Autumn Reading List: Deals with the Devil
19 books about making ill-advised deals with various devils and demons.
I really wanted to title this “I can make a deal with the devil because my dick’s bigger.” because it’s been stuck in my head, but I wasn’t sure if that would get me dinged in the algorithm or not.
Anywho, I was listening to The Devil Went Down to Georgia the other day (seriously nothing gets me more hyped up than hearing “I told you once you SONOFABITCH I’m the best there’s ever been.”)
This, plus this tweet that I came across, got me thinking about books revolving around deals with the devil or demons.
So here are several books that include themes of making deals with various devils (some are loose interpretations, but I feel that they still fit the overall vibe and intention).
The Devil Three Times by Rickey Fayne
Yetunde awakens aboard a slave ship en route to the United States with the spirit of her dead sister as her only companion. Desperate to survive the hell that awaits her at their destination, Yetunde finds help in an unexpected form—the Devil himself. The Devil, seeking a way to reenter the pearly gates of heaven, decides to prove himself to an indifferent God by protecting Yetunde and granting her a piece of his supernatural power. In return, Yetunde makes an incredible sacrifice.
Their bargain extends far beyond Yetunde’s mortal lifespan. Over the next 175 years, the Devil visits Yetunde’s descendants in their darkest hour of need: Lucille, a conjure woman; Asa, who passes for white; Louis and Virgil, who risk becoming a twentieth-century Cain and Abel; Cassandra, who speaks to the dead; James, who struggles to make sense of the past while fighting to keep his family together; and many others. The Devil offers each of them his own version of salvation, all the while can he save himself, too?
Katabasis by R.F. Kuang
Alice Law has only ever had one goal: to become one of the brightest minds in the field of Magick. She has sacrificed everything to make that a reality—her pride, her health, her love life, and most definitely her sanity. All to work with Professor Jacob Grimes at Cambridge, the greatest magician in the world—that is, until he dies in a magical accident that could possibly be her fault.
Grimes is now in Hell, and she’s going in after him. Because his recommendation could hold her very future in his now incorporeal hands, and even death is not going to stop the pursuit of her dreams. Nor will the fact that her rival, Peter Murdoch, has come to the same conclusion.
As Many Souls as Stars by Natasha Siegel
Releasing November 25th
Cybil Harding is a First Daughter. Cursed to bring disaster to those around her, she is trapped in a house with a mother paralyzed by grief and a father willing to sacrifice everything in pursuit of magic.
Miriam Richter is a creature of shadow. Forged by the dark arts many years ago, she is doomed to exist for eternity and destined to be alone—killing mortals and consuming their souls for sustenance. Everything changes when she meets Cybil, whose soul shines with a light so bright, she must claim it for herself. She offers a bargain: she will grant Cybil reincarnation in exchange for her soul.
Thus begins a dance across centuries as Miriam seeks Cybil in every lifetime to claim her prize. Cybil isn’t inclined to play by the rules, but when it becomes clear that Miriam holds the key to breaking her family curse, Cybil finds that—for the first time in her many lives—she might have the upper hand. As they circle each other, drawn together inescapably as light and dark, the bond forged between them grows stronger. In their battle for dominance, only one of them can win—but perhaps they can’t survive without each other.
Tantrum by Rachel Eve Moulton
Thea’s third pregnancy was her easiest. She wasn’t consumed with anxiety about the baby. She wasn’t convinced it was going to be born green, or have a third eye, or have tentacles sprouting from its torso. Thea was fine. Her baby would be fine.
But when the nurses handed Lucia to her, Thea just knew. Her baby girl was a monster. Not only was Lucia born with a full set of teeth and a devilish glint in her eye, but she’s always hungry. Indiscriminately so. One day Lucia pointed at her baby brother, looked Thea dead in the eye and said, “I eat.”
