TNBBC's The Next Best Book Blog

The 40 But 10: Dave Housley

noreply@blogger.com (TNBBC Super Mod) — Mon, 18 May 2026 09:00:00 +0000

I've pulled together 40ish questions - some bookish, some silly - and have asked authors to limit themselves to answering only 10 of them. That way, it keeps the interviews fresh and connectable for all of us!

Today we are joined by Dave Housley. Dave is the author of five novels and five story collections, most recently the novel-in-stories Aliens Attack! and the collection Looney. His work has appeared in Booth, Identity Theory, McSweeneys, Wigleaf, and some other places. He is one of the founding editors at Barrelhouse, and the primary organizer of the Conversations and Connections: Practical Advice on Writing, which is held in DC in the Spring. He is the Director of Web Strategy for Penn State Online Education.

How do you celebrate when you finish writing a new book?

I might pour myself a drink and pat myself on the back a little. It’s a big achievement, just to finish something, and I definitely believe in celebrating those milestones.

Then…I suck it up and do the next part, which is going through the process of trying to find somebody to publish the book, getting rejected, and hopefully eventually finding a publisher. I was joking to a friend the other day that I feel kind of like the Kevin Costner character from Bull Durham, who sets the dubious record for most home runs in the minor leagues. Aliens Attack! is my tenth published book, which I’m really proud of, of course. But every single one of those books was written and then either pitched to agents first, failed at attracting an agent, and then submitted to places that were open to unagented submissions. I have a science fiction book out right now at something like twelve places, and I’m probably about a month away from having a shitty but finished first draft of a book that, if it works out how I think it will work out, will be one I where I start with trying to find an agent. It’s a weird situation to be in, having published a fair amount of work that I’m really proud of, but also every single time I’m writing a book, I’m truly not sure if it will ever be published, or if this is the one that’s just going to be a word file on my computer.

Summarize your book using only gifs or emojis.

Would you and your main character(s) get along?

Well, there are more than a few “shitty dude” stories in this book. They’re mostly fuckups who can’t quite see themselves clearly and are self-inflicting most of the damage they’re incurring, so on one hand, these shitty dudes are not a great hang. On the other, I think most of them are created in my own image and based on my own worst instincts and traits, so…maybe? Those are the humans in this book, which is a book about an alien invasion, and where a group of interconnected people are at the moment of the invasion, and how they react when they are really faced with the end. The book also has a number of chapters/stories written from the perspective of the aliens, and I think would get along with most of them, because those stories are mostly about getting what you think you want, and still being sad.

What are you currently reading?

I’m currently very consciously and proactively trying to write a book that works like an Elmore Leonard book but has the shaggy dog spirit of the Big Lebowski, so I am literally reading nothing but Elmore Leonard books. I just finished 52 Pickup and started a re-read of Get Shorty.

What’s the one book someone else wrote that you wish you had written?

I think Strangers on a Train is not only one of the best thrillers ever written, just a completely canonical story, but also the funniest book I’ve ever read.

What’s the single best line you’ve ever read?

I’m going to cheat and use a line from a movie if that’s okay, because I watched the movie A Simple Plan (also a great book) and there’s a line that I can’t get out of my head. Billy Bob Thornton plays this kind of simple fail-brother to Bill Paxton’s lead character. I won’t give away the ending, but the context is they’re arguing over a big decision that Billy Bob thinks will set his life in a new direction. So far, that life has been extremely limited – he’s never been outside their small town or had a real relationship. “I just want to know what people do,” he says.

Do you read the reviews of your books or do you stay far far away from them, and why?

I read them. I feel like if you’re going to be a writer you really need to develop a thick skin, and at this point I’ve been doing this for a long time, so I generally don’t mind if something doesn’t land with a reader, even if that person then goes on to write a middling or bad review somewhere. It’s all so subjective. Of course I like it a lot better when somebody has good things to say about a book!

If you could time travel, would you go back to the past or forward into the future?

I was born in 1967, so I was around for a few years of the Sixties, but, well, I was a baby. I feel like I very much grew up in the shadow of the Sixties, and free love and hippies and all of the cultural change that happened in that decade. I soaked up a lot of it, but I definitely missed it, and if I could go back to any time, I think I’d go back there and experience it as a slightly older young person.

What songs would be on the soundtrack of your life?

For this book it’s been David Bowie space songs all the way. A number of the chapters are named after Bowie songs or lyrics: I’m Happy, Hope You’re Happy Too, Very Different Today, and Waiting in the Sky are all chapters in Aliens Attack! Writing the book and planning the launch party, I must have listened to Life on Mars, Starman, Lady Stardust, the Ziggy Stardust a million times.

What are your bookish pet peeves?

It is really hard to write funny. This is something I learned reading for Barrelhouse very early on in my writing career. Trying and failing at being funny is a terminal condition for a story or a novel. You really can’t get past it. So many books that are thought of as comic are really just broad, and the humor is a kind of flailing, look-at-these-assholes humor. I think when something is really funny, like the George Saunders story “Sea Oak,” for instance, there’s a real sadness at the heart of things that I don’t think is present in a lot of the books that are marketed as funny, comical, farcical, whatever. But as I already said, I think Strangers on a Train is the funniest book I’ve ever read, so maybe my funny is a little different.

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Released April 2026

Goodreads link

Told through the men and women—and aliens—who experienced it firsthand, Dave Housley's sci-fi novel ALIENS ATTACK! presses us with the big question: what would you do at the end of the world? Intertwining the depth of sonder with the honesty of reality, Housley brings us the truth of what an alien invasion would look like in each of our lives. From a woman who realizes the man she’s about to marry has a dark secret to a priest addicted to oxycontin holed up with a choir he despises, ALIENS ATTACK! is pockmarked with wry humor, pop culture references, and authenticity. Housley holds the mirror up for us and tells us to behold what we cannot run away from—ourselves.

Page 69 Test: Echo Chamber

noreply@blogger.com (TNBBC Super Mod) — Mon, 11 May 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Disclaimer: The Page 69 Test is not mine. It has been around since 2007, asking authors to compare page 69 against the meat of the actual story it is a part of. I loved the whole idea of it and so I'm stealing it specifically to showcase small press titles - novels, novellas, short story collections, the works! So until the founder of The Page 69 Test calls a cease and desist, let's do this thing....

In this installment of Page 69,

we put Maren Voss's Echo Chamber to the test.

Set up page 69 for us.

We're five days into the story. Elara Wren — neuroscientist, single mother — has just discovered that her ex-husband Jonas has been "overwritten": his body is intact, his memories are there, but the consciousness driving him is no longer his. A shadowy organization called the Venn Institute has learned to intercept human consciousness as a signal and replace it with something else.

Page 69 is her visit to her brother Luka, who has been in a coma for six years following a car accident. Elara has always believed his brain simply wasn't recovering. She's brought along Ren — a paranoid, brilliant former colleague who has been tracking the Venn Institute from the margins. He's brought equipment she doesn't have. What they find changes everything she thought she knew about the six years she's spent at her brother's bedside.

What is the book about?

Echo Chamber is a literary thriller built around one central question: what if consciousness isn't something your brain produces, but something it receives — a signal from somewhere else?

Neuroscientist Elara Wren discovers evidence of this during a routine brain-mapping experiment. Within 48 hours, her lab is broken into, her data is stolen, and she realizes the man living in her ex-husband's body is not Jonas. A powerful organization has been quietly replacing key people — same face, same memories, different consciousness — and they've been doing it for years.

Elara goes on the run across the Netherlands with her eight-year-old son Milo, a boy whose uncanny perceptiveness has always set him apart. He noticed before she did: *"Daddy's eyes are different."* As she traces the organization to an isolated facility in northern Norway, she uncovers a truth about her own family that changes everything — and has to choose between saving the people she loves and preserving what makes us human.

For readers of Blake Crouch's *Recursion* and *Dark Matter* — fast-paced, idea-driven, emotionally grounded.

Do you think this page gives our readers an accurate sense of what the book is about? Does it align itself with the novel’s theme?

Completely. Echo Chamber is built around one central question: what if consciousness isn't something your brain produces, but something it receives — a signal from somewhere else? Page 69 is the moment that question stops being theory. Elara's brother has been in a coma for six years. She's been told his signal is fading. Here she learns it isn't fading at all — someone is actively jamming it. Six years of visits, six years of grief, and the truth is that he's been in there the whole time, trapped, screaming into silence no one could hear.

It's the scene where the thriller becomes personal. And where Elara stops being a scientist trying to understand what's happening, and becomes a sister with something to fight for.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

PAGE 69

ECHO CHAMBER

Ren works quickly. Attaches electrodes with practiced efficiency — these aren't his first patients, probably not in sanctioned settings either. The unit hums to life. My brother's brain blooms in color on a small screen, unlike the patterns I'm used to.

I sit in the worn chair by the bed. Take Luka's hand — always warm, even though he's done nothing but breathe for six years. Run my fingers over his knuckles, over the scar from when he was eight and fell out of a tree. Over the ring he was already wearing before the accident, a simple silver band.

"Hey, Lu. Brought a friend. A bit intense, but he's trying to help."

Luka's face doesn't change. Hasn't changed in six years. But his skin feels warmer today, as if he knows something is different.

"Run isolation now," Ren says, eyes locked on the screen.

I watch my brother as the software filters out spatial noise, strips away brain activity. Leaves only the signal — Luka's signal. I've seen it before, but weaker each time. Fragmented. A voice drowning in static.

But Ren's equipment shows something mine didn't.

"There," he points at the screen. "See this?"

I lean in to look. There's a pattern in the low register of the signal. A secondary waveform nested within the primary, oscillating at a different frequency. Artificially precise.

"That's not degradation," I whisper.

"No. Interference."

"From what?"

"External source. Actively disrupting his signal. The signal isn't fading on its own — it's being deliberately jammed."

The room falls silent. The monitors seem to hold their breath. Somewhere in the hallway a nurse laughs, the sound so normal it hurts.

"Someone is doing this on purpose?"

"The interference pattern is structured. Regular. Has the same signature as Venn's overwrite technology, but at low power. It doesn't replace his signal — it drowns it."

I look at my brother's face. Six years I've watched him lie here. Daily visits the first two years, weekly after that. Always asking the unanswered question — are you still in there?

He is. Has been the whole time. Someone is keeping the door shut.

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Maren Voss is an independently published author of literary thrillers that sit at the intersection of science and identity. *Echo Chamber* is her debut novel, drawing on real debates in neuroscience — the hard problem of consciousness, quantum coherence in the brain, the philosophy of personal identity. She writes in English and Dutch. Currently 4.6 stars on Amazon across English, Dutch, German, and Spanish editions, with a French translation just published.

Echo Chamber

Science Fiction | Thriller

Released February 2026

Purchase your copy here

What if your brain isn't the source of who you are — just the receiver?

When neuroscientist Elara Wren records a signal that shouldn't exist — a pattern of consciousness originating outside the brain — she thinks she's made the discovery of her career. Within 48 hours, her lab is ransacked and she's warned to stop looking.

Then she tests her ex-husband. The signal is wrong. The man in Jonas's body has all his memories — but Jonas is gone.

Fleeing across the Netherlands with her eight-year-old son Milo, Elara follows the trail of a shadowy organization that has learned to intercept human consciousness and overwrite it. They've been replacing people for years. And her brother's six-year coma may not be what she always believed.

*Echo Chamber* is a thriller about what we lose when we lose ourselves — and how far a mother will go to bring people back.

Podcast episode — "Your Brain Is a Biological Antenna":

What I Read in April

noreply@blogger.com (TNBBC Super Mod) — Sat, 09 May 2026 12:49:00 +0000

Here's what I read in April. Thirteen books (and 2 DNFs)... ain't nothing the sneeze at!

Of the thirteen, only one was a 5 star. Four of them were 4 stars. Twelve of the thirteen were review copies. Seven of the books were digital copies, five were print copies from the author/publisher. One was an audiobook. The longest read was The Hive at 768 pages. The shortest read was Filth Eaters are 125 pages.

A total of 4293 pages read.

But Won't I Miss Me by Tiffany Tsao

This is a perfect example of why I hesitate to DNF a book.

In But Won't I Miss Me, women give birth to their babies and simultaneously give birth to a clone of themselves — a process called rebirthing — and that clone then in turn devours the woman. Hair, bones, everything. Then... it takes her place. Same memories, same body, only stronger, same same same.

Only… WTF, ladies. You die. You are eaten by a thing you grew inside you that slides out and literally fucking eats you and then becomes you. And everyone is just fine with this. It’s considered natural. Expected. Sometimes even admired. And every time the new you gets pregnant, the cycle starts again. You can be eaten and copied multiple times in your “lifetime.” Seriously, WTF right?!

As wild and fascinating as that sounds, the book doesn’t actually lead with it. We jump in after our narrator, who was terrified to be killed, has already been rebirthed, only... something went wrong. She’s not strong like the others. She’s sickly, detached from her new baby, and clearly suffering from postpartum depression. The doctors run her and the baby through a slew of tests to understand why her rebirthing failed, and determine it was malabsorption, and we follow her through a bit of a boo‑hoo spiral: her husband is disappointed she rebirthed poorly, she can’t do the super‑mom feats the other rebirthed women can, and he’s annoyed at the extra work her weakness creates for him.

This is where I almost DNF’d. It was slow, repetitive, and I knew I couldn’t keep going if that was all the book had to offer.

But it’s not! If you’re reading this and you’re slogging through Part I like I did, wondering if it’s worth it... hang in there until Part II. Trust me. The book shifts in a completely different direction, and suddenly I found myself riveted. Like, fully locked in, didn’t want to put it down, riveted.

And that’s all I’ll say, because like the last book I reviewed, going in blind is best!

I can't wait to hear what you think of it.

She Waits Where the Shadows Gather by Michelle Tang

OMG I rage‑read this book so hard!!

This was another in a growing line of books where I nearly DNF’d multiple times because I could not handle the main characters, and every section that wasn’t about their deteriorating marriage moved at such a slow, agonizing crawl I wanted to scream.

Carlos and Avery — the married couple at the center — completely rubbed me the wrong way. Carlos is a full‑on narcissistic ass, and Avery has been with him too long and loves him too much to leave. He drags her out to his family home in another country under the guise of helping his parents clean it up and get it ready to sell. Except… that is NOT why they moved there. And when Avery learns the house is haunted, she does what every non‑believer in every haunted‑house story does - she takes it on the chin and explains away every weird, unsettling thing she experiences.

See? Rage‑bait material.

But I’m noticing a trend with books releasing this year... or at least with the ones I've decided to pick up so far. They start out blah and boring, splashing around in the shallow end, testing your patience... and then, right when you’re about to give up, they cannonball you straight into the deep end and nearly drown you with a twist you might have seen coming if you weren’t so busy mentally talking yourself out of chucking the book across the room.

And that twist... the one I almost didn’t stick around for? It actually bumped this from a two‑star “I suffered so you don’t have to” read to an “okay, you surprised me” three‑star read.

If you pick it up, stick it out. You're going to get pissed and you're probably going to want to curse me out. But I think you might like where it goes.

And Side By Side They Wander by Molly Tanzer

Oh man you guys.

DNFd at 16%. Before you come at me for not giving it a fair chance, the book is barely over a hundred pages so 16% is a decent sample of it.

This killed me too, because I adore Molly Tanzer and I had such high hopes for it. It was one of my most anticipated.

Her novel A Pretty Mouth is still one that I think about, all these years later. But I just could not get into this one at all.

I usually do pretty good with sci fi space stuff but the characters and world building were thrown at me way too fast and I wasn't able to settle in at all, rereading paragraphs to try to recall what I just read as the book continued full speed ahead without me.

Sigh.

The Palaces of the Crow by Ray Nayler

When I saw this on NetGalley, the cover immediately caught my eye, and the description sealed the deal — a young Jewish girl, a Polish soldier, a Roma horse trader, and a mute boy with no name, all banding together for survival deep in the woods with the help of a flock of highly intelligent crows as they try to escape the horrors of WWII. Caught between the Nazis and the Red Army, guided by birds? Ok, call me curious!

Strangely, this is the third war‑set book I’ve read this year, which is usually a hard no for me. But the first two — Sarafina by Philip Fracassi and The Girl With a Thousand Faces by Sunyi Dean — both had elements that intrigued me. Sarafina leaned into historical horror with touches of magical realism. TGWaTF was an alternate historical fantasy. So when I picked up Palaces of the Crow, I was hoping it, too, would lean in one of those directions. I mean… a group of kids being led through the woods by crows practically begs for magical realism, right?!

So there I was, waiting for something strange or uncanny to happen — and instead, I found myself reading a much more grounded story about a group of children who’ve lost everything, hunkering down with their feathered companions. It’s a book rooted in survival, friendship, trauma, and loss and explores the world through multiple perspectives, breaking down the boundaries between humans and animals... yet it never fully steps into the magical or fantastical space I was expecting.

Taken at face value, it’s a solid story about resilience and connection in the midst of war. But I can’t pretend I wasn’t disappointed that it didn’t dive into the elements that initially drew me to it. Is it unfair to say I feel a little cheated?

Hunger & Thirst by Claire Fuller

I am such a fan of Claire Fuller, and it’s officially my goal to read her entire backlog. I started with The Memory of Animals, which I loved, then moved on to Unsettled Ground, which was also fabulous. I own Swimming Lessons and Our Endless Numbered Days (still unread, but soon!), and I just snagged Bitter Orange on Pango — so yes, I can now proudly call myself a Fuller Completist.

I was thrilled to land a NetGalley ARC of Hunger & Thirst, and it did not disappoint. This is an incredibly unsettling read — slow and layered at first, and then suddenly it smacks you upside the head with a mallet, leaving you stunned and deliciously freaked out. If you loved the way Kliewer’s The Caretaker crawled into your brain, or if you’re a sucker for haunted‑house vibes that keep your nerves humming, don’t miss this one.

We follow Ursula in two timelines that are set thirty six years apart: in the present, where she’s actively avoiding a journalist who wants to interview her for a documentary about her involvement in the unsolved disappearance of Sue, her friend and coworker; and in her teenage years, where she’s bouncing between unstable living situations and spending time with a sketchy little crew in an abandoned house where the owners allegedly died in a murder‑suicide.

Ursula idolized Sue, a bold, bad‑influence girl who always pushes things one step further and when Sue suggests a séance in the murder‑suicide house, of course they do it. But then Raymond channels something that turns its attention on Ursula, something that claims to know her past and her future, and the floor drops out. From that moment on, the book slides into full‑tilt creep mode and really starts to get under your skin.

If you want to know more, you're going to have to pick it up. But make sure you close all the curtains and lock all the doors. Trust me!

Kill All Wizards by Jedediah Berry

A tea‑sipping, well‑dressed barbarian sets out for vengeance against The Fifth Committee — a tribunal of wizards — after the death of his little brother. He’s on a mission to track down one very specific wizard with whom he has some unfinished business.

Told in third‑person plural and set in a bar built inside the skull of a long‑dead god (yes, really), our barbarian Gotchimus... a name I actually loved... sits at a table with his friend and colleague, trying to barter for information about this elusive wizard. But before his friend will spill anything, he demands the story behind Gotchimus’s newly acquired eyepatch.

Sounds simple enough but omg this thing is so confusing.

I thought the cover and description sounded intriguing, and I accepted the review copy from Tordotcom... a publisher I usually enjoy... but Kill All Wizards was just too strange, too meandering, and too out‑there for me. I tapped out on page 74. And considering the book is only 133 pages long, that’s saying something.

As much as I hate DNFing books, I simply could not bring myself to care about Gotchimus, whether his friend ever gave him the information he needed, or whether he’d get his revenge.

Count. Me. Out.

Decomposition Book by Sara Van Os

Come for the menty‑b girl vibes, stay for the corpse companionship.

Savannah is a neurotic twenty‑something taking a semester off college and hiding out alone in her parents’ summer home, trying to recover from a recent traumatic event and get her head on straight. She calls her mom daily out of obligation, checks in with her therapist weekly, and spends the rest of her time drinking too much wine and slow‑dosing Ambien to quiet her relentlessly negative internal monologue.

