Trinkets of Terror: A Tale of the Raven and Its Collection of Tarnished Treasures
Raven Tomes
Virefire Publishing (May 5, 2026)
Reviewed by Nora B. Peevy

 In Celtic and Native American lore, ravens have the reputation of being smart, beguiling, and oftentimes tricksters, but in Trinkets of Terror: A Tale of the Raven and Its Collection of Tarnished Treasures, Raven takes on another roll-protection of her people. In this collection of thirteen tales, Raven watches human folly again and again. She doesn’t understand why humans have to get their hands on anything the shiny or mysterious and because of her frustration with their behavior, she finds herself getting into some wild capers, which nearly take her life a time or two. But then again… she’s Raven, the magical bird, so would she really die? She tries incessantly to help the humans in the book, but her warnings fall on death ears, so after the dust has settled, she carries trinkets to her nest, reminders of what has befallen certain people to keep others from falling into a similar fate.

What I adored about this book was it was a light horror book like a set of camping tales. It was just enough terror to keep you interested, but not so much that you felt weighed down by the storytelling. The creative imagery at each of the chapters, done in monochromatic tones of blue were stunning and only leant to the book’s appeal. And then there was the twisting, fallen feather at the end of each page, which tied the entire book together for me. The feather was so graceful and calming to look at. It was your protector throughout the book. You knew you were safe and nothing bad would happen as long as those feathers were around. I think my favorite story was the one where Raven bought a timepiece at a secondhand store and her reflection started acting oddly without her. That was creepy.

These stories would be wonderful to share with your children at a campsite or after dinner curled up on the couch or before bed. If you are looking for more Raven stories, I suggest looking up some of the Native American trickster stories for children to get better acquainted with like How Raven Stole the Sun by Maria Williams, Raven: A Trickster Tale from the Pacific Northwest: A Caldecott Honor Award Winner by Gerald McDermott, or A Raven and Clever Elephant: Bedtime stories for kids by Okongor Ndifon. Raven Tomes’s book fits well within this circle of mythology. Her use of whimsy and wit served her well in this book and I would love to see this turned into an entire series of a menagerie of animals.

Crawl Space
Steve Toase

Steve Toase’s Crawl Space is a tightly wound novella of weird horror that takes an obscure real-world technology—abandoned vacuum postal systems—and twists it into something profoundly unsettling. Set in a small German city, the story follows Rachael and Ben, investigators working for the mysterious Durchsickern Institute, as they methodically record and explore disused pneumatic tube networks. What begins as a professional assignment in dusty cellars and forgotten infrastructure soon reveals an impossible space whose very existence defies measurement and logic.

Toase excels at grounding the uncanny in the mundane. The early sections are deliberately restrained, filled with the tactile details of rubble, old documents, and mechanical remnants. This slow accumulation of atmosphere makes the eventual discovery of the Crawl Space all the more disorienting. Once entered, the novella shifts into more visceral territory, where squirming, organic intrusions and impossible geometries create a sense of bodily and spatial violation. The horror feels organic rather than imposed, growing naturally from the characters’ curiosity and the hidden structures beneath the city.

Rachael and Ben are drawn with quiet competence; they are flawed people but their professional partnership provides a solid anchor before the personal stakes escalate. Herr Bettelmein, the enigmatic figure commissioning their work, adds a layer of institutional unease without descending into cartoonish villainy. Toase keeps the focus on the protagonists’ growing disquiet and the practical problems of navigating (and surviving) a space that should not exist.

The novella’s strength lies in its economy. At novella length, every detail serves the mounting tension, and Toase resists the temptation to over-explain the Crawl Space’s origins or nature. The result is a story that lingers in the mind like an itch beneath the skin: uncomfortable, intriguing, and resistant to easy resolution. Themes of hidden infrastructure, the limits of measurement and documentation, and the dangers of venturing into worlds behind the visible one are handled with subtlety rather than over-long exposition.

While some readers may wish for slightly more emotional depth, the novella’s focus on atmosphere and conceptual unease serves its weird-horror aims well. Crawl Space is a confident, distinctive piece of short-form horror that rewards close attention and leaves a lingering sense of architectural and corporeal wrongness. Fans of restrained cosmic or body horror with a strong sense of place will find much to admire in Toase’s excavation of the spaces we think we know.

Body Shocks: Extreme Tales of Horror
Ellen Datlow (ed.)
Tachyon Publications (October 19, 2021)
Reviewed by Nora B. Peevy

If the illustrated cover of an eye, surrounded by porcupine spines and nerves and arterial branches doesn’t scream body horror, I don’t know what does. This book is not only a creepy good read, but the illustrations inside are so meticulous and gorgeous, it elevates this book to high art. Ellen Datlow picked out a great lineup with some of the best names in the business to terrorize me before I slept each night like Christopher Fowler, Priya Sharma, Tanarive Due, R.C. Matheson, Cody Goodfellow, and Gemma Files, just to name a few. This book is a chunker. It is not an anthology I was able to zip through in one night, nor did I want to do so. The detail in each story was varied and rich like a finely woven tapestry and no two tales were the same.

