Cats Luv Coffee Book Reviews

Review || The Place Where They Buried Your Heart by Christina Henry

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 24 Jan 2026 20:58:00 +0000

Published November 4, 2025 by Berkley

A woman must confront the evil that's been terrorizing her street since she was a child in this gripping haunted house novel from the national bestselling author of The House That Horror Built and Good Girls Don’t Die.

On an otherwise ordinary street in Chicago, there is a house. An abandoned house where, once upon a time, terrible things happened. The children who live on this block are told by their parents to stay away from that house. But of course, children don’t listen. Children think it’s fun to be scared, to dare each other to go inside.

Jessie Campanelli did what many older sisters do and dared her little brother Paul. But unlike all the other kids who went inside that abandoned house, Paul didn’t return. His two friends, Jake and Richie, said that the house ate Paul. Of course adults didn’t believe that. Adults never believe what kids say. They thought someone kidnapped Paul, or otherwise hurt him. They thought Paul had disappeared in a way that was ordinary, explainable.

The disappearance of her little brother broke Jessie’s family apart in ways that would never be repaired. Jessie grew up, had a child of her own, kept living on the same street where the house that ate her brother sat, crouched and waiting. And darkness seemed to spread out from that house, a darkness that was alive—alive and hungry.

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This is horror tucked inside a monster house, with an entire cosmos pulsing just beneath the floorboards. The house is alive in that constant, watching-you way, crowded with impossible voices and layered tragedy. Cosmic horror often feels vast and distant, but here it’s close. It presses in. It’s slow, suffocating, and painfully personal. The universe doesn’t just fail to care. It mocks.

What hit hardest was the found family at the center of it. These characters are bound together by shared damage, survival, and the kind of loyalty that forms after everyone else has already failed you. The house has taken so much from the neighborhood, and they stay behind to bear witness. To keep watch. To carry the guilt that refuses to be outrun.

Bleak, eerie, and still emotionally cutting.

Review || Ghost Station by S.A. Barnes

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 03 Jan 2026 23:19:00 +0000

Published April 9, 2024 by Tor Nightfire

A crew must try to survive on an ancient, abandoned planet in the latest space horror novel from S.A. Barnes, acclaimed author of Dead Silence.

Space exploration can be lonely and isolating.

Psychologist Dr. Ophelia Bray has dedicated her life to the study and prevention of ERS—a space-based condition most famous for a case that resulted in the brutal murders of twenty-nine people. When she's assigned to a small exploration crew, she's eager to make a difference. But as they begin to establish residency on an abandoned planet, it becomes clear that crew is hiding something.

While Ophelia focuses on her new role, her crewmates are far more interested in investigating the eerie, ancient planet and unraveling the mystery behind the previous colonizer's hasty departure than opening up to her.

That is, until their pilot is discovered gruesomely murdered. Is this Ophelia’s worst nightmare starting—a wave of violence and mental deterioration from ERS? Or is it something more sinister?

Terrified that history will repeat itself, Ophelia and the crew must work together to figure out what’s happening. But trust is hard to come by…and the crew isn’t the only one keeping secrets.

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S.A. Barnes catapulted herself onto my must-read list with Dead Silence in 2022. Space horror isn't something I typically pick up, but I adored her take on an abandoned ghost ship in space. Choosing to read Ghost Station was, therefore, a complete no-brainer for me.

Set on a remote research outpost far from Earth, Ghost Station follows a team sent to investigate an abandoned space station with a dark history. Psychologist Dr. Ophelia Bray is sent along with them to ensure everyone remains in a good mental state while away. Of course, that makes her the outsider. The crew, who have been on previous missions together, is tense, secretive, and clearly hiding something from Ophelia.

Ghost Station delivers Barnes' blend of sci-fi horror stout with atmospheric dread, deep psychological apprehension, and a feeling of aloneness. The tension that Barnes creates in the station and between the characters is prominent. You feel the seclusion, the anxiety, the creeping sense that something is very wrong, even as you still aren't sure what.

Here's where it went wrong for me. There's a lot of telling, not showing, in this book. Granted, there's a lot of backstory to get through, but so much of it is given to us in the form of Ophelia's inner monologue. Ophelia is deeply unreliable with herself while trying to portray herself to her team as a reliable psychologist. She second-guesses every sensation, every memory, every emotional reaction. While I understand the results, it was exhausting to read. I wanted more horror, less emotional vacillation.

While Ghost Station didn’t absolutely blow me away, it definitely kept me interested in some of the mysteries and had some really creepy moments. If you’re into slow-burn sci-fi horror with great atmosphere and unreliable characters, it's worth a read. It just didn't quite make it into the territory of Dead Silence.

26 Books for 2026

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 28 Dec 2025 04:07:00 +0000

Horror never really sleeps. It waits, it watches, and every new year it finds fresh ways to crawl back into our lives.

Horror in 2026 is shaping up to be a feast of unease, monsters both intimate and enormous, and stories that crawl under your skin. These are books that lean into dread, obsession, grief, and the kind of fear that lingers long after the last page. Not just monsters in the dark, but the slow realization that the dark has been there the whole time, waiting.

This list gathers 26 of my most anticipated horror books arriving in 2026 that promise to unsettle and occasionally break your heart. Whether you crave haunted houses, cosmic weirdness, slashers with teeth, or stories that blur the line between fear and heartbreak, 2026 has something waiting to ruin your sleep in the best possible way. Turn the page carefully.

Wolf Worm by T. Kingfisher

Something darker than the devil stalks the North Carolina woods in Wolf Worm, a new gothic masterpiece from New York Times bestselling author T. Kingfisher.

The year is 1899 and Sonia Wilson is a scientific illustrator without work, prospects, or hope. When the reclusive Dr. Halder offers her a position illustrating his vast collection of insects, Sonia jumps at the chance to move to his North Carolina manor house and put her talents to use. But soon enough she finds that there are darker things at work than the Carolina woods. What happened to her predecessor, Halder’s wife? Why are animals acting so strangely, and what is behind the peculiar local whispers about “blood thiefs?”

With the aid of the housekeeper and a local healer, Sonia discovers that Halder’s entomological studies have taken him down a dark road full of parasitic maggots that burrow into human flesh, and that his monstrous experiments may grow to encompass his newest illustrator as well.

Wife Shaped Bodies by Laura Cranehill

Sorrowland meets Manhunt in this literary horror debut in which an isolated newlywed—covered in mushroom growths like all the other wives in her community—strikes a precarious balance between following her husband’s strict rules and pursuing an intense connection with a woman who makes her question everything.

Forbidden from leaving her house from girlhood until marriage, Nicole has only her mother's lessons and what she can see from her bedroom window to draw on in forming her view of the world, and of herself. Taught that the mushrooms which cover the women in her village are repulsive and dangerous, she conforms to a rigid set of rules to protect herself and those around her.

When her wedding day arrives, Nicole moves from one prison to another—an empty mansion on the very outskirts of town belonging to the husband she’s been promised to since birth. As she haunts the edges of Silas's unknowable life and decaying home, maintaining control over her own transforming body becomes increasingly impossible. And when another wife with rebellious tendencies pays Nicole an unexpected visit, something within her cracks open. Their furtive explorations yield confusing answers, unearthing the long-buried secrets of the generations of resentful brides that came before. Unmoored, angry, and at last awakened, Nicole must reckon with who she really is, and perhaps, give in to what she truly wants.

Raw, visceral, and relentless, Wife Shaped Bodies is an exploration of gender, power, and community through the lens of mycological body horror and an ode to the unsettling beauty of the natural world.

Morsel by Carter Keane

The Blair Witch Project meets The Ritual, with a generous helping of The Menu, in Morsel, a delicious folk horror novella perfect for fans of T. Kingfisher, Cassandra Khaw, and Paul Tremblay.

Lou did what the children of parents with back-breaking, poor paying jobs are supposed to do; pulled up her bootstraps, went to college, and got an office job with coworkers who won’t stop talking about their multi-level marketing scheme disguised as self-betterment.

Determined to lift her ill mother out of poverty before it's too late, and in the spirit of climbing the corporate ladder, Lou accepts an assignment in the rural hills of Ohio. She quickly finds herself stranded in the middle of nowhere with a sabotaged truck, a dog she’s determined to keep safe, and something stalking her through the ancient Appalachian woods.

If she can’t escape the woods in time, she’ll come face to face with the fact that her job isn’t the only thing that wants to eat her alive.

Morsel is a chilling testament to the burden of generational poverty and the all-consuming nature of capitalism, where the monster and the monstrous, in the end, are not the same.

Dead First by Johnny Compton (February 10, 2026 by G.P. Putnam's Sons)

From the Bram Stoker award-nominated author of The Spite House comes a bone-chilling new novel about a private investigator hired by a mysterious billionaire to discover why he can’t die.

When private investigator Shyla Sinclair is invited to the looming mansion of mysterious Texan tycoon Saxton Braith, she’s more than a little suspicious. The last thing she expects to see that night is Braith’s assistant driving an iron rod straight through the back of his skull. Scratch that—the last thing she expects to see is Braith’s resurrection afterward.

Braith can’t die, it turns out, but he has no explanation for his immortality, and very few intact memories of his past. Which is why he wants to pay Shyla millions to investigate him, and bring his long-buried history to light.

Shyla can’t help but be intrigued, but she’s also trapped by the offer. Braith has made it clear that he knows she’s the only person he can trust with his secret, because he knows all about hers.

Bold, atmospheric, and utterly frightening, Johnny Compton’s Dead First is spine-chilling supernatural horror about the pursuit of power and the undying need for reckoning.

I'll Watch Your Baby by Neena Viel (May 26, 2026 by St. Martin's Griffin)

From the Bram Stoker award-nominated author of The Spite House comes a bone-chilling new novel about a private investigator hired by a mysterious billionaire to discover why he can’t die.

When private investigator Shyla Sinclair is invited to the looming mansion of mysterious Texan tycoon Saxton Braith, she’s more than a little suspicious. The last thing she expects to see that night is Braith’s assistant driving an iron rod straight through the back of his skull. Scratch that—the last thing she expects to see is Braith’s resurrection afterward.

Braith can’t die, it turns out, but he has no explanation for his immortality, and very few intact memories of his past. Which is why he wants to pay Shyla millions to investigate him, and bring his long-buried history to light.