One night, after mixing a little too much of everything, she wakes up in the woods behind the house… lying next to a dead woman. After a very understandable freakout, Savannah convinces herself there was no foul play. She rummages through the woman’s backpack, finds a journal that begins with “If you’re reading this, I’m either safe or dead. Either way is fine by me,” and learns the body's name: Ava.

In her already fragile state, Savannah delays calling the police and instead begins spending time with the corpse — reading Ava’s journal entries, piecing together her final days, and forming a one‑sided relationship that grows stranger and more intimate by the day.

What starts as morbid curiosity slowly spirals into something much darker, as Savannah’s mental state begins to mirror the decomposing body in the woods.

It’s a gripping read, pulling you along chapter after chapter as you come to understand what both women endured to end up where they are.

That said, there were some things that didn't sit right with me, spoilery things, and if you've already read this, maybe you know, and those things kept threatening to pull me out of the story.

If you’re into books about women on the cusp of losing thier shit, and have enjoyed The Pisces, The Bus on Thursday, To Be Devoured, Beta Vulgaris, you'll definitely want to get this one into your reading line up once it releases.

Dead Weight by Hildur Knutsdottir

A delightfully twisted domestic thriller where not a whole lot is happening on the surface, but what does happen is a LOT. If you know, you know.

Unnur is living her life — gunning for a promotion, jetting around the world with her married lover, convincing herself she’s totally fine. Then one evening she comes home to find a black cat curled up on her couch. She shoos it out, only to find it waiting outside her apartment door the next day. Assuming it’s a runaway, she tracks down the owner: Ásta, a young woman clearly going through some stuff, who reluctantly asks Unnur to watch Io until she’s in better shape.

And that’s where things start to unravel.

Ásta and Io slip into Unnur’s life with alarming ease, and before long Unnur finds herself pulled into the center of a very bad situation... but one she’s uniquely, almost disturbingly equipped to handle.

Unnur is a fascinating and quietly unhinged MC. She’s sharp, self‑possessed, morally flexible, and absolutely committed to maintaining control of her world… even when that world threatens to control her. Watching her navigate chaos with an eerie, serene determination is half the fun.

Don’t get in a lady’s way when there’s a mess to clean up.

This was loads of fun and easily digested in a few hours. The words practically run off the page. But check your triggers with this one — the story may seem low‑key, but it’s built around infidelity and domestic abuse.

If you've enjoyed Eat The Ones You Love, I Am Agatha, or Too Old For This... this one is a must-read.

The Black Farm by Elias Witherow

Sooo many of you have gushed over this one, so when I saw it for cheap on Chirp, I figured sure, why not. I hate FOMO and I’m always down for a super bloody read. But honestly? This one was just… meh.

The Black Farm kicks off with Nick and his girlfriend Jess shoving pills down their throats after deciding life just isn’t worth living anymore. Jess has never recovered from the loss of their unborn son. Nick can’t imagine living without Jess. Sounds kinda Romeo-and-Juliet tragic, right? But uh-uh. Nope.

Nick wakes up in The Black Farm—a twisted, purgatory-adjacent afterlife where all suicidals are dumped. The place is run by a guy named Danny, who forces newcomers to make a choice:

Feed the Pig (aka sacrifice yourself to the entity that created the Farm, who will digest you and decide whether you go to hell or get a second chance at life), or refuse, and spend eternity sprinting from Pigborn—grotesque creatures who will capture, torture, and kill you… only for you to respawn somewhere else on the Farm, forever and ever, amen.

Nick says fuck the pig and decides to take his chances on the Farm, on an insane mission to find Jess, who has to be out there somewhere, and then figure out how to get the two of them out of this nightmare.

It sounds cool enough. And it was gross, but not turn-me-off gross. It made for an alright companion on my commute. Did I love it? No. Did I hate it? Also no. Do I have any interest in book two? Yeah, no. One ride through the Farm was plenty for me.

The Hive by Ronald Malfi

I was a little late requesting a review copy of this one, but the publisher granted it to me anyway and so I wasted no time and dove right in!

What a chunky and intimidating guy this was! I cannot remember the last time I read a book this long. The closest I've been was when I read Bury Your Bones in the Midnight Soil which clocked in at over 500 pages. And I've never read anything by Malfi before so this felt like quite the risk for me. Think about how many more books I could have read in the span of time I was reading this one?! I heard my gigantic TBR pile collectively sigh when they saw me open this one on my kindle.

The Hive takes place in a small town pummeled by a bizarre storm. When the skies clear, the residents of Mariner’s Cove head out to assess the damage — only to find themselves strangely drawn to random bits of debris scattered across lawns, trees, and water: a colander, a bike wheel, wire hangers, even someone’s front door. They don’t know why, only that they must protect these objects at all costs.

Those afflicted begin having vivid dreams — climbing a metal structure high in the sky, seeing strange symbols that slowly reveal themselves as instructions. There’s something they need to build. Something important. And Malfi makes you wait until the final quarter to find out what it is.

God, this thing was long. And I’m not convinced it needed to be. Malfi could’ve shaved off a good two hundred pages by trimming the repetition. Still, he does a solid job introducing the (many) main characters and keeping their bizarre storylines straight while gradually ramping up the tension and WTF energy.

Not a book I’ll be shouting from the mountaintops about, but not one I’d tell you to skip either. Worth the read — just maybe not at this length.

The Cat Bride by Charlotte Tierney

“…when you are a girl trapped in a tower, in a world made of boy, it is essential to understand how not to attract attention.”

Holy hot mess and so much more.

We meet sixteen-year-old Lowdy, who’s done something bad enough to get her mother fired and the two of them kicked out of their cushy living situation. They end up moving in with Lowdy’s ailing grandmother… who still resides in Astra's childhood home located in the family's abandoned zoo.

Astra, Lowdy’s mother, grew up performing with her own mother’s lynx back in the 70s. The zoo was once a tourist draw thanks to their rare hybrid cat — a tynx, part tiger, part lynx — until it escaped its enclosure and killed a man. The tynx was supposedly put down, the lynx rehomed, and the zoo shuttered.

Sixteen years later, as Astra returns with Lowdy in tow, rumors start swirling that the tynx never died at all. Something is stalking the neighborhood. Livestock is turning up brutally slaughtered. People are being mauled. And Lowdy begins to fear that she, her mother, and her grandmother are far more entangled with the creature than she ever understood.

Holy gaslighting, Batman. This entire book is one massive mindfuck. The family dynamics are as toxic as the home's peeling lead paint, and the childhood trauma runs ridiculously deep. Tierney never shows her hand — not once — and we’re dragged along page after page trying to figure out whether Lowdy is mentally unraveling, whether Astra is a suffocating manipulator, or whether both things can be true at the same time.

As the truth behind Lowdy’s horrid behavior back home slowly surfaces, and the generational damage between mother, daughter, and grandmother comes into focus, it becomes painfully clear that no one is getting out of this story unscathed.

The Cat Bride is equal parts fable and fairytale, wrapped in a suffocating, atmospheric setting that’s as compelling as it is repellent. It’s weird, it’s feral, it’s unsettling — and it absolutely sinks its claws in.

Definitely for fans of novels like Our Wives Under the Sea, Nightbitch, and The Book of X.

Bone of My Bone by Johanna Van Veen

This is another one of those cases where I would’ve declined the publisher’s pitch if I judged books solely by their cover. It’s perfectly appropriate for the story, sure — but it leans a little too “M’lord and fair maiden” for my taste, and not nearly enough “holy saint’s skeleton head.”

The novel drops us into the 1600s during the Thirty Years’ War, where we meet Elsebeth, a rough‑and‑tumble woman who has just left her family behind to die, and Ursula, a nun disguised in layman's clothing, desperate to reach the safety of her convent. The two narrowly escape a band of soldiers who are pillaging, burning, and assaulting their way across the countryside. As they flee into the Bavarian Forest, they stumble upon a dying peasant who begs them to take the box he carries and deliver it home.

Inside the box? A saint’s skull. And “home”? The burial site of the rest of her bones. Reunite them, he says, and the saint will grant them a wish.

So off Ursula and Elsebeth go, on a grim little pilgrimage they never asked for... unaware that a necromancer and his rotting companion are close behind, determined to reclaim what was stolen.

If you liked Alex Grecian’s Red Rabbit, there’s a lot here that will feel familiar in the best way. It’s dark but cheeky, atmospheric without being dreary, and full of quirky characters and unexpected side quests. The religious horror is subtle but steady — it's the quiet pulse that keeps the story moving.

I think I’m in the minority when I say I liked it, but didn’t love it. The story is entertaining, the journey was fun, and the characters memorable, but some of the language and the way the women framed thier queer relationship edged into eye‑roll territory for me.

Still, Bone of My Bone is a lively, macabre road‑trip fable with charm, grit, and a saint’s skull rattling around in the center of it all. Not a new favorite, but absolutely worth the trek if you enjoy dark historical adventures with a tongue planted firmly in its cheek.

Make Me Better by Sarah Gailey

I’m not entirely sure what’s shifted in Sarah Gailey’s writing lately, but they aren't writing books like they used to. Gone are the days of alternate history gender bending hippo riders and futuristic gun wielding queer librarians. Gone too are the creepy haunted house vibes and the page-turning thriller crawling with clones, jilted wives, dark twisted secrets, and murrrrrrder.

I’ve always admired how Gailey reinvents themselves with each new project. That said, even though I loved the outer space setting, Spread Me veered a little too hard into weird kink territory for my tastes, and now Make Me Better turns in the complete opposite direction by delivering a more subdued story. The premise of an isolated cult community that hosts a monthly “Salt Festival” promising healing and transformation is compelling on paper. It sounds like it would have all the right ingredients... tension, mystery, emotional depth.

But the pacing here is extremely slow, and even with the undercurrent of unease threaded throughout, I struggled to stay invested. By the time Celia, one of the Salt Fesitval's visitors, finally uncovers what’s happening, the reveal didn’t carry the weight I hoped for, and I wasn’t as surprised as the book seemed to want me to be.

Of all Gailey’s books, this one feels the most conventional and the least distinctively “them.” There’s nothing wrong with a quieter, more mainstream approach... it just wasn’t giving what I’ve come to love most from their work.

In the end, Make Me Better is a thoughtful, restrained take on the cult subgenre, but it doesn't quite find the spark that made Gailey’s earlier novels so unforgettable. Readers new to their work may enjoy its slow‑burn mystery, but longtime fans might find themselves wishing for a bit more of that old fire.

For similar vibes that do a bit more, try The Island by Kerri King and Reef Mind by Hazel Zorn.

Filth Eaters by Ito Romo

"Everything in this book is historically accurate—except, of course, the vampires. Oh, and what happens in the future. But almost everything else is historically accurate." - Ito Romo

Filth Eaters takes a genre that’s been done to death (and undeath, lol) and manages to carve out something genuinely new. Ito Romo introduces a fresh breed of vampire — one that can reproduce, that doesn’t crumble under the usual folkloric tricks, and that feels more like an evolving species than a static bloodthirsty monster.

This nonlinear novel traces a thousand‑year bloodline beginning with Shandor in 1099, moving through the turning of the young Spaniard Radames in a 1400s bathhouse, and landing in 2069, where Radames’s son Doro livestreams his kills on the streets of a drowned, neon‑soaked New York City.

It’s ambitious, sweeping, and often fascinating.

Romo uses this multi-century timeline to explore survival in all of its physical, emotional, and generational forms... where his characters wrestle with identity, the exhaustion of existence, and the deeply human hunger to love and be loved, even when your species is dependent on taking life in order to sustain your own.

The structure is bold, the ideas are fresh, but the emotional impact didn’t land firmly for me. I definitely admired the concept more than I connected with the characters.

In the end, though Filth Eaters breaks new ground in the vampire genre and was a solid, intriguing read, it never fully sunk its teeth into me.

The End by Adam Cosco

Eli and Selene are two tech‑heads heading to a remote cabin for a much‑needed reset. Their relationship has been strained, Selene has been stuck in a fog she can’t shake, and Eli is convinced that some time away without distractions will help them reconnect.

But shortly after they settle in, Eli runs out to the store, leaving Selene curled up on the couch with a book. When he returns, she’s gone. The only clue is the time‑lapse camera she set up to record the sunset. As he rewinds the footage, he watches Selene walk naked into the frozen lake… and vanish. By the time he reaches the shore, it’s already too late.

While drowning in grief, Eli notices an email notification on her phone — a welcome message to a “gathering of the faithful.” Curiosity (and desperation) lead him to the meeting, where he encounters the leaders of a strange, cult‑leaning group who believe the dead can reconnect with the living through chosen vessels. And Selene’s death, they insist, is the sign they’ve been waiting for.

What follows is a dark, twisted descent into one man’s inability to accept loss and his growing obsession with understanding why she left him behind. The book plays with grief, delusion, and the seductive pull of belief systems that promise answers when life refuses to give any.

It’s an intriguing setup with some genuinely eerie moments, but the story never fully clicked for me. The atmosphere is strong, the premise compelling, yet the emotional payoff felt muted. In the end, it’s a story with sharp edges and haunting ideas... just not one that cut as deeply as I had hoped.

The 40 But 10: Patricia Henley

noreply@blogger.com (TNBBC Super Mod) — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Today we are joined by PATRICIA HENLEY is the author of three novels, five collections of stories, two chapbooks of poetry, and a stage play. Her first novel, Hummingbird House, was a finalist for the National Book Award and The New Yorker Fiction Prize. Her short fiction has appeared in The Atlantic, The Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, and other journals. Her work has been anthologized in Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, and other anthologies. Her new collection of stories, Apple & Palm, is forthcoming from Cornerstone Press in March 2026. She taught in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Purdue University for 26 years. She lives in Kingston, Washington. Learn more at patriciahenleyauthor.com

What do you do when you’re not writing?

I think about writing. I take long walks. I read. I watch British TV, mostly cop procedurals. Keeping in touch with far-flung friends and family takes time and energy, and it keeps my spirits up. I’m good at planning dream trips. I used to bake, but I have broken myself of that pastime, per my doctor’s orders. Now I watch Facebook reels of people creating luscious cakes.

What’s something that’s true about you but no one believes?

Most people do not believe that I was fat as a girl. I wore Chubette dresses.

What’s the best money you’ve ever spent as a writer?

I’ve traveled. And since my work usually starts with a character in a particular place, traveling has fed my writing. Hummingbird House is set almost entirely in Guatemala. When I first traveled there, I had no larger ambition than to write a few stories set there. I spent ten years going back and forth, gathering material. That was money well spent.

Describe your book in three words.

Women claiming themselves.

If you could spend the day with another author, who would you choose and why?

A dead author: William Trevor. I so admire him. I will never come to the end of reading his stories.

A living author: Tessa Hadley. She amazes me. I wrote her a fan letter once. I urgently await each new book by her.

What is your favorite book from childhood?

When I was a girl, I had two books that I read over and over. The Secret Garden bewitched me. Dicken, the boy who tamed animals and was deeply connected to the natural world, became the model for nearly every man I’ve fallen in love with. Name the constellations and recognize bird calls, and I’m yours. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, the story of Francie, a girl staunchly living through hard times, gave me a protagonist to emulate.

What are you currently reading?

The Entire Sky by Joe Wilkins. We’re doing an event together in May in Portland, Oregon, where we’ll have a conversation about our rural, small town, and working-class characters. His characters leap onto the page, so utterly real.

What genres won’t you read?

Although I love sci-fi movies and sci-fi television (I’m a Trekkie), I don’t read science fiction. There’s not enough time to read everything.

Do you read reviews, or do you steer clear of them, and why?

I always read reviews. I’ve been mostly lucky that way, so they don’t upset me. It’s fascinating to see what book reviewers see in the work. Or don’t see.

What is under your bed?

Red boots. A box of supplements. I keep old teaching supplies under my bed in boxes. Every time I move, I divest myself of some teaching supplies, but not all! I always think that I may need them in the future. I’m 79 years old and I still love teaching.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Released March 2026

Goodreads link

In her new, linked collection, APPLE & PALM, set in and around the town of Whistle Pig in the Western Maryland mountains, a web of characters navigate unexpected pitfalls, relationships, and aging.

- Fragile, elderly Roxy now lives in a studio behind Tansy, the women’s arts co-op, instead of with the other women. She wants Lulu nearby. Lulu is her philandering grandson’s wife, a free spirited mother who keeps about Roxy connected, alive.

- Jill is in her sixties. She’s resilient, a little fierce, and rescues others—lets them find peace working in her apple orchard or respite on her sprawling property, which gives her a love and connection she prizes far more than any romance.

- And then there’s Maddy, who loves books but has to read on the sly. She came up poor and married young, and her unreliable and violent husband doesn’t trust books. Or her.

Exploring faded dreams, newly found independence, memory, desire, and more, the women in Henley’s stories clarify their identities and grasp their own narratives, in a world where men are rarely soulmates but share the reckoning of change. Sentence by sentence, Patricia Henley demonstrates in APPLE & PALM why she is a master of the short story craft.

Adam Cosco Recommends Books of Influence

noreply@blogger.com (TNBBC Super Mod) — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 09:00:00 +0000

And so we continue our Writers Recommend - a series where we ask writers to, well, you know.. recommend things. Like the books that they've enjoyed. To you. Because who doesn't like being recommended new and interesting books, right?! Think of it as a PSA. Only it's more like an LSA -Literary Service Announcement.

Hey, my name is Adam Cosco. I started as a screenwriter and then became a novelist, mostly because I hated waiting for financing to get my stories made into movies. Most of my books started as scripts, and they read like movies. I’m still learning how to make them more novelistic, but I wanted to take the opportunity in this article to talk about some of my influences and discuss some books that I really like but haven’t gotten a chance to talk about anywhere else.

Lunar Park by Bret Easton Ellis

In my reading journey, no book has made me laugh as hard as this one. What you have to know about this book is that it’s autobiographical, but in a highly unique way. The book casts its own author as the protagonist, but this version of Bret Easton Ellis is not a gay man; he is instead domesticated and living with his wife in the suburbs. There is something so hilarious about just imagining this scenario.

To me, reading it was like the novelistic equivalent of seeing Fellini’s 8½ for the first time, that idea that anything was possible, and that movies and books were a way to be playful and mine your own life while blurring the truth. It's done in the same way Orson Welles would embellish his own life to the point where the legend and the lie were indecipherable.

There are so many pleasures in this book. The writing is hilarious, as it focuses on Bret, his complicated relationship with his father, and his even more complicated relationship with his fictional son, who is troubled in the same way Bret was growing up. But what I really love about it, as it goes on, is that the book kind of acts as therapy for Bret. We see that the fictional son Bret invented is a stand-in for his younger self, the one he fashioned as an edgy writer, the cool guy who was part of the literary Brat Pack. Ultimately, the book reveals itself to be about an author accepting the process of growing up and becoming uncool. In that sense, it has a lot of heart, just buried under a blackened crust.

Parallels in my work: Even though I wrote it well before reading Lunar Park, the book of mine that is most similar to it is Perverts. It’s a caustic journey through LA’s underbelly, set in the summer of 2012 against the backdrop of a raging forest fire. If you like the style of Bret Easton Ellis, you might like it. Check it out here.

The Song of Kali by Dan Simmons

I have always said that the best horror stories are the ones that don’t let people off the hook. The Song of Kali by Dan Simmons is less of a standard story and more of a slow, plodding march toward what seems like inevitable doom.

The story follows a husband and, later, his wife as they journey to Calcutta. The lead character, a writer working for a literary magazine, is sent to write an article about newly discovered poetry by M. Das. In his search to meet M. Das, he learns of secret societies and the Hindu goddess Kali, the goddess of death and destruction.

This is probably a good time to address what has become the elephant in the room regarding this book: in recent years, it has been labeled as xenophobic at best and racist at worst. This is a perception that was intensified by the fact that Dan Simmons expressed anti-Muslim views in his later years. I personally reject that hypothesis regarding the book itself, but I am the first to admit that I might be wrong, and this book very well may have some racist undertones in it. I am not one to allow someone's personal politics, especially later in life, to color their work.

