Stories to listen to in October! 

AUDIO BOOK/CD FICTION BAKER
Cutting Teeth / Chandler Baker
New York Times bestselling author Chandler Baker’s Cutting Teeth is a witty, thrilling story of parental love that asks: is there anything a mother won’t do for her children? Darby, Mary Beth, and Rhea are on personal quests to reclaim aspects of their identities subsumed by motherhood-their careers, their sex lives, their bodies. Their children, though, disrupt their plans when an unsettling medical condition begins to go around the Little Academy preschool: the kids are craving blood. Then a young teacher is found dead, and the only potential witnesses are ten adorable four-year-olds. Soon it becomes clear that the children are not just witnesses, but also suspects . . . and so are their mothers. As the police begin to look more closely, the children’s ability to bleed their parents dry becomes deadly serious.
Also available as an audiobook on Libby/OverDrive.

AUDIO BOOK/CD FICTION CHBOSKY
Imaginary friend / Steven Chbosky
Single mother Kate Reese is on the run. Determined to improve life for her and her son, Christopher, she flees an abusive relationship in the middle of the night with Christopher at her side. Together, they find themselves drawn to the tight-knit community of Mill Grove, Pennsylvania. It’s as far off the beaten track as they can get. Just one highway in, one highway out. At first, it seems like the perfect place to finally settle down. Then Christopher vanishes. For six long days, no one can find him. Until Christopher emerges from the woods at the edge of town, unharmed but not unchanged. He returns with a voice in his head only he can hear, with a mission only he can complete: Build a tree house in the woods by Christmas, or his mother and everyone in the town will never be the same again.
Also available as an audiobook on Libby/OverDrive.

AUDIO BOOK/CD FICTION TORO
The hollow ones / Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan
Forced to shoot her suddenly violent partner, rookie FBI agent Odessa Hardwicke witnesses the escape of a shadowy form from the deceased agent’s body, and embarks on a sanity risking investigation into a centuries-old being.

AUDIO BOOK/CD FICTION HILL
Full throttle: stories / Joe Hill
In this masterful collection of short fiction, Joe Hill dissects timeless human struggles in thirteen relentless tales of supernatural suspense, including “In The Tall Grass,” one of two stories co-written with Stephen King, basis for the terrifying feature film from Netflix. A little door that opens to a world of fairy tale wonders becomes the blood-drenched stomping ground for a gang of hunters in “Faun.” A grief stricken librarian climbs behind the wheel of an antique Bookmobile to deliver fresh reads to the dead in “Late Returns.” In “By the Silver Water of Lake Champlain,” two young friends stumble on the corpse of a plesiosaur at the water’s edge, a discovery that forces them to confront the inescapable truth of their own mortality, and other horrors that lurk in the water’s shivery depths. And tension shimmers in the sweltering heat of the Nevada desert as a faceless trucker finds himself caught in a sinister dance with a tribe of motorcycle outlaws in “Throttle,” co-written with Stephen King.
Also available as an audiobook on Libby/OverDrive and hoopla.

AUDIO BOOK/CD FICTION JACKSON
The lottery, and other stories / Shirley Jackson
A powerful collection of short stories by Shirley Jackson. “The Lottery,” one of the most terrifying stories of the twentieth century, created a sensation when it was first published in the New Yorker. “Powerful and haunting,” and “nights of unrest” were typical reader responses. This collection, the only one to appear during Jackson’s lifetime, unites “The Lottery” with twenty-four equally unusual stories. Together they demonstrate her remarkable range – from the hilarious to the truly horrible – and power as a storyteller.
Also available as an audiobook on Libby/OverDrive and hoopla.

AUDIO BOOK/CD FICTION KING
Later / Stephen King
The son of a struggling single mother, Jamie Conklin just wants an ordinary childhood. But Jamie is no ordinary child. Born with an unnatural ability his mom urges him to keep secret, Jamie can see what no one else can see and learn what no one else can learn. But the cost of using this ability is higher than Jamie can imagine, as he discovers when an NYPD detective draws him into the pursuit of a killer who has threatened to strike from beyond the grave.
Also available as an audiobook on Libby/OverDrive.

AUDIO BOOK/CD FICTION FLIGHT
Flight or fright: 17 turbulent tales / edited by Stephen King and Bev Vincent
An anthology about all the things that can go horribly wrong when suspended six miles in the air, hurtling through space at more than 500 mph and sealed up in a metal tube with hundreds of strangers. All the ways a trip into the friendly skies can turn into a nightmare, including some never thought of before. Featuring brand new stories by Joe Hill and Stephen King, as well as fourteen classic tales and one poem from the likes of Richard Matheson, Ray Bradbury, Roald Dahl, and Dan Simmons.

AUDIO BOOK/CD FICTION KOONTZ
The big dark sky / Dean Koontz
As a girl, Joanna Chase thrived on Rustling Willows Ranch in Montana until tragedy upended her life. Now thirty-four and living in Santa Fe with only misty memories of the past, she begins to receive pleas – by phone, through her TV, in her dreams: I am in a dark place, Jojo. Please come and help me. Heeding the disturbing appeals, Joanna is compelled to return to Montana, and to a strange childhood companion she had long forgotten. She isn’t the only one drawn to the Montana farmstead. People from all walks of life have converged at the remote ranch. They are haunted, on the run, obsessed, and seeking answers to the same omniscient danger Joanna came to confront. All the while, on the outskirts of Rustling Willows, a madman lurks with a vision to save the future. Mass murder is the only way to see his frightening manifesto come to pass.

AUDIO BOOK/CD FICTION LAMBERT
The children’s home / Charles Lambert
A beguiling and disarming debut novel from an award-winning British author about a mysterious group of children who appear to a disfigured recluse and his country doctor – and the startling revelations their behavior evokes. In a sprawling estate, willfully secluded, lives Morgan Fletcher, the disfigured heir to a fortune of mysterious origins. Morgan spends his days in quiet study, avoiding his reflection in mirrors and the lake at the end of his garden. One day, two children, Moira and David, appear. Morgan takes them in, giving them free reign of the mansion he shares with his housekeeper Engel. Then more children begin to show up. Dr. Crane, the town physician and Morgan’s lone tether to the outside world, is as taken with the children as Morgan, and begins to spend more time in Morgan’s library. But the children behave strangely. They show a prescient understanding of Morgan’s past, and their bizarre discoveries in the mansion attics grow increasingly disturbing. Every day the children seem to disappear into the hidden rooms of the estate, and perhaps, into the hidden corners of Morgan’s mind. The Children’s Home is a genre-defying, utterly bewitching masterwork, an inversion of modern fairy tales like The Chronicles of Narnia and The Golden Compass, in which children visit faraway lands to accomplish elusive tasks.

AUDIO BOOK/CD FICTION POE
Tales of terror / Edgar Allan Poe
American poet, critic, and short-story writer Edgar Allan Poe is universally recognized for his cultivation of the macabre in fiction. His stories are characterized by an original kind of supernatural horror, often using the awareness of death as a catalyzing force in its own right. His tales and poems brim with psychological depth and intense imagery, made vivid through his musical language and hypnotic rhythms, which are especially captivating when heard aloud.
Also available as an audiobook on hoopla.

LP: October 2023