As we creep closer to midterm submissions and Christmas markets, it’s imperative to find time amid the chaos for a good November read. Whether it’s horror, mystery, romance, or all three, autumn offers the perfect selection of novels. While Little Women and The Picture of Dorian Grey are classic transitional reads between autumn and winter, my annual reread list leans on a few personal favourites.
First and foremost has to be the dark academia classic: The Secret History. The story follows a group of Greek students at Bennington College as they rapidly descend into madness and murder. Having read it over five times, I can’t praise Donna Tartt’s audiobook narration enough; she brings each character to life exactly as envisioned. The book hooks you from the first line and reels you back in each year to explore its texts and hidden symbols and distinguish truth, from Tartt’s life and the narrator’s, from its aestheticised version.
Similarly, M. L. Rio’s If We Were Villains follows a small group of theatre students whose obsessive devotion to their craft spirals into murder. For those who prefer Shakespeare to Socrates, this blend of prose and drama, constant suspicion over guilt, and questions of how far one will go for love or revenge will grip you until the last page.
For a darker read, the only novel to keep me glued to the page in sheer suspense since Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is Adam Nevill’s The Ritual. This tale of reunited friends backpacking through Scandinavia who stray into the woods and meet their demise will make you sleep with the lights on and think twice before venturing off the path.
Lastly, my biased pick for a late-autumn romance is the Twilight saga. Even if internet culture has reduced the movies to memes like “‘Where the hell have you been, loca?” the original books remain staples of the season. With the first book borrowing from Pride and Prejudice, the second from Romeo and Juliet, and the third from Wuthering Heights, the series offers modern readers an accessible doorway into classic literature against the atmospheric backdrop of Forks, Washington. New Moon is the saga’s most compelling work, examining the naïveté of young love and weighing whether it’s better to choose a love that’s safe and steady or one that makes you feel alive (the choice, of course, is obvious).
Countless other novels deserve a place on this list, but these remain my non-negotiable seasonal staples. Whether you’re looking for murderous classicists, Norse terror, or brooding vampires, there’s no better way to survive the end of midterm season.
Photo by Sajad Nori on Unsplash