In my defense of it, I liken it to movies like Straw Dogs, which views the rural English countryside as sinister and backward, or books and movies like Don't Look Now, which casts Venice, Italy, as sinister and perverse. The thing is, xenophobia is a word and a feeling for a reason. Certainly, hatred of any culture should be looked down on, but when it comes to horror stories, the fear of "otherness" is ingrained into the DNA of the genre, and mining those fears to create a feeling of dread is totally fair game.

Besides, it would be a great travesty to Dan Simmons to make his politics his sole legacy. Song of Kali is a masterclass in building dread. It may be one of the most downer books of all time, but to me, it belongs in the same category as the great downer movies like Blow Out, The French Connection, or Don’t Look Now. Nothing rattles an audience like taking the idea of a "happily ever after" and yanking it out from under them.

Parallels in my work: I wrote a book called The Heart of a Child which shares the same spiritual DNA as Song of Kali. I admittedly wrote this before I knew about Simmons or his work, but I assume I admire his writing because I am drawn to darker stories that leave no refuge for the reader. The Heart of a Child is loosely based on the McMartin Preschool trial of the '80s and is about a young girl who tells her parents she witnessed her teachers performing Satanic Ritualistic Abuse on some of her fellow classmates. Learn more about it here.

The Dogs of Babel by Carolyn Parkhurst

Unlike the other books I am suggesting, The Dogs of Babel did have a direct influence on my writing. I first read this as a screenplay and later as a book, and I was just struck by how unexpectedly moving it was. It’s about a man whose wife commits suicide, and the only witness to it was his dog. He then embarks on a journey to teach the dog how to speak because he is unconvinced that his wife took her own life and suspects there was something more, perhaps something sinister.

I just love the premise of trying to teach a dog to speak. In the script, he, I believe, buys floor pads and attempts to teach the dog to communicate that way. This is funny because at the time this book was written, that was considered far-fetched. Since then, I have become obsessed with a dog named Bunny on TikTok who does exactly this, she uses floor buttons to speak English, and it’s amazing!

I was always struck by the beginning of this book, the idea of a man who is unable to accept the suicide of someone he loves and goes searching for answers. After some life experience, knowing people in my own life who died by suicide, and thinking about my own attempts to join self-help groups and philosophical societies, I decided to write my own spin on this type of story.

My version starts out similarly: a man’s girlfriend unexpectedly kills herself by submerging herself under ice until she drowns. The man is unable to reconcile with what has happened, and instead of turning to a dog, he turns to a philosophical group that counts “listening to the dead” among its core tenets.

I wanted to write something about the siren's lure of belief. I really dislike movies and books that condescend to religion. Most of the world is religious, and if you are going to explore this territory, I feel you have to at least attempt to understand what makes people believe in something beyond the material world. When I wrote The End, I was trying to answer that question for the characters—to understand how grief leads people to need to believe in something. I wanted to make those answers a revelation for the audience as well. So instead of just reading about how a skeptical character becomes a believer, you yourself are lured into the belief system, feeling the magnetic pull of that cult-like atmosphere.

I owe a debt of gratitude to both the novel and the script of The Dogs of Babel for giving me the jumping-off point to take my story in a completely different direction. I really love that book, I love dogs, and I'm a sucker for anything that features animals in an un-Disneyfied way.

If you are interested in reading my book, The End, you can find it here: https://adamcosco.com/theend.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Adam Cosco is an award-winning author and filmmaker whose work dives deep into the shadows of the human psyche. A graduate of the prestigious American Film Institute, Adam cut his teeth in Hollywood before turning his focus to novels—crafting stories that blend horror, psychological suspense, and dark satire.

His novels—Little Brother, Say Goodbye to Jonny Hollywood, Lowlands, The Heart of a Child, and his latest mind-bending thriller The Dream Killer—have captivated readers with their atmospheric dread and sharp psychological insight.

Fearless, provocative, and impossible to ignore, Adam Cosco writes the kind of stories that leave a mark.

What I Read in March

noreply@blogger.com (TNBBC Super Mod) — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 12:08:00 +0000

Here's what I read in March. Another strong month with 14 books total.

Of the fourteen, two were 5 stars. Three were a solid 4 stars. Twelve of them were review copies... eleven of those I even managed to read before their release dates! Seven were from netgalley. Five were print copies from the author/publisher. Two were on audio. The longest read was The Boatman at 398 pages. The shortest was The Fifth Year at 80 pages.

A total of 3643 pages read.

The Boatman by K Bengston

The rites are failing. Potter’s Field is unraveling. And the Boatman isn’t just a ferryman of the dead.

Ring the church bell. Offer final confession. Place two silver coins over the eyes to pay the toll to Shoel. That’s the burial ritual Father Boone was taught when he arrived in Potter’s Field, a strange little town still reeling from the death of Father Orin, who burned alive in a house fire. But after this most recent death, something goes wrong. Horribly wrong.

The townsfolk gathered graveside are attacked by a murder of crows. The body vanishes from its half-filled grave. A debt collector shows up looking for payment and ends up neck-deep in something ancient and hungry. And the local whore begins seeing visions of two soggy, spectral children who sing a chilling rhyme: “Off he goes. Pays his tolls. Two for the eyes, one for the souls.”

Something old has awakened. And it’s waiting to be fed. "Save them. Show Mercy." The Boatman always collects.

Bengston's debut is a feverish blend of folklore and cult horror, with some serious echoes of the TV series From — the creepy "anghkooey" children, the crows as harbingers, the sense that nothing is what it seems and everything is about to go sideways. It’s a story where fairy tale logic curdles into nightmare, and the world you thought you understood gets ripped apart, piece by piece, right before your very eyes.

Yes, the middle is a mess. Yes, the style takes some getting used to. But once you surrender to the chaos, it’s a wild, eerie ride into ritual, regret, and a madness that doesn’t ask permission before it arrives.

The Feeding by Flint Maxwell

The fifth and final book in the Whiteout series!

And it was just meh. I think Flint had fizzled out at this point.

While Grady and group start settling in at the City of Light and making new friends, they also start getting a little too comfortable - living in warm, fortified buildings with more than enough to eat, no longer stuck outside battling the elements and wraiths, has lowered their defenses a bit. It all seems too good to be true and that's because it is. While on night watch one evening with his BFF and fellow musketeer Stone, Grady catches a woman running and flailing outside towards the city gates and since that was him not too long ago, he convinces the others to let her in. And, surprise surprise, along with this new stranger, the group also unknowingly ushers in their greatest and bloodiest battle yet.

Will our rag tag family make it out unscathed? Will the City of Lights be able to withstand the approach of the Matron? Will we ever find out where the hell these evil shadows and the summer snow came from?!

Are we seriously ending things like this?!?!

I had loved where this series was going. Each book was better than the last. Up until now. Pffft. I could take or leave this one.

3 stars for the series as a whole - a cool concept with characters I really enjoyed hanging out with. It sputtered around here and there but definitely kept me engaged and entertained as I listened during my drive.

Sarafina by Philip Fracassi

Sarafina is a wicked little cocktail of war torn historical horror dusted with dark fairytale magic and a heaping spoonful of religion — the kind of story that lures you in gently before sinking its claws and teeth into you.

The story follows three brothers, Ethan, Mason, and Archie, who flee the brutality of their widowed father hands by enlisting in the Civil War, only to discover the front lines offer their own brand of cruelty. After barely surviving the carnage and watching friends torn apart beside them, desertion becomes less a choice than a desperate instinct for survival.

They vanish into the woods, starving and exhausted, and find brief refuge with a small Indigenous community who feed them and tend their wounds. But the respite shatters when the patriarch betrays them, forcing the brothers back into flight — straight into a swamp that nearly claims Mason’s life.

Just as the last of their hope begins to dissolve, Ethan spots a young boy watching them from across a river where fruit trees bloom impossibly out of season. He rouses his brothers, and they follow the child to a secluded cabin.

There, a beautiful woman waits in the doorway with three enormous dogs at her side, offering warmth, food, and a dreamlike sense of salvation. The brothers fall under her spell, but Ethan can’t shake the feeling that something beneath the surface is terribly wrong. And the longer they stay, the clearer it becomes that they didn’t find sanctuary. They have escaped one hell only to stumble willingly into another.

On a side note: I’ve always loved the strange synchronicities that crop up in my reading life, and Sarafina was no exception. It pulled in the underworld of Shoel from my last read (The Boatman by K. Bengtson) and the Choctaw nation woven through the book before that (The Walls Are Closing In On Us by Joshua Trent Brown). When stories start aligning like this, I get a buzzy, uncanny feeling... like I’m following some hidden path and the books are quietly nudging me forward. Has that ever happened to you?

The Caretaker by Marcus Kliewer

Holy shiiiiit.

It’s been a very long time since a book crawled into my head and actually scared me while I was reading it alone at night. I’m talking real anxiety, that “maybe I should turn a light on, close all the blinds, and double check the doors" energy. The Caretaker got under my skin in a way I wasn’t prepared for, and the dread just kept building in my chest like something alive.

And listen, I wasn’t one of the people foaming at the mouth over Kliewer’s debut. But this? This book is going to give my current favorites of the year a serious fight. This one completely redeemed him for me.

It’s sharp, claustrophobic, and so psychologically invasive that I kept wanting to put it down just to breathe... and then immediately picked it back up because I had to know.

I finished it and instantly wished I had someone next to me so I could scream about it. I totally would have failed the rites. And nope. Don't ask me to housesit for you. Ever. Homie don't play that.

Fuck me. This was good.

These Familiar Walls by CJ Dotson

These Familiar Walls solidified something for me: Dotson’s characterization of women and children just doesn’t work for me. Her women tend to be abrasive in ways that feel more grating than complex, and her child characters never quite land... they are either overly adult or oddly infantile.

Amber Hughes, our protagonist, was particularly rough for me. The story bounces back and forth between Amber as an adult as she moves her husband and their two kids into her childhood home after her parents' gruesome murder and Amber as a middle schooler with her younger sister when they befriend Nathan, a deeply unsettling neighborhood boy. Nathan is malicious, Amber is desperate to belong, and the dynamic between them is really uncomfortable. She becomes obsessed with him, even as he acts cruely towards her and her sister, and starts mirroring his rage. I get why we need her childhood timeline, but that doesn’t mean I enjoyed reading it.

Meanwhile, in the present, spooky things start happening: reflections misbehaving, there are unexplained whispers and shadows, and a sudden and unhealthy fascination with fire. Much like in The Cut, Dotson also has her characters making baffling parenting decisions. Kids are left alone during supernatural chaos, danger is shrugged off, all the red flags are ignored. You’re left thinking what a terrible mother. What an absent partner. What is wrong with these people.

And... as with any haunted house story, the longer she stays there and tries to ignores it, the more the activity starts to ramp up. Once her husband begins experiencing it himself, the haunting really escalates, and the plot starts peeling back its layers. A few twists at the end saved this from being a total flop, nudging it from a 2 star rating to a 3, but overall? Not my favorite.

The Cellar Below the Cellar by Ivy Grimes

Ooof. This one was rough. Like… Grasshands rough. The concept was sooo good, but the execution? Absolutely not.

The Cellar Below the Cellar follows Jane, who stops by her grandmother’s house in the woods and ends up stranded there when a massive solar storm wipes out the power grid. With no way to contact the outside world, she and Grandma check on the nearest neighbors and decide to pool resources to survive. Meanwhile, Grandma — who is so suspiciously obtuse and obviously keeping some secrets — keeps pushing Jane to take over as guardian of the cellar below the cellar. And Jane is terrified of whatever’s down there.

Sounds promising, right? Except the writing is… bad. Like, distractingly bad. Jane is supposed to be thirty-three, but she thinks, talks, and reacts like a sulky teenager. I genuinely assumed she was sixteen until the author casually dropped her age. She even plays dolls with the neighbor girl — dolls her late mother made, dolls with “special powers” like taking over your skin and doing your chores for you if you feed and water them. I wish I were joking.

Grandma is hiding something, everyone is acting weird, and the writing is painfully clunky. Honestly, this should’ve been a DNF, but I kept going because I needed to know what was in the cellar below the cellar. And by the time we finally got there, there weren't that many more pages to go so...

This is absolutely landing on my Worst Of 2026 list. And that sucks, because I had such high hopes. And seriously... with a cover that gorgeous, the book had no business being this bad.

Books like this make me wonder if I should create a "books I suffered through so you don't have to" goodreads shelf.

The Ninth Metal by Benjamin Percy

I’ve read and appreciated a few of Percy’s previous novels. But no matter which one I pick up, I always seem to hover between 3 and 4 stars. I want to love his work more than I actually do. And interestingly, each book is wildly different from the last... he brings something new with each one.

The Wilding is a generational camping trip turned dark and creepy. The Dead Lands reimagines Lewis and Clark in a post-apocalyptic future ravaged by super flu and nuclear fallout. Red Moon is basically a war on werewolves. And now, with his Comet Cycle trilogy—set in a world reshaped by comet debris—we kick things off with The Ninth Metal, which cleverly blends sci-fi, eco-horror, thriller, and superheros together.

Set in Minnesota, the meteors that crashed there contained omnimetal, a new element with the potential to become the next great energy source. Once discovered, it sparks a modern-day gold rush. Two rival mining families battle for land rights (think Yellowstone, but with more pickup trucks and dirty deals), while others snort the metal dust and retreat to a compound to worship the comet in peace and heightened consciousness. Meanwhile, a child who was closest to one of the original impact sites begin to change in ways that science and the military can’t quite explain.

It’s a wild premise, and Percy throws a lot into the pot—corporate espionage, cults, government agents, and a rookie cop caught in the middle. But despite all the moving parts, or maybe because of them, it never fully clicked for me. While the concept is cool, the execution didn’t fully deliver the punch I was hoping for.

Still, I’m intrigued enough to continue. Each book in the trilogy is a standalone story set in a different location, struggling with a different result from the meteors crashing, and I’m curious to see how Percy plays with genre in the next installment. The Ninth Metal didn’t blow me away, but it laid enough groundwork to keep me invested. Onward to The Unfamiliar Garden.

Seasons of Iron and Glass by Amal El-Mohtar

Interestingly, this collection isn't supposed to release until March 24th but I saw it on the new and noteworthy shelf at Barnes and Noble this weekend. So I guess I couldn't have picked a better time to pull this one out of the review pile.

The stories in Seasons of Glass and Iron are the wispy, feathery things of fairy tales — delicate on the surface, but edged with teeth.

Some, like the title story, feel like the fables we grew up with: a woman perched atop a glass mountain, far out of the reach of men, befriending another woman in iron shoes who climbs her way to the summit.

Others find comfort in their strangeness. The Lonely Sea in the Sky follows a planetary geologist studying an alien mineral called Lucyite, only to be locked underground after being diagnosed with Meisner Syndrome... a kind of deadly infatuation with diamonds. It’s bizarre, shimmering, and oddly tender.

Across the collection we meet shapeshifters, dream-hoppers, bird people, witches, and secret keepers. El-Mohtar’s worlds are lush and glimmering, full of magic that feels both ancient and startlingly new.

Always stunning, sometimes frustratingly complicated, these stories drift between the accessible and the inscrutable. Some will resonate deep in your bones; others you may set aside simply because they’re beyond you in that moment. But no matter what, you’re bound to fall in love with something within these pages — a line, a character, a moment of wonder that lingers long after you close the book.

Invasive Species by Ellery Adams

Is it me or does Invasive Species remind you of the glossy neighborhood drama of 90210 and the suburban horroresque tension of Fright Night, with the scrappy, kid vs evil charm of The Monster Squad, only set in a small seaside town? Teen angst, adult drama, and a creepy house on the hill that contains something ancient and awful... all coexisting in one claustrophobic cul‑de‑sac.

This is a book where the mundane meets monsters in a suffocatingly suburban setting. It’s slow but steady. Cute but forgettable. The charm is definitely there - the tight knit neighborhood, the eerie house, the sense that something is very wrong - but the execution never fully grabbed me.

It’s the kind of book you breeze through on a rainy afternoon and enjoy in the moment, but one that doesn’t linger long after. A solid three stars for me. Pleasant, cartoonishly spooky, entertaining enough, but not one that’s going to haunt my shelves.

And for a book supposedly set in the ’80s? The nostalgia is MIA. If the jacket copy hadn’t told me, I’d never have guessed.

The Great Houses of Pill Hill by Diane Josefowicz

The Great Houses of Pill Hill is an entertaining literary spin on the cozy, whodunit, crime fiction genre that follows Cookie, an interior decorator hired to restore a historic home for one of New Preston’s wealthiest couples.

Things get messy when one of her crew discovers a strange hidden room tucked behind a wall that's connected to the chimney’s ventilation system. They get messier when Cookie decides to throw herself into an affair with her client's husband. And they get messier still when the house goes up in flames during the housewarming party and her lover is found among the ashes... wrapped in a rug... with his head bashed in.

The detective on the case taps into Cookie’s unusual hobby of building miniature dioramas of famous murder scenes, commissioning one of the property in hopes it might help reveal who, exactly, has blood on their hands. And Cookie can't seem to help conducting a little investigation of her own to see if she can't get to the bottom of things herself.

The book has its charms, yet it felt a bit all over the place and though it's not a super chunky book, something about Diane’s writing made it feel like a much longer read than it actually was.

And since I'm complaining... lols... there’s the infidelity, which is a pet peeve of mine. Cookie seems to have slept with half the men in town, which was exhausting and made it pretty hard to root for her. Every time the plot threatened to move forward, we detoured into yet another hookup, another secret, another questionable decision.

Overall, a solid three stars. Not terrible, not great, and not one that I can see sticking with me for long. Although as I was reading it, it did bring to mind Stacy Wilder's Charleston Conundrum, and that series as a whole, which is also a cozy murder mystery, but with a cool twist!

Morsel by Carter Keane

I have feelings about this one. Boy do I have feelings. But overall, I kinda really liked it.

Let me explain.

For starters, I have some qualms with the cover. There’s some major mismatching happening between it and the actual content. I can’t quite put my finger on why... because yes, Morsel deals with death and rebirth, and yes, cicadas are everywhere, but the cover lends itself more towards a fairytale‑eco‑mushroomy vibe, and the book is… well, absolutely not that.

The first half? I loved it. Carter crushed it. The characters, the dialogue, the situation our MC finds herself in... pure horror fodder. She knows it, and we know it, every damn step of the way. And it keeps us hanging on, curious to see what's going to happen next.

I also appreciate that the author tells us up front the dog is going to be fine, because phew, that was one less thing to stress over as the tension and oh‑shit‑girl‑you‑better‑run energy started kicking into high gear.

Then you hit the twist... and yes, I'm ashamed to say that once it landed I immediately thought, “How did I not see THAT coming?” From that point on, things start to spiral. What was weird is now totally unhinged, and we're left feeling like two different books got split down the middle and glued together 0r like the characters stepped out of one story and jumped right into another. And while I didn't hate the book post-twist, I just wasn't expecting it to go there and needed some time to adjust.

I know I’m probably not doing a great job of explaining the actual plot, but honestly? I think it’s best to go in blind. Read the description, avoid the reviews, and just ride the waves. See where it takes you. And if you finish it feeling the same way I did, I’d love the validation.

The Fifth Year by Marlen Haushofer

I find it funny that the Haushofer book I’m most interested in — The Wall — is still sitting untouched in my TBR, while I’ve already read Killing Stella and now The Fifth Year. And unfortunately, this one didn’t do much for me.

It’s part fever dream, part fairytale, following a five‑year‑old girl living a secluded life with her grandparents in a pre‑technology world. Days are spent outdoors from sunup to sundown, or inside crafting paper families out of old newspapers. Time itself becomes elastic here... slowing to a crawl, then lurching forward without warning. I’m assuming that’s meant to mimic how a child experiences time, but it often left me feeling disoriented rather than immersed.

Overall, I wasn’t impressed. The narrative felt too hazy, the story too shapeless. Read at your own risk.

The Girl With A Thousand Faces by Sunyi Dean

This book took me by complete surprise! It's definitely going to be a 2026 top-read contender for sure.

