? Drawing on the latest scientific research and his own scuba-diving adventures, Godfrey-Smith probes the many mysteries that surround the lineage. How did the octopus, a solitary creature with little social life, become so smart? What is it like to have eight tentacles that are so packed with neurons that they virtually “think for themselves”? What happens when some octopuses abandon their hermit-like ways and congregate, as they do in a unique location off the coast of Australia?

By tracing the question of inner life back to its roots and comparing human beings with our most remarkable animal relatives, Godfrey-Smith casts crucial new light on the octopus mind—and on our own. https://bookshop.org/p/books/other-minds-the-octopus-the-sea-and-the-deep-origins-of-consciousness-peter-godfrey-smith/8487100?ean=9780374537197&next=t

Spooky Book Club is a monthly reading group for the macabre-curious. The genres we explore are often horror, horror-adjacent literature, thriller, supernatural, gothic & more. We meet every LAST Friday of the month.

Sign up for book clubs at Glendora Bookshop by email, call/text, or just stop in and inquire. Spooky Book Club also mingles on FB so be sure to join our group to keep in touch.

August’s Spooky Book Club selection is Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Suskind. Be sure to snag your copy at Glendora Bookshop (book club members take 10% off book club reads!) and join us in August to discuss!

*****

INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • Set in eighteenth-century France, the classic novel that provokes a terrifying examination of what happens when one man’s indulgence in his greatest passion—his sense of smell—leads to murder.

In the slums of eighteenth-century France, the infant Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is born with one sublime gift—an absolute sense of smell. As a boy, he lives to decipher the odors of Paris, and apprentices himself to a prominent perfumer who teaches him the ancient art of mixing precious oils and herbs. But Grenouille’s genius is such that he is not satisfied to stop there, and he becomes obsessed with capturing the smells of objects such as brass doorknobs and fresh-cut wood. Then one day he catches a hint of a scent that will drive him on an ever-more-terrifying quest to create the “ultimate perfume”—the scent of a beautiful young virgin. Told with dazzling narrative brilliance, Perfume is a hauntingly powerful tale of murder and sensual depravity. https://bookshop.org/p/books/perfume-the-story-of-a-murderer-patrick-suskind/8525602?ean=9780375725845&next=t

Spooky Book Club is a monthly reading group for the macabre-curious. The genres we explore are often horror, horror-adjacent literature, thriller, supernatural, gothic & more. We meet every LAST Friday of the month.

Sign up for book clubs at Glendora Bookshop by email, call/text, or just stop in and inquire. Spooky Book Club also mingles on FB so be sure to join our group to keep in touch.

September’s Spooky Book Club selection is Slewfoot by BROM. Be sure to snag your copy at Glendora Bookshop (book club members take 10% off book club reads!) and join us in September to discuss!

*****

Set in Colonial New England, Slewfoot is a tale of magic and mystery, of triumph and terror as only dark fantasist Brom can tell it.

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.

Together, they ignite a battle between pagan and Puritan – one that threatens to destroy the entire village, leaving nothing but ashes and bloodshed in their wake.

This terrifying tale of bewitchery features more than two dozen of Brom’s haunting full-color paintings and brilliant endpapers, fully immersing readers in this wild and unforgiving world. https://bookshop.org/p/books/slewfoot-a-tale-of-bewitchery/18841349?ean=9781250621993&next=t

Spooky Book Club is a monthly reading group for the macabre-curious. The genres we explore are often horror, horror-adjacent literature, thriller, supernatural, gothic & more. We meet every LAST Friday of the month.

Sign up for book clubs at Glendora Bookshop by email, call/text, or just stop in and inquire. Spooky Book Club also mingles on FB so be sure to join our group to keep in touch.

October’s Spooky Book Club selection is The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter. Be sure to snag your copy at Glendora Bookshop (book club members take 10% off book club reads!) and join us in October to discuss!

*****

Angela Carter was a storytelling sorceress, the literary godmother of Neil Gaiman, David Mitchell, Audrey Niffenegger, J. K. Rowling, Kelly Link, and other contemporary masters of supernatural fiction. In her masterpiece, The Bloody Chamber—which includes the story that is the basis of Neil Jordan’s 1984 movie The Company of Wolves—she spins subversively dark and sensual versions of familiar fairy tales and legends like “Little Red Riding Hood,” “Bluebeard,” “Puss in Boots,” and “Beauty and the Beast,” giving them exhilarating new life in a style steeped in the romantic trappings of the gothic tradition.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators. https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-bloody-chamber/17744851?ean=9780143107613&next=t

Spooky Book Club is a monthly reading group for the macabre-curious. The genres we explore are often horror, horror-adjacent literature, thriller, supernatural, gothic & more. We meet every LAST Friday of the month.

Sign up for book clubs at Glendora Bookshop by email, call/text, or just stop in and inquire. Spooky Book Club also mingles on FB so be sure to join our group to keep in touch.