Shyla can’t help but be intrigued, but she’s also trapped by the offer. Braith has made it clear that he knows she’s the only person he can trust with his secret, because he knows all about hers.

Bold, atmospheric, and utterly frightening, Johnny Compton’s Dead First is spine-chilling supernatural horror about the pursuit of power and the undying need for reckoning.

Hex House by Amy Jane Stewart (April 28, 2026 by Titan Books)

A feverishly told, dark and unsettling Scotland-set fairy-tale about a safe haven for women which transforms them into vessels of revenge, perfect for fans of T. Kingfisher, A. G Slatter and Julia Armfield

ELLY

Elly is running. Pregnant and still in her wedding dress, she flees the cottage that her new husband has rented for their wedding night. Because he’s not what people think he is – and she knows that, one day, he’ll hurt her in a way she can’t fix. Freezing and lost in the dead of night, Elly begins to lose hope.

A woman in the woods alone is never the beginning of the story. It’s usually the end.

So, when a beautiful house appears out of nowhere and a woman beckons her inside, it almost feels too good to be true.

Welcome to Hex a refuge, a home, a sanctuary. A place that can only be found by those who truly need it; a place that promises to teach Elly how to access a power more incredible – and more terrifying – than anything she could have imagined.

SIOBHAN

Four years after Siobhan meets Elly at Hex House, her life is in ruins. Once a promising filmmaker invited to the house to make a documentary with her brother, Theo, she’s given up on her dream after witnessing unspeakable horrors there. Now, she spends her time drinking too much, toying with an older man in increasingly dangerous ways, and trying to get Theo to speak to her again. She ignores the scar on her stomach that never fully heals.

That is, until someone reaches out with news about Hex House that could change everything.

And Siobhan knows, deep down, that she was always destined to return.

Turn Off The Light by Jacquie Walters (March 3, 2026 by Mulholland Books)

Two women living centuries apart are bound by the same dark secret in this haunting horror novel by Jacquie Walters, author of Dearest and “a talent to watch” (Sarah Langan).

The Devil enters through doors left open…

On the isolated Eastern Shore of Virginia, Edith is a healer, a woman of knowledge—and a woman watched. Shadows move where they shouldn’t. Whispers creep through the dark. Terrified she has opened her home to the Devil, Edith makes a desperate choice.

Claire doesn’t believe in ghosts—until she returns home to care for her dying father and finds her childhood house… listening. As one sleepless night bleeds into the next, she becomes convinced something is stirring beneath the floorboards. Something that has waited a long time to rise.

Is the house haunted? What compels this lurking darkness? As the danger mounts, Edith and Claire will discover they’ll need each other to survive. But they are separated by four hundred years. And time is running out for them both.

The Seventh Sister by Dawn Kurtagich (April 7, 2026 by Thomas & Mercer)

From the author of The Madness comes a haunting folk horror fable of lost sisters, old gods, and the terrible power of belief left to rot in the woods.

After the tragic death of their parents, the seven Ward sisters are sent to live with their grandmother on the remote forest island of Beltane, a place suspended between time and shadow. What begins as an attempt to mend their fractured lives soon twists into a waking nightmare, where grief bleeds into childhood fantasy and ancient rites awaken a dark and eerie devotion to Daudir, the Forgotten God of the Wood.

When another cruel tragedy strikes, the sisters are left to fend for themselves, learning to live with death as a constant, lurking presence. The fragile world they’ve carved splinters beneath the weight of isolation, and the forest around them grows restless…

Years later, a cryptic letter summons the surviving sisters home. Drawn back into the wild embrace of their dangerous faith, they confront a truth more terrible than memory, and the dreadful secret that waits, silent and sentient, in the depths of the all-seeing trees.

This lyrical and haunting folk horror explores how trauma can root itself in the soil of childhood, how love can curdle into obsession, and how gods, especially forgotten ones, never stay buried for long. But at its heart, it’s about how they fracture, survive, return, and reckon with what they’ve made together.

Aubrey Wants to Die by Pip Knight (March 3, 2026 by Hanover Square Press)

Love is hard. Being undead is harder ... Dolly Alderton meets True Blood in this dark, funny hell of a story

Aubrey is not what she seems. She's young, beautiful, romantic, obsessive and ... a vampire. All she wants is to be human again, and failing that, she wants to die. But the problem is, she can't. Not by stake through the heart or holy water or crucifix or garlic or fire. And she'd know, she's tried every method ... Twice.

So she's stuck here on this earth, all alone. Even the vampire who made her this way - an aristocratic douchebag called Oscar - has abandoned her.

But everything changes when one fateful night, she meets Jonathan. He's everything Aubrey's ever dreamed of, and what's more, he's her soulmate. Her Bella-Edward story. For the first time in 150 years, she has a reason to hope - eternal life might be bearable after all. So when Jonathan unexpectedly breaks up with her, she'll do anything to get him back.

But that's the exact moment Oscar swoops back into her life. And he has other plans for her. Soon, she's thrown into a world of glamour, glitter, blood and hedonism, a world that has her questioning everything she knows to be true-about life, but also about herself. A world where nothing is simple ... And no-one is safe, either.

A Plagued Sea by Kim Bo-Young (August 11, 2026 by Tor Nightfire)

First the flood
Next the sickness
Last the change

Visionary Korean author Kim Bo-young unleashes a Lovecraftian nightmare of infection, transformation, and abomination.

“[Kim Bo-young's] fiction is a breathtaking piece of a cinematic art.” ―Bong Joon-ho, Academy Award-winning director of Parasite

While waiting for a train to Haewon, an isolated Korean seaside village, bodyguard Mu-young gets a disaster alert on her phone. TVs throughout the station report breaking news of a massive earthquake on the eastern coast. Despite the danger, Mu-young boards the train with her she’d rather face the earthquake than leave the girl in her mother’s care. That choice haunts her for the rest of her life.

Three years later, Haewon Village is home to horrors. The earthquake unleashed an ancient plague that transforms its victims into fishy monsters, and the government’s lockdown has cut off any hope for help. Mu-young’s niece is dead, and all that’s left for her is to hunt villagers who break isolation. When an officious bureaucrat from Seoul arrives in the village, he stirs up even deeper trouble. Will Mu-young survive? Does she even deserve to?

Headlights by CJ Leede (June 9, 2026 by Tor Nightfire)

Every instinct tells him to run. Every memory tells him he can’t.

Special Agent Daniel Stansfield is ready for a change. Burnt out and defeated by the job, it’s his last day with the FBI. But before he can turn in his badge, he’s summoned back to Denver, the city he ran from four years ago, with a chilling message: it's happening again.

Seemingly innocent people are waking up on the side of the highway, with no memory of how they got there, wearing the skin of victims they've allegedly never met. And they each share one haunting detail: a strand of a stranger’s hair is tied around their tongue.

Now Daniel is pulled back into the gruesome cycle, and every clue leads him deeper into the shadows of his own past. He will have to confront the ghosts of his traumatic childhood and face what’s been hunting him all along— before he and the people he loves become the next victims.

Perfect for fans of The Shining and Longlegs, bestselling author CJ Leede’s Headlights is a pulse-pounding hunt across the frozen wilderness of Colorado.

The Temptation of Charlotte North by Camilla Bruce (May 19, 2026 by Del Rey)

A rebellious young woman desperate to escape her predetermined life joins forces with an unlikely ally—a sinister spirit—in this dark gothic fantasy from the acclaimed author of At the Bottom of the Garden .

Be careful what you wish for. It might come true....

In 1910, on a small, remote island that boasts more sheep than people, life does not hold a lot of promise for spirited Charlotte North. Her only escape from both this insular community and a family who does not understand her seems to be through marriage—an institution she is not at all eager to join, given the unhappiness of her parents' own union. Plus, eligible suitors are few and far between, which is why Charlotte has fallen hard for one the few outsiders to join their community in recent the handsome—and likewise unhappily married—new priest.

And then an ancient tower once rumored to have imprisoned a witch—or an unfaithful wife—crumbles, and releases . . . something. A restless spirit that knocks inside the walls and sends household objects flying. A spirit that seems to have an affinity for Charlotte herself. Though many on the island are terrified of this new interloper, Charlotte sees in it potential. Power. And perhaps even a way to get everything she has most wanted out of life.

Bed Rot Baby by Wendy Dalrymple (February 10, 2026 by Quill & Crow Publishing House)

Her life is falling apart… like, literally.

Being a sugar baby isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. After a failed art career and a failed relationship, Baby has lost her way. She’s adrift in the post-Y2K, pre-Facebook world and stuck in her Florida hometown, selling stolen goods online and working as a sugar baby. Even though she’s hustling hard, there’s still never enough money to pay the bills, and her long-suffering roommate is ready to put her out on the streets. One night after a bad date with her sugar daddy, Baby is assaulted by a mysterious woman in a parking lot. The attack leaves her disoriented and exhausted, so Baby takes to her bed to lie there and rot, like, for real. With every passing day, Baby’s looks and health decline in strange and horrific ways. Soon, it becomes apparent that the strange woman who assaulted her had something to do with her declining state. Baby needs to find her attacker, reclaim her life and her beauty, and get her shit together once and for all. But at what cost?

Bed Rot Baby is a pink horror meditation of self-discovery through self-destruction, and the real cost of self-image, self-esteem, and beauty.

Trad Wife by Saratoga Schaefer (February 10, 2026 by Crooked Lane Books)

A ‘traditional wife’ influencer allows a demonic creature to impregnate her in this unnerving horror novel, perfect for fans of Nightbitch and Mary, from the author of Serial Killer Support Group.

Every #tradwife needs a baby. She’ll get one at any cost.

When Camille Deming isn’t cooking, cleaning, or homesteading in her picture-perfect country farmhouse, she’s posting about her tradwife lifestyle for her online followers. She takes inspiration from other tradwives on social media, aspiring to be like them, but Camille’s missing a key a baby. And contrary to what she posts online, things with her husband Graham have been strained. Pressured by her eager followers, Camille fears that without a baby, her relationship will suffer and her social media will never grow out of its infancy.

When Camille discovers a mysterious, decrepit well in the wheatfield behind her house, she makes a wish for a baby. Afterwards, she has unsettling experiences that she convinces herself are angelic in nature, and when she’s visited one night by a strange creature, her wish comes true.

