Carl’s R.I.P. Challenge ended yesterday and I completed it, finishing four books for Peril the First.

I picked a long list to choose from and read two books from my original list and added two more. The four books I read are (click on the title to read my review):

• The House on the Strand by Daphne Du Maurier 
• The Gravedigger’s Daughter by Joyce Carol Oates
• Chocky by John Wyndham
• Tales of Terror by R L Stevenson

My favourite book has to be The Gravedigger’s Daughter.

They’re all very different books and vary in the amount of “peril” they contain. None of them are scary. Chocky has a definite supernatural element; the others are full of suspense. There’s a fair amount of horror in The Gravediggger’s Daughter ; The House on the Strand is dark fantasy; and Tales of Terror are suitably gothic and dark.

I didn’t get to the other books on my list during the Challenge, but they are all books I hope to read before long:

• The Turn of the Screw by Henry James – I’™ve been meaning to read this for ages.
• The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly – apparently creepy and disturbing.
• The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeir – a mystery surrounding the afterlife.
• The Collector by John Fowles – haunting and darkly melancholic.
• The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks – macbre and bizarre.
• Not Dead Enough by Peter James – murder and deception.