Thea doesn’t know whether to be terrified or proud of her rapacious baby girl. And as Lucia starts growing faster and talking more, dark memories bubble to the surface--flashes from Thea’s childhood that won’t release their hooks from her heart. Lucia wants to eat the world. Thea might just let her.
Play Nice by Rachel Harrison
Clio leads a picture-perfect life as an influencer, but beneath the glossy veneer she harbors a not-so glamorous secret: she grew up in a haunted house. Well, not haunted. Possessed. After Clio’s parent’s messy divorce, her mother, Alex, moved Clio and her sisters into a house occupied by a demon. Or so Alex claimed. That’s not what Clio’s sisters remember or what the courts determined when they stripped Alex of custody after she went off the deep end. But Alex was insistent; she even wrote a book about her experience in the house.
After Alex’s sudden death, the supposedly possessed house passes to Clio and her sisters. Where her sisters see childhood trauma, Clio sees an opportunity for house flipping content. Only, as the home makeover process begins, Clio discovers there might be some truth to her mother’s claims. As memories resurface and Clio finally reads her mother’s book, the presence in the house becomes more real, and more sinister, revealing ugly truths that threaten to shake Clio’s beautiful life to its very foundation.
Fiend by Alma Katsu
The Berisha family runs one of the largest import-export companies in the world, and they’ve always been lucky. Their rivals suffer strokes. Inconvenient buildings catch on fire. Earthquakes swallow up manufacturing plants, destroying harmful evidence. Things always seem to work out for the Berishas. They’re blessed.
At least that is what Zef, the patriarch, has always told his three children. And each of them knows their place in the family—Dardan, as the only male heir, must prepare to take over as keeper of the Berisha secrets, Maris’s most powerful contribution, much to her dismay, will be to marry strategically, and Nora’s job, as the youngest, is to just stay out of the way. But when things stop going as planned, and the family blessing starts looking more like a curse, the Berishas begin to splinter, each hatching their own secret scheme. They didn’t get to be one of the richest families in the world without spilling a little blood, but this time, it might be their own.
The Rush by Beth Lewis
Canada, 1898. The Gold Rush is on in the frozen wilderness of the Yukon. Fortunes are made as quickly as they’re lost, and Dawson City has become a lawless settlement.
In its midst, three women are trying to find their place on the edge of civilization. Journalist Kate has travelled hundreds of miles after receiving a letter from her sister warning that her husband means to kill her. Martha’s hotel and livelihood are under threat from the local strongman, who is set on buying up the town. And down by the river, where gold shimmers from between the rocks, Ellen feels her future slip away as her husband fails to find the fortune they risked so much to seek.
When a woman is found murdered, Kate, Martha and Ellen find their lives, fates and fortunes intertwined. But to unmask her killer, they must navigate a desperate land run by dangerous men who will do anything for a glimpse of gold.
This is a bit of a loose interpretation of the theme, but I think that becoming obsessed with wealth, fame, etc. typically goes hand in hand with making deals with the devil in a sense.
House of Cotton by Monica Brashears
Nineteen years old, broke, and effectively an orphan, Magnolia doesn’t have much to look forward to. She feels stuck and haunted: by her overdrawn bank account, by her predatory landlord, by the ghost of her late grandmother Mama Brown.
One night while working at her dead-end gas station job, a mysterious, slick stranger named Cotton walks in and offers to turn Magnolia’s luck around. He offers her a lucrative “modeling” job at his family’s funeral home. Magnolia accepts. But despite things looking up, Magnolia’s problems fatten along with her wallet. When Cotton’s requests become increasingly weird, Magnolia discovers there’s a lot more at stake than just her rent.
Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez
A young father and son set out on a road trip, devastated by the death of the wife and mother they both loved. United in grief, the pair travel to her ancestral home, where they must confront the terrifying legacy she has bequeathed: a family called the Order that commits unspeakable acts in search of immortality.
For Gaspar, the son, this maniacal cult is his destiny. As the Order tries to pull him into their evil, he and his father take flight, attempting to outrun a powerful clan that will do anything to ensure its own survival. But how far will Gaspar’s father go to protect his child? And can anyone escape their fate?