Camille’s pregnancy announcement gets more engagement than anything she’s ever posted—so what if Graham’s reaction is lukewarm? Camille’s life is finally falling into place. Never mind that her pregnancy is developing freakishly rapidly and she’s suddenly craving raw meat. Being a traditional wife is worth it.

Rosemary’s Baby for the digital age, this disturbing horror novel is one you’ll want to devour in just one bite.

Body Count by Codie Crowley (May 5, 2026 by Disney-Hyperion)

In this sapphic slasher novel, Sundae Valentine made a deal with a monster in Wildwood, N.J., when she was a child, and barely escaped with her life. Six years later, Sundae’s braving Wildwood again for a killer beach party to celebrate prom with the cheerleaders and the football team. But the monster is back, too, and this time he’ll stop at nothing to make sure she pays her debts.

We Call Them Witches by India-Rose Bower (April 7, 2026 by Poisoned Pen Press)

Most people have been devoured by the eldritch creatures, but Sara and her family have been fighting for survival, armed with their knowledge of folklore and pagan rituals - the only weapon that seems to work against these monsters.

And then a young woman, Parsley, comes out of nowhere into Sara's life. Found in their garden, they have no idea where she is from.

Sara and Parsley begin to fall in love, but disaster strikes when Sara’s brother Noah is taken by the creatures.
They set out to find him, across a landscape of merciless terror, haunted by death.

But can Parsley truly be trusted in a world where humanity is as scarse as humans themselves?

The Unheld by Luke Larken (August 25, 2026 by Hyperion Avenue)

A girl in the Montana territory sets out to find her father after he is carried off by an otherworldly creature in this atmospheric horror Western.

Charlie’s life is a lonely one. While other twelve-year-olds are in school, she spends her days skinning the animals her mercurial father hunts in the wild woods just outside their cabin. And the woods and its twisted creatures—an owl with four wings, a boar with two heads, a fox with gills—are becoming stranger by the day.

One night, a nightmarish beast neither animal nor human appears and drags Charlie’s father into the wilderness. To find him, she enlists the aid of two unlikely allies also in search of the beast: an Englishman with a connection to a mysterious occult society and a Northern Cheyenne policeman exiled for a crime he didn’t commit. Yet as she and her allies prepare for a confrontation with the Beast, Charlie must decide if her father, a brusque man who has always withheld his affection, is ultimately worth saving.

The Unheld is an unsettling and soulful horror novel about loneliness, human connection, and how we find each other in a world that seems designed to alienate. With this assured debut, Luke Larkin marks his arrival in the genre and proves the American frontier still harbors untapped stories in its shadows.

She Made Herself a Monster by Anna Kovatcheva (February 10, 2026 by Mariner Books)

A heady, dark-hued Gothic gem of a debut in nineteenth-century Bulgaria, a self-proclaimed vampire slayer—actually, a traveling con artist—joins forces with a teenage girl to create a monster deadly enough to vanquish their own demons.

We make monsters in order to destroy them. For thousands of years, we’ve named witches and burned them, suspected demons and exorcised them. When crops die and children fall ill, who better to blame than a monster?

In nineteenth-century Bulgaria, Yana rides from one desolate town to the next, staging grisly displays while the villagers animal corpses in the public square, eggs filled with blood in the chicken coop. She tells the stricken villagers stories of vampires that stalk the night. Then Yana eliminates the threat, and leaves seeds of hope in her wake.

The village of Koprivici, however, is plagued by exceptional illness and misfortune, its children rarely surviving infancy. There, Yana meets a headstrong orphan who the villagers blame for their curse. As Anka approaches womanhood, the village Captain is grooming her for marriage against her will. Anka is powerless against him—that is, until Yana arrives. Together, the orphan and the vampire slayer hatch a to conjure a monster so vile, it might provide cover for Anka to escape. But their plan quickly takes on a horrifying life of its own...

Inspired by Slavic folklore, She Made Herself a Monster concocts a clever mix of witchery, ghost stories, heresy, and deception to spin a feminist fable about agency and the power of collective action. It is a haunting and astoundingly cathartic tale of two women who will stop at nothing to take control of their fate.

May The Dead Keep You by Jill Baguchinsky (April 21, 2026 by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)

There’s nowhere Catie East would rather be than the redwood forest that surrounds her family’s unusual historic home, the Heights.

She prefers being alone in the forest. People are…complicated. But when a scientist and his son move into the estate’s cottage, planning to study the woods around them, the boy catches Catie’s eye. And when a dead woodpecker miraculously comes back to life in his precious hands…he captures her heart.

Necromancy isn’t the only strange thing happening in the Heights. There’s an unfamiliar face in the mirror. Blood on the floors. Eyes in the wallpaper. And the men around her—including her once-sweet nature boy—are becoming something else. Something possessive and frightening. Something violent.

As the Heights’s dark history starts to come to light, Catie discovers that the home she loves is imbued with pain. And even though the pain isn’t her own, it will corrupt her and the people around her all the same—unless she can stop it.

A story about breaking cycles of abuse and overcoming generational trauma, May the Dead Keep You is an edge-of-your-seat listen—equally horrifying, heart-wrenching, and hopeful.

I Know a Place by Nat Cassidy (May 5, 2026 by Shortwave)

There are locations in this world where the light doesn’t seem to reach. Where, no matter how illuminated the place might be, shadows creep in too strongly to fight back.

A suspiciously empty gas station rest stop in the middle of the night, littered with googley eyes... A doctor’s office, where a bottle of booze and a tear-stained folder wait on the desk... A tech millionaire’s haunted kitchen... A Bible-quoting ventriloquist’s dingy apartment... A yoga retreat in the middle of the desert, silent except for the screaming...

These supernatural and sinister locations are your destination, and bestselling author Nat Cassidy will be your guide. Featuring the Bram Stoker Award–nominated, critically acclaimed novella Rest Stop (one of Esquire’s Best Horror Books of 2024), along with a number of other original short stories, some which have never been published before, I Know A Rest Stop and Other Dark Detours is a travelogue down twisting side streets and through alleyways where the darkness has eyes...and teeth.

Let’s hope you make it home in one piece—if the ghosts, gory visions, and splatterpunk nightmares don’t get you first.

Bone of My Bone by Johanna Van Veen (May 26, 2026 by Poisoned Pen Press)

The year is 1635.

Sister Ursula, a young nun fleeing the ruins of her convent, and Elsebeth, a sharp-witted peasant, escape a band of marauding soldiers and disappear into the Bavarian forest. War scorches the land, and no one survives it alone. Amid the devastation, they find something in the arms of a dying the gilded skull of a saint.

It is said that if you reunite the saint's skull with her body, a wish will be granted. Desperate for salvation, and each with secret desires of their own, Ursula and Elsebeth follow a ragged map across the blighted countryside. But darkness follows them. A necromancer, drawn to the relic's power. The saint herself, whispering at night. And as the lines between blessing and curse blur, the women must face a harrowing the magic they seek comes at a cost.

At the journey's end, they'll face an impossible choice—one that could tear apart everything they know… or bind them to each other forever.

The Way It Haunted Him by Laura R. Samotin (June 9, 2026 by Titan Books)

A terrifying and powerful dark academia novel about Jewish folklore, grief, and other things locked in the archives. Perfect for fans of T. Kingfisher, Tori Bovalino and Sunyi Dean.

"It's real. You'll see."

Michael Stein arrives at the Schechter Institute for Judaic Studies battered and broken after the death of his boyfriend seven months prior. Blaming himself for the accident that killed him, Michael has come to the Institute to complete his boyfriend's dissertation as part of his effort at repentance. While Michael's own past leads him to condemn superstition as a way to mask prejudice and old-fashioned beliefs, his boyfriend's research argues that the folktales told in the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe were based in truth, and that demons and other creatures walked the earth, wreaking havoc on peoples' lives.

Instead of the Institute's infamous archivist, Michael is met by his grandson, Jacob Schechter, who has taken over the archive after his grandfather's death. A firm believer in the existence of the supernatural, Jacob explains that the archive plays host to a coterie of household demons. Michael insists that he is a skeptic, but strange and frightening occurrences plague his research, causing Michael to question both his sanity and his view of the world.

To cope with his guilt, grief, and the terrifying shadows following him, Michael must reckon with the events leading up to his boyfriend's death—and his role in it—by trusting the enigmatic Jacob to help uncover the truth. As untangling the mysteries of the past bring Jacob and Michael closer together, their respective secrets threaten to tear them apart. Because Michael is not the only one with darkness on his conscience, and if he and Jacob discover the truth of each other, only one of them may survive the fallout.

You Did Nothing Wrong by CG Drews (March 17, 2026 by St. Martin's Press)

A relentless, horror-inducing psychological suspense for fans of The Push and Baby Teeth by New York Times bestselling author CG Drews.

Single mother Elodie’s life has become a fairy tale. She’s met Bren, equal parts golden-retriever devoted and sinfully handsome. He’s whisked her and her autistic son, Jude, to the crumbling family house he’s renovating. She has a new husband, a new house, and a new baby on the way. Everything is perfect.

Then Jude claims he can hear voices in the walls. He says their renovations are “hurting” the house. Even Elodie can’t ignore it–something strange is going on. The question is, is it with the house, or with her son?

Then the one secret Elodie has been hiding is revealed, and no one is safe anymore.

A pulse-pounding, clever take on the haunted house novel, You Did Nothing Wrong examines the complexities of motherhood and the twisted bonds of family as it races to its shocking ending.

The Sea Hides Its Dead by Megan Bontrager (July 14, 2026 by Run For It)

The Descent meets The Ritual in a cult aquatic horror about a group of academics trapped in a sea cave who must reckon with eldritch horrors as they are forced to atone for their greatest sins.

ATONE OR DIE.

Grad student Caro has no idea what she wants to do with her life, but when an opportunity arises to act as a research assistant on an anthropological expedition for her professor and lover, Edward Beck, she doesn't hesitate.

Beck assembles a team of academics and professionals to study the ancient sea-based Cult of the Leviathan, and the expedition descends into the sea caves where the cult are said to have dwelt.