November’s Spooky Book Club selection is Notes on an Execution by Danya Kukafka Be sure to snag your copy at Glendora Bookshop (book club members take 10% off book club reads!) and join us in November to discuss!

*****

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • WINNER OF THE EDGAR AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL • NEW YORK TIMES BEST CRIME NOVEL OF THE YEAR

“Defiantly populated with living women . . . beautifully drawn, dense with detail and specificity . . . Notes on an Execution is nuanced, ambitious and compelling.” —Katie Kitamura, NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW (Editors' Choice)

"A searing portrait of the complicated women caught in the orbit of a serial killer. . . . Compassionate and thought-provoking." –BRIT BENNETT, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Vanishing Half

Recommended by New York Times Book Review • Los Angeles Times • Washington Post • Entertainment Weekly • Esquire • Good Housekeeping • USA Today • Buzzfeed • Goodreads • Real Simple • Marie Claire • Rolling Stone • Business Insider • Bustle • PopSugar • The Millions • The Guardian • and many more!

In the tradition of Long Bright River and The Mars Room, a gripping and atmospheric work of literary suspense that deconstructs the story of a serial killer on death row, told primarily through the eyes of the women in his life—from the bestselling author of Girl in Snow.

Ansel Packer is scheduled to die in twelve hours. He knows what he’s done, and now awaits execution, the same chilling fate he forced on those girls, years ago. But Ansel doesn’t want to die; he wants to be celebrated, understood. 

Through a kaleidoscope of women—a mother, a sister, a homicide detective—we learn the story of Ansel’s life. We meet his mother, Lavender, a seventeen-year-old girl pushed to desperation; Hazel, twin sister to Ansel’s wife, inseparable since birth, forced to watch helplessly as her sister’s relationship threatens to devour them all; and finally, Saffy, the detective hot on his trail, who has devoted herself to bringing bad men to justice but struggles to see her own life clearly. As the clock ticks down, these three women sift through the choices that culminate in tragedy, exploring the rippling fissures that such destruction inevitably leaves in its wake. 

Blending breathtaking suspense with astonishing empathy, Notes on an Execution presents a chilling portrait of womanhood as it simultaneously unravels the familiar narrative of the American serial killer, interrogating our system of justice and our cultural obsession with crime stories, asking readers to consider the false promise of looking for meaning in the psyches of violent men.

"Poetic and mesmerizing . . . Powerful, important, intensely human, and filled with a unique examination of tragedy, one where the reader is left with a curious emotion: hope." —USA TODAY

“A profound and staggering experience of empathy that challenges us to confront what it means to be human in our darkest moments. . . . I relished every page of this brilliant and gripping masterpiece."—ASHLEY AUDRAIN, New York Times bestselling author of The Push https://bookshop.org/p/books/notes-on-an-execution-danya-kukafka/16909648?ean=9780063052741&next=t

Spooky Book Club is a monthly reading group for the macabre-curious. The genres we explore are often horror, horror-adjacent literature, thriller, supernatural, gothic & more. We meet every LAST Friday of the month.

Sign up for book clubs at Glendora Bookshop by email, call/text, or just stop in and inquire. Spooky Book Club also mingles on FB so be sure to join our group to keep in touch.

December’s Spooky Book Club selection is The Unworthy by Agustina Bazterrica Be sure to snag your copy at Glendora Bookshop (book club members take 10% off book club reads!) and join us in December to discuss!

*****

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

The long-awaited new novel from the author of global sensation Tender Is the Flesh: a thrilling work of literary horror about a woman cloistered in a secretive, violent religious order, while outside the world has fallen into chaos.

From her cell in a mysterious convent, a woman writes the story of her life in whatever she can find—discarded ink, dirt, and even her own blood. A lower member of the Sacred Sisterhood, deemed an unworthy, she dreams of ascending to the ranks of the Enlightened at the center of the convent and of pleasing the foreboding Superior Sister. Outside, the world is plagued by catastrophe—cities are submerged underwater, electricity and the internet are nonexistent, and bands of survivors fight and forage in a cruel, barren landscape. Inside, the narrator is controlled, punished, but safe.

But when a stranger makes her way past the convent walls, joining the ranks of the unworthy, she forces the narrator to consider her long-buried past—and what she may be overlooking about the Enlightened. As the two women grow closer, the narrator is increasingly haunted by questions about her own past, the environmental future, and her present life inside the convent. How did she get to the Sacred Sisterhood? Why can’t she remember her life before? And what really happens when a woman is chosen as one of the Enlightened?

A searing, dystopian tale about climate crisis, ideological extremism, and the tidal pull of our most violent, exploitative instincts, this is another unforgettable novel from a master of feminist horror. https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-unworthy-agustina-bazterrica/21530471?ean=9781668051887&next=t