CRP's Blog

Fall is the best time of the year for reading (inarguably, so don’t even try). In celebration of the coziest season, the CRP staff rounded up their favorite fall reads below! If you think we’re missing any, please let us know in the comments.

This might be a cliched answer, but the entire Harry Potter series makes me think of fall. There’s nothing better than a curling up on the couch with a good cup of coffee and having the Hogwarts Express pull into the station on September first. —Jen DePoorter, marketing coordinator

I think it can probably be chalked up to deeply embedded school-year associations, but whenever the fall weather officially blows into town, I always get an itch to read The Great Gatsby. I keep weirdly obsessive records of my reading habits, and it looks like I haven’t revisited it since 2013. Maybe this is the year to break it out again? (Can’t possibly imagine why a novel exploring the moral and spiritual bankruptcy of the extremely wealthy might be relevant right now.) —Allison Felus, production director

The Fall of Freddie the Leaf is a warm, wonderfully wise and strikingly simple story about a leaf named Freddie. How Freddie and his companion leaves change with the passing seasons, finally falling to the ground with winter’s snow, is an inspiring allegory illustrating the delicate balance between life and death. —Tom Galvin, sales manager

We Have Always Lived in the Castle and The Haunting of Hill House, both by Shirley Jackson. The Queen of Creep just can’t be beat. She’s the perfect atmospheric Halloween read. —Leanna Gruhn, senior publicist

I finished The Secret History by Donna Tartt at the tale end of summer (pun intended) and wish that I had waited just a few more weeks for fall, but once I started I couldn’t stop. I read all 559 pages in just a few days. The book has all the ingredients for an ideal fall read: New England college setting; a dash of murder; friendships that corrupt and turn evil; and the whole thing is told as a flashback, and is very nostalgic, which I always feel at this time of year. —Emily Lewis, marketing associate

For me, fall means spooky season, and I love thoughtful thrillers that point out the horror inherent in the mundane. One that fits that category is The Grip of It by Jac Jemc, a spare novel that turns the stresses of homeownership and partnership into an chilling exploration that questions what we really know about who we are and the spaces we live in. Another recent favorite is Helen Phillips’s The Need, a creepy psychological drama about the lengths we go to to protect ourselves and our stories. It also does a great job unpacking the grotesqueries of children and parenthood. —Kara Rota, senior editor

I actually love to pick what books I’m going to read based on the seasons! Two of my favorite fall reads are The Shining and Frankenstein. A few years ago I also read all of the Hannibal Lecter books throughout September and October. This year to kick off my fall reading, I decided to read Blood Echo by Christopher Rice (son of Anne Rice). It’s the second book of a series about a girl who was raised by serial killers. As you can see, my taste in books fits really well with the fall. —Stefani Szenda, marketing associate