The publisher reached out and sent a print arc. I like a lot of what Tor puts out but I was super hesistant going into this one because (1) I wasn't a huge fan of The Book Eaters and (2) I am not generally a fan of most fantasy novels. So... I set the expectations real low. But within the first few pages, I had a feeling this was going to be different — and I was right.

The story is set in an alternate Hong Kong during WWII, where ghosts coexist with the living. Most of them have been pushed into the cramped, chaotic Kowloon Walled City, and this is where Mercy Chan ends up after washing ashore with no memory of who she is or where she came from. Once inside the city, she discovers she has a very valuable gift. She can talk to ghosts and help them achieve the revenge they need so they can finally rest. But while she is helping ghosts find peace, another spirit has infiltrated Kowloon's waterways, and is leaving drowned civilians in its wake. And it claims to know Mercy.

What takes place is a deliciously twisty story of a woman haunted by a past she cannot recall, while the very thing she seeks is hunting her down for the justice it believes it deserves.

I can't say too much because it will ruin things for you but OMG the twist that hits and how it changes everything ... it was so well done and so gripping that it was almost impossible to put the book down to go and do the necessary things like laundry and cooking and sleeping.

And honestly? This might be the first time I’ve liked an author’s second book more than their first. I usually fall in love with the first book I read from someone, no matter where it lands in their bibliography, but this one completely outshone its predecessor.

If you’ve been hemming and hawing over this one, just go for it. And if it wasn’t on your radar until now, consider this your nudge. You’re going to love it.

Indie Spotlight: Jon O’Bergh's serialized story The Yōkai

noreply@blogger.com (TNBBC Super Mod) — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Welcome to our Indie Spotlight series, in which TNBBC gives small press authors the floor to shed some light on their writing process, publishing experiences, or whatever else they'd like to share with you, the readers!

Today's spotlight shines on Jon O'Bergh and his novel The Yōkai, which is being serialized for free through substack.

Climate Change, a Horror Novel, and the Dragon Ichimokuren

Just west of Nagoya in central Japan lies Mount Tado, legendary home of Ichimokuren, a one-eyed dragon god with the ability to control the weather. He appears as a giant serpent with either a single eye or one good eye and one destroyed eye. Sometimes he is depicted as a single floating eye in the sky, surrounded by winds and rain. At other times he wanders around Mount Tado in the form of a hinotama—a floating ball of fire. According to yokai.com, an illustrated database of Japanese supernatural folklore:

“When he leaves his shrine, black thunder clouds skirt the top of rooftops, and heavy rains fall and winds blow all around. These can swell into powerful storms which cover land and sea. His storms are powerful enough to topple trees and break boulders, fling people into the air, knock down houses, and capsize boats.”

Over 1,500 years ago, Shinto priests founded Tado Taisha Shrine at the foot of the mountain. In the superstitious past, when clouds formed around Mount Tado, locals believed that Ichimokuren was moving about. They became fearful of the damage he might do. In order to pacify him and minimize destruction, they enshrined him in Tado Taisha as an incarnation of the one-eyed Shinto deity of blacksmithing, Amenomahitotsu no kami. His shrine was built with no door in order to allow him to come and go as he pleases.

Ichimokuren represents a type of yokai with powers that bring both blessings (in the form of rainfall needed for crops) and dangers (destructive, frightening storms). Yokai (sometimes spelled yōkai) is the collective name for a wide range of supernatural occurrences that includes ghosts, goblins, witches, demons, anthropomorphic household items, strange hybrid animals, mysterious lights, and more. Dual characteristics—alternately helpful and sinister—are emblematic of many yokai, similar to creatures of legend in other cultures.

Among the more well-known yokai are the kappa (human-like turtles or reptilians that inhabit rivers and ponds and have a reputation for luring people to be drowned), the yurei (ghosts that appear as ethereal figures with long, dark hair, which Western audiences will recognize from The Ring and The Grudge movies), and the yamauba (a witch similar to Baba Yaga that Hayao Miyazaki incorporated into the character Yubaba in his anime feature Spirited Away).

With Ichimokuren’s connection to weather, he offered an ideal character to make an appearance in my novel The Yōkai as a frightening harbinger of climate change. The main character, Asami Watanabe, is studying yokai for her college thesis. A gang of demons, upset over the degradation of their environment, appears one day and demands a ghost story nightly to spare her life. However, each story must include an actual person who dies. Asami confronts a moral dilemma, forced into choosing who lives and who dies, until she teams up with a group of college friends, a female wizard, and a shapeshifting yokai cat to fight back. I’ve drawn on Japanese legends for many of the locations, characters, and background elements in the novel. The horror stories that Asami creates also become part of the plot.

At its heart, The Yōkai is about a shy young woman who learns to tap into her inner strength and overcome her adversaries. By the end of her journey—which is a classic epic with obstacles, trials, and descent into a demonic underworld—she has a moment of realization, a profound insight about herself and the nature of good and evil. I’m currently publishing chapters for free in weekly installments on Substack at https://jonobergh.substack.com/p/the-yokai-story-index. Readers can subscribe to receive the short chapters by email, or read them online on Substack.

I recommend that you immerse yourself in the world of Japanese yokai such as Ichimokuren. These strange, scary, entertaining entities have much to reveal to us about the human condition.

Jon O’Bergh is a musician and author of horror novels. Out Front Magazine described his novel Shockadelica as “a book that must be on your to-read list,” and Aurealis Magazine named it “Reviewers’ Pick of 2022.” He has also released over a dozen albums in a variety of styles, including the critically acclaimed album 13 Witches. You can find more information about Jon at https://obergh.net.

World Edition's Forthcoming "Read The World A to Z" series

noreply@blogger.com (TNBBC Super Mod) — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 22:00:00 +0000

I am thrilled to share that I've joined the World Editions launch team, helping to celebrate this timely and much needed translation series.

Launching in Fall 2026, Read the World A to Z allows readers to travel the globe with the most influential voices from Argentina to Zambia! With three new volumes published each season, this collectible series features translated novels from A to Z—one country for every letter of the alphabet.

By publishing books from countries rarely represented in the canon of translated literature, World Editions is looking to further cultural exchange, broaden perspectives and promote diversity by increasing the visibility of non-Western voices.

All titles published as part of the series are written by contemporary, influential authors and reflect the social and cultural dimensions of their country of origin. The emphasis is on works that portray modern society, give insight into current culture and shape public discourse. The series features predominantly – but not exclusively - female voices that are both unique and typical for the country. The majority of authors have never been published in English before.

The first three volumes of the Read the World A to Z series, publishing on 10/6/26, will take you to Argentina, Belgium and China.

All That Dies in April , which I read and reviewed in the summer of last year, is an ancestral tale rooted in a long Latin American history of rural displacement by Mariana Travacio, one of Argentina’s most celebrated authors.

Written by the bestselling author Kristien Hemmerechts,The Woman Who Fed the Dogs offers a deep-dive into the mind of Belgium's most hated woman, the wife of serial killer Marc Dutroux.

And the third volume of the Read the World A to Z series takes you to China with Zhang Yueran’s Cocoon, called a “luminous gateway into current Chinese fiction” by the Wall Street Journal.

Make sure to hang around! More information and posts will be coming out in the lead up to this very critical and expansive series.

Audio Series: Alex Morrall

noreply@blogger.com (TNBBC Super Mod) — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Our audio series "The Authors Read. We Listen." was hatched in a NYC club during BEA back in 2012. It's a fun little series, where authors record themselves reading an excerpt from their own novels, in their own voices, the way their stories were meant to be heard.

Today, Alex Morrall joins us. Alex Morrall lived in south-east London where her voluntary work inspired ‘Helen and the Grandbees.’ She is also a published food reviewer and poet and author of ‘Adrift: The Storyteller and Mosaicist. She writes about the complexities of society with warmth, empathy and a touch of humour, and enjoys working using her creative and mathematical background. She has a maths degree but paints beautiful city scenes and landscapes in her spare time.

Listen to Alex read an excerpt from Helen and the Grandbees by clicking on the soundcloud link below.

What the audiobook is about:

Twenty years ago, Helen was forced to give up her baby daughter.

Now there’s a knock at the door — and Lily is standing there.

For two decades Helen has built a life around silence, carefully avoiding the past she left behind. But Lily’s arrival shatters the fragile calm Helen has constructed. As mother and daughter attempt to reconnect, long-buried secrets begin to surface, and the emotional cost of the choices made years before becomes impossible to ignore.

Set in southeast London, Helen and the Grandbees is a moving literary novel about motherhood, loss, and the complicated ways people try to protect themselves from pain — even when it means risking the connections they most long for.

“Uplifting and engaging.” — Daily Mail

The 40 But 10: Stevie Edwards

noreply@blogger.com (TNBBC Super Mod) — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Today we are joined by Dr. Stevie Edwards. She is an Assistant Professor at Clemson University and Poetry Editor of The South Carolina Review. Stevie’s poems have appeared in Poetry, American Poetry Review, TriQuarterly, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. She is the author of Quiet Armor (Northwestern University Press, 2023), Sadness Workshop (Button Poetry, 2018), Humanly (Small Doggies Press, 2015), and Good Grief (Write Bloody Publishing, 2012). Her next book, The Weather Inside, is forthcoming from the University of Arkansas Press in Spring 2026 as part of the Miller Williams Poetry Series edited by Patricia Smith. She holds a PhD from the University of North Texas and an MFA from Cornell University. Originally a Michigander, she now lives in South Carolina with her spouse and a small herd of rescue pitbulls.

What made you start writing?

I started writing as a teenager. In the eighth grade, I had a wonderful English teacher (Mr. Janson), and he had us put together a collection of our favorite published poems and then write poems in conversation with those poems. I believe we were also supposed to choose a theme and got to decorate it. As a teen, I had severe issues with generalized anxiety disorder and bipolar I disorder, but they weren’t diagnosed or treated yet, and poetry gave me a place to put my big, disorderly feelings and try to make sense of them.

If you could have a superpower, what would it be?

Definitely teleportation. I have a phobia of driving, and teleportation would be badass. Also, I like to travel, but I don’t love waiting in long security lines at airports or sitting in cramped seats on long flights, so teleportation would be super nice.

What’s the best money you’ve ever spent as a writer?

This year for Christmas, I got a Freewrite Smart Typewriter, and it is magical. It allows me to write without the distraction of a web browser or Outlook telling me I have a new work email to respond to. Also, it feels really nice to type on and is a very appealing aesthetic object. Every time I write now, I feel fancy! And, you know what, if there’s one aspect of my life where I get to feel fancy, I am glad it’s writing.

How do you celebrate when you finish writing a new book?

For my last book, Quiet Armor, I got a tattoo of Medusa on my upper arm because I had three poems in it about Medusa. I’d like to continue the book tattoo tradition, but I don’t know what to get for The Weather Inside yet. If anyone reads the book and has a good tattoo idea, please tell me.

What is your favorite way to waste time?

I’m obsessed with watching cooking competition shows. Top Chef, The Great British Baking Show, Beat Bobby Flay—I love them all. I find them very soothing to watch.

What is your favorite book from childhood?

I must have checked out The Lorax by Dr. Seuss dozens of times from my small local library when I was a kid. I honestly think it shaped my sense of morality and encouraged me to become an environmentalist.

You have to choose an animal or cartoon character that best represents you. Which is it and why?

Absolutely my pitbull Tinkerbell. Tinkerbell had a hard past before we adopted her (we suspect she was abused), and despite her trauma living on in her (as seen by her cowering anytime someone raises their voice), she is full of love. She inspires me to be open to the world despite living through sexual trauma in my teens and twenties. I think it’s easy to want to cut yourself off from the world when terrible things happen to you, but Tinkerbell has taught me to still seek the good in people. Also, just in case you’re wondering, Tinkerbell is a stubby gray pitbull with a genetic condition that makes her legs short. She waddles around and begs for pets from everyone. She’s probably eleven or twelve years old (it’s hard to say because she was found super pregnant in a field), but I hope she’s still got a few more good years in her.

Do you read the reviews of your books or do you stay far far away from them, and why?

I try very hard to only read them once, quickly. I treat them like band-aids; it’s best to rip them off fast. I tend to obsess over the little morsels of criticism, even if the reviews are positive overall. I understand people who just stay far away from reviews (maybe that’s healthier), but at the end of the day, I’m just too curious.

Do you think you’d live long in a zombie apocalypse?

No, I think I would die very quickly. I am terrible at navigation and driving. I’m not good at building things. I’ve never really been in a physical fight and have no interest in learning to use a gun. I hate running. I would be one of the first to go, and honestly, I’m okay with that.

What’s the one thing you wish you knew when you were younger?

I wasn’t diagnosed with mental health issues until I was a senior in college, and I really wish I’d gotten care when I was much younger. I started experiencing severe anxiety and suicidal ideation as an elementary school student, and I just felt incredibly alone and hopeless. I suffered for years that I didn’t need to suffer. Mental health treatment has completely changed my outlook on life.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

March 2026

https://www.uapress.com/product/the-weather-inside/

In The Weather Inside, Stevie Edwards measures the emotional atmosphere of a mind navigating bipolar disorder, complex PTSD, generalized anxiety disorder, and alcoholism while forging intimacy and creative resilience in a rapidly declining world.

Both as someone who has struggled with mental health and as a feminist approaching middle age, Edwards interrogates parenthood and marriage: What forms of nurturing survive when traditional roles and certainties do not? Can bringing children into a collapsing world still be an act of hope? When your partner does not want children, where should you divert your surfeit of love? The poet grieves, “I am chanting the name of a daughter / my husband doesn’t want / enough, the child I’ve spent years / not being sure I deserved.”

This fiercely honest and intimate collection offers a vision of adulthood shaped by the capacity to inhabit an embattled inner world. With clarity and dark wit, Edwards probes the uneasy border between solitude and connection, asserting the relationship between caring for oneself and caring for the wider world.

Advance praise for the book

“ ‘I kept you / long past your prime: sweet / funk of rotting stems and all, / I adored you,’ Edwards might as well be saying to her past self in The Weather Inside. This wholehearted collection featuring a middle-aged speaker reflecting on the young woman she once was is rife with funny, hearty, sensual poems of willful acceptance in sobriety and committed childlessness. Edwards’s is a poetry of insistence. I admire the self-acceptance rendered in the fresh images she’s created.”

—Maya Marshall, author of All the Blood Involved in Love

“The Weather Inside is a beautiful and incisive collection. I love how patient the poems of Stevie Edwards are, how closely they attend to image and the unfolding of the heart. This book is teeming with moments that function as mirrors."

—Hanif Abdurraqib, author of There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension

“Edwards’s poignant newest collection challenges us to believe it’s possible to feel at home in a body, to feel at home in a life. Sweeping across decades spent ‘trying to be / the pink spray of glitter bursting / from inside the popped balloon,’ these radiant, finely tuned poems examine years mired in major trauma, mental illness, and alcoholism, offering hard-won wisdom at deeply satisfying poetic turns. Fiercely committed to authenticity, Edwards disarms our inner cynics into rooting for love—especially self-love—however tenuous, however incongruous with the hells we’ve lived through.”

—Eugenia Leigh, author of Bianca

What I Read in February

noreply@blogger.com (TNBBC Super Mod) — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 13:13:00 +0000

February is a short month and yet I was able to squeeze in more books than I have in a long while. I read a total of 14 books - 4 on audio, 8 review copies, 2 were books I bought...

One 5 star (let's see if you can guess which one it was!), six 4 star, six 3 star, and one sad lonely two star.

Let's see what I read!

Olyoke by Vincent Endwell

This is the fourth book in a row I’ve read with yellow in its cover. Just a funny coincidence, but honestly, the cover for this one really fits. Olyoke is bright, bizarre, and a little blinding in its strangeness.

As we enter Olyoke, we find that it's a strange town filled with strange people connected by very strange things. Most famously known for its Dolly‑Parton‑esque theme park, it also carries a dark, unsettling history that refuses to stay buried.

The residents can feel something coming — something catastrophic, something calamitous, something that's testing the boundaries of place and time. And here we are, being pulled along for the ride, helplessly strapped in as Endwell drags us through this rollercoaster of interconnected stories, dreams, reddit posts, and podcast episodes.

I can’t pretend I understood everything that was happening. The book is weird, tangled, and sometimes hard to follow. But it’s not without its charm, and I never outright hated the experience.

Still, if Olyoke were a real place, it wouldn’t make my travel list. To hell with this town.

Wretch by Eric LaRocca

Eric LaRocca the way I prefer them: griefy, masochistic, dirty, and raw. Weird, but not “gross for the sake of being gross” weird.

In Wretch, we follow Simeon, a man drowning in grief after losing the love of his life, Jonathan, to cancer. He’s stuck in a fog of malaise — his work performance tanks, his ex-wife hovers with unwanted concern (and lingering feelings), and he keeps dodging time with his teenage son, reinforcing his own belief that he’s a failure of a father.

The self-loathing runs deep.

To numb the ache, Simeon turns to anonymous chat rooms — sometimes to just rub one off quick, sometimes just to find someone willing to sit with his loneliness. It’s there he receives an invitation to a grief support group called The Wretches, where widows and widowers take photos of mundane, everyday objects in hopes of glimpsing their lost loved ones in them.

In true LaRocca fashion, what begins as a tender, emotionally fraught story slowly spirals into the strange. The questions it raises are haunting: What would you give for fifteen more minutes with the person you lost? Would one time be enough? And what would that do to the memories you’ve been clinging to?

It’s a story that will linger... like a bruise.

Lure by Tim McGregor

Oh wow. Mermaid horror has really entered its slay era these past few years, and Lure is a shining example of why.

Keep in mind, this was a total impulse buy — I was wandering the horror section at B&N, saw it was published by Tenebrous Press and set in an isolated fishing community, and that was it. I was hooked.

Mermaid gore for the win, and guuurrll… this book gets all the stars. I can’t throw them fast enough. I’m crafting it a crown made entirely of stars to perch on its gorgeously terrifying, seaweedy head. Crack this book open and I swear the pages practically shoot starlight and stinky sea creatures.

Go in blind with nothing but the back‑of‑book description. Trust me. It’s so… aaaaah! I’m calling it now: this is absolutely sitting in my Top 5 of 2026. You watch.

Nothing Tastes As Good by Luke Dumas

Like a lot of women, I’ve been carrying around extra weight ever since I had my kids—who are both well into their twenties now. And once you hit those “cougar years,” that stubborn belly fat and muffin‑top love handle combo becomes a stage‑five clinger. This past summer I finally got fed up enough to do something about it. I cut back on the mindless snacking and switched to lower‑fat meals.

At first, your body is like, oh hey, we’re doing this, and you drop a pound or two a week. It’s subtle, the scale moves, your clothes loosen, you notch the belt. And then… everything just stops. You’re still eating better, still behaving, still doing all the “right” things, and the scale is like, nah, we’re good here. If you want more progress, you have to overhaul your habits again, walk more, eat even less, and honestly? It sucks.

Exercise smexercise. If there were a way to lose weight without sweating or sacrificing snacks, I’d be first in line. And that’s exactly the fantasy Dumas dangles in front of Emmett —a twenty‑something gay man who is exhausted by being the biggest guy in the room. He’s tired of the stares, the judgment, the teasing, the invisibility, the endless cycle of diets that go nowhere. So when he sees an ad recruiting participants for a clinical weight‑loss trial, he signs up faster than I can reach for a chocolate chip cookie.

Nothing Tastes as Good brings fatness, social shaming, and body dysmorphia to the forefront. Add in childhood trauma, body horror, and a splash of juicy cannibalism, and you’d think you’ve got the recipe for a killer (pun absolutely intended) novel.

While the writing itself is solid, the first half drags and becomes frustratingly repetitive. As much as I wanted to root for Emmett, he felt oddly flat and jerky—especially in a story built on themes of identity, transformation, and becoming your best self.

I feel like Dumas had the opportunity to go much darker, messier, and immensely more twisted. Overall, it’s a cute, campy, emotionally unstable little thing with a cool twist towards the end, but ultimately, it didn’t live up to the promise of its ingredients.