But when the cave entrance collapses, trapping them inside, the expedition will find they are not alone in the darkness. Surrounded by strange artefacts and scattered bones, an ancient trial has been set in motion. One by one, the members of the expedition will be tested and forced to atone for their greatest sin. . . or die.

The Winter Folk by Jen Julian (July 21, 2026 by Run For It)

A woman returns to the mysterious lodge in the woods where she once worked, and to the inscrutable creature that bound her there, in this haunting Appalachian gothic horror from singular voice Jen Julian. Perfect for fans of Alix E. Harrow and T. Kingfisher.

This is the story of Moth, who earned her name working for the Winter Folk.

Every year, the Winter Folk gather at a secret lodge in the Appalachians, a place known as Deerhaven, refuge for the time-worn and weary. As a child, Moth heard warnings from her mother: They are heartless, wild creatures—and they got no concern of us. At twenty-one, Moth is a college dropout, indebted, impoverished, and desperate for better things. She falls instantly for Deerhaven’s beautiful antlered host, the mild-mannered Mr. Oslin. When he offers her a housekeeper’s contract—one wish granted for a winter of service—she signs without question.

But Deerhaven is a dangerous place. Staff must follow strict rules or else face dire consequences, and the guests can be unpredictable and savage. And yet, Moth endures, enticed by a rumor that Mr. Oslin is looking for a protégé. A singular worker who would stay with him forever and be transformed.

Decades later, Moth returns to Appalachia with her husband and teenage daughter. She can't shake the feeling that she needs to return to Deerhaven, which banished her twenty years ago. As she hunts for a way in, her haunting memories and harrowing experiences come roaring back — her friends and rivals, her growing obsession with Mr. Oslin, and her mysterious exile.

A door exists in the dark of the woods. After so long away, what has Deerhaven become?

The Halls of the Dead by S.M. Hallow (August 18, 2026 by Harper Voyager)

A queer, gothic horror romance set in a necromancy-tinged London, sure to entrance fans of The Death of Jane Lawrence and Mexican Gothic.

London, December 1849

Irene Shallcross Haley has dedicated her life to necromancy, a forbidden, reviled art that is passed along through sentient grimoires bound in human skin. With her undead husband St. John—a marriage of kindred spirits and platonic convenience—she has been protecting the knowledge of generations of witches that came before her. Like any magic, it has come at a her reputation, her relationship with her sister, and her soul. But when Irene’s love, Agnes, is hanged for witchcraft, Irene refuses to let Agnes be one more thing that is taken from her.

A true resurrection has not been achieved in two thousand years, but Irene is determined. With the help of St. John, Irene bangs on the doors of the Halls of the Dead, demanding the third part of their triumverate back…or did she? Because the Agnes that awakens comes with both a hunger for raw flesh and a malignant ghost tied to her soul.

Necromancy is the art of saying no—no, I won't let you go; no, I won't let you be destroyed—and Irene’s work is not yet done. She must find a way to bring Agnes back to her true self, she must navigate her feelings for her resurrected lover as well as St. John, and she must do all of this without catching the attention of Sir Silas Underhill, the man who sentenced Agnes to death.

Death is not the end of love. But Irene may realize it can actually be the beginning.

Looking for more? Check out the full list of 2026 releases here.

Review || Listen to Your Sister by Neena Viel

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 20:59:00 +0000

Published February 4, 2025 by St. Martin's Griffin

Twenty-five-year-old Calla Williams is struggling since becoming guardian to her brother, Jamie. Calla is overwhelmed and tired of being the one who makes sacrifices to keep the family together. Jamie, full of good-natured sixteen-year-old recklessness, is usually off fighting for what matters to him or getting into mischief, often at the same time. Dre, their brother, promised he would help raise Jamie–but now the ink is dry on the paperwork and in classic middle-child fashion, he’s off doing his own thing. And through it all, The Nightmare never stops haunting Calla: recurring images of her brothers dying that she is powerless to stop.

When Jamie’s actions at a protest spiral out of control, the siblings must go on the run. Taking refuge in a remote cabin that looks like it belongs on a slasher movie poster rather than an AirBNB, the siblings now face a new threat where their lives–and reality–hang in the balance. Their sister always warned them about her nightmares. They really should have listened.

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Listen to Your Sister caught me completely off guard. The cover and blurb hint at a haunted house story, maybe a slow-burn spookfest. That’s not what this book is doing. It’s sharper, stranger, and far more emotionally intense than that.

Calla Williams is holding her family together with white-knuckle perseverance. She’s stepped into the adult role by default, trying to parent two brothers who resent her for it, even as they rely on her completely. She’s haunted by nightmares of their deaths, and the pressure of those dreams colliding with real life begins to warp her reality in genuinely horrifying ways.

This book runs on raw emotion. Grief morphs into rage, rage into guilt, guilt into love, and the whole thing barrels forward like a broken roller coaster that never slows down enough for you to catch your breath. Reality and the supernatural blend so seamlessly that you’re never quite sure what’s happening in Calla’s mind and what’s happening in the world, which only deepens the unease.

The sibling dynamics are messy and authentic. Calla is exhausted, grieving, angry, guilty, and stubbornly refusing to let go. She loves her brothers fiercely with all her heart, but they only see it as suffocating. There's grief, rage, love, and guilt—all tightly interlaced. Viel turns that emotional knot into horror, not with cheap scares, but by forcing you to sit inside the mess with her characters. The fear comes from love curdling under stress, from responsibility turning into a trap, from knowing everyone is hurting and no one knows how to stop it.

If you’re not a fan of fever-dream-like books that prioritize emotion over straightforward truths, this might not be your book. But if you enjoy horror that creeps under your skin because it acknowledges how difficult family can be, obligation can be stifling, and that you sometimes can love people too much, Listen to Your Sister is unforgettable.

Review || Wolf Worm by T. Kingfisher

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 14 Dec 2025 23:26:00 +0000

Published March 24, 2026 by Tor Nightfire

Something darker than the devil stalks the North Carolina woods in Wolf Worm, a new gothic masterpiece from New York Times bestselling author T. Kingfisher.

The year is 1899 and Sonia Wilson is a scientific illustrator without work, prospects, or hope. When the reclusive Dr. Halder offers her a position illustrating his vast collection of insects, Sonia jumps at the chance to move to his North Carolina manor house and put her talents to use. But soon enough she finds that there are darker things at work than the Carolina woods. What happened to her predecessor, Halder’s wife? Why are animals acting so strangely, and what is behind the peculiar local whispers about “blood thiefs?”

With the aid of the housekeeper and a local healer, Sonia discovers that Halder’s entomological studies have taken him down a dark road full of parasitic maggots that burrow into human flesh, and that his monstrous experiments may grow to encompass his newest illustrator as well.

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Wolf Worm is T. Kingfisher's latest offering: a Gothic horror set amid the dense undergrowth of body horror on the lush, forest floor of Southern charm and weirdness. This time, facing down the absurdity is Sonia Wilson, an illustrator hired to draw insects for the unsociable and ill-mannered Dr. Hader. Kingfisher once again takes an everyday somebody and drops them right into her gruesome biological catastrophe.

Some readers might struggle with the slow-burning, atmospheric build-up of Wolf Worm. It's an insidious, creeping dread as Wilson discovers the wrongness of her environment. The horror doesn't leap out and wail. It encroaches on your awareness with little by little, with phantom sensations of wriggling bodies and tickling wings. This is the perfect hallmark of Gothic fiction, so I wasn't upset at the slow pacing.

No one really does weird like Kingfisher, yet her voice always has this peculiar balance between cozy and unsettling, mingling with the absurd. Her characters are just average Joes, wandering into the nightmareish, and having to totally wing it. They face their fear, yes, but not with superhuman prowess, but in the same way a child clutches a flashlight and faces the proverbial boogeyman under their bed. They just do, because the only way is through. Wilson is a perfect example of this; she's unnerved, but she keeps going anyway.

And who wouldn't be unnerved? Kingfisher has scripted her most cringeworthy horror yet—bugs. This book gets under your skin, literally. A "wolf worm" is the larva of the Cuterebra botfly that burrows under the skin and lives there, growing, until it drops out to start the cycle again. I was previously familiar with "warbles", as they are sometimes called, having worked in vet medicine before. (I once horrified a female client by plucking one out of a lump on her cat with forceps. In hindsight, I probably should have explained first. Oops.) These things have always icked me out, but hearing that they are also called wolf worms was new to me. As if the typical creepy crawlies aren't bad enough, Kingfisher's larvae come with... let's just say, abnormal capabilities.

Reading a story by Kingfisher is like Wilson searching through the bug library drawers. There’s always something peculiar and something enormously endearing awaiting discovery in the next drawer. I can't wait to read whatever she comes up with next.

Review || Ashes of August Manor by Blaine Daigle

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 30 Nov 2025 19:02:00 +0000

Published June 10, 2025 by Wicked House Publishing

For fans of "The Haunting of Hill House" and "The Haunting of Bly Manor".

Noelle, a tragedy-ridden hospice worker with a unique connection to death, accepts a job caring for the dying patriarch of the reclusive August family at their lakefront manor just outside the town of Bell River, Oregon. The house does not have electricity, and the eccentric nature of the family is displayed through the grotesque artwork that lines the walls of the manor.

As Noelle wrestles with her own struggles with understanding her connection to death, she is also plunged headfirst into the dark mysteries surrounding the August family. The dying patriarch who she is strangely never able to see. The head of the household incapable of giving a straight answer, and a boy unable to speak but clearly terrified of something.

But above all, she must uncover the answers behind the ashen footprints she finds all over the house at night and the withered figure she sees looming at the tree line across the lake.

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Ashes of August Manor has the moody, unsettling atmosphere Blaine Daigle is known for. Its dark halls, foggy forests, and falling ashes only solidify the ghosts that haunt the manor and Noelle. The slow-burning tension, the creeping dread, and the feeling that something is inherently wrong are all present here, and Daigle’s descriptive style once again shines. August Manor is eerie and intriguing, and the family that inhabits it only lends strangeness to the place.

The mystery itself is solid, and the final reveal is satisfying enough, but the journey there didn’t seize me as his other stories have. There are plenty of supernatural elements at play, some villainy, and a bit of folk horror that I wish had a better seat at the table. There's some truly creepy imagery in Old Crow, the local legend that haunts the woods in its tattered red cloak, taloned hands, and beaked face. Daigle speaks of writing quiet horror, the type of horror that is macabre and melancholic, and he accomplishes that with every turn of the hallway, every squeak of the wood floors, and flash into the psyche of his characters.

