Hello and a very warm welcome to damppebbles. It’s Tuesday which means it’s time for this week’s Top Ten Tuesday post. I’ve decided to take part in That Artsy Reader Girl’s Top Ten Tuesday meme to mix things up a little here at damppebbles. Add a little bit of variety to our bookish weeks.

The meme was originally created by The Broke and the Bookish but has lived with Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl since January 2018. It was created to encompass a love of books, of lists and to bring readers together. If you would also like to take part then you’re very welcome: the more, the merrier. Just make sure you link back to Jana’s post every week. If you don’t have a blog, then no problem, just add your list to the comments below.

This week’s theme is Books on My Autumn 2026 To-Read List. A nice, easy list to compile this week. My reading tends to be scheduled months in advance so this list has already written itself. Aided and abetted by a NetGalley addiction I don’t think I will ever have under control…

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1. The House That Eats the Dead by Max Doty
The new house is a fresh start for Claire and her family. It’s a move towards the quiet suburban life she has craved since her turbulent childhood; a step up the corporate ladder for her husband, Tom; and a safe haven for their two children.

Yet, as they unpack their boxes, she senses something is wrong . . .

Fresh flowers dry up, store-bought eggs are inexplicably hollow and her daughter’s favourite toy disappears. Claire soon confronts a series of impossible truths: the house is hungry. It’s devouring anything that was once alive. And only Claire and Tom, the owners of the house, will remember that this ‘food’ ever existed.

When Claire exploits the house’s power in a moment of weakness, she and the house forge a fragile bond. But as its hunger intensifies and Claire starts to lose control, she fears who else might be drawn to her home – and what sinister appetites they’ll bring.

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2. The Blackbird Conspiracy by Tariq Ashkanani
A dead man’s secret. A government that kills to keep it. And a PI who won’t let go.

When PI Callie Munro finds her tech specialist murdered inside his fortress-like Edinburgh flat, she knows the killing wasn’t random. He let his killer in.

What he left behind is far more dangerous: surveillance footage of a hit-and-run that official records insist never happened. As Callie digs deeper, witnesses begin to vanish. She suspects that a covert government operation is monitoring civilians and silencing anyone who gets too close.

With police stonewalled and a hunter closing in, Callie has no one to trust but herself. And as the conspiracy tightens around her, questions about her own past resurface—questions she has spent a lifetime trying to bury.

It’s a simple equation. Expose the conspiracy…or disappear with it.

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3. They Say a Girl Died Here by Sarah Pinborough
IN THIS TOWN, EVERYONE KNOWS EVERYONE. BUT SOMEBODY KNOWS MORE THAN THEY THINK…

Anna Maybourne dropped out of university to move to the farming town of Harper’s Creek with her mother, sister and grandmother. They don’t talk about why.

They hoped being back home might help Grandma’s dementia. But it only descends deeper – while Anna becomes obsessed with the murder of two local girls, exactly three years apart. The case was closed, but as the next three-year anniversary looms, the town prays, worries, and waits.

But Anna believes that the killer is watching – and that Grandma somehow knows more than she should. They say both are, in their own ways, mad. Because when Grandma speaks, only Anna understands that instead of being over, the mystery seems like it’s starting again…

A murder mystery unlike any other: full of secrets, suspense, and a shocking twist that could only come from the mind of Sarah Pinborough…

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4. Pictures of You by Josh Malerman
A woman becomes the unknowing subject of an artist’s dangerous work in this intense Hitchcockian horror from Josh Malerman, the New York Times bestselling author of Incidents Around the House.

After a magical night out on the town with her fiancée Jack, Emily wakes alone in a huge bed situated in a beautiful, well-lit room. But the pink ceiling, the mauve walls, and the deep, dark corners are nothing like the hotel she and Jack rented. More worrisome yet: Emily has no memory of this place from the night before.

A woman’s voice directs her to remain in bed. And beyond the end of the bed, a picture frame upon an easel – a frame with no canvas, no painting, no art. Only . . . there is the silhouette of a person Emily does not recognize. A person emanating demand, danger, evil. And the way the woman talks . . . She’s acting as if Emily herself is the painting. The still life. The art.

Emily is as confused as she is scared. But it’s immediately clear that she is trapped – and that Jack’s life is on the line along with her own.

The clock is ticking . . .
For Emily.
For Jack.
For being forever trapped.

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5. Serenity Falls by C.J. Tudor
Welcome to Serenity Falls – the most idyllic, and safest, town in the US – a place to grow up, grow your family and grow old together. For Dan and his daughter, Sadie, it’s the perfect relocation option. A fresh start, thousands of miles from their troubled past in the UK.

But their idyll is shattered when they find a dead body in the swimming pool of their new house – a house Dan’s late mother kept secret from him all his life.

