In the spirit of the season, Mechanics’ Institute staff will be selecting their favorite tales of mystery and terror this month. Here’s a taste of what you might find on display to snuggle up with on October 31st.
Chris recommends The Flame Alphabet by Ben Marcus
In Ben Marcus’s The Flame Alphabet, an epidemic sweeps through the country practically overnight; the speech of children begins to make parents devastatingly ill. The story follows a small family as they navigate chaos, uncertainty and experimental treatments in an increasingly unfamiliar world. While Marcus favors a poetic and lyrical style over tense minimalism, Cormac McCarthy's familial survival tale The Road is a worthy comparison, sharing a similarly bleak outlook while quietly retaining heroism and hope.
Craig recommends The Rocky Horror Picture Show (DVD)
A screamingly funny salute to sci-fi, horror, and rock music, all rolled into one. This popular cult classic stars Tim Curry, Barry Bostwick, Susan Sarandon and rock star Meat Loaf.
and Sudden Fear (DVD)
Joan Crawford provides an emotionally charged performance as a playwright who uses her plotting skills to save her own life. This well crafted film noir thriller is an unbeatable combination of lush melodrama and drop-dead suspense.
Matt recommends... the classics – Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Imagination, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
Heather recommends...from The Collected Ghost Stories of M.R. James to the modern horror of Koji Suzuki’s Sadako Yamamura (the antagonist in Ring) – this is one of my favorite genres of story to read: the ghost story.
But what about specters in the real world? There’s no better place to begin than with Mary Roach. With her usual wit and aplomb, she explores the facts and the not-so-factual claims of those who deal with ghosts and ghouls in Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife (129 R62).