Compared to some of Daigle's other titles, this one doesn’t quite reach the same level of emotional weight. While his best books balance emotional depth with encroaching horror, the characters in Ashes of August Manor didn't stick with me the way his others have. A book centered around death and grief should have been emotionally devastating, but instead, due to its inconsistent pacing left me struggling at times, dipping into stretches that felt repetitive.

Overall, Ashes of August Manor is a respectable, gothic read with some classic Daigle elements. If you are looking for a slow-burning gothic horror, this one would sit well on your shelf. However, for long-time readers of Daigle's, it doesn’t quite reach the intensity or emotional profundity of his best work.

Cover Reveal | Bone of My Bone by Johanna Van Veen

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 29 Oct 2025 12:00:00 +0000

I loved Johanna Van Veen's previous novel Blood on Her Tongue (You can read my review here.) so I'm very excited to be able to share with you the cover for her next novel Bone of My Bone. Her covers are deliciously dark and moody. I can't wait to read this one.

One saint. One Sinner. One Skull.

Sister Ursula, a young nun fleeing the ruins of her convent, crosses paths with Elsebeth, a sharp-witted orphan, after narrowly escaping a band of marauding soldiers. Deep in the Bavarian Forest they encounter a dying man clutching a wooden box, inside it, the gilded skull of a saint. Pursued by a necromancer drawn to the relic’s power and haunted by visions of the saint herself, the women soon realize that what they carry may be both miracle and curse and the growing love between them will come at a cost.

On sale 5/26/2026 Trade Paperback Original by Poisoned Pen Press

This book is perfect for fans of Robert Eggers’ The Witch and readers of Agustina Bazterrica’s The Unworthy. BONE OF MY BONE is a visceral, cannibalistic exploration of cruelty and passion set amid the devastation of the Thirty Years’ War. Told through an intimate and unflinching lens of daily survival, Johanna van Veen examines how devotion can be manipulated to justify both good and evil, and how love, faith, and the struggle to endure demand devastating sacrifices.

JOHANNA VAN VEEN grew up in the Netherlands with her two sisters. She received an MA in English Literature with a specialization in early modern literature, as well as an MA Book and Digital Media with a specialization in early modern book history. She enjoys spending time with her girlfriend, her sisters, and her dog, though not necessarily all at the same time. 

Review || Breathe In, Bleed Out by Brian McAuley

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 04 Oct 2025 15:51:00 +0000

Published September 2, 2025 by Poisoned Pen Press

It's a Midsommar night's Scream in this blood-soaked thriller set at a remote healing retreat from horror author Brian McAuley.

Hannah has been running from her demons ever since she emerged from a harrowing wilderness trip without her fiancé. No one knows exactly what happened the day Ben died, and Hannah would like to keep it that way... even if his ghost still haunts her with vivid waking nightmares that are ruining her life. So when her friend group gets an exclusive invitation to a restorative spiritual retreat in Joshua Tree, Hannah reluctantly agrees in search of a fresh start.

Despite her skepticism of the strange Guru Pax and his belief in the supernatural world, Hannah soon finds healing through all the yoga, sound baths, and hot springs offered at the tech-free haven. But this peaceful journey of self-discovery quickly descends into a violent fight for self-preservation when a mysterious killer starts picking off retreat attendees in increasingly gruesome ways. As the body count rises and Hannah’s sanity frays, she’ll have to confront her dark past and uncover the true nature of a ruthless monster hellbent on killing her vibe for good.

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If you're a fan of slashers, unreliable narrators, and the kind of mystery that keeps you second-guessing —Breathe IN, Bleed Out is a wickedly fun ride. Brian McNulty delivers a fast-paced, genre-savvy novel that’s as much a love letter to horror tropes as it is a clever psychological mystery.

This book throws you into a world that feels like it was born out of a late-night horror movie marathon of Friday the 13th. You’ve got the tension between characters, the looming sense that someone (maybe everyone?) is hiding something, and the unreliability of the main character who is already seeing the ghost of her dead fiancé.

The isolated setting adds so much creeping dread and the growing paranoia builds until you are yelling "The killer is right behind you!". Mix that with a little bit of gritty angst and dark humor. McNulty really leans into the “whodunit” energy while still delivering all the bloody, campy, adrenaline-pumping thrills you expect from a slasher.

If you’re a fan of books that keep you guessing and characters who keep you suspicious, Breathe IN, Bleed Out is well worth your time. What really sets this apart from your typical slasher is the way it messes with your head. It’s a bloody good time — in every sense.

Review || The Bone Drenched Woods by L.V. Russell

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 03 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Published April 15, 2025 by Quill & Crow Publishing House

Carve the bones. One for the gate, one for the door, two for the mantel, and three for the floor… Hyacinth Turning knows the terrors beyond her village, the insatiable hunger of the Teeth. She listens to the sermons given by the Elders in their hare-skin masks. She watches as the heathens hang and the witches burn. They tell her to be good and quiet. But Hyacinth is neither good nor quiet. After a series of tragic events, Hyacinth finds herself hastily wedded and sent far away from all she has ever known to a settlement at the edge of the sea. Where more than just the Teeth are hungry. Another horror swims below, leviathan shadows kept at bay by offerings of flesh and bone.

But no sooner does Hyacinth take root in her new home do the Teeth and the Deep come to feed. Suspicion soon falls upon the outspoken Hyacinth, who spends more time with the outcasted Morgan Carroway than her own husband. The Elders want her burned, her husband wants her hanged, and a long-lost love claws at her dreams, but Hyacinth only wants one thing. A life and death of her choosing.

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Hyacinth Turning is sent away to a remote village near the forest and sea, where ancient horrors like the Teeth and the Deep are kept at bay through sacrifices. She’s reeling from personal tragedy, isolated in a new marriage to a man she doesn't like, and immediately flung into a new claustrophobic community ruled by folklore, fear, and blood rituals...exactly like the one she left. She’s not just unwelcome, she’s disposable. Her body, her grief, and her silence are all things to be used, suppressed, or sacrificed for the “greater good.”

Hyacinth is constantly acted upon rather than acting. She’s shipped off, married off, silenced, accused, watched, threatened… and she endures all of it, often with the emotional affect of a ghost—just a resigned shuffle through escalating misery. She’s worn down by it until she’s just absorbed into the horror. I'm sure that's the point but it doesn’t make for satisfying character development. It makes for bleak existential rot. No sharp turns. No big “aha” moment. Just damp misery, sprinkled with vague dread.

Folk horror ofttimes tries to fake the ancient, the ritualistic, the uncanny, but The Bone Drenched Woods feels authentic. The bone offerings, the hare-masked Elders, the silent submission to the Deep? It all feels like it could have grown out of some obscure corner of real folklore. It’s primal and unnerving.

L.V. Russell absolutely nails that oppressive, damp, rot-soaked feeling of being somewhere ancient and uncaring. This book is all aesthetic. The prose is undeniably pretty, damp and bloody and yet frustratingly vague. Atmosphere can only carry you so far when the plot is doing the slowest, saddest shuffle toward nowhere. If you enjoy slow-burn folk horror where nothing is explained, and everyone is miserable, this one is for you.

Feature Fiction || The Brood by Rebecca Baum

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 17 Sep 2025 14:51:00 +0000

Published October 28, 2025 by Thomas & Mercer

Cutthroat NYC lawyer Mary Whelton just buried her problematic old mentor. But as she leaves the mourners and protesters behind, the press stays hot on her heels. Desperate to escape, she unwittingly barrels deep into a remote forest in upstate New York. Until a collision—with a buzzing, oozing throng of cicadas—stops her dead in her tracks.

She awakens in a crude cabin, held captive by Girl, a simple, hulking woman who mistakes Mary for her derelict mother and obsesses over a mysterious Brood. While tortured echoes from Mary’s past feed her growing sense of fear, it becomes clear that she’s destined to bear an unthinkable role in the cicadas’ cyclical reemergence. But when Girl’s grisly past comes back to haunt them both, Mary is thrust into a violent battle of wills.

Confoundingly creepy and atmospheric, The Brood peels back the hurt and pain of the female experience, laying bare the messy necessity for transformation and growth.

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Rebecca Baum is a novelist, ghostwriter, and content marketer. While her ghostwriting has served founders of global nonprofits and mission-driven businesses, Baum wades into the wonderfully troubled waters of horror with her novel The Brood. Her prior book, Lifelike Creatures, was longlisted for the Crook’s Corner Book Prize Foundation’s 2021 best debut novel set in the American South. A native of rural Louisiana, Baum feels she has almost earned the right to call herself a New Yorker after more than twenty-five years in the city. She lives in Greenwich Village with her husband and favorite karaoke partner, Gary.

Feature Fiction || A Grave Duet by Kasey Fallon and Melisa Peterson Lewis

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 28 Aug 2025 15:01:00 +0000

Published October 1, 2025 by Falcon Lit

A collection of horror-infused novelettes for mature readers who crave the macabre. Within these pages wait twisted tales of possession, ravenous monsters, vengeful demons, and deeply rooted phobias clawing their way to life.

Each story is a separate haunt on Halloween — from modern horrors to ghost-haunted histories, and a bleak future scarred by a deadly plague.

After three years working on writing projects together, Fallon and Lewis debut their first anthology with guest author Rissa Miller; Historian and Seer.

Combining their interests in horror, speculative fiction, and gritty characters, these authors twist dark fiction into reality

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Feature Fiction || Cedar Mills by Dylan James

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 01 Aug 2025 15:00:00 +0000

Published August 1, 2025 by Savage Realms Press

Seeking to understand the recent deaths and disappearances in their town, a disgraced homicide detective and a group of grieving high schoolers unwittingly join forces. But what this ragtag bunch of answer-seekers find will not only force them into a fight to save themselves and their town, but all of humanity as we know it... Welcome to Cedar Mills.

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Dylan James is the author of a dozen plus short stories and poetry publications, appearing in Horror Tree’s Trembling With Fear, Moria Literary Magazine, and more.

