The couple stage right front is disturbing with the fake death sexy sexy and totally upstaging Neil. However, I am behind this idea!

A bit short notice for this year, and also. . .hmm. Scary books. What is a scary book. Poe, I guess. I know and love disturbing books, but scary? What do you recommend, folks?

High Rise gave me nightmares.

If you want scary, there's always the Dick Cheney autobiography

scary not amazingly depressing.

I just read Let the Right One In. There's plenty of juice left in the novel even if you've seen the film, which necessarily compresses and simplifies some of the story and characters.

I say "juice" advisedly: the novel is pretty squelchy-descriptive and horrifying. So much so that one night when I got turned around in the dark on my way back to bed from the bathroom and then I heard some tiny rustling (which was almostcertainlybutnotcertainlyENOUGH my partner moving the blankets in his sleep), my heart started to pound.

The only other fiction that's really scared me in recent years is House of Leaves, which I read while house-sitting in a big house in the woods. If you're reading that book, it's pretty chilling to wake up in the dark and just know that the room you're in is all wrong.