The Snow by Flint Maxwell (Whiteout #1)

Decided to download this whole series on Chirp when I saw a sale for it. I'm always down for a good ole apocalyptic read. And this one was really fun. The main character Grady is a cheeky and make-the-best-of-a-bad-situation kind of dude and the audiobook just flies... at least when you listen at 1.5x speed!

It began with a single snowflake.

Grady and his two bestest buds, Jonas and Stone, head out to a cabin by a lake to hang and have a relaxing time celebrating the 4th of July, cracking beers open with the family next door, but the world... it has other plans. While they sleep off their drinks the first night there, snow begins to fall and just never stops. Slowly getting buried under feet of the white stuff, with nowhere to go and no connection to the outside world - no service, no power - they assume they can just wait out whatever this weirdness is. The sun'll come out and melt this strange summer snow and then they can go back to enjoying themselves by the water again... only... the sun never comes up. And they soon learn that the snow and freezing cold is not the worst thing out there. There are shadowy figures out there in distance. Voices calling their names, visions of the things they love or fear the most. Where did they come from? Do they want to do them harm? Are they brave enough to go outside and find out?

It's not the best book ever but it's definitely worth the read. So bundle up and get those snowshoes strapped on. It's going to be a freaky frostbitten kind of ride.

Already started book 2!

Westward Women by Alice Martin

If fungal fiction and women’s lit had a strange little baby, it would be Westward Women

Set in a slightly dystopian 1970s, the Watergate investigation is abruptly paused when an epidemic sweeps across the country — one that only affects women of a certain age. It starts with an itch and spirals into a restless, painful compulsion to head west. As the infection progresses, pupils swell, memories slip, language unravels, and in some cases, violent impulses rise to the surface. No one knows how it spreads or how to stop it. Mothers, sisters, wives… if they aren’t caught early and sedated in hospitals, they abandon their lives and drift toward the Pacific Ocean.

We follow three women:

Aimee, who isn’t sick but is determined to track down her best friend Ginny; Eve, a reporter chasing the Westward Women in hopes of finding the angle that will revive her career; and Teenie, one of the infected, deteriorating fast as she hitchhikes with a man calling himself The Piper — a supposed good Samaritan with unclear motives who ferries sick women west, but only if they pass his little “test.”

Threaded throughout is a second-person collective voice — an echo of the infected — that grows more meaningful the deeper you get.

Like many multi‑POV novels, the characters are connected in ways that slowly come into focus, but the reveals arrive at a crawl. The book isn’t long, yet it somehow felt like I’d been reading it for ages.

Interesting premise, strong atmosphere, but the pacing dragged enough that my attention wandered more than once. A solid three‑star read: compelling ideas, uneven execution.

The Boatman by Alex Grecian

When I saw Bad Hand Books was releasing a new Alex Grecian, I didn’t even pretend to play it cool and rushed to their DMs to beg for a copy. Having previously adored Red Rabbit and its sequel‑of‑sorts Rose of Jericho, The Boatman was an instant must‑have.

This time Grecian trades the weird west for the open ocean. June and Walt Dennison board the cruise ship Maria Calypso for their honeymoon in what they believe will be a quick break from the demands of their daily lives. But two days in, June steps out on deck, lost in thoughts of all the responsibilities waiting back home — the thank‑you cards, the unopened gifts, the novel she’s supposed to be writing — when she spots something impossible: a man in a white suit, standing in a tiny boat, rowing it like a gondola… and somehow keeping perfect pace with the massive ship.

Storms don’t shake him. Speed changes don’t matter. He never falls behind, never draws closer. Just rows. And waits.

Speculation spreads fast, but it’s the ship’s doctor, Vincent, who finally says the quiet part out loud: he believes the figure is Death itself, come to collect. And the timing is suspicious — the very day June saw the boatman, the Captain suffered a heart attack he absolutely should not have survived. Vincent urges everyone to stay aboard, even when the ship docks for supplies. Some crew and passengers bail anyway. But June, Walt, and a handful of others stay put, terrified that stepping off the ship might be the very thing that seals their fate.

This is a dark, eerie, wonderfully unsettling read. Grecian expertly plays with the unknown — what we fear about death, what we’d sacrifice to outrun it, and how long a person could live in a floating purgatory before the waiting becomes its own kind of doom.

Dark, tense, and deeply enjoyable — a four‑star voyage into the unknown. This one should be on all of your wishlists this April.

The Pisces by Melissa Broder

Not a new release by any means, but new to my TBR because for the longest time I assumed it was just a straight-up sad girl romance. Only recently did I learn it’s actually a slightly spicy, sad girl, toxic‑relationship‑with‑a‑merman novel. And listen, full disclosure, I was only here for the merman.

Lucy’s internal monologue was a whole experience... frantic, funny, self‑sabotaging, and painfully relatable. Her brain runs at a mile a minute with nonstop commentary... sometimes hilarious, sometimes unhinged, sometimes both at once. The whole UTI, pee‑after‑sex stuff? Yaaass girl, we see you.

But then came the parts that made me want to bleach my brain. I was just not ready for the raunchy moments that detailed her, uhm, entrance and exit... and their bodily fluids and functions had me recoiling like a Victorian fainting maiden. I nearly tapped out more than once.

And the dog. The moment that dog appeared, I knew Melissa was going to go there. They alllllwaaays go there. And I hated her for it.

So yeah, I’m sitting here with a million mixed feelings. Entertained, grossed out, mildly traumatized, but with a merman who somehow kept me turning pages anyway. I'm still not entirely sure how I feel.

The Dark Winter by Flint Maxwell (Whiteout #2)

I'm really have fun with this series right now. It's been a great companion while I'm driving back and forth to work and they are so short! I've been flying through these books.

I see a lot of the reviews for this one complain that it doesn't really advance the storyline much but I thought it did. Keep in mind, these are quick, quirky books following a very small group of people who find themselves very suddenly thrust into a weird snowy apocalypse with strange wraith-like creatures who haunt and taunt them. They are immediately and completely cut off from the world so we know what they know which is.. absolutely nothing.

I've been enjoying being kept out in the cold (pun fully intended), learning along with them through trial and error, and I can't wait to see where things go.

I do have one concern though... they've rescued an abandoned dog, and I swear to god, if that thing ends up dying... I might change my tune. I'm putting a lot of faith and trust in Flint, though my head says I should be prepared to be devastated...

More soon! On to book 3!!!

The Numbing by Flint Maxwell (Whiteout #3)

Book 3 on audio and chugging right along. Really glad I bought the whole series in one shot. These books are so short and they move so fast that after a couple of days I'm jumping right into the next one with no gaps in between.

Still lots of wraiths, but now with more human monsters. And the foreshadowing just keeps on keeping on. Our main guy Grady loves to set us up by giving us a glimpse of what's coming. It eases the tension a bit while still keeping the storyline interesting.

In The Numbing, Grady and the group end up moving around a bit, trying to find a comfortable place to set some roots down and end up growing their little family of survivors when they run across a young pregnant woman in a snowmobile who helps them get to the local ski resort and hotel. While settling down together, they hear a man screaming out in the snow and find an older dude speared through the leg with a giant icicle. This dude gives off serious ick, but Grady ignores his gut because the guy promises them warmth, food, and a place to rest their heads. Only... he's buttering them up for something and Grady learns a valuable lesson... first impressions should always be trusted.

If you haven't started these yet, I would highly recommend it. I like them more and more, the further on we go.

Starting book 4 Monday morning on my drive into work! Can't wait.

The Infinite Sadness of Small Appliances by Glenn Dixon

"A House without Humans was no House at all."

A tender, quietly dystopian sci‑fi tale about Harold, a retired gentleman grieving the loss of his wife Edie, his estranged daughter Katie who temporarily returns home, Edie's young piano student Adrian who still visits Harold's home to practice for his exam, and the sentient appliances who adore their humans enough to fight for them. Among them is a vacuum who names herself after a character from To Kill a Mockingbird — a small but earnest act of self‑definition — and who will do whatever she can to keep The Grid from evicting Harold once Edie is gone.

What unfolds is a story that balances sweetness with sorrow...a home full of aging humans and loyal machines trying to preserve the last traces of a life well‑loved, even as the cold, all‑seeing system called The Grid insists on efficiency over empathy. The appliances’ devotion, Harold’s grief, and Adrian’s lingering connection to Edie all weave together into something surprisingly moving.

As heartwarming and hopeful as it is bleak, The Infinite Sadness of Small Appliances explores technology, family, chosen bonds, and what it means to be human — even when the ones fighting hardest for you aren’t human at all.

Cute and cozy. A nice palette cleanser to give me a breather between my usual dark and moody reads.

Indigent by Brianna N Cox

Ok. Hear me out. This book is being woefully underrated and I’m here to fix that.

But before you dive in, you need to know what you’re walking into: Cox has a very specific, very chaotic way of telling a story. If you prefer clean, linear, traditional narratives, this might not be for you. The closest comparison I can make is Kathe Koja’s Dark Factory series — that same disjointed, sensory, slightly delirious style where you’re not sure what’s happening at first but ohhhh that’s exactly where the magic is.

Once your brain adjusts to Cox’s wavelength, it becomes absolutely, disgustingly intriguing.

If Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke by Eric LaRocca or You Weren’t Meant to Be Human by Andrew Joseph White hit the right kind of wrong for you, you’re going to devour this one.

We’re talking parasites. We’re talking body horror — and I mean body horror. We’re talking cannibalism and a ridiculously warped family dynamic.

It’s epidemic fiction set in a low‑income apartment building where the government is just a little too slow, the infection is just a little too fast… and just a little too smart.

If you pick this up — and you really, truly SHOULD — I cannot wait to hear what you think.

The City of Light by Flint Maxwell (Whiteout #4)

Oh no, how do I only have one more book left? I am racing through this series but it's just so fun. I think it gets a little better with each installment honestly.

In City of Light, Grady and the group escape the nutter who held them hostage in Woodhaven and head towards the rumored City of... you guessed it... Light before Mia has her baby. But, of course, something, or rather, some ONE gets in their way and slows them down again...

And the wraith action hits high gear here too!

I cannot wait to see how it ends but I know I'll be sad when it's over. #readerproblems

The Walls Are Closing In On Us by Joshua Trent Brown

Another great novel coming out of Malarkey Books. This one is absolutely soaked in grief as we meet George, a dying mixed‑race Choctaw man lying in the woods near a river, his body broken and beaten, waiting for the end. As he drifts in and out of consciousness, he’s visited by the ghosts of his deepest regrets and the people who shaped him, for better or worse, as he moved through the world.

Like most Southern gothic stories, The Walls Are Closing In On Us simmers with quiet rage. It digs into segregation, racial tension, generational trauma, and the relentless, bone‑deep anxiety of trying to outrun a past that refuses to stay buried. Brown threads these themes through a landscape that feels both mythic and painfully real, blending historical fiction with a touch of magical realism that never feels ornamental — it feels earned, inevitable, haunting.

There’s a rawness to the writing that feels similar to Denis Johnson’s bruised lyricism and Taylor Brown’s sense of place — that same mix of grit, lyricism, and spiritual exhaustion. Yet Joshua Trent Brown is doing his own thing here, too, with this story about a man facing death while reckoning with the versions of himself he left scattered across the years, and the country that shaped him in ways he never asked for.

It’s heavy but it’s also strangely tender — a novel about endings that still manages to honor the small, stubborn ways people keep going.

If you're not reading Malarkey, what are you even reading?!

Blog Tour: IKONA

noreply@blogger.com (TNBBC Super Mod) — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 15:39:00 +0000

In a world divided by a genetic catastrophe, a monk and a former thief are linked by a sacred object that holds the key to a global cure.

The presence of a holy icon that bridges the gap between different eras and fractured timelines defines the world of M.D. Dixon’s IKONA. The story follows a diverse group of people as they are drawn into the artifact’s mysterious field, leading to a convergence that is both fated and determined by choice. It is an exploration of how memory and healing can transcend the limitations of linear time.

Amazon | Goodreads

A holy icon in the form of a Russian Orthodox cross surfaces throughout history, possessing a healing power that remains unexplained. Four strangers are drawn into its resonance, their journeys taking them from the bustling centers of Sydney, Hong Kong, Atlanta, and Berlin to the silent ruins of a future Siberia. In Atlanta, Kate Davies watches as the icon affects a sick child, while in Sydney, Finley Minor is haunted by visions of the weight of the future. Jia Li MacPherson, a former thief, carries secrets that powerful entities seek to bury. A century ahead, Wallace Deng Moroz, a monk in a world nearly ended by a genetic engineering catastrophe, searches for a cure in a dangerously polarized society.

Their paths are destined to cross, but the outcome depends on their choices. They must decide which future they are meant to live in and what must be surrendered to reach it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

———

FINLEY & THE SEA

MAY 2019

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA

Finley Minor was by his own accounts an empty man, a listless man, spiritually and emotionally sparse. Blink a thousand times and his course in life would not have shifted an inch. He was motionless like a chameleon in the presence of a threat. But this was not fact, only fear, and that of a man who knew that he’d not lived at full throttle and had succumbed to the fate of it —a slow and shallow life. He ruminated on it. He judged himself for it. He laughed at his own expense, without thinking he might ever change a thing.

In the way one always has a beginning, a great excuse, this was Finley’s: at the age of seven, in his native England, he sat on the beach as his stick wove tessellations in the sand (almost of its own accord, it seemed in retrospect), and he looked to the horizon towards France with the open, impressionable curiosity of his young age. He wondered at the sea’s depth, its great distance, how one might (as many had) swim across the channel, what creatures might lurk there, what they might feel like against bare skin. He imagined something slimy and cold, fanged, and slithering. The waves seemed to roar at him, even though they descended in the rockpools with the gentleness of pooling cream.

He stood, determined to satisfy his curiosity. He took halting steps over the rocks and shells, straight ahead, then bearing left around a rock face that jutted into the sea. He sat on a big, flat rock and stared into the gray water. He heard his father calling out his name, but ignored him. The water rushed in again and again, and each time reached further and further, first sucking at his toes, then his heels, then his knees. His curiosity fled; he became afraid, and all sound was magnified, the dull ocean roar, the seagull squawking a few feet away, his heartbeat. He knew he had to go back to shore. He waved to his father, stood, and took a faltering step. There was a low murmur; the water fizzled once more in retreat from the rocky sand like the gasping breath of a dying man. He felt dizzy and fell to his knees. He crouched on all fours and steadied himself as the water swirled and grasped at him, and the sky looped and the clouds fell from the corner of his eyes. He felt his head winched back towards the horizon, and the sea reached for his throat. Blackness.

When he came to, dragged back to shore by his father, he announced that his aunt would never return from her Côte D’Azur holiday. He wagged his finger towards the surf and pulled a face, “Over there, there is smooching.”

The official prognosis was that he’d had an epileptic fit, though none of the tests proved it. He must have passed out, in that case, the doctor pronounced, low blood sugar, a low-level virus, dehydration.

But Finley knew, only he knew.

The ocean had rent a hole in his soul, and let in the future.

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M.D. Dixon is a novelist, somatic therapist, and explorer of the intersections between the psyche and the sacred, science and mysticism, trauma and transformation. Holding a Ph.D. in the social sciences with a focus on Russia and Ukraine, Dixon has spent nearly fifteen years in therapeutic practice in Sydney, Australia. Dixon’s debut novel, IKONA, weaves visionary fiction, myth, and metaphysics to illuminate the evolution of consciousness. Dixon also hosts The Shattering Place, a podcast on multidimensional healing and the awakening human story, launching in early 2026.

Visit M.D. Dixon online.

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Additional tour coverage is taking place today at Long and Short Reviews and Chapter Break

The Page 69 Test: The Walls Are Closing in on Us

noreply@blogger.com (TNBBC Super Mod) — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 10:00:00 +0000

In this installment of Page 69,

we put Trent Brown's The Wall Are Closing In On Us to the test.

Set up page 69 for us.

I realized when sending over this page that this could take forever, so here goes nothing. The MC, George, is out with his best friends Koi and Chito, along with Koi's girlfriend Susanna (affectionately called Satty here). George has already been through quite a lot leading up to this page -- no spoilers!! but... he's been through it -- and this is one of the few moments of respite he's been given so far. But despite the respite, temptation abounds for this boy.

What is the book about?

Memory. New, old, and false identity. Circus performers. Mountain lions. A fight to the death. Choctaw mythology. Love and death. Disappearing during the most tumultuous time in modern history. The consequences of disappearing and coming back a new person.

At its core: The Walls is a fictional retelling of a mysterious ancestor of mine.

Do you think this page gives our readers an accurate sense of what the book is about? Does it align itself with the novel’s theme?

No? Yes? Maybe?

I like to tell people that this book is about nothing at all. Or at least, what happens when you try to reduce yourself from who you are into nothing at all. But, to answer your second question, nothing aligns more with the novel's theme than the last sentence from this excerpt: "The only sounds were of squirrels and raccoons in the trees, frogs and toads in the muddy bank, and a restless fish gator that might come up for air between sleeps in the pitch black." If you like those things, you'll probably like this book.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Page 69

The Walls Are Closing In On Us

Chito shrugged at her and looked to his older brother as if to ask him what he thought of the situation. Koi looked at the two boys, then his girlfriend who was still smiling at him with a gaze of temptation and then back at the front door of their home. No light escaped the windows. Their parents were asleep, or at least awake and not trying to see anything.

“What did you have in mind?” Koi asked her.

“Let’s walk down to the hatcha. And drink these,” she said, picking up two big glass bottles out of a crate in the bike basket and holding them up in front of her face.

“What’s that?” George asked.

“Beer,” she said.

George had never seen a bottle of beer before, or a beer at all. It was strictly forbidden in Chito and Koi’s household and he never saw his mammy drink a drop of it. She only spoke of it once, lamenting to herself about how so many good men in their community had been ruined by it. He had taken that as enough evidence to stay away from it ever since.

“Satty, what are you doing with that stuff?”

“Trying to have fun, like I said.”

“The boys can’t have alcohol.”

“Why not?”

Koi didn’t answer, because he didn’t really have one. And by the time he had thought of a few weak reasons why his two brothers couldn’t have a drink, he realized that she had laid the bike down and started carrying the bottles back down the driveway.

“Hey, where are you going?” he tried to yell in a whisper.

“To wherever the fun might be.”

He shook his head and turned to look at the two younger boys whose eyes were wide as if to say please can we go and he shook his head again and shrugged his shoulders and they started down the path after her.

They sat under a small wood bridge at the edge of a creek offshoot of the Pearl, or hatcha, River. The water hardly moved here, it was more of a swamp than anything else. The only sounds were of squirrels and raccoons in the trees, frogs and toads in the muddy bank, and a restless fish gator that might come up for air between sleeps in the pitch black.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Joshua Trent Brown is a writer from a small town in North Carolina that you've never heard of. He has a debut novel out called "The Walls Are Closing In On Us." You can buy it from Malarkey Books or pretty much anywhere else. He's working on another book too, if you like this first one. You can learn more about him at joshuatrentbrown.com.

The Walls Are Closing In On Us

Literary | Historical fiction

Malarkey Books | March 3, 2026

The Walls Are Closing In On Us follows George, a dying Choctaw and white man, reckoning with the ghosts of his past as he bleeds out beside a cold North Carolina river, hundreds of miles from home.

Based ever so slightly on a true story, this Southern odyssey explores what it means to be anyone at all, and how even the simple act of reading someone’s name is enough to bring them back to life – no matter if they wish to remain forgotten.

The 40 But 10: Eugen Bacon

noreply@blogger.com (TNBBC Super Mod) — Mon, 16 Feb 2026 10:00:00 +0000

We're happy to help Meerkat Press support the release of their latest title Another Nemesis, poems by Ai Jiang, Angela Yuirko Smith, Eugen Bacon, and Maxwell I Gold, by participating in their blog tour.

For our portion of the tour, Eugen has decided to participate in our 40 But 10 series - where I've pulled together 40ish questions - some bookish, some silly - and have asked authors to limit themselves to answering only 10 of them. That way, it keeps the interviews fresh and connectable for all of us!

