The Most Wonderful Time of the Year!!

No....it's not the fact that school started. And it's not because the NFL season is just around the corner. Mind you, these are both valid answers. But today, the most wonderful time of year means the start of the RIP IV Challenge brought to you by Carl, from Stainless Steel Droppings!! The Readers Imbibing Peril Challenge is my very favorite challenge across the blogosphere. It's a time to give in to fear. The leaves are going to be changing soon, there will be a little nip in the air. Halloween is just around the corner, and there will nights filled with ghouls and goblins. The eerie and the creepy are set to make their way into our lives for a short period. It is a time that I don't have to feel guilty for imbibing in my true pleasure of horror and the dark elements that surround it. And I, for one, am ridiculously excited about it!! I've been waiting for weeks for this announcement. I've even been stockpiling books to be used for this challenge. And today it is here!

As always, Carl has set up this wonderful challenge to have multiple perils to choose from:



Peril the First:
Read Four books of any length, from any subgenre of scary stories that you choose.

Peril the Second:
Read Two books of any length, from any subgenre of scary stories that you choose.

Peril the Third:
Read One book of any length, from any of the subgenres listed earlier in the post.



More than any other time of the year, R.I.P. season brings out my desire to explore the short story genre. We will again do Short Story Sundays, for those of you who read R.I.P. related short stories any time during the week and want to write about them. I know I have Lovecraft, Poe, and Angela Carter waiting in the wings for my short story reading.

As always, this challenge runs from September 1st until October 31st. I know I will be participating in the Peril the first....hopefully multiple times!! I read more books for the RIP III last year than I did any other challenge. Do you need a set reading list? Of course not. But here is the pool of books I will be drawing my reading from this year:

• The Rising by Brian Keene
• You are so Undead to Me by Stacy Jay
• 13 Bullets by David Wellingham
• Feast of Fools by Rachel Caine
• Baltimore,: Or, The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire by Mike Mignola and Christopher Golden
• The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan
• Four and Twenty Blackbirds by Cherie Priest
• Castaways by Brian Keene
• The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
• Infected by Scott Sigler
• Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid: The Book of Scary Urban Legends by Jan Brunvand
• Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill
• Nocturnes by John Connelly (for the Short Story Peril)
• Grave Peril by Jim Butcher (Dresden Files, Book 3)
• Embrace the Night by Karen Chance (Cassandra Palmer, Book 3)
• Iron Kissed by Patricia Briggs (Mercy Thompson, Book 3)

And this year, I may have to delve into a re-read of my very favorite scary book: The Stand by Stephen King.

I can't wait to see how many of these books I can actually fit in this year!! Now, dear readers, you should join us on this eerie and creepy journey. Come on: you know you want to!!