Fright Night: A celebration of horror novels and the authors behind them

Name: Fright Night: A celebration of horror novels and the authors behind them
Start: 2024-10-28T18:30:00-04:00
End: 2024-10-28T20:00:00-04:00
Location: WBUR CitySpace

Schedule

Mon Oct 28 2024 at 06:30 pm to 08:00 pm

UTC-04:00

Location

WBUR CitySpace | Brookline, MA

Spooky season is upon us…and what better time to experience the jolt of fright by reading a good ol’ scary book? Horror fiction is having quite the renaissance. Between 2022 and 2023, sales of horror and ghost stories rose by 54%. And in the first three months of 2024, sales were 34% higher than at the same time last year. What’s compelling readers to seek more tales of things that go bump in the night?
Join Here & Now associate producer Kalyani Saxena for a conversation celebrating the thrills and chills of horror novels with authors Alix E. Harrow (“Starling House”), Grady Hendrix (“How to Sell a Haunted House”) and Alexis Henderson ("An Academy for Liars"). They’ll discuss their books, how the genre has evolved and the insatiable appetite for more scary stories.
Copies of their books will be available from our bookstore partner Brookline Booksmith and the authors will sign following the conversation.
CitySpace Tickets:
Premiere: $30.00 (includes reserved seating in the front of the theater)
General: $20.00
BU Faculty/Staff: $15.00 (must present a valid BU ID upon arrival)
Student: $10.00 (must present a valid student ID upon arrival)
Ways To Save:
WBUR’s Legacy Circle, Murrow Society and Members save $5.00 on premiere and general tickets to this event. To apply the discount to your ticket purchase online, you’ll need to enter a promo code. You can get your code by emailing [email protected].
About “Starling House”:
I dream sometimes about a house I’ve never seen….
Opal is a lot of things — orphan, high school dropout, full-time cynic and part-time cashier —but above all, she's determined to find a better life for her younger brother Jasper. One that gets them out of Eden, Kentucky, a town remarkable for only two things: bad luck and E. Starling, the reclusive nineteenth century author of "The Underland," who disappeared over a hundred years ago.
All she left behind were dark rumors — and her home. Everyone agrees that it’s best to ignore the uncanny mansion and its misanthropic heir, Arthur. Almost everyone, anyway.
I should be scared, but in the dream I don’t hesitate.
Opal has been obsessed with "The Underland" since she was a child. When she gets the chance to step inside Starling House — and make some extra cash for her brother's escape fund — she can't resist.
But sinister forces are digging deeper into the buried secrets of Starling House, and Arthur’s own nightmares have become far too real. As Eden itself seems to be drowning in its own ghosts, Opal realizes that she might finally have found a reason to stick around.
In my dream, I’m home.
And now she’ll have to fight.
Welcome to Starling House: enter, if you dare.
About “How to Sell a Haunted House”:
When Louise finds out her parents have died, she dreads going home. She doesn’t want to leave her daughter with her ex and fly to Charleston. She doesn’t want to deal with her family home, stuffed to the rafters with the remnants of her father’s academic career and her mother’s lifelong obsession with puppets and dolls. She doesn’t want to learn how to live without the two people who knew and loved her best in the world.
Most of all, she doesn’t want to deal with her brother, Mark, who never left their hometown, gets fired from one job after another and resents her success. Unfortunately, she’ll need his help to get the house ready for sale because it’ll take more than some new paint on the walls and clearing out a lifetime of memories to get this place on the market.
But some houses don’t want to be sold, and their home has other plans for both of them…
About "An Adacemy For Liars":
Lennon Carter’s life is falling apart.
Then she gets a mysterious phone call inviting her to take the entrance exam for Drayton College, a school of magic hidden in a secret pocket of Savannah. Lennon has been chosen because — like everyone else at the school — she has the innate gift of persuasion, the ability to wield her will like a weapon, using it to control others and, in rare cases, matter itself.
After passing the test, Lennon begins to learn how to master her devastating and unsettling power. But despite persuasion’s heavy toll on her body and mind, she is wholly captivated by her studies, by Drayton’s lush, moss-draped campus and by her brilliant classmates. But even more captivating is her charismatic adviser, Dante, who both intimidates and enthralls her.
As Lennon continues in her studies, her control grows, and she starts to uncover more about the secret world she has entered into, including the disquieting history of Drayton College. She is increasingly disturbed by what she learns, for it seems that the ultimate test is to embrace absolute power without succumbing to corruption…and it’s a test she’s terrified she’s going to fail.
Like his novels “The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires” and “The Final Girl Support Group,” “How to Sell a Haunted House” is classic Hendrix: equal parts heartfelt and terrifying — a gripping new read from “the horror master” (USA Today).