Amy H. Sturgis's Blog, page 16

Halloween 2023: 31 Days of Dark Academia, October 13

Dark Academia novel: Summer Sons by Lee Mandelo (2021)

Quote:

“This is where it gets interesting. The second son loves this girl so much he decides to step onto an unholy path. Now the story varies, but in the one my mama told me, he makes a deal. He takes his youngest sister, goes to a crossroad on the property past the witching hour, and he waits until some evil comes to him. He looks that evil square in the face and offers it his sister in return for his wife.”

… “He kills his sister,” Sam guessed.

“Of course he does,” Mr. McCormick said.    

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weirdchristmas:

weirdchristmas:

Halloween 2023: 31 Days of Dark Academia, October 12

Dark Academia novel: Very Bad People by Kit Frick (2022)

Quote:

Tuesday morning, three classrooms have been ghosted. All over campus, there are whispers. It’s happening again. And I heard they make initiates drink blood. And it’s just a stupid hoax. The teachers talk too. I bet I know who is responsible. And at least they’re not defacing school property. And there are proper channels here at Tipton.

Three students have completed their initiation rite. Which leaves seven of us.

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Halloween 2023: 31 Days of Dark Academia, October 11

Dark Academia novel: Shadow of the Lions by Christopher Swann (2017)

Quote:

The two lions crouched on top of their pedestals, frozen in preparation to leap. One was snarling, its stone teeth menacing in the late-afternoon shadows, while the other stared out with disdain at the broad sweep of empty soybean fields that lay just across the state highway, a disdain made all the more pointed because the lion was missing its left eye.

The missing eye was their only major flaw. A myth of swift and terrible justice falling on those who harmed the lions had shielded them further disfigurement over the years. Blackburne legend had it that the student who chiseled out the left eye as a class prank in 1947 died that same week, drowning in the Shenandoah Creek when his canoe tipped over. Since then… the lions were left alone.

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Halloween 2023: 31 Days of Dark Academia, October 10

Dark Academia novel:

My Dearest Darkest by Kayla Cottingham (2022)

From the cover:

You’ll never guess what’s watching in the dark…

Quote:

While all towns have their ghosts, Rainwater’s was special. They sank through its submerged sea caves and slithered up its cliffs. They bounced around its caverns and tunnels like electrical pulses in a brain, echoing memories of footsteps and laughter and screams through the ground and into the towering evergreen trees. The peninsula had a habit of keeping things long after they were gone.

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Halloween 2023: 31 Days of Dark Academia, October 9

Dark Academia novel: The Temple House Vanishing by Rachel Donohue (2020)

Quote:

The cabinet was filled with curious and bizarre items. There was a jar with a dead tarantula in it, a case of butterflies and one with insects, a chain made of teeth; there were stamps, an ivory horn, a photo of a two-headed calf, an old jewelry box, some gemstones, a miniature violin and other jars filled with liquid which was too murky to see what was inside. I chose a skull. It was small, like that of a child. Mr. Lavelle nodded as he handed it to me. And for what was not the first time, I felt like he was a seer and that everything that would come to happen he had already foreseen. I held the skull in my hands. I imagined, for a moment, I could squeeze it and it would shatter.

I have not thought about this for many years, but now I wonder if I should not have chosen the skull. That perhaps if I had just picked a gemstone, things would have been different. I would not have become what I did. But then I remember the way I felt as they both, he and Victoria, looked at me, and I think perhaps not.

It was all inevitable.

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Halloween 2023: 31 Days of Dark Academia, October 8

Dark Academia novel: The Broken Girls by Simone St. James (2018)

Quote:

Written in pencil, the lines of a familiar rhyme looked back up at her: Mary Hand, Mary Hand, dead and buried under land. She’ll say she wants to be your friend. Do not let her in again!

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Halloween 2023: 31 Days of Dark Academia, October 7

Dark Academia novel: The Cloisters by Katy Hays (2022)

Quote:

Death always visited me in August. A slow and delicious month we turned into something swift and brutal. The change, quick as a card trick.

I should have seen it coming. The way the body would be laid out on the library floor, the way the gardens would be torn apart by the search. The way our jealousy, greed, and ambition were waiting to devour us all, like a snake eating its own tail. The ouroboros.  

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Halloween 2023: 31 Days of Dark Academia, October 6

Dark Academia novel: The Honeys by Ryan La Sala (2022)

Quote:

I don’t fear the dark. I know the dark, and it knows me. Within it, I’m safe from the sun’s lovely illusions. I know what I’ve always known: The monsters worth fearing are the ones that are dangerous enough to hide in daylight.

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Halloween 2023: 31 Days of Dark Academia, October 5

Dark Academia novel: Promise Boys by Nick Brooks (2023)

From the cover:

Perfection. Excellence. Discipline. Murder.

Quote:

Sometimes what’s obvious takes a while to see – the person who pulls a trigger doesn’t just disappear into the dark. They are right here among us once we decide we’re ready to question everything we think we know. They’re always closer than you think.

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