R.I.P. VIII Challenge

You may have noticed the new image on my sidebar - that's because I'm participating in a reading challenge called R.eaders I.mbibing P.eril which is hosted by Stainless Steel Droppings. It's all about spending September and October reading dark books - horror, mysteries, thriller, anything along those lines. I'm participating in Peril the First, which is to read four such books in the two months. This shouldn't be hard for me as I do love those sorts of books the best.

I've already planned to read The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins this fall, as well as the new Stephen King book Doctor Sleep. Perhaps this would also be a good time to finally read 14 by Peter Clines, which has been on my to read list for a while. Another one lurking on my to read list is a short novel called Your House Is on Fire, Your Children All Gone by Stefan Kiesbye. It doesn't have very good ratings on Goodreads, but it sounds very intriguing to me. (And some of my favorite books aren't very popular, so those ratings aren't necessarily a good indicator of what I'd like.)

But I think I'm going to start with When Nights Were Cold by Susanna Jones, one of the books I ordered from the UK a while back because it's not available here in the US. I remembered it as a story about a woman ahead of her time, who went an arctic exploration in a time when women's lives were mostly confined to the domestic sphere. Upon reading the description again, however, there is much more to this story - something terrible happened on that expedition and our heroine must face up to it years later. What I thought was a just a historical novel is in fact a psychological thriller. Now I'm even more eager to read it.

Since I haven't participated before, I don't know if there are contests or prizes or anything like that. I'm just looking at this as extra incentive to catch up on my horror/mystery/thriller reading.