17 new SFF books to get nice and cozy with this September

The Widow of Pale Harbor – Hester Fox

From the author of The Witch of Willow Hall comes another spooky historical tale that sounds just perfect for the Fall.

In The Widow of Pale Harbor, a man named Gabriel moves to Pale Harbor, Massachusetts in the mid-1800s, hoping to outrun his grief over his wife’s death. However, weird things are happening in his new town, and most of them seem to revolve around the novel’s titular widow, a woman by the name of Sophronia Carver, who never leaves her home. Is she a murderer? Is she a witch? The gothic romance is a mystery with plenty of Edgar Allen Poe elements, as both characters struggle to save themselves and the town.

The official synopsis certainly sounds creepy enough.

"Maine, 1846. Gabriel Stone is desperate to escape the ghosts that haunt him in Massachusetts after his wife’s death, so he moves to Maine, taking a position as a minister in the remote village of Pale Harbor. But not all is as it seems in the sleepy town. Strange, unsettling things have been happening, and the townspeople claim that only one person can be responsible: Sophronia Carver, a reclusive widow who lives with a spinster maid in the eerie Castle Carver. Sophronia must be a witch, and she almost certainly killed her husband. As the incidents escalate, one thing becomes clear: they are the work of a twisted person inspired by the wildly popular stories of Mr. Edgar Allan Poe. And Gabriel must find answers, or Pale Harbor will suffer a fate worthy of Poe’s darkest tales"

The Widow of Pale Harbor is available on September 17.