Monstrilio by Gerardo Sámano Córdova
Grieving mother Magos cuts out a piece of her deceased eleven-year-old son Santiago’s lung. Acting on fierce maternal instinct and the dubious logic of an old folktale, she nurtures the lung until it gains sentience, growing into the carnivorous little Monstrilio she keeps hidden within the walls of her family’s decaying Mexico City estate. Eventually, Monstrilio begins to resemble the Santiago he once was, but his innate impulses—though curbed by his biological and chosen family’s communal care—threaten to destroy this fragile second chance at life.
The Bog Wife by Kay Chronister
Since time immemorial, the Haddesley family has tended the cranberry bog. In exchange, the bog sustains them. The staunch seasons of their lives are governed by a strict covenant that is renewed each generation with the ritual sacrifice of their patriarch, and in return, the bog produces a “bog-wife.” Brought to life from vegetation, this woman is meant to carry on the family line. But when the bog fails—or refuses—to honor the bargain, the Haddesleys, a group of discordant siblings still grieving the mother who mysteriously disappeared years earlier, face an unknown future.
Middle child Wenna, summoned back to the dilapidated family manor just as her marriage is collapsing, believes the Haddesleys must abandon their patrimony. Her siblings are not so easily persuaded. Eldest daughter Eda, de facto head of the household, seeks to salvage the compact by desecrating it. Younger son Percy retreats into the wilderness in a dangerous bid to summon his own bog-wife. And as youngest daughter Nora takes desperate measures to keep her warring siblings together, fledgling patriarch Charlie uncovers a disturbing secret that casts doubt over everything the family has ever believed about itself.
The Woods All Black by Lee Mandelo
Leslie Bruin is assigned to the backwoods township of Spar Creek by the Frontier Nursing Service, under its usual mandate: vaccinate the flock, birth babies, and weather the judgements of churchy locals who look at him and see a failed woman. Forged in the fires of the Western Front and reborn in the cafes of Paris, Leslie believes he can handle whatever is thrown at him—but Spar Creek holds a darkness beyond his nightmares.
Something ugly festers within the local congregation, and its malice has focused on a young person they insist is an unruly tomboy who must be brought to heel. Violence is bubbling when Leslie arrives, ready to spill over, and he’ll have to act fast if he intends to be of use. But the hills enfolding Spar Creek have a mind of their own, and the woods are haunted in ways Leslie does not understand.
The Captive by Kit Burgoyne
For months, Luke and his underground revolutionary group have been planning their biggest operation yet: kidnapping 23-year-old Adeline Woolsaw. They don’t want a ransom—they want to expose the Woolsaw Group, the source of Adeline’s parents’ enormous wealth, a vast yet largely anonymous company that runs everything from military bases and mental hospitals to commuter trains, call centers, and prisons.
But the revolutionaries get a shock when they bundle Adeline into their van. She’s about to go into labor. And she may not object to being kidnapped, if it allows her and the baby to escape her despotic parents.
It quickly becomes apparent that this is no ordinary child. He’s capable of setting off deadly weather events and summoning plagues of vermin. And that’s just the beginning. Luke discovers that Adeline’s parents engineered the pregnancy as part of a dark bargain with an ancient evil of nearly limitless power. Now the Woolsaws and their henchmen will stop at nothing to get the infant back, so they can establish an infernal new kingdom on Earth with their grandchild on the throne.
Devil House by John Darnielle
Gage Chandler is descended from kings. That’s what his mother always told him when he was a child. Years later, he is a true crime writer, with one grisly success—and a movie adaptation—to his name, along with a series of subsequent less notable efforts. But now he is being offered the chance for the big break: to move into the house where a pair of briefly notorious murders occurred, apparently the work of disaffected teens during the Satanic Panic of the 1980s. Chandler finds himself in Milpitas, California, a small town whose name rings a bell—his closest childhood friend lived there, once upon a time. He begins his research into the murders with diligence and enthusiasm, but soon the story leads him into a puzzle he never expected—back into his own work and what it means, back to the very core of what he does and who he is.