His nonfiction novel BROTHERS peaked at #3 on Barnes & Noble’s History Bestsellers.

His horror fiction novel CEDAR MILLS is set to be published in 2025 by Savage Realms Press.

Review || What Feasts at Night by T. Kingfisher (Sworn Soldier #2)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 26 Jul 2025 00:45:00 +0000

Published February 13th 2024 by Tor Nightfire

The follow-up to T. Kingfisher’s bestselling gothic novella, What Moves the Dead .

Retired soldier Alex Easton returns in a horrifying new adventure.

After their terrifying ordeal at the Usher manor, Alex Easton feels as if they just survived another war. All they crave is rest, routine, and sunshine, but instead, as a favor to Angus and Miss Potter, they find themself heading to their family hunting lodge, deep in the cold, damp forests of their home country, Gallacia.

In theory, one can find relaxation in even the coldest and dampest of Gallacian autumns, but when Easton arrives, they find the caretaker dead, the lodge in disarray, and the grounds troubled by a strange, uncanny silence. The villagers whisper that a breath-stealing monster from folklore has taken up residence in Easton’s home. Easton knows better than to put too much stock in local superstitions, but they can tell that something is not quite right in their home. . . or in their dreams.

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T. Kingfisher returns to the eerie world of gothic horror with What Feasts at Night, the second novella in her Sworn Soldier series following the acclaimed What Moves the Dead. This novella once again follows Alex Easton, a gender non-binary former soldier with a dry sense of humor, a haunted past, and a knack for running into things that go bump in the night.

This time, Easton heads to their family's old hunting lodge in Gallacia in search of some rest. Naturally, rest is the one thing they don’t get. The lodge is falling apart, the caretaker has died under bizarre circumstances, and the quiet feels wrong. The longer they stay, the more the atmosphere closes in: disturbing dreams, strange local legends, and plenty of superstition. Familiar faces return, including the ever-delightful Miss Potter, a no-nonsense mycologist who continues to steal every scene with her fungal fanaticism. New faces charm as well, like the sharp-eyed Widow Botezatu with her baleful looks and no-nonsense ways.

While What Feasts at Night trades some of the first book’s energy for a slower, more reflective pace, it still delivers plenty of dread. The horror here is quieter, more psychological, and steeped in folklore and PTSD. Kingfisher’s uniquely dry humor is still present, with sharp, witty banter and Easton's internal dialogue. Easton’s internal battle adds emotional depth to the creeping horror, and the camaraderie between characters brings just enough warmth to offset the gloom.

While it’s not as fast-paced as What Moves the Dead, What Feasts at Night is haunting in its own way: moody, thoughtful, and quietly chilling. It’s another strong entry in Kingfisher’s growing collection of uniquely strange horror stories.

Review || Heartless Hunter by Kristen Ciccarelli

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 20 Jul 2025 16:33:00 +0000

Published February 20, 2024 by Wednesday Books

E>nemies-to-lovers doesn't get more high stakes than a witch and a witch hunter falling in love in bestselling author Kristen Ciccarelli's latest romantic fantasy
On the night Rune’s life changed forever, blood ran in the streets. Now, in the aftermath of a devastating revolution, witches have been diminished from powerful rulers to outcasts ruthlessly hunted due to their waning magic, and Rune must hide what she is.Spending her days pretending to be nothing more than a vapid young socialite, Rune spends her nights as the Crimson Moth, a witch vigilante who rescues her kind from being purged. When a rescue goes wrong, she decides to throw the witch hunters off her scent and gain the intel she desperately needs by courting the handsome Gideon Sharpe - a notorious and unforgiving witch hunter loyal to the revolution - who she can't help but find herself falling for.

Gideon loathes the decadence and superficiality Rune represents, but when he learns the Crimson Moth has been using Rune’s merchant ships to smuggle renegade witches out of the republic, he inserts himself into her social circles by pretending to court her right back. He soon realizes that beneath her beauty and shallow façade, is someone fiercely intelligent and tender who feels like his perfect match. Except, what if she’s the very villain he’s been hunting?

Kristen Ciccarelli’s Heartless Hunter is the thrilling start to The Crimson Moth duology, a romantic fantasy series where the only thing more treacherous than being a witch...is falling in love.

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Heartless Hunter is a romantic, fantasy tale of forbidden love, political intrigue, and rebellion. As the first installment in The Crimson Moth series, readers are introduced to a world where witches have been relegated to outcasts, hunted by those who once revered them.

The story follows Rune, a witch in hiding under a false identity in a kingdom where magic is forbidden. By day, she plays the part of a spoiled noble. By night, she becomes the Crimson Moth, a masked vigilante aiding fellow witches escape persecution. But when a mission goes awry, she finds herself on the radar of Gideon Sharpe, the kingdom’s most feared witch hunter. To protect her identity, Rune makes a bold move: seduce the enemy. What begins as strategy quickly tangles into something far messier.

Rune and Gideon’s relationship is laced with suspicion, chemistry, and tension, hitting many of the hallmarks of an enemy-to-lovers romance. Both characters carry trauma and conflicting loyalties, and watching them unravel each other is one of the book’s major appeals. Gideon is the typical brooding anti-hero, but while Rune is a strong lead, her inner conflict isn’t given quite enough nuance to make her stand out. Their chemistry simmers, but the development of trust and intimacy feels somewhat rushed, given how high the stakes are.

Ciccarelli writes in a clear, accessible style, and the pacing is solid, so there’s rarely a dull moment. But the world-building feels surface-level. The political structure, the history of the revolution, and the rules of magic are underdeveloped, making the stakes feel less grounded than they could be. The blood magic system had potential, but it was never really explored the way I wanted it to be.

Heartless Hunter has all the ingredients for a standout romantasy: witches in hiding, a ruthless hunter, a masked vigilante, and a steamy enemies-to-lovers dynamic. I found it entertaining, but it didn't quite rise above the crowd in the increasingly crowded romantasy genre. That being said, it does set the stage for the continuation of the series. Here’s hoping book two, Rebel Witch, brings more depth to this dangerous world.

Review || The Stolen Throne by Abigail Owen

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 10 Jul 2025 18:17:00 +0000

Published May 2, 2023 by Entangled: Teen

My twin sister is the true queen of Aryd. She survives, hiding and clinging to life in the desert, while I reign as the false queen alongside the monstrous King Eidolon. There’s only one escape from this gilded prison: Reven. My Shadowraith. My heart. Only the shadows that he struggles to control are growing more sinister, more powerful.

It’s just a matter of time before they turn on him…and on me.

Even escape doesn't mean true freedom, though, when we're still on the run from Eidolon’s unstoppable armies. And when we discover there’s a traitor among us, I have no choice…I must become the queen I was never meant to be.

Because as one evil hunts me, the other loves me more than himself.

And my fate lies with both.

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Abigail Owen turns up the heat in this darker, emotionally intense sequel. The Stolen Throne picks up right where The Liar’s Crown left off, with Meren caught between who she was raised to be and who she needs to become. The stakes are higher, the danger sharper, and the emotional force between the main characters even more devastating. I'm always concerned that I won't remember enough to pick up additional books in a series to follow along, but Owen does a fantastic job of catching you up.

Meren's personality continues to shine. Her struggle with identity, especially as someone who was born to be a placeholder for her twin sister, feels real and unpretentious. She's done hiding. She's making impossible choices, stepping into danger, and claiming a destiny that no one ever showed her. Her entire life has been about pretending to be someone else, so watching her come into her own is super satisfying. And Reven, our brooding shadow wraith? He remains a doozy, so full of angsty feelings. He’s torn by loyalty, by love, by the past, and that quiet control of his starts to unravel. Their chemistry is just as electric as it was in book one, maybe even desperately so now that secrets are unraveling and the stakes are climbing higher and higher.

There's an urgency to book two that wasn't there for The Liar's Crown. The pacing is tight, with plenty of action and suspense, but what really stands out is how Owen balances that with quieter, softer moments. There are moments of vulnerability that hit just as hard as the big twists. With a lot of moving pieces to keep track of in this story, as well as more twists and higher stakes, it's nice that Owen finds the time to let things pause before the next hit comes.

The Stolen Throne leaves everything behind, carrying us towards book three, The Shadows Rule All. This YA fantasy takes no prisoners. Do I want a happy ending eventually? Sure. But only after they’ve been torn apart, emotionally flayed, and stitched back together by choosing each other, through the wreckage.

Feature Fiction || Straw Girl by Brigid Barry

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 01 Jul 2025 15:10:00 +0000

Published June 10, 2025 by Rowan Prose Publishing, LLC;
Sapphire Imprint

To believe in that other world, she must first learn to believe in herself.

The signs were always there.

The footsteps.

The cries.

The melancholy music from a faraway place.

Though Melissa Roberts lives alone, she chooses not to believe in superstitions. Locked in the rational prison of her closed imagination, she must open her mind and soul to that other place before it’s too late.

For the voices are rising.

The footsteps draw closer.

Until the music is deafening.

She must prepare herself. She must become the Straw Girl. They are coming for her.

Fans of "The Invited" by Jennifer McMahon, "The Ghost of Slackwood House" by J.T. Westbrook, and Susanna Kearsley’s "The Shadowy Horses" will enjoy Straw Girl.

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Brigid Barry is a lifelong resident of Maine. A disabled Air Force veteran and blessed parent of twins, she lives on a small hobby farm with her favorite husband and too many animals. "Straw Girl" is her debut book.

www.brigidbarry.carrd.co

Review || My Throat an Open Grave by Tori Bovalino

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 21 Jun 2025 18:55:00 +0000

Published January 23, 2024 by Page Street Kids

Labyrinth meets folk horror in this darkly romantic tale of a girl who wishes her baby brother away to the Lord of the Wood

Growing up in the small town of Winston, Pennsylvania feels like drowning. Leah goes to church every Sunday, works when she isn’t at school, and takes care of her baby brother, Owen. Like every girl in Winston, she tries to be right and good and holy. If she isn’t the Lord of the Wood will take her, and she’ll disappear like so many other girls before her.

But living up to the rigorous standards of the town takes its toll. One night, when Owen won’t stop screaming, Leah wishes him away, and the Lord listens. The screaming stops, and all that’s left in the crib is a small bundle of sticks tied with a ribbon.