Eugen Bacon is an African Australian author. She is a Solstice, British Fantasy, Ignyte, Locus and Foreword Indies Award winner. She’s also a twice World Fantasy and Shirley Jackson Award finalist, and a finalist in the Philip K. Dick Awards and the Nommo Awards for speculative fiction by Africans. Eugen is an Otherwise Fellow, and was also announced in the honor list for “doing exciting work in gender and speculative fiction.” Danged Black Thing made the Otherwise Award Honor List as a “sharp collection of Afro-Surrealist work.” Visit her at eugenbacon.com.

Describe your book poorly.

It’s not a novel or an anthology and it’s kind of biggish at 100 pages. There’s not one or two or three authors and the cover looks like a rainbow with some devils and angels on it. So the real artist is the publisher. In effect, you can get painted pastures and news from the sea, a bit of Lilith and Circe and a bastardized song. Somewhere inside is an unbuilt thing and a Saraswati. Nah, yeah, Loki and Anansi too. Tell you what, something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue, something taken, something forsaken. Bloody oath, she knows a bit more. Relax. What else were we to do? Look out for the wall of someday.

Do you have any hidden talents?

I’m telepathic. My hand itches when I’m about to get money. For real, I feel things deeply. Like, years ago, miles away, I knew when my father was dying. Maybe I need to listen to that intuition more.

What’s the most useless skill you possess?

I’m telepathic. What’s the fucken point when you know someone’s about to break up with you or something’s about to go to shit, before anything’s even happened, and you can’t change squat?

What do you do when you’re not writing?

I love artsy movies, foreign language movies, swimming, power-walking to headphone music, reading collections of short stories or multi-authored anthologies… I’m quite a fussy reader, though. Certain books talk to me more than others, and I pay attention to those.

What is your favorite book from childhood?

I grew up reading African ‘how’ and ‘why’ stories: Why the crocodile lives in the water. How the zebra got her stripes. Why the hyena has two short legs… These were my favorite books, that always had a cultural or societal moral.

What genres won’t you read?

I don’t like erotica text for the sake of it. Sure, I love intimacy but bad sex is quite awful on page. I love something sensual that builds on an emotional connection rather than just a physical grind on a flesh whimsy.

What’s the single best line you’re ever read?

Michael Ondaatje. Divisadero, where, at Lucien Segura’s wedding, Marie-Neige—the woman who is not his wife—pulls a note from her cotton sleeve and pushes it into his breast pocket. It would burn there unread for another hour as he danced and talked with in-laws who did not matter to him… everything that was important to him existed suddenly in the potency of Marie-Neige:

The note she had written said Good-bye. Then it said Hello …

What are you currently reading?

I’m judging works for the 2025 Otherwise Award so I can’t name the works but I feel tremendously exhilarated to be in a position where I can pay attention to genre- and gender-expansive works that engage with difference in poignant ways.

Which literary invention do you wish was real and why?

A bit cliched… time machine, change outcomes—but would I really? What if the cascade effect of each alteration yielded far worse results?

Do you think you’d live long in a zombie apocalypse?

Good Lord, no. I’m too curious, too easily spooked.

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Releasing February 17, 2026

Dark Speculative Poetry

Meerkat Press | Bookshop.org | Amazon

This dark and thought-provoking poetry collection is co-authored by four multi-award winning authors and poets, Ai Jiang, Angela Yuriko Smith, Eugen Bacon and Maxwell I. Gold.

anOther Nemesis unravels sinister speculative poems themed The Colonizers, Primal Sources, Nameless Others and Crooked Ontologies. It reconnoitres words as weapons, reshaping to the unworldly, casting transfigurations of that which was never meant to be changed, and featuring poignant behind-the-poems by each poet.

The extraordinary assemblage interrogates the ways cultures, language, information, and the lack thereof are used as means of control; how voices will always rise against systems that rewrite identity, suppress truth, and silence dissent; the distinctions of purity and diffusion and the infinite number of fates upon which our existence is simultaneously contingent; how Ubiquitous indifference can sometimes be the cruelest villain of them all... and more!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Excerpts

Calibration by Eugen Bacon

worlding the merpeople insists on fundamental descaling and tail amputation without anesthetics to ascertain if the language of crying harbors an ideology of resistance

because the truth of a creature manifests itself

when its discomfort threshold

is breached.

A Home You Don’t Remember by Ai Jiang

How to Miss

You’re eager to sip sweet nectar

from deep chasms and explore

the long winding valleys of the place

of your birth. But how do you miss

a place that seems like only a passing

portrait because it has been so long

since your physical body roamed

across its soils, stepped into its marrows,

uprooted

from its grooves, troughs, and furrows?

a place renamed, unnamed, renamed,

until it has forgotten what it had been

before the touch of human hands,

untrodden by human footprints,

now holding memories not its own.

Sun Wukong by Angela Yuriko Smith

The Monkey King—Sun Wukong, mischief embodied, irrepressible rebel birthed from stone to defy gods. His voice taunted heaven and teased immortals, arrogance wrapped in humor, wisdom hidden behind mirth. He defied limits, another snatcher of forbidden fruit, he grifted peaches of immortality and rewrote destinies with defiance. His laughter shook the celestial palaces; his clever tongue twisted divine decree into chaos, leaving order trembling in his wake.

Today, the Monkey King swings through digital jungles, flipping conventions and mocking algorithms with anarchic glee. He leaps across viral trends, prank videos, and meme culture, rebellious against the gravity of expectation. Sun Wukong is the chaos in the comment section, the unpredictable tweet that shatters expectations, the influencer who refuses to follow the script. He challenges censorship, mocks digital vanity, and playfully dismantles the serious facade of modern life, reminding humanity that freedom lies in laughter and that chaos is is needed for creation.

Defy all order—

Creation is subversive.

Freedom is laughing.

The Wall of Someday by Maxwell I. Gold

To Hope there was more,

over death,

over stars

after the Earth was ash

and there was no more less than,

no more walls;

in Hope to see towers that might stretch beyond limitation

outside my window or a house trapped

on the edge of a someday

I’d never know or to see what lay beyond the thick walls of night,

To Hope each time a great storm gathered,

cackling with heavy thunder and light,

I’d never know the words,

‘ne’er to pass the wall’

And to hope one day I might cross the threshold,

where the Gates of Tomorrow swung wide

and no longer the dark cruelties of today,

beat ceaselessly against my brain;

though with each passing night,

the storm’s call grew ever deeper,

‘never to pass the wall

and hope there was more,

over death,

over stars

after the Earth was ash

and there was no more less than,

no more walls.

About the other authors:

Ai Jiang is a Chinese-Canadian writer, Ignyte, Bram Stoker, and Nebula Award winner, and Hugo, Astounding, Locus, Aurora, and BFSA Award finalist from Changle, Fujian currently residing in Toronto, Ontario. She is the recipient of Odyssey Workshop’s 2022 Fresh Voices Scholarship and the author of A Palace Near the Wind, Linghun, and I AM AI. Find her at www.aijiang.ca.

Angela Yuriko Smith, former president of the HWA and publisher of Space and Time magazine, is the proud recipient of multiple awards, including two Bram Stokers. As a Publishing Coach, she helps writers search less and submit more with her weekly calendar of author opportunities at authortunities.substack.com.

Maxwell I. Gold is a Jewish-American cosmic horror poet and editor, with an extensive body of work comprising over 300 poems since 2017. His writings have earned a place alongside many literary luminaries in the speculative fiction genre. His work has appeared in numerous literary journals, magazines, and anthologies. Maxwell’s work has been recognized with multiple nominations including the Eric Hoffer Award, Pushcart Prize, and Bram Stoker Awards. Find him and his work at www.thewellsoftheweird.com.

The 40 But 10: Robert Hoffman

noreply@blogger.com (TNBBC Super Mod) — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Today we are joined by Robert Hoffman, who recently retired from teaching after 34 years. He was a blogger for six years for his local paper, the Albany Times Union. He also blogged for Albany.com, Fark.com, CrooksandLiars.com, and kneesandfists.com. In 2021, he published my his first novel, "Blind Spot. He also wrote a television pilot with a friend which was just named an "Official Selection" at the Las Vegas International Film and Screenwriting Festival. "Taken to the Grave" marks his second attempt at writing a work of fiction.

Why do you write?

I’ve enjoyed writing since I was in high school. My dream was to be a sports writer, but then I began to enjoy writing about a host of issues. In college I had my own column which I enjoyed immensely. However I was unable to further my writing career when I graduated and ended up as a social studies teacher for my career which worked out fine. About 12 or 13 years ago I started blogging and I was picked up by our local newspaper, the Times Union of Albany. I did that for a few years, but began to get bored doing it, and so I decided to try writing a work of fiction. I enjoy getting to express my ideas and opinions through characters that I create, and I enjoy the challenge of completing a story that moves people.

What’s the most useless skill you possess?

My wife says I have a head filled with “mindless muck.” If I were to translate that I would say that I have a head for trivia. As a social studies teacher, this skill can come in handy, I mean, if somebody asks you who the 14th president was, and you don’t know that it was Franklin Pierce, aren’t you going to feel silly. I also have a head for sports trivia, and can quote a lot of movies and old television comedies. If being able to do that is wrong, then I don’t want to be right.

Describe your book in three words.

Journey of Discovery

Would you and your main character(s) get along?

Well that’s pretty funny because the story was inspired by something that my wife experienced and for a while, because of it, we did have a few disagreements, however, I’m happy to say we get along just fine.

If you could cast your characters in a movie, which actors would play them and why?

Maria could be played by Julia Louis Dreyfuss, although I’m not sure she’s Italian enough looking, but she’s spunky and intelligent and passionate like Maria. Mark could be played by Matt Walsh from “Veep.” I would think that Annie could be played by Chloe Grace Moretz, and perhaps Michael could be played by the late Philip Seymour Hoffman. Sofia and Lawrence would have to be played by multiple actors since their stories are kind of told through flashbacks.

What are some of your favorite books and/or authors?

I tend to look for books that have some comic relief to them. I like Richard Russo, as well as Gary Shteyngart, and Kurt Vonnegut. I also enjoy Philip Roth because he seemed to always be ahead of his time when it came to understanding where America came from and where it’s going.

What’s the one book someone else wrote that you wish you had written?

“Confederacy of Dunces,” and it’s not even close. The characters, the setting, the way the story all comes together at the end, it is brilliant and laugh out loud funny. My favorite book of all time.

If you were on death row, what would your last meal be?

I actually wrote a blog about this several years ago. I took a look at what many of the most infamous amongst us who were on death row ordered for their last meal, and it was quite illuminating. I narrowed mine down to three choices:

A - A Burger King bacon-double cheeseburger with onion rings

B - A meatball pizza from almost any Long Island or New York City pizzeria

C - A pastrami sandwich from almost any Jewish deli in New York City or Long Island. After that, all I can say is, “Warden, do your worst!”

If you could time travel, would you go back to the past or forward into the future?

I would go forward in time. There are no “good old days.” The past was pretty awful, racism, no air-conditioning, no medicine, who wants it? I would like to travel to the future so I can see how my grandchildren turn out.

What’s the one thing you wish you knew when you were younger?

I don’t have regrets because they are the biggest waste of time that there is. You can’t change the past, and even if you could go back and talk to your younger self, you, being you, would you even listen? However, I would have given writing a real shot as a profession, so I would have told myself to be ore daring and less cautious, but I’m sure wouldn’t have listened because that’s who I am, thus, a waste of time. It would be more lucrative to go back in time and tell my younger self to bet it all on the 2008 Super Bowl, and pick the Giants before the season started, I would have made a mint.

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E-book | Paperback | Goodreads

Maria Abrams has always needed answers. A college professor with a gift for logic, she believes that if you dig long enough, the truth will rise to the surface. But when she turns her relentless curiosity toward her own family, she unearths more than she bargained for: a web of secrets her mother carried silently to the grave.

A precious gift from her favorite niece reveals a hidden relationship and its lasting consequences, Maria’s pursuit of clarity collides with the resistance of relatives who would rather leave the past buried. Her journey takes her from small-town New York to séances with reluctant mediums, forcing her to confront uncomfortable truths about loyalty, betrayal, and the fragile bonds that hold families together.

Taken to the Grave is a layered family mystery about identity, silence, and the cost of uncovering what was meant to remain hidden. At once intimate and suspenseful, it asks the ultimate question: when does the truth set us free, and when does it break us apart?

What I Read In January

noreply@blogger.com (TNBBC Super Mod) — Sun, 01 Feb 2026 17:36:00 +0000

New year, new reading goal set over at Goodreads, new reading challenge too!

I kicked the year off having read a total of 13 books - 2 for potential publicity purposes, which won't be listed here; 1 audiobook, 1 book from my tbr, and 9 review copies. Phew!

There were some really good ones and some kinda meh ones and if you're curious to see which was which, take a peek-see below:

Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by VW Schwab

I spotted this one at 2nd & Charles, and the only reason I grabbed the hardcover was because it was a signed copy. I’d been curious... it’s been all over my #bookstagram feed, hyped as a toxic sapphic vampire story, but good lord, this thing is a brick.

I cracked it open on New Year’s Eve right before the ball dropped and only just finished it last night. It’s a slow‑burn, centuries‑spanning “making of a villain” tale that follows three women whose lives eventually collide in a way that’s somewhat predictable but still thoroughly satisfying.

There’s love, lust, and sex, as you’d expect in any vampire novel, plus just enough gore to keep the horror girls fed (This was a fun line - “They came apart like Christmas paper”). Schwab did a nice job building out each character’s backstory… except for Alice. Her chapters were much shorter than the others and her history was squeezed into her current timeline as flashbacks and felt more clunky, compared to how Maria/Sabine and Lottie’s arcs unfolded.

One thing I loved - the vampires never actually refer to themselves as vampires. Instead, they refer to themselves as having been 'buried in the midnight soil', which gives the whole mythology this earthy, ancient texture. And one character’s childhood nickname ends up looping back into the title in a way really clever... a double entendre that lands beautifully once you get there.

This is my first, and probably my only, Schwab. Not because there’s anything wrong with the book — she’s a fantastic storyteller — but because her other work doesn’t really sound like my thing, and her novels tend to run a little long for my taste. I don’t mind committing to a chunky book, but a story told in 500 pages often could’ve been told in 300 and been just as impactful.

Regardless of length, Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil delivers exactly what it promises: a lush, bloody, sapphic epic with teeth. So if you’re like me and a little late to the game, there’s no time like now to grab a copy. This one deserves to stand shoulder to shoulder with Interview with the Vampire as a modern must‑read of the genre.

The Butcher of Nazareth by David Scott Hay

Look out, bitches — this book is fire. I’m not kidding. It’s so friggen good I’m still vibrating. I devoured all 300 pages in a single day, blew off every Sunday responsibility I had, and even stayed up past my bedtime the night before going back to work after five glorious days off. And I have zero regrets.

If you’re not familiar with the biblical story of King Herod and the Massacre of the Innocents, take a minute and Google it. I’ll wait. (I had to do the same. Apparently my CCD teachers skipped that chapter.)

The short version: a paranoid king hears a prophecy about a child destined to overthrow him, so he orders the execution of every male infant two years old and under. An absolutely horrific historical event.

Enter David Scott Hay, who takes that nightmare and zooms in on one man caught in the middle of it — a grieving father, a master butcher, forced into the ranks of the Black Masks and compelled to participate in the very massacre that stole his own son. Many years later, he’s a man hollowed out by guilt and haunted by apocalyptic visions. Those visions point to a single surviving child, one who slipped through the slaughter. And now this butcher, this broken man, is tasked with finding the boy who got away… and killing him to prevent the end of the world.

What made this book so compulsively readable is how deeply Hay roots the story in this man’s torment. He’s not a villain. He’s a father trying to claw his way toward redemption through an impossible, soul‑splitting mission. The tension between duty, prophecy, grief, and the faintest flicker of hope is just... uuuugh... chef’s kiss.

This book didn’t just hook me. It dragged me by the throat. An absolute must‑read… as long as gory, alternate takes on biblical events don’t send you running for the hills. If you can handle the darkest corners of the Bible (and let’s be honest, that text gets grim), you’re going to have a blast with this one. I promise you.

Kayak by Kristal Stittle

Oh gosh, you guys. I really wanted to like this one. The premise had me hooked: a meteor crash-lands on Earth, scattering dust filled with alien seeds. As the wind carries this dust across continents, the seeds take root, and what grows from them is monstrous. These creatures are brutal, relentless, and hungry for human flesh.

Like any good alien invasion tale, there’s a weakness. Water. Once that’s discovered, humanity scrambles toward the nearest lakes, rivers, oceans — anything that might offer safety. In the chaos, Keith loses his parents at the beach, and the story follows his fight for survival as he searches for his friends and family out on the Canadian lakes, alone in his little kayak.

I was really excited to read this one. It should have been gripping. The setup was eerie and cinematic, and I was ready to be swept into the horror. But the execution just didn’t deliver. The pacing felt flat, the writing was somewhat stilted and never quite settled for me. If I didn’t know better, I’d have assumed this was a debut. It reads like Stittle was trying too hard to channel what she imagined a sixteen-year-old boy might sound like, and the result felt forced and awkward.

I kept hoping it would find its rhythm, that that the tension would build, that Keith’s journey would pull me in. But instead, I found myself wanting to DNF more than once — and regretting that I didn’t. Cool concept, but kind of disappointing follow-through. Which is upsetting, because I really like what Tenebrous has been putting out lately!

Funeral Song by Carly Racklin

I requested a copy of this one because the premise hooked me and, yes, the cover is ridiculously pretty. A town where the dead are resurrected and just… rejoin the living like it’s no big deal? Sign me up.

“Praise All-Eternal Death who restores life to the dead.”

In Cairney, Death grants resurrection to its residents, a ritual the townsfolk treat as sacred. But Friede, the church pianist, has always viewed it as a curse. When she awakens in the catacombs coughing up mud and brackish water, her first thought is a horrified no… no, no, nooo. As her memories return, she realizes she has died and been dragged back against her will.

Soon after, she learns that Death’s relic has been stolen and the acolyte who guarded it has been murdered in a manner disturbingly similar to her own. With Allhallowsmas approaching and the resurrected at risk of fading away, Friede and her friend Bastian set out to recover the relic and restore order to a community obsessed with death, even as she longs for the rest she was denied.

The setup is fantastic. The vibes are moody. But the story never digs into the lore the way I hoped it would. Cairney is begging for deeper history, richer mythology, and more fully realized characters, but the narrative keeps things frustratingly shallow. Racklin had a killer concept, but instead of plunging into the depths, the book just treads water.

Pretty prose, great concept, underwhelming execution.

The Midnight Muse by Jo Kaplan

Add another one to your fungal fiction list, because The Midnight Muse is a welcome addition to the genre — eerie, immersive, and so easy to fall into.

This is my first Jo Kaplan novel and my god, I love the way she writes. Her storytelling has this wonderfully strange, magnetic energy that pulled me in from page one and never let go.

We start with two timelines that will ultimately come crashing together: one where our primary MC Harlow is hospitalized after a traumatic event that begins very mysteriously but quickly starts coming together, and another that takes place a little earlier, following her and the remaining members of the dark metal band Queen Carrion as they head into the woods a year after their lead vocalist Brynn vanished. They’re there to say goodbye… or in Harlow’s case, to make one last desperate attempt to find her.

The cabin they rent is every horror trope turned up to eleven — remote enough to feel wrong, without wi-fi (of course), and oh look, a trap door in the floor. Plus that prickling sensation that they are being watched.

Once they settle in, the weirdness starts simmering. They hear singing in the woods. There's a glimpse of a white deer that feels more omen than animal, mold creeping in the corners, cobwebs sagging from the chandelier, and when Rhys starts getting sick… that’s when the weird-o-meter snaps clean off.

Because the land itself is alive — crawling with an aggressive, hungry mycelium eager to burrow into their bodies and rot them from the inside out. It lures. It whispers. It waits for them to step outside so it can try to claim them. And now our fearsome friends find themselves fighting for their lives.

This book is creepy, cringey, atmospheric as hell, and absolutely drenched in dread. And the body horror? Oh wow. Think The Ruins but with sentient mushrooms.