The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle
Charles Thomas Tester hustles to put food on the table, keep the roof over his father’s head, from Harlem to Flushing Meadows to Red Hook. He knows what magic a suit can cast, the invisibility a guitar case can provide, and the curse written on his skin that attracts the eye of wealthy white folks and their cops. But when he delivers an occult tome to a reclusive sorceress in the heart of Queens, Tom opens a door to a deeper realm of magic and earns the attention of things best left sleeping. A storm that might swallow the world is building in Brooklyn. Will Black Tom live to see it break?
Passing Through a Prairie Country by Dennis E. Staples
For decades, a dark force has terrorized the Languille Lake reservation. Spoken of only in whispers as “the sandman,” he lurks in the Hidden Atlantis Lake Resort and Casino, leeching its patrons’ dreams and preventing the ghosts that linger there from moving on. Fleeing a breakup, Marion Lafournier, a midtwenties Ojibwe, seeks solace in the slot machine’s siren song. Here he falls afoul of the sandman, an encounter he barely escapes through the timely intervention of his cousins Alana and Cherie.
Marion and Alana are members of the Bullhead clan, a family with ties to a sacred past and a fierce determination to ensure their future. Alana, with her sevenfire sight, is the only person to fully understand the danger the sandman poses. Aware of Marion’s occasional ability to navigate the spirit world, she enlists his aid in defeating this wraith. But the power and reach of the sandman go far beyond Alana’s worst fears. Soon she and Marion find themselves in a battle for their lives and for the souls of the reservation’s residents, both the living and the dead.
The Devil and the Dark Water by Stuart Turton
It’s 1634 and Samuel Pipps, the world’s greatest detective, is being transported to Amsterdam to be executed for a crime he may, or may not, have committed. Traveling with him is his loyal bodyguard, Arent Hayes, who is determined to prove his friend innocent.
But no sooner are they out to sea than devilry begins to blight the voyage. A twice-dead leper stalks the decks. Strange symbols appear on the sails. Livestock is slaughtered. And then three passengers are marked for death, including Samuel. Could a demon be responsible for their misfortunes?
With Pipps imprisoned, only Arent can solve a mystery that connects every passenger onboard. A mystery that stretches back into their past and now threatens to sink the ship, killing everybody on board.
Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo
Galaxy “Alex” Stern is the most unlikely member of Yale’s freshman class. Raised in the Los Angeles hinterlands by a hippie mom, Alex dropped out of school early and into a world of shady drug-dealer boyfriends, dead-end jobs, and much, much worse. In fact, by age twenty, she is the sole survivor of a horrific, unsolved multiple homicide. Some might say she’s thrown her life away. But at her hospital bed, Alex is offered a second chance: to attend one of the world’s most prestigious universities on a full ride. What’s the catch, and why her?
Still searching for answers, Alex arrives in New Haven tasked by her mysterious benefactors with monitoring the activities of Yale’s secret societies. Their eight windowless “tombs” are the well-known haunts of the rich and powerful, from high-ranking politicos to Wall Street’s biggest players. But their occult activities are more sinister and more extraordinary than any paranoid imagination might conceive. They tamper with forbidden magic. They raise the dead. And, sometimes, they prey on the living.
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I have Our Share of the Night on my TBR stack, and I can't wait to get my hands on Play Nice when it comes out in paperback-- I'm reading Cackle right now and utterly OBSESSED. I also loved her last book So Thirsty.
I instantly added The Devil Three Times by Rickey Fayne to my TBR. This entire premise sounds fascinating to me, and is also making me think of Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi? Maybe it's the multigenerational family element and the subject matter.
I read The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden in August, and I think it would work on this list as well. It's set in WWI, and there is a character who I'm convinced is meant to be the devil himself.