It’s just the start of a series of disturbing discoveries. Abandoned houses where people have seemingly just upped and left. The strange woman Sadie sees around town putting up ‘missing’ posters for a child who drowned almost thirty years ago. An ice cream van that drives around at night making sure residents are asleep…

As plans gear up to celebrate Serenity Falls’ fiftieth anniversary, something is stirring beneath the surface of the blissful façade. Is Serenity Falls really the perfect town or is it founded on something far darker? And is someone so desperate to keep its secrets that they’d resort to anything to preserve them?

Welcome to Serenity Falls.
Once you’re here, you’re here to stay.

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6. This Movie Doesn’t End the Way We Want by Hailey Piper
A woman, haunted by the disappearance of her sister and best friend thirty years ago uncovers the terrifying urban legend behind the last film they watched together, in this chilling riff on the cursed film subgenre by the Bram Stoker award-winning author of Queen of Teeth.

In November 1994, three girls visit their local movie theater to see an obscure film. Only one of them is ever seen again.

Thirty years later, Val McQueen has never forgotten the day she lost her little sister and best friend, but she’s closed the curtain on it, certain she’s moved on despite her parents’ resentment and hounding by true crime enthusiasts.

That is until a stranger’s murder brings it all screaming back—a terror she’s tried to tell herself is only a movie. Enlisting the help of cinephile and former classmate Roxie de la Fontaine to find the film, Val soon realizes that hers is not the only pursuit. Someone, or something involved with the movie is on the hunt, too…

… For the girl who got away all those years ago.

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7. Do You See What I See? by Peter Swanson
Welcome to Christmas at Grey Gables, where everyone’s a suspect.

Struggling mystery writer Nicholas Child is commissioned to help another writer finish the overdue follow up to his breakout bestseller.

Travelling to Grey Gables, the writer’s Cape Cod home, in the week before Christmas, he discovers a house full of secrets, and a cast of very suspicious guests.

When two shocking deaths occur, Nicholas tries to write his account of what happened, and a perfectly fiendish puzzle starts to emerge.

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8. Night of Madness by Ryan Douglass
Mara is a horror buff whose only fond memories of her dad are bonding over movies by Jack Stanley—the producer of the eighties. Stanley’s campy slasher movies may have kept Mara’s fraught parental relationship on life support and gained a cult following, but the man himself has faded from the public eye…until he announces a contest centered around Asylum, his most terrifying film. Five teen influencers will be invited to spend the night on the fully constructed set; whoever sticks it out until morning wins a hundred thousand dollars.

Stuck in a dead-end job, Mara seriously needs that cash. She may not be a famous influencer, but there has to be a way to manufacture an online presence that will capture Stanley’s attention. With the help of her brother and best friend, Mara finds some creative solutions to her dilemma and lands herself onto the roster of the lucky chosen few by way of her engaging authenticity.

When Mara and the other contestants arrive on set, it’s a horror fan’s dream being immersed in the asylum setting, but as the night wears on, they realize the danger is more than movie magic… They’re not there to win or lose but to live or die. As Mara fights to survive, she discovers an inner ruthlessness she didn’t know she had. Just how far will she go to see the sunrise—and will she still recognize herself by the end?

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9. The Thicket by Noelle W. Ihli
Everyone will hear you scream. No one will listen.

Norah can’t stop thinking about the night her brother died.

She was supposed to stay with him at the Halloween carnival. He’d begged her to stay. But they fought and Norah left him alone in the woods. That was before she realized there was a real killer lurking among the costumes and macabre props.

When the carnival reopens just weeks later amid media controversy, Norah decides to retrace her brother’s last steps in a desperate attempt to unravel what really happened that night. But the woods hold more than just traumatic memories.

Before long, Norah begins to suspect that the killer’s choice of hunting ground was no coincidence – and that this nightmare is far from over.

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10. Barb Jacobs Just Won’t Die by Tanya Pell
A serial killer? She’s SO over it.

Barbra Jacobs is exhausted after twenty years playing the ‘final girl’, the only one that survives till the end of the movie. She’s sick of creepy guys at backwater horror conventions asking her to sign photos of her twenty-year-old self in underwear. She’s decided this is her last one.

She thinks her day can’t get any worse when she finds a woman with her throat slit in the bathroom. And now this deranged killer is stalking Barb and picking off her former castmates one by one . . .

She’s sick and tired of playing the victim. If she’s going to live, Barb must give the final-girl performance of her life.

Because this time, there’s no one coming to save her.

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For anyone keeping an eye on publication dates, before you say anything, I know… I know a lot of these books have recently been published and yes, I’m only just getting round to reading them (blame that NetGalley addiction and having very little down time over the summer). What’s on your autumn TBR? Have you read any of these books? Planning on reading any? Are you taking part in Top Ten Tuesday this week? Let me know in the comments.

So there we have it! If you fancy joining in next week then head on over to That Artsy Reader Girl’s blog to find out what the next theme is!