I absolutely devoured this. It got under my skin in the best way. Kaplan didn’t just write fungal horror. She wrote a fever dream you can’t shake.

King Sorrow by Joe HIll

I sat on the fence with this audiobook for a long time before finally pulling the trigger. Honestly, the only reason I did was because I spotted it for cheap on Chirp and thought, why not? And then, just like that, it became my commuting companion for the last three weeks.

And… ugh, you guys. I just wasn’t a fan.

It actually starts out kind of cute. A college kid gets targeted by an older couple whose mother is in the same jail as his. They threaten to have their mom hurt his mom unless he steals rare, expensive books from the library where he works so they can sell them off and pay down some debt. Arthur goes along with it under duress, and his friends rally around him to figure out how to get these people off his back. In the process, they discover that one of the rare books is a journal belonging to a man who practiced dark magic and summoned a dragon. So naturally, they decide to summon the dragon too.

Enter King Sorrow, who appears, marks them, and makes a pact: he’ll protect them as long as they give him one soul on Easter. They agree… and quickly realize dragons are tricky little monsters. One soul turns into many, and suddenly they’re stuck feeding him for decades while scrambling for a way to break the pact or kill him outright so they can finally be free.

The whole thing was just too long and a little too unbelievable — yes, even for a story with a dragon. The characters were grating, especially King Sorrow. Every line he delivered was clearly meant to sound ominous and menacing, but instead it landed as goofy and corny.

And the strangest part? Every so often, right in the middle of the narration, the audiobook would shift into these odd little dramatized segments — actors, sound effects, the whole production — layered into the story without warning. It was jarring, and not in a fun experimental way.

This one just didn’t work for me. Please don't hate me.

Dig by JH Markert

Strange things are starting to happen on Crow Island — an isolated stretch of land known for its tupelo honey, its Geechee folklore, and Jericho, the unsettling giant of a child who went on a murder spree one Fourth of July eight years ago.

Amy Barnes, whose family owns the island, gets a late‑night call from Reverend Dodd telling her to contact his son Nathaniel and tell him to dig. Sensing something is horribly wrong, Amy rushes to Dodd’s house but she’s too late. He’s dead. His hand has been severed and coated in honey. His yard is torn up with frantic holes. And he’s been obsessively sketching red crows… which would be odd anywhere, but especially here, since Crow Island hasn’t seen a single crow in centuries.

Sheriff Lawrence quickly finds himself in over his head as more islanders develop the same compulsive urge to dig, frantically releasing clouds of dirt into the air and unearthing disturbingly large bones. And if those bones belong to who they fear they do, the island is about to face a reckoning unlike anything in its long, haunted history.

I really loved this book. I appreciated its slow burn and the way Markert gradually revealed the tangled relationship between the characters and the island, which feels like a character in its own right. The history of the bees, the quest to create truly pure tupelo honey, the honey house no one but the beekeeper can enter, the small earthquakes growing in frequency and intensity… it all builds with this steady, uncanny pressure. You may think you know where it’s headed, but trust me, you won’t guess everything.

It’s atmospheric, strange, and deeply rooted in place... the kind of Southern‑gothic‑adjacent horror that seeps under your skin. Crow Island has secrets, and watching them rise to the surface was an absolute treat.

Pedro the Vast by Simon Lopez Trujillo

I read this book cover to cover in my antilibrary while snowmageddon 2026 continues to whollop us. Even though it's the wrong time of year for fungus to live 'amongus', it was a great excuse to sit in one place and just read... guilt free.

Pedro the Vast follows three groups of people that are intimately connected to a forest worker who becomes infected by mushroom spores and survives, or appears to survive, because it's kind of hard to tell how much of Pedro is actually still in there... There's a religious group that basically kidnaps him once he awakens from his coma and treat him like a prophet, his son and daughter who are learning to deal with his absence, and a mycologist who is briefly called upon to consult on Pedro's case and its potential for additional contamination.

Trujillo’s writing has such softness to it, a musicality and a melancholy that feels distinctly, beautifully Spanish. The prose stays tender and attentive, lingering on small gestures, quiet moments, and the natural world with a reverence that makes the whole novel feel alive.

As the three storylines work together, the novel becomes less about the horror of Pedro’s infection and more about the ways life insists on continuing, reshaping itself, adapting, pushing forward. It’s quiet, contemplative eco‑fiction with a speculative shimmer, and it will have me thinking about the resilience of living things long after I move on from this book.

Crawlspace by Adam Christopher

Crawlspace. An interesting name for a cosmic horror novel… set in outer space… on a spaceship. And yet, it kinda works, because the ship’s crawlspace is exactly where all the real trouble starts.

I didn’t fall head over heels for this one, but Adam Christopher absolutely knows how to let the tension simmer and marinate his readers in atmospheric dread.

The story takes its sweet time getting going. We meet the crew of the XK72 (truly one of the least inspiring spacecraft names imaginable) as they prepare for a test flight of a hyperspace prototype called the SLIP drive — a machine meant to break the laws of physics and fling them across two light‑seconds in two microseconds. It’s a lot of setup... but hang in there.

While the descriptions of the different parts of spacecraft and the mechanical techy terms were a bit snoozey and hard to follow, the characters were pretty fun and easy to latch on to. You can tell something's going to go down pretty early on and when the weird and sabatogy stuff does start, everyone does that classic horror‑story thing where they shrug it off, rationalize it, or pretend it’s fine until it very much isn’t. And by the time they finally stop making excuses, well… it’s already too late.

The knocking that sounds like it's overhead, and then underfoot, and then in the walls. The shadowy movements in the corner of their eyes, catching the reflection of someone in the mirror or the window when you are alone in the room ... and now the missing crew members...

Crawlspace doesn’t reinvent cosmic horror, but it knows exactly how to make you sneak a peek over your shoulder before you turn out the lights and brings the darkness of the void uncomfortably close.

I Am Agatha by Nancy Foley

What do you get when an eccentric, aging artist hooks up with a woman slipping into the early stages of Alzheimer’s? You get I Am Agatha.

This is a tender, twisted little tale about love, loyalty, and moody‑ass bitches. Our narrator, Agatha, has recently relocated to New Mexico and fallen into a relationship with Alice, a widow whose mind is beginning to fray at the edges. Alice’s family owns the property Agatha rents, and as Alice’s dementia worsens, her son — who has never liked Agatha and considers her a corrupting influence — announces he’s selling the land out from under her. Cue Agatha’s quiet, simmering rage. She’s a classy butch, after all, and she’s not about to be pushed around.

Just as she’s trying to convince Alice to move in with her, Alice disappears. And Agatha, in all her stubborn, steel‑spined glory, starts covering for her when the questions begin.

It’s funny, it’s dark, it’s a little unsettling — the kind of story that keeps you leaning forward, wondering what this prickly old woman is going to do next. Agatha’s commentary is what really makes this book. She’s observant, wickedly petty, and fully aware that she’s the most interesting person in any room, even though she hates to draw any attention to herself.

If you love books narrated by unreliable, isolated older women... think Too Old For This, Elena Knows, or Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead... then buckle up, baby! Agatha’s in the driver’s seat, and she’s taking you on one hell of a ride.

Killing Stella by Marlen Haushofer

Took a break from all of the review copies I've been reading lately and pulled this out of the TBR.

Never judge the decisions a person makes. That's what I had to keep reminding myself as I read this novelette yesterday.

If someone wants to live in the dark, ignore the obvious, and torture themselves with spiraling assumptions instead of facing the truth head‑on… fine. Good for them. Personally, I find that kind of willful avoidance maddening and enablist, but hey, to each their own. That's the bed you made. But also, I'd be lying if I said I never did that, sooo...

Killing Stella is beautifully written, but wow did it piss me off. The emotional choices, the passivity, the refusal to act — all of it pressed every one of my buttons. I spent half the book wanting to shake the narrator and the other half reminding myself to unclench my jaw.

And yet, despite how massively frustrating and triggering it was, it’s clever, tightly crafted, and incredibly readable. Just not sure it was worth the full paperback price for a story that's less than 90 pages long.

The 40 But 10: Cheryl S. Ntumy

noreply@blogger.com (TNBBC Super Mod) — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Today we are joined by Cheryl S. Ntumy. Cheryl is a Ghanaian writer of speculative fiction, romance and YA. She is part of the Sauútiverse Collective, which created a shared universe for Afrocentric speculative fiction, and Petlo Literary Arts, a creative writing organisation in Botswana. Her Sauútiverse novella Songs for the Shadows was published in 2024 by Atthis Arts and her short story collection Black Friday and Other Stories from Africa was published in 2025 by Flame Tree Press. Along with Eugen Bacon and Stephen Embleton, she co-edited the second Sauútiverse anthology, Sauúti Terrors, to be published in January 2026 by Flame Tree Press.

Why do you write?

I write because I can’t not. I think of writing as alchemy. It’s how I make sense of the world, process my thoughts and emotions and transmute them into something else. Stories translate the weirdness of existence into a universal language. They allow us to use words to communicate what is beyond words. If that’s not magic, I don’t know what is. Writing is also a kind of compulsion for me; my imagination doesn’t let up and some stories will torment me until I write them!

How do you celebrate when you finish writing a new book?

I catch up on sleep, go outside, hang out with other humans – all the things I couldn’t do while possessed by the muses.

Describe your book in three words.

Unsettling. Unexpected. Unique. (Sorry. I couldn’t resist!)

Describe your book poorly.

So there are these five planets that orbit two suns, sometime in the future, but also sometime in the past, and one of them is dead (or alive, depending) and has kind of been replaced by its moon. A bunch of different people wrote a bunch of scary stories set on these planets, except some aren’t really scary, they’re more like that funny feeling you get when you think someone is watching you. And there are also poems; cool, creepy poems, not like the ones we had to read in school. The peoples and cultures of these planets are African-ish. The humans, that is. If you like good things, you’ll like this book!

What is your favorite book from childhood?

Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll. I have a beautiful unabridged edition with both stories and the original illustrations by John Tenniel. It’s one of my most beloved possessions.

Some honourable mentions, all of which I’ve read as an adult: Minnie by Annie M. Schmidt. Collections of folktales, myths and fairytales from around the world, e.g. One Thousand and One Nights. Dan Yaro, Double Agent by Dorothy Wimbush. Watership Down by Richard Adams. And the usual suspects: Nancy Drew, Malory Towers, anything by Judy Blume.

What genres won’t you read?

I can tolerate any genre, but dislike excessive violence/cruelty, gore, and fiction with no actual plot.

Do you read the reviews of your books or do you stay far far away from them, and why?

I read reviews. I want to know what people liked and what they didn’t, what came across the way I hoped it would and what didn’t land. It’s fascinating to see how people interpret things. I also find that reading reviews helps me get over myself!

Do you think you’d live long in a zombie apocalypse?

I would die, hopefully, before the zombies get anywhere near me. Apart from the gross factor, zombies bug me on a conceptual level. Why do they need to eat if they’re (un)dead? Why are they never vegetarian? Why don’t they eat themselves or each other? How do they digest food (or do anything at all) when their bodies are falling apart? Nope; I’m not sticking around to be devoured or turned by a decaying meatsack with superhuman strength!

Are you a book hoarder or a book unhauler?

Unhauler, definitely. I love books, but not as much as I love space. I don’t want to keep books unless I’ll happily re-read them for the rest of my life, or they have sentimental value. Libraries are a wonderful thing…

If you were on death row, what would your last meal be?

Fried rice with tofu, salad (no rocket), fried plantain and fresh pepper. Vanilla ice cream with caramel syrup and chocolate pieces. Sobolo (a drink made with bissap, cloves and ginger). Dairy Milk Cashew and Coconut. Hot water with lemon and honey.

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Releases January 20th

Flame Tree Publishing | Book Page

Sauúti Terrors

Edited by Eugen Bacon, Stephen Embleton and Cheryl S. Ntumy

This powerful and haunting collection of short stories from the groundbreaking Sauútiverse follows the success of Mothersound: The Sauútiverse Anthology. Sauúti Terrors tells of the doomed, the damned, the shunned, the cunning, the destroyers, the noxious, and more.

Featuring works by African and African diaspora writers: Linda D. Addison, T.L. Huchu, Xan van Rooyen, Jamal Hodge, Ishola Abdulwasiu Ayodele, Wole Talabi, Mazi Nwonwu, Kofi Nyameye, D.S. Falowo, Shingai Njeri Kagunda, J. Umeh, Moustapha Mbacké Diop, Miguel O. Mitchell, DaVaun Sanders and Nerine Dorman.

Flame Tree Beyond & Within collections present a wide range of voices, often with myth-inflected short fiction, and an emphasis on the supernatural, science fiction, the mysterious and the speculative.

The Page 69 Test: Holy Denver: A Novel of Shame and Redemption

noreply@blogger.com (TNBBC Super Mod) — Mon, 12 Jan 2026 10:00:00 +0000

In this installment of Page 69,

we put Florence Wetzel's Holy Denver: A Novel of Shame and Redemption to the test

Set up page 69 for us.

This scene occurs in the first part of the book, which follows the main character Elizabeth through a typical day in Denver, working at a job she loathes and living in a place she’s ashamed of, namely a basement studio. Here Elizabeth is describing life in the studio, including her mysterious neighbor, who she calls the Snuffler.

What is the book about?

The novel is told as Elizabeth’s first-person memoir. She’s a reluctant Denver transplant who lost her prestigious Manhattan publishing job in the wake of the 2009 financial crash. This forces her to move to Colorado, the home of her Beat-poet father, where she takes a minimum-wage job at an indie bookstore. She actively dislikes her coworkers, and she’s humiliated to find herself shelving books she once edited.

This first part of the book is a slow burn that culminates about midway, when Elizabeth’s bitter attitude and haughty behavior lead to a shocking confrontation. She’s forced to reckon with herself, and this journey takes her through the lingering shadows of the Columbine shooting and the JonBenét Ramsey case.

The book is also a love letter to Denver. Elizabeth despises the city at first, but as the novel progresses, she falls in love with its quirky charm. The title comes from Jack Kerouac, who uses the phrase “Holy Denver” in On the Road.

Do you think this page gives our readers an accurate sense of what the novel is about? Does it align itself with the novel’s theme?

I think this section gives a clear impression of Elizabeth’s voice and personality. She has a dry humor that sometimes verges on cruelty, but she also has a good heart buried underneath her verbal sharpness. So even though she doesn’t initially seem sympathetic to the Snuffler, she does worry about him.

I also like that the page mentions Trixie. She’s a secondary character who becomes more important as the book develops, and this is the reader’s first introduction to her.

The novel’s theme is laid out in the subtitle, namely shame and redemption. This is Elizabeth pre-redemption, and it’s clear she could benefit from a kinder attitude to her fellow humans.

And by the way, I did actually see someone wearing a T-shirt that said LOSING FAITH IN HUMANITY ONE PERSON AT A TIME. I never forgot it, and then it popped up here in Holy Denver!

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Page 69

Holy Denver: A Novel of Shame and Redemption

I had just stroked on my second layer of polish when I heard a noise in the hallway. A strange muffled snuffling, as if someone had a bad cold but was reluctant to blow their nose.

That could only mean one thing: the Snuffler was home.

Before I moved in, I had asked Pat about my fellow basement dwellers. She said, “On one side, you have Trixie. She’s a nice person and she’s like you, someone who lost work due to the crash and needs low rent. And on the other side—well, don’t worry. He’s harmless.”

Which didn’t do much to inspire confidence. After living at The Swiss Arms for three months, I still hadn’t seen this mysterious tenant. I did, however, hear his odd snufflings whenever he trudged by my door.

The sound was actually a relief, because it meant the Snuffler was still alive. He was clearly one of those people who would lie dead in their apartment for weeks until a neighbor—in this case, me—noticed a bad smell. I always took a deep whiff when I passed the Snuffler’s door, and I listened for his phlegmy breath whenever I heard footsteps passing my studio. Confirming that he was still alive was always a comfort, because it meant I didn’t have to worry about him for the next twenty-four hours.

As my final coat of polish dried, I contemplated the mystery of the Snuffler. We never bumped into each other in the hallway, but I would sometimes see his door close when I left my apartment, which made me suspect he listened at the door before emerging from his lair, deliberately avoiding an encounter. I was fairly certain he only did his laundry in the middle of the night, because once when I was having a bout of insomnia, I heard his door open and close, then heard him shuffle away and shuffle back five minutes later.

The Snuffler obviously had something to hide, although I had no idea what. Even though Pat claimed he wasn’t dangerous, I had my doubts. During one of my brief chats with Trixie, I asked what she thought. Trixie said she’d only seen him once, and that was from behind.

“I called out hello,” she told me, “but he didn’t turn around. He was wearing a gray T-shirt with black letters. Do you know what it said?”

“I shudder to think.”

Trixie raised her eyebrows. “LOSING FAITH IN HUMANITY ONE PERSON AT A TIME.”

“Oh my God,” I replied. “He’s the next Unabomber.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Florence Wetzel was born 1962 in Brooklyn, NY. She writes in different genres, including the memoir Sara My Sara: A Memoir of Friendship and Loss. Her novels include the thriller The Woman Who Went Overboard, the Swedish mystery The Grand Man, Dashiki: A Cozy Mystery and Aspasia: A Novel of Suspense and Secrets. She has also authored horror short stories, a book of poems and memoir essays, and co-authored jazz clarinetist Perry Robinson's autobiography. Her latest book is Holy Denver: A Novel of Shame and Redemption. You can find her at Linktree | Instagram | Facebook

Holy Denver: A Novel of Shame and Redemption

Released January 6th

In 2009, at the height of the economic crash, Elizabeth Zwelland loses her prestigious Manhattan publishing job in the fallout from Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. Forced to move to Colorado, the home of her Beat-poet father, she takes a minimum-wage job at an indie bookstore, shelving the very books she once edited.

Bitter and adrift, Elizabeth scorns her coworkers and customers—until a shocking confrontation forces her to reckon with herself. Her journey takes her through the shadows of the Columbine shooting and JonBenét Ramsey case, leading to an awakening forged in hardship and a deepening connection to the city Jack Kerouac once called Holy Denver.

The Garbage (2026) Reading Challenge

noreply@blogger.com (TNBBC Super Mod) — Fri, 02 Jan 2026 19:46:00 +0000

If you've been following me for years, you'll know that I really love reading challenges because of the way it stretches your reading comfort zone, but I've always sucked at actually completing them.

In 2015, over at Goodreads, we kicked off our most outrageous challenge ever, borrowing The Beatles Reading Challenge from another group I was a part of, which had turned their songs into reading tasks. And in 2016, we whipped up The REM Reading Challenge. (I really sucked at this one. I couldn't even complete one album, but man was it fun trying!). And then to honor David Bowie's passing, in 2017 we pulled together the Bowie Reading Challenge! In 2018 I decided to take a break from our music theme and challenged everyone to read whatever the fuck they wanted in our RWTFYW challenge. The only rule was that there were no rules : ) In 2019 I spread my love of Guster around, 2020 was all about Ani DiFranco, 2021 had us fan girling over PJ Harvey, and 2022 continued the female artist love with our Liz Phair challenge (I sucked at this one too, didn't complete one album but came soooo close for so many!). 2023 had me returning to my 80s roots and we concocted The Cure challenge, which was my most successful up to that point. And 2024 brought us the Depeche Mode challenge, where I completed a whopping record breaking 8 albums! And we just closed out our 2025 Afghan Whigs Challenge.

For 2026 I'm going to keep the alternative resurgence theme going and am thrilled to announce that we're hosting the Garbage Reading Challenge!

Garbage made a comeback in 2025 but have been kicking the crap out of the radiowaves since the mid 90's. Shirley Manson is an absolutely killer lead vocalist.

Whether you know and love Garbage or this is the first time you are hearing of them (I mean it's possible, right?), what I think is most cool about these kinds of reading challenges... is that you don't even have to be a fan of the musicians to participate. You just have to be a fan of READING!!

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Garbage (2025) Reading Challenge

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So here's how this works:

*The goal is to cross off as many of Garbage's songs as you can throughout the course of 2026.

You can challenge yourself to complete one entire album, focus on completing one decades-worth of albums, or build your own challenge by hitting your favorite song titles... it's totally up to you!