I quivered at Toother by Terry Dowling, as victims had their teeth removed in serial cases dating back decades. I marveled at Christopher Fowler’s The Look and how people will do anything to get into the modeling industry. That you usually only have “the look” for a year and must capitalize on it insistently. But my favorite story was Caitlìn R. Kiernan’s Elegy for a Suicide in which a woman finds a straight razor in a hole of living fungi, which she plunges into and gets extremely sick from. I watched her die on every page in slow motion and her lover wax from being angry at her for not fighting to stay with her to pitying her and wanting her suffering to end. The writing was extremely powerful. All the writing in this collection is strong, which is probably because it’s been handpicked by one of the Queens of Horror who has curated over twenty-five anthologies and knows how to scare her audience with only the blink of an eye.

Don’t blink while you’re reading this collection. You won’t want to miss any of it. It’s one of the best body horror anthologies I’ve come across in a long time. I think it’s perfect for a night of long reading with a good snack before bed. But savor each story slowly, because they are so flavorful and you won’t want to miss anything.

A Crow’s Scream

A Crow’s Scream is the final book of the Wendlelow Mysteries trilogy, and I am sorry that it’s the last one. After reading this one and the previous two, I found myself feeling rather at home in Wendlelow, and not quite ready to leave it yet. The books are so well written that I have a clear picture of exactly what the town looks like and where everything is. Not only that, but Mr. Sheldon was able to accomplish it without paragraphs or pages of information dumps that make me want to rip my hair out and deposit the book in the nearest acid bath. Well done, that man!

Paul Sheldon is the king of folk horror, and the tradition shows in his writing, which includes the old gods roaming the borderlands and ancient, cursed creatures stalking the still and dark places in a town where the veil between worlds is paper-thin. In A Crow’s Scream, we have nine interwoven tales of horror that may be read independently or in order (which I recommend).

Sheldon is also a master of character development and creates characters so real that you will be certain that you have met them somewhere before, and they will stay with you long after you turn the final page. Hell, they may even jump off the page and move in!

In this third book, all the loose ends from the previous two are tied up in a lovely package of resolution, but I can’t tell you too much about it without spoiling things. All I can say is that if you can’t take a vacation (or even if you can), pick up copies of Fireside Horror, Threads of Shadow, and A Crow’s Scream, wait for a rainy week, and spend some quality time in Wendlelow. You won’t have postcards to send, but you will come away with lots of truly unique memories.

(My reviews of Fireside Horror and Threads of Shadow may be found on Hellnotes.com as well, should you care to read them.)

5 out of 5 stars

Who Was That Masked Fan:? A Wrestling Tale
J. Rocky Colavito
Independently published (July 7, 2023)
Reviewed by Nora B. Peevy

“Whether it is rebooted versions of various cinematic monsters, or relying on the presence of real mental derangement makes manifest the dangerous outsider as yet another monster to conquer. These examples represent [albeit superficially] the foundation for the successful union of professional wrestling and horror, a well-situated storytelling and character development strategy to better frame the battle between good and evil and the principals in the battle,” Rocky Colavito wrote in his article, More than Hard Core Death Matches: Pro Wrestling and Horror’s Interdependence published on The Butchered Writers Substack on April 11, 2026.

I wasn’t sure what I was  getting myself into, as I’ve never read any of the horror wrestling genre and am not a fan of the sport at all, but when offered a peek into the world, I admit I was curious to see how this would play out. And I found it delightful! It was a full seventy pages of wrestling action and smack talk with a mysterious character who makes the NEW a better club, The Spirit, and a sweet little boy who dreams of becoming a wrestler in the ring himself one day, Handy Andy. With The Spirit’s help, the club finds their own way back to the spirit of wrestling and Handy Andy finds his way to fame during middle school, which only grows in turn. It’s all backdropped by the ghosts of the greats hovering over the ring in the back and watching the action. And man, was there a lot of action!

Rocky Colavito’s mind is stellar at capturing a wrestling fight on the page. His use of technical terms is above bar but didn’t alienate me as the reader; it only increased my understanding of a sport I knew nothing about. There was no room to breathe while I was reading these action scenes. It became apparent to me that wrestling stories do indeed have their own place in the genre of horror because there is good fighting evil every time. Who comes out on top? I never know until the match is over, but the adrenaline is pumping and the wrestlers are at their  best performance levels and smack talk. If you’re looking for a refreshing book to pick up, you might try Who Was That Masked Fan?: A Wrestling Tale. It just might surprise you and win you over like it did me.