It’s here! My favorite reading time of the year, spooky season, the season when things are supposed to start getting cool and crisp (even if that doesn’t happen until late October in south TX, if then!). Time for all the spooky fun creepy books! As usual, I started early and won’t count those books toward my RIP totals. But honestly, I nearly always get in at least a dozen books under the categories that RIP generally entails: mystery, suspense, thriller, dark fantasy, gothic, horror, and supernatural. Here’s my starting list for the year:

• Gideon the Ninth – Tamsyn Muir
• The Scapegoat – Daphne du Maurier
• Devil’s Night – Todd Ritter
• Unhallowed Graves – Nuzo Onoh
• The Reluctant Dead – Nuzo Onoh
• The Postscript Murders – Elly Griffiths
• Mister Impossible – Maggie Stiefvater
• Ghosts of the Tsunami – Richard Lloyd Parry
• Testimony – Mark Chadbourn
• The Drowning Kind – Jennifer McMahon
• Snowflakes – Ruth Ware
• Graveminder – Melissa Marr
• Dark One – Brandon Sanderson
• The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina – Zoraida Córdova
• Mr Flood’s Last Resort – Jess Kidd
• Murder at Melrose Court – Karen Baugh Menuhin
• The Woods Are Always Watching – Stephanie Perkins
• Not a Happy Family – Shari Lapeña

I definitely won’t get to all of those! Some, I’m not even sure will actually qualify as RIP books once I start reading them. And I’m sure there will be more I haven’t heard or thought of yet as well. (Also, I already started reading RIP books by mid-August, so there are two that were originally on my list – Survive the Night and All Our Hidden Gifts – that don’t officially count, but certainly count in my head, heh.)

Now here’s a particularly fun thing. The hosts of RIP are including a bingo card this year! I know it’s unlikely I’ll get a full-on blackout card, but I hope to get at least one line of Bingo during my RIP season! Additionally, there’s a new photo challenge (September = Cozy, October = Atmosphere, both = Tradition) and a new tier, Peril of the Listen (music, audiobooks, podcasts). Yes! Sign me up please!!

As always, thank you to the hosts for all the things you do in this spooky season!