Filled with shame and the weight of the town’s judgment, Leah is forced to cross the river into the Lord of the Wood’s domain to bring Owen back. But the devilish figure who has haunted Winston for generations isn’t what she expects. He tells her she can have her brother back―for the price of a song. A song that Leah will have one month to write.

It’s a bargain that will uncover secrets her hometown has tried to keep buried for decades. And what she unearths will have her questioning everything she’s been taught to fear.

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My Throat an Open Grave is a exploration of folklore, guilt, and the complexities of good and evil in small-town America. Set in Winston, Pennsylvania, the story follows 17-year-old Leah, who, after wishing her baby brother Owen away, must confront the Lord of the Wood—a mythical figure who has taken children for generations.

Drawing comparisons to Labyrinth might be unfair. Yes, she wished the child away, and has to journey to get him back, but there is no jewelry-crazed Hoggle, tricksy labyrinth, or singing fireys swapping limbs and heads in this story. Nothing as fantastical as the world in which Sarah finds herself. Instead, Leah has to cross the river, find the terrifying Lord of the Wood and trade something of meaning to get her brother back.

Leah's inner voice takes center stage often. She speaks to and about herself with a level of cruelty that’s difficult to stomach at times. Throughout the story, she repeats the idea that she’s broken, bad, or unlovable, and this negative self-talk becomes a major lens through which we see her experiences. Leah's self talk becomes a way to unravel not just who she is, but how others have defined her. It's heavy (and sometimes annoying). Leah's journey isn’t just about confronting the Lord of the Wood—it’s also about confronting the narrative she’s been forced to believe about herself.

While there are supernatural elements, the true horror in My Throat an Open Grave isn’t from the Lord or the forest, it’s in the silence of the town, in what people are willing to ignore, and in the way fear and guilt twist Leah’s choices. While those looking for more in-your-face horror will be disappointed, keep in mind this is rated young adult. I found it less eerie than just sad.

Review || Unholy Terrors by Lyndall Clipstone

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 11 Jun 2025 00:40:00 +0000

Published October 17, 2023 by Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)

A bloodstained tale of a girl torn between her vows and her heart, where falling in love may be the deepest sin of all…

Everline Blackthorn has devoted her life to the wardens—a sect of holy warriors who guard against monsters known as the vespertine.

When a series of strange omens occur, Everline disobeys orders to investigate, and uncovers a startling truth in the form of Ravel Severin: a rogue vespertine who reveals the monsters have secrets of their own.

Ravel promises the help she needs— for a price. Vespertine magic requires blood, and if Everline wants Ravel to guide across the dangerous moorland, she will have to allow him to feed from her.

It’s a sin for a warden to feed a vespertine— let alone love one— and as Everline and Ravel travel further across the moorland, she realizes the question isn’t whether she will survive the journey, but if she will return unchanged. Or if she wants to.

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Unholy Terrors is a breathtaking descent into a world of ruined faith, cursed forests, and forbidden love. It’s the kind of gothic fantasy that is full of blood and bone-deep magic and decayed beauty.

Set in a realm haunted by terrifying creatures called vespertine, the story follows Everline Blackthorn, a young warden bound by duty but born without magic. Her life has been shaped by silence, discipline, and the shadow of her mother’s betrayal. When she meets Ravel Severin—a boy she’s been taught to fear—Everline’s world begins to unravel. Forced into a dangerous alliance to save her best friend, she must question everything she’s ever believed about monsters, loyalty, and herself.

Clipstone’s writing is lush and immersive, filled with grief, rage, longing, and desire woven through every scene. The worldbuilding is gorgeous: ancient cathedrals slowly sliding into rot and ruin, magic that’s as much curse as blessing, and monsters that speak in riddles and memory. There’s an almost reverence for decay and ruin, making the setting feel like a living character in its own right.

The relationship between Everline and Ravel is at the heart of the novel, with their growing connection adding emotional depth to the story. It’s everything a gothic love story should be—slow-burning, feral, and dangerous. Everline and Ravel’s bond is rooted in shared pain and the brutal process of unlearning everything they’ve been taught about good and evil. Their connection is intense, yet tender, and never simple. Their dynamic is layered and complicated, exploring how love, loyalty, and betrayal intertwine in a world filled with secrets.

Lyndall Clipstone has written a novel that feels like it was pulled from the bones of a dark fairytale—strange and darkly beautiful. Unholy Terrors is more than just a fantasy with monsters. It's about shedding the expectations that bind you, breaking free of old truths, and finding love in the last place you’re supposed to look.

Review || A House With Good Bones by T. Kingfisher

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 08 Jun 2025 16:49:00 +0000

Published March 28, 2023 by Tor Nightfire

A contemporary Southern Gothic from award-winning master of modern horror, T. Kingfisher. A House With Good Bones explores the deep, dark roots of family.

Sam Montgomery is worried about her mother. She seems anxious, jumpy, and she's begun making mystifying changes to the family home on Lammergeier Lane. Sam figures it has something to do with her mother's relationship to Sam's late, unlamented grandmother.

She's not wrong.

As vultures gather around the house and frightful family secrets are unearthed under the rosebushes, Sam struggles to unravel the truth about the house on Lammergeier Lane before it consumes her and everyone else who stands in its way...

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A House with Good Bones by T. Kingfisher is what happens when Southern hospitality meets creeping dread—and then both sit down for a very awkward family dinner. The story follows Sam, a refreshingly snarky archaeologist and bug enthusiast, who returns to her childhood home only to find her usually vibrant mother behaving like a polite, nervous stranger. The usually eccentric house is too clean, too white, the air too still and the garden? Let’s just say it has… opinions. Things go from “Hmm, that’s odd” to “Holy freaking ladybugs” in the best, weirdest way possible.

Kingfisher blends unsettling horror with laugh-out-loud moments in a way only she can. One minute you’re creeped out, the next you’re snorting at Sam’s deadpan commentary. It’s not a scream-fest, but it is eerie and absurd and deeply weird in the way only Kingfisher does. One minute you're reading about ghostly whispers and oppressive vibes, the next you're laughing at Sam's sarcastic inner monologue or her casual conversations about bugs. The horror here is more unsettling than terrifying, but it sticks with you—and there's a wonderfully grotesque twist that really delivers.

The novel spends a lot of time carefully layering tension, hinting at deep-rooted family trauma, strange supernatural forces, and an ominous legacy tied to the grandmother’s influence. But when the horror finally arrives, it feels a bit rushed and underdeveloped. It’s not a bad ending by any means, it’s quirky, bold, and in line with the novel’s tone but compared to the expansiveness of the first two-thirds, it feels like it wrapped up too quickly. Despite that, Kingfisher remains on the must-read list for me.

Review || The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 27 May 2025 16:04:00 +0000

Published May 2, 2023 by Tor Nightfire

From USA Today bestselling author Cassandra Khaw comes The Salt Grows Heavy, a razor-sharp and bewitching fairytale of discovering the darkness in the world, and the darkness within oneself.

You may think you know how the fairytale goes: a mermaid comes to shore and weds the prince. But what the fables forget is that mermaids have teeth. And now, her daughters have devoured the kingdom and burned it to ashes.

On the run, the mermaid is joined by a mysterious plague doctor with a darkness of their own. Deep in the eerie, snow-crusted forest, the pair stumble upon a village of ageless children who thirst for blood, and the three 'saints' who control them.

The mermaid and her doctor must embrace the cruelest parts of their true nature if they hope to survive.

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Cassandra Khaw’s The Salt Grows Heavy is a grim, lyrical horror-fantasy that begins with the mermaid's children having just eaten her prince. Albeit, he wasn't a very nice one. Khaw takes the familiar mermaid myth and completely capsizes it, crafting a story that’s brutal, surreal, and, beneath all the blood and bone, surprisingly tender. It's a novella that defies clear classification — a hybrid of gothic fairy tale, body horror, and lushly poetic prose.

The story kicks off with the merchildren eating their way through the kingdom. Striking a weird companionship are the murderous mermaid and a plague doctor. She’s a predator, archaic and uncaring, but also deeply introspective. (Of course, she'd have to be since her husband recently cut out her tongue.) The peculiar plague doctor is enigmatic yet witty. The two strike up a friendship and almost coy flirtation.

I've said before that Khaw's writing is not for everyone. It's dense, with each morsel needing to be chewed carefully before being consumed. It’s the kind of language that turns violence into poetry and transforms body horror into something oddly exquisite. It’s brutal and beautiful, grotesque and captivating. For readers who enjoy language that leans into the stylized and surreal, it’s an enjoyable experience. For many others, it may be a barrier to reading any of Khaw's writing.

The tone is relentlessly grim, but not without a strange, dry humor that punctuates the story in unexpected places. It’s perfect for readers who enjoy weird literary horror, mythic storytelling, and moral ambiguity. It’s about monsters but also transformation, and what it means to survive when the world sees you as a thing to be used or controlled. This isn't a fairy tale. It's what crawls out of the sea foam after the supposed "happily ever after" is over.

Just like Khaw's expansive writing, The Salt Grows Heavy is not for everyone. If you’re looking for a tightly plotted story with clear moral lines and conventional structure, this probably won’t be your thing. It’s strange. It’s lyrical. It’s emotional. It’s a novella that doesn’t explain itself — it just pulls you under the waves and waits for you to drown.

Review || Blood on Her Tongue by Johanna van Veen

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 26 May 2025 17:35:00 +0000

Published March 25, 2025 by Poisoned Pen Press

"I'm in your blood, and you are in mine…"

The Netherlands, 1887. Lucy's twin sister Sarah is unwell. She refuses to eat, mumbles nonsensically, and is increasingly obsessed with a centuries-old corpse recently discovered on her husband's grand estate. The doctor has diagnosed her with temporary insanity caused by a fever of the brain. To protect her twin from a terrible fate in a lunatic asylum, Lucy must unravel the mystery surrounding her sister's condition, but it's clear her twin is hiding something. Then again, Lucy is harboring secrets of her own, too.

Then, the worst happens. Sarah's behavior takes a turn for the strange. She becomes angry… and hungry.

Lucy soon comes to suspect that something is trying to possess her beloved sister. Or is it madness? As Sarah changes before her very eyes, Lucy must reckon with the dark, monstrous truth, or risk losing her forever.

