(Art is “The Innocent Abandoned” by ExDolore.)

For today’s spooky reading recommendation list, check out “Five Haunted House Books Written By Women” by Lisa Kröger and Melanie R. Anderson for Tor.com. 

Here is an eerie snippet from one of the novels in the list, The Graveyard Apartment by Mariko Koike (U.S. edition 2016).

It’s pretty close to perfect, Misao thought. What more could anyone want? Two LDK (real-estate shorthand for two bedrooms, living room, dining area, and kitchen); nearly a thousand square feet, including the balcony; a building that was only eight months old; full-time resident managers, right on the premises. For a family in search of a wholesome, peaceful life, it was really quite ideal. Not bothering with a tablecloth, Misao laid out two coffee cups on the bare dining table, along with Tamao’s mug, which was adorned with a picture of a cartoon bear. When she happened to glance toward the balcony, a fleeting wave of misgivings about the location washed over her. Shaking it off, she made a conscious effort to focus on the positives. Beyond the sliding-glass doors, the verdant-smelling March air was whipping around, and there were no buildings nearby to obstruct her field of vision. If only the sublime greenery belonged to a park, and not a graveyard …

Misao gave her head a quick, purposeful toss, as if to banish such futile thoughts, then laughed out loud. There she went again, fretting about minor drawbacks and useless hypotheticals. As if she had time to waste on that kind of nonsense! Cut it out, she told herself sternly.

The percolating coffee began to fill the room with a delicious aroma. Misao grabbed a frying pan that had just been unpacked a few moments earlier and gave it a quick rinse under the tap. She heated the pan on the stove and added a splash of cooking oil. When the oil began to sizzle, she dropped in three of the eggs she had brought from their previous place—painstakingly packed to make sure they wouldn’t get broken in transit.

As she worked, Misao couldn’t keep her eyes from wandering to the living-room windows. The nearly perfect apartment was partially surrounded, from the south to the west side, by a vast graveyard that belonged to an ancient Buddhist temple. To the north were some uninhabited houses, long since fallen into ruin and engulfed in weeds, while on the east side there was a patch of vacant land. Beyond that empty field the smokestack of a crematorium was clearly visible, and from time to time the tall, cylindrical brick chimney would belch out a billow of thick black smoke. Depending on which way the wind was blowing, it wasn’t inconceivable that some of that mortal smoke might waft in through the apartment’s open windows from time to time.

A longer excerpt is available online from Macmillan here.

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