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Set in 1887 Netherlands, Blood on Her Tongue follows Lucy as she returns to her family's estate to care for her twin sister, Sarah, who has become ill and dangerously fixated on a bizarre body unearthed in the bog near their home. As Sarah's behavior grows increasingly erratic, Lucy must confront the possibility that something far more sinister than madness is at play.

As is true with gothic fiction, the atmosphere reigns supreme. The author builds a haunting, claustrophobic setting that perfectly complements the story’s tension. The house feels cold and suffocating, the nearby bog is basically a character itself, and there’s this constant dread hanging over everything. Sarah's transformation is both disturbing and magnetic, drawing readers into a world where the line between the natural and the supernatural blurs. Her peculiar behavior and condition are filled with uncertainty and mystery.

Lucy is a great narrator, determined to make sense of her sister's decline. The bond between the twins is the heart of the story, but it’s twisted and uncomfortable in a way that totally works for gothic fiction. It's complicated, painful, and achingly human. You’re never quite sure what’s real or what’s supernatural, which helps the creeping unease. As with a lot of gothic fiction, it’s a slow burn. There’s more moodiness and creeping unease than plot devices, but the payoff is worth it if you hang in there.

If you like your horror quiet, slow, and full of creeping dread, Blood on Her Tongue might be right up your alley. This book is all about mood—foggy landscapes, crumbling family homes, and the kind of tension that feels both tender and terrifying.

Review || Red in Tooth and Claw by Lish McBride

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 25 May 2025 18:38:00 +0000

Published October 8, 2024 by G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers

Faolan Kelly’s grandfather is dead. She’s alone in the world and suddenly homeless, all because the local powers that be don’t think a young man of sixteen is mature enough to take over his grandfather’s homestead…and that’s with them thinking Faolan is a young man. If she revealed that her grandfather had been disguising her for years, they would marry her off at the first opportunity.

The mayor finds a solution that serves everyone but Faolan. He hires a gunslinger to ship her off to the Settlement, a remote fort where social outcasts live under the leadership of His Benevolence Gideon Dillard. It's a place rife with mystery, kept afloat by suspicious wealth. Dillard's absolute command over his staff just doesn't seem right. And neither do the strange noises that keep Faolan up at night.

When Faolan finds the body of a Settlement boarder, mangled by something that can’t possibly be human, it’s clear something vicious is stalking the palisades. And as Settlement boarders continue to drop like flies, Faolan knows she must escape to evade the creature’s wrath.

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Lish McBride has never met a genre she couldn’t wrestle into something fun and fierce—and Red in Tooth and Claw is no exception. It's a dark and quietly powerful young adult fantasy that blends the dust and grime of Western grit with supernatural intrigue and hidden threats. Imagine if the Wild West got strange, feminist, and slightly feral. Then throw in a heroine who’s tougher than a two-dollar steak and just as likely to punch you in the eye as look at you. It's the perfect amount of heart and snark.

Set in an alternate Old West where magic and horror entwine, the story follows Faolan Kelly. To keep herself safe and to give her more opportunities in a rugged, patriarchal world, she's spent her life passing as a boy. After her grandfather's death, Faolan is sent to the Settlement, a remote fort led by the enigmatic His Benevolence Gideon Dillard (because that doesn't scream cult leader at all!). Faolan quickly realizes the Settlement isn’t a refuge—it’s a trap. And she might be the only one sharp enough (or stubborn enough) to escape it.

Faolan is exactly the kind of protagonist you want in a world full of monsters—quick with a comeback and even quicker with a plan. Scrappy, resilient, and totally relatable. No matter the odds, she's not backing down. She’s not trying to be a hero; she’s trying to survive.

The story weaves together elements of mystery, horror, and magic, keeping readers intrigued as Faolan uncovers the secrets of the Settlement. It’s a story about survival and the cost of being seen in a world that prefers you not to take up space. There's humor, but McBride keeps it light compared to some of her other novels. If there's a downside, it's that this is a slower-paced book. If you’re expecting action on page one, it might feel like a slow burn. But the tension builds beautifully, and when things do go sideways, it hits harder because of it. There's a tad bit of romance, but it doesn't detract from the story.

Red in Tooth and Claw is a bite-sized delight for fans of paranormal fiction who like their monsters with a side of snark and soul. Moody, magical, and meaningful—with just enough teeth.

Review || Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 21 May 2025 13:17:00 +0000

Published April 26, 2022 by Tor Books

After years of seeing her sisters suffer at the hands of an abusive prince, Marra—the shy, convent-raised, third-born daughter—has finally realized that no one is coming to their rescue. No one, except for Marra herself.

Seeking help from a powerful gravewitch, Marra is offered the tools to kill a prince—if she can complete three impossible tasks. But, as is the way in tales of princes, witches, and daughters, the impossible is only the beginning.

On her quest, Marra is joined by the gravewitch, a reluctant fairy godmother, a strapping former knight, and a chicken possessed by a demon. Together, the five of them intend to be the hand that closes around the throat of the prince and frees Marra's family and their kingdom from its tyrannous ruler at last.

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In Nettle & Bone, T. Kingfisher delivers a darkly enchanting original fairy tale that is as emotionally rich as it is darkly tongue-in-cheek. This novel threads elements of deconstructed fairy tales with horror and wit.

When Marra learns the full extent of her sister’s suffering at the hands of a powerful and abusive prince, she sets out to kill him—as one does. However, this requires the help of a ragtag group of unlikely companions: a dust-wife, a bone dog, an ex-knight, and a possessed chicken. Yes, you read that right. Demon. Possessed. Chicken. With these quirky sidekicks, this adventure is officially off the rails.

Marra isn’t your usual heroine either. She’s middle-aged, introverted, and not exactly sword-swinging slay-the-dragon type—but her quiet determination is impossible not to root for. She's realized the painfully obvious: no one is coming to save them. So she’s going to do it herself. If that means it's "off with his head", she'll find the axe.

Nettle & Bone is a fairy-tale nouveau—a magical, macabre, and mystical messed-up journey full of heart, humor, and just enough horror. If you like your fantasy clever, creepy, and just a tad bit unhinged, this one is for you.

Review || A Dark and Endless Sea by Blaine Daigle

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 20 May 2025 13:37:00 +0000

Published June 7, 2024 by Wicked House Publishing

Whitt Rogers has been dreaming.

Horrible dreams.

Dreams that stretch the very fabric of the real and the unreal as he is pulled by a voice across the country to a small crab fishing ship set to depart into the Bering Sea. At sea, the memories piece themselves together in cracked fragments. But there is something out there. Something speaking to Whitt in his dreams. A voice from a long-forgotten memory that promises peace at the cost of madness. A voice that leads to a place unimaginable and inescapable

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A Dark and Endless Sea is a quiet, introspective horror novel that leans heavily into grief, memory, and isolation. Blaine Daigle clearly has a talent for atmospheric writing—his prose is thoughtful and often poetic, creating a somber tone that lingers throughout the book.

The story centers on Whitt, who has woken with no memory of what came before this moment. He's plagued by nightmares of a flooded town and floating dead bodies. He's directed to a crabbing boat in small-town Alaska. There’s a lot to admire in how Daigle explores the fragility of human connection while in isolation. The emotional realism is the book’s strongest point. There are a lot of dream sequences, compounding Whitt as an unreliable narrator, and leaving the reader with a sense of surrealism.

That said, the pacing is slow—very slow. While some readers may appreciate the quiet build, I found myself wanting more payoff and a clearer sense of stakes. It’s a story that flirts heavily with dread, but the ending just didn't deliver in a satisfying way.

I loved The Broken Places, but this one just wasn't for me.

Review || Cold Snap by Lindy Ryan

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 14 May 2025 19:28:00 +0000

Published October 15, 2024 by Titan Books

A grieving mother and son hope to survive Christmas in a remote mountain cabin, in this chilling novella of dread, isolation and demons lurking in the frozen woods. Perfect for fans of The Only Good Indians, The Shining and The Babadook.

Two weeks ago, Christine Sinclaire's husband slipped off the roof while hanging Christmas lights and fell to his death on the front lawn. Desperate to escape her guilt and her grief, Christine packs up her fifteen-year-old son and the family cat and flees to the cabin they'd reserved deep in the remote Pennsylvania Wilds to wait out the holidays.

It isn't long before Christine begins to hear strange noises coming from the forest. When she spots a horned figure watching from between frozen branches, Christine assumes it's just a forest animal—a moose, maybe, since the property manager warned her about them, said they'd stomp a body so deep into the snow nobody'd find it 'til spring. But moose don't walk upright like the shadowy figure does. They don't call Christine's name with her dead husband's voice.

A haunting examination of the horrors of grief and the hunger of guilt, perfect for readers of Stephen King, Christina Henry, and Chuck Wendig.

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I went into Cold Snap expecting a chilling, atmospheric horror story with strong emotional distress — and for the first little bit, that’s what it seemed to be. Set against the icy backdrop of a small Appalachian town, the setup is familiar but effective: people with emotional baggage retreat to a remote cabin in the woods, and weird things begin to happen. To quote Dora the Explorer: "¡Vámonos!"

Unfortunately, what begin as isolation horror deeply embedded with grief (the husband died hanging Christmas lights), the story quickly took a turn into surreal territory, and I found myself more confused than captivated. Her dead husband is talking to her, or is it the moose, and events start to feel disjointed — almost dreamlike, but not in a way that ever fully clicks.

What really pulled me out of the story, though, was the cat death — which is not only graphic and disturbing but referenced multiple times throughout the book. I understand horror can be visceral and I don't shy from gore, but the way this was handled felt excessive and deeply unpleasant. And the only person traumatized by it was the kid! Mom was just like "Darn, the cat got stomped to death in the snow by a maybe-moose". If animal harm is a deal-breaker for you, I strongly recommend skipping this one.

There are interesting ideas here — grief, guilt, isolation — but they get buried under so much weirdness and emotional chaos that they never fully land. Cold Snap might resonate with readers who enjoy abstract, metaphor-heavy horror, but for me, it was more frustrating than frightening. I kept waiting for it all to come together or for the deeper meaning to reveal itself, but by the end, I was wondering WTH just happened.

Having loved Bless Your Heart and Throw Me to The Wolves, I was excited to venture into this one, but it missed its mark with me.

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