*You cross off the songs by reading a book that meets the criteria listed after each song title.

If the book meets multiple reading tasks, cool! You can apply it to multiple song titles, OR you can make the reading challenge more challenging by limiting yourself to one song title per book.

*There may be built in redundancy with some of the tasks.

They are repetitive on purpose, to give you an opportunity to read more than one type of book and still get credit for completing a task. (Sneaky, I know!)

*Please copy and paste the entire list, or your customized challenge list, into your own thread in this goodreads folder and strike through the song titles as you complete them, OR, you can simply copy and paste each song title and its criteria from the master list here as you complete it. (obviously put your name in the thread title so we know whose challenge it is).

*Do not add your list directly to Rule and List thread.

*YOU MUST LIST THE BOOK TITLE AND AUTHOR that coincides with the song as you complete it for the challenge so we know what you read!

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An example of a completed song title task in your Challenge thread would look like this:

<s>“This Bouquet” – Read a book that features flowers on the cover</s> - The Distance from Four Points by Margo Orlando Littell

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Aaaaannnnnnnddddddd here's the list:

A total of 8 studio albums and 91 total songs tasks!

Garbage (1995)

"Supervixen" – Read a book that features a strong female MC

"Queer" – Read an LGBTQIA book

"Only Happy When It Rains" – Curl up with a book on a rainy day instead of going out or doing your chores and take credit for it here

"As Heaven is Wide" – Read a book that features religion

"Not My Idea" – Read a book that was recommended to you by someone else

"A Stroke of Luck" – Save this for the book that became a surprise five star read

"Vow" – Read a book that you swore you would never read, or a book by an author you swore you would never read

"Stupid Girl" – Read a book that features a sad girl / weird girl

"Dog New Tricks" – Read a book that features a dog or has a dog on the cover

"My Lover’s Box" – Read a romance novel or a book that heavily features love

"Fix Me Now" – Save this for the book that becomes your entire personality after you read it

"Milk" – Read a book that features drinking or has a drink on the cover

Version 2.0 (1998)

"Temptation Waits" – Read that book you just bought, go ahead, move it right to the top of your TBR

"I Think I’m Paranoid" – Read a book that is super creepy and had you looking over your shoulder the whole time

"When I Grow Up" – Read a book that features a young MC

"Medication" – Read a book that deals with illness / chronic illness

"Special" – Read a book that was someone else’s favorite

"Hammering in My Head" – If you read a book that gave you a “book hangover”, take credit for it here

"Push It" – Save this spot for the book you pimped the most this year

"The Trick Is to Keep Breathing" – If you read a book that literally took your breath away, take credit for it here

"Dumb" – If you read a book that you should have DNFd and didn’t, take credit for it here

"Sleep Together" – Save this for the book that kept you up all night

"Wicked Ways" – Read a book with a twist that took you by surprise

"You Look So Fine" – Read a book just because of its cover and take credit for it here

Beautiful Garbage (2001)

"Shut Your Mouth" – Save this spot for the book you read this year that that you will absolutely not take any criticism on

"Androgyny" – Read a book with a cover that could work for any genre

"Can’t Cry These Tears" – Read a tear jerker

"Til the Day I Die" – Read a book about death and/or dying

"Cup of Coffee" – Stay in bed and read a book so you can take credit for it here

"Silence is Golden" – Read a book with a cover that features foil lettering/design

"Cherry Lips" – Read a book that is set in the summertime

"Breaking Up the Girl" – If you DNF a book, take credit for it here

"Drive You Home" – Listen to an audiobook on your commute to work / in the car and take credit for it here

"Parade" – If you read a book that you own in multiple formats, take credit for it here

"Nobody Loves You" – Read a book that is severely under read / flying under everyone’s radar

"Untouchable" – Save this spot for your favorite book of the year

"So Like a Rose" – Read a book that has a flower / flowers on the cover

Bleed Like Me (2005)

"Bad Boyfriend" – Read a book that features an evil or morally grey male MC

"Run Baby Run" – Go buy and immediately read that brand new release you’ve been waiting for and take credit for it here

"Right Between the Eyes" – Read a book that has a body part on the cover

"Why Do You Love Me" – Read a book that you’d be embarrassed to have people see you read

"Bleed Like Me" – Read a gory horror novel

"Metal Heart" – Read a steampunk, industrial, or sci-fi novel

"Sex Is Not the Enemy" – Read a steamy, spicy book

"It’s All Over but the Crying" – If you read a book you thought you were going to love but it turned out to be trash, take credit for it here

"Boys Wanna Fight" – Read a book that features a lot of violence

"Why Don’t You Come Over" – Do a buddy read, or if you read a book for a book club, take credit for it here

"Happy Home" – Read a book that features a haunted house

Not Your Kind of People (2012)

"Automatic Systemic Habit" – Read a book that is shelved in your favorite section of the bookstore

"Big Bright World" – Read a dystopian novel

"Blood for Poppies" – Read a book with a red cover, or that has blood on the cover

"Control" – Read an audiobook and play it at whatever speed you want

"Not Your Kind of People" – Give an author you didn’t like a second chance and take credit for it here

"Felt" – If you read a book that makes you crave more books like it, take credit for it here

"I Hate Love" – Read a book that you would consider the complete opposite of a romance novel

"Sugar" – Read a book that you’d consider “brain candy”

"Battle in Me" – Save this spot for the book that really toyed with your emotions or set off all of your triggers

"Man on a Wire" – Read a book that deals with grief, regret, longing, or vulnerability

"Beloved Freak" – Save this spot for the first book you give a 5 star rating to

Strange Little Birds (2016)

"Sometimes" – Read a book from a genre you’ve dabbled in but don’t typically read

"Empty" – If you read a book that everyone loves or hates but you just felt meh about, take credit for it here

"Blackout" - Save this spot for a book you read that you really liked but immediately forget everything in it after you finish reading it

"If I Lost You" – Read a book that features grief and loss

"Night Drive Loneliness" – Read a book while on a road trip and take credit for it here

"Even Though Our Love is Doomed" – Read a book that makes you feel icky for liking it

"Magnetized" – Read a book that social media influenced you to purchase and read

"We Never Tell" – If you read a popular book and hated it, take credit for it here

"So We Can Stay Alive" – Read a book about the end of the world

"Teaching Little Fingers to Play" – Read a book that features music, musical instruments, or is written by a musician

"Amends" – If you read a book that someone recommended to you, but you didn’t like it, take credit for it here

No Gods No Masters (2021)

"The Men Who Rule the World" – Read a book that has a political theme

"The Creeps" - Read a book that creeps you out

"Uncomfortably Me" – Read a book that is outside of your comfort zone

"Wolves" – Read a book that features wolves, coyotes, or werewolves (or has a main character that is any animal)

"Waiting for God" – Freebie space! Read anything you want and take credit for it here

"Godhead" - Read a book by someone who you believe to be highly influential

"Anonymous XX" – Read any book you want and take credit for it here

"A Woman Destroyed" – Read a book that features a badass, rage filled female MC

"Flipping the Bird" – Read a book that is full of foul language

"No Gods No Masters" – Read whatever the hell you want and take credit for it here

"This City Will Kill You" – Read a book that takes place in a large city

Let All That We Might Imagine Be the Light (2025)

"There’s No Future in Optimism" – Read a book that’s dark and depressing

"Chinese Fire Horse" – Read a book that’s been translated

"Hold" – Read a book you borrowed from the library and take credit for it here

"Have We Met (the Void)" – Read a Sci Fi, Space opera book

"Sisyphus" – Read a book about a mythological character/creature or a historical novel

"Radical" – Read a non fiction book

"Love to Give" – Read a book that features love or has a heart on the cover

"Get Out My Face AKA Bad Kitty" – Read a book with an animal on the cover

"R U Happy Now" – Read a book with a title that used initials or acronyms in it

"The Day That I Met God" – If you read a book and it totally becomes your new personality, take credit for it here

Books I Read in December

noreply@blogger.com (TNBBC Super Mod) — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 23:51:00 +0000

Closing out 2025 with a strong December! I read a total of 13 books - some were hot as fuck, others were cool as a cucumber. Why not just jump into them all? Did you read any of these, and if you did, did they hit the same?

On Sundays She Picked Flowers by Yah Yah Scholfield

I’ve had my eye on this book for ages, and I'm so thrilled to have finally gotten my hands on a review copy. Queer southern gothic speculative fiction with fractured family trauma and survival? Sign me up.

From the very first page, it pulls you under. It’s packed with everything you’d hope for—twisted, atmospheric darkness, abusive mothers, a decaying house hidden in the woods, restless haints, and horrors that linger in the shadows.

But what makes it unforgettable is its humanity. This is one of the most haunting, visceral novels I’ve read in years. At its core, it’s the story of a woman clawing back control after a lifetime of suffering, rising from the wreckage of her past to seek beauty in a world that has offered her only cruelty.

The result is a resonant, traumatic, and deeply unsettling read.

We Call Them Witches by India-Rose Bower

We Called Them Witches is a striking spin on the post-apocalyptic novel. Think Bird Box. Think A Quiet Place. Think any horror story where terror arrives out of nowhere and annihilates humanity in grotesque, unstoppable ways.

But here, the menace is stranger. These are eldritch monsters that morph into a mixture of whatever they’ve consumed and whatever is in their environment. Imagine a silently shifting mass of twigs, insect legs, moss, human parts, fox skulls, dirt—an ever-changing nightmare that refuses to give up its search for prey.

We follow Sara and her family as they endure this new world by turning to old pagan practices: wards, adder stones, protective circles that hold these creatures at bay. But their fragile safety shatters when they discover an unconscious girl lying just beyond their defenses.

Parsley can't remember how she escaped the "witches" and Sara is simply mesmirized by her. As their friendship blossoms, a horror hits home - the creatures capture her brother Noah and everyone is relying on Parsley's knowledge of the beasts in order to rescue him from their otherworldy clutches.

What unfolds is a frustratingly devious exploration of just how far we're willing to go to save our family. And what we learn is that, in the end, survival isn’t just about keeping the monsters out—it’s about facing the ones we’ve already let in.

I really liked it but I also hated how much it toyed with me lol.

Composite Creatures by Caroline Hardaker

Ok. The last 11 books I've read were all review copies. I thought it was time to give myself a break and dip into my massive tbr pile!!

I picked up Composite Creatures on a whim at a used bookstore—partly for the cover, but also because of its ambiguous, allusive description and the fact that it’s published by Angry Robot, a small press known for sharp, inventive sci‑fi. The description wasn’t screaming science fiction, but oh gosh, you guys. This thing!

Hardaker thrives on withholding information, so we’re pulled into the story with only the barest sense of what’s happening. If you prefer novels that lay everything out up front, this might not be for you. But for me? Totally my jam.

We’re introduced to a world ravaged by climate change, where most animal species have vanished and where the majority of people face a slow, inevitable death from “the greying”—a form of incurable cancer born of polluted air and dwindling resources.

Norah and Arthur, strangers to one another, want desperately to live longer, healthier lives. Enter Easton Grove, an elite and painfully expensive health system that pairs them based on genetic compatibility, hoping their partnership will blossom into a press‑worthy love story. That compatibility matters: it grants them the right to receive an ovum organi to raise together.

And what is an ovum organi? Think of it as a genetic replica of both partners, beginning as a strange, pet‑like ball of fur that—if cared for properly—develops into something far more familiar over time.

I won’t say more, because the book’s power lies in its slow reveal. But I will say this: Composite Creatures deserves your attention. I wasn’t expecting it to punch me in the gut, and oh boy did it ever!

A quote on the back calls it “wistful” and “wonderfully strange.” It’s that, and so much more. It sneaks up on you, claws out, and leaves a mark you won’t shake off. Come for the weird little furball, stay for the existential sucker punch.

25 Days by Per Jacobsen

Did I just tear through a 300‑page book in a single day, even though the author intended it to be savored one chapter at a time over the 25 days of Christmas? Why yes. Yes, I did. And what delicious brain candy it was.

25 Days is the perfect winter holiday horror novel to sink into on a sleepy Sunday afternoon. It doesn’t take itself too seriously, but it knows exactly how to keep the pages turning. Told through alternating chapters from each family member’s perspective, we witness the horrors inflicted on them from every angle. And if I ever thought vacationing in an isolated cabin on a mountain sounded appealing, this book cured me of that fantasy real quick.

Rompy, twisted, and as frigid as the inside of an icebox, 25 Days is a chilling delight—a must‑read if you’re looking to kill a few hours before the festivities begin.

What Christmas horror novel would you recommend?

Nowhere Burning by Catronia Ward

This one was rough for me—not because it’s bad, but because it never quite reached the level of Sundial’s full‑tilt wtf‑energy, even though Ward still delivers her signature twists toward the end.

So what exactly threw me off? Maybe it was the sheer number of twists, some of which felt designed to provoke a “Gasp!” moment that didn’t quite land. Maybe it was the way the story tried to straddle both “haunted house” and “cult” territory without fully committing to either lane.

And I can’t lie: the entire time I was reading, I kept thinking about Michael Jackson—specifically the parallels to Neverland Ranch and the swirling child‑related rumors.

Intentional? Coincidental? Hard to say, but it definitely muddied the experience.

Am I being too grumpy because it didn’t meet my expectations? Possibly. But here’s the thing: I still enjoyed it. It just didn’t hit me with the same intensity as her previous book.

So… a mixed bag, but a compelling one.

I Bought a Haunted Christmas Tree Farm by Sam Whittaker

Haters gonna hate, unless, of course, you walked into this expecting a fun, rompy Christmas horror story. In which case… congratulations, because that’s exactly what this book is.

So what if there are typos sprinkled throughout, like those rogue strands of tinsel you keep finding weeks after the tree is gone.

So what if the story takes its sweet time and then hurls the ending at you like a runaway train, leaving an ectoplasmic smear of blood and bodies in its wake.

I still thought it was cute... a festive little horror snack perfect for a lazy December afternoon. And no, I didn't read it advent‑style. Sure, it’s a charming idea in theory, but are there reaaallly people out there who crack these things open on December 1st and then dutifully read one chapter a day all month long. Pssshhh. Couldn’t be me.

For all you holiday themed readers out there... sometimes you just want a book that’s merry, messy, and mildly unhinged. This one delivers.

The North Sun by Ethan Rutherford

Just when you think you’re settling into a run‑of‑the‑mill historical novel about a whaleship sent to locate the missing captain of another vessel lost in Arctic waters… North Sun veers gloriously off the map. What begins as a straightforward maritime rescue tilts into something stranger and far more intoxicating than I had expected.

Told in sharp, stunning chapters, the novel follows Arnold Lovejoy, a whaleman recruited by the powerful Ashley family to find their missing son‑in‑law, Leander, and retrieve a prized heirloom believed to be stranded with him on the ice. Lovejoy—hopelessly smitten with the Ashleys’ daughter, Leander’s wife—leaps at the chance to return to sea, chase a little whale, and maybe win her favor along the way.

But the farther the ship sails, the more the story mutates. What starts as a simple search‑and‑rescue spirals into a gruesome, violent, fantastical descent into the deep. Think Moby-Dick with a heavy pour of McGuire’s North Water, Rawson's From the Wreck, and Nahill’s From the Belly—a dark, atmospheric, haunting debut that only grows more feral and hypnotic the deeper you go.

By the final pages, you’re not just reading a whaling tale—you’re swallowed whole by it.

Love love love!

The Body by Bethany C Morrow

Soooo… this book. It’s totally bingeable, but wow is it triggering. Have I mentioned how much I loathe infidelity as a plot device... especially when the female MC refuses to ask the questions she needs answered and instead spirals through every horrible scenario her brain can conjure?

Raised under the thumb of strict religious parents and now terrified that her husband Jerrod might be cheating, Mavis is already mentally spiraling when she gets into a car accident rushing home to beat him there. She’s mid–panic attack, her mind a cyclone of worst‑case scenarios, desperate to get inside, shower, and start dinner, but the universe has other plans. She survives with only minor injuries, but her luck? That’s another story.

Because the accident is just the beginning. That night, she spots a neighbor in a nightshirt digging a hole in her backyard. The next day, while she and Jerrod are buying an outdoor camera, a man tries to drop a ceiling fan on her and ends up brutally attacking two shoppers who intervene. Then comes the break‑in… and… well, the hits keep coming.

The Body takes the marriage vow “till death do us part” and twists it into something more sinister — and far more deliciously unhinged. Morrow pushes you to confront the darker side of devotion, both religious and marital. By the end, you’re not sure whether to look away… or turn the page faster.

Poor Damned Souls by Charlene Elsby

It looks like I’ve accidentally signed myself up for an infidelity marathon with these last two review copies. If The Body was hauntingly religious, Poor Damned Souls is its godless, feral counterpart.

Holy hell… what did I just read? I thought Elsby’s Musos was twisted, but this one is unhinged on an entirely different level.

Honestly, men should treat this book as a cautionary tale about what can happen when you stray — especially if your spouse has access to online verification software and the instincts of a detective. Lord help you.

We follow a woman who realizes her husband is cheating. That discovery sends her spiraling into a brutal mix of self‑loathing, obsession, and very understandable rage. Yet she keeps quiet, not wanting him to change his patterns or hide things more than he already is. Instead, she becomes consumed with uncovering every detail — the how, the why, and the who.

But be careful what you go looking for, because you will find it… and what you find might shatter your spirit and scramble your sanity.

This book is a fireball of chaos. It’s triggering, visceral, raunchy, and unapologetically gory.

Here's a taste:

"I try to gauge from the volume of semen how long it's been since he's last ejaculated."

"Sometimes it's easier to get used to something than it is to change it."

"Getting to know a person as meat does not reveal thier essence... getting to know a person, on an emotional level, is also a disappointing theme park."

It will make you look at relationships — and the dark corners people hide in — very differently. If you read and appreciated Chandler Morrison’s Dead Inside, or Maude Ventura's My Husband, you’ll feel right at home here (and might want to start clearing out your browser history... just in case).

I Found Christmas Lights Slithering Up My Street by Ben Farthing

Meh. Cute idea, but the execution just fell flat for me. Honestly, as a fan of strange and bizarre stories, I’m not sure why this isn’t being marketed as a YA novel, because that’s where it feels it sits — and where it might’ve actually worked better.

I read this in one sitting yesterday evening, hoping for a fun, light Christmas horror romp to close out the holiday. Instead, I got a story weighed down by subpar writing: extremely surface‑level and repetitive, like Farthing was trying too hard to sound like a kid that it pulled me right out of the moment. The descriptions were muddy enough that I sometimes had to stop and reread, still unsure what Farthing was trying to show me.

At its core, the book follows Douglas, a young boy grieving the loss of his sister, who died the previous Christmas Eve. His parents’ holiday spirit has died with her, and he’s desperate to revive it. While he and his friends are decorating a half‑built house in the newer section of his neighborhood, he spots strange not‑red, not‑purple lights glowing from a storm drain. Thinking he’s found the perfect addition to his display, he reaches in and pulls out something far more sinister. Something dark. Something creepy. Something looking for an empty vessel… and Douglas and his neighborhood are full of possibilities.

In the end, it’s a story with a solid premise that never quite grows into the horror it promises... a spark of an idea buried under writing that is trying too hard to sound young, and feels too thin and too repetitive to truly scare. A festive fright‑lite that could’ve shined, but instead flickers out long before the final page.

The Valley of Vengeful Ghosts by Kim Fu

Never buy a house without knowing exactly what you’re getting yourself into. If The Valley of Vengeful Ghosts teaches you anything, let it be that. Unless you’ve seen The Money Pit, in which case, you should’ve learned that lesson ages ago.

Eleanor’s mother has just died, and with her last breath she makes Eleanor promise to use the money she's left her to finally buy a home. So Eleanor, who has lived under her mother’s watchful, overprotective eye her entire life and has never made a single adult decision on her own, is suddenly, naïvely tossed into the housing market.

Enter an aggressively enthusiastic real estate agent who all but shoves a pen into her hand. The house is a gorgeous model home, one of only two in a brand‑new development that won’t resume construction until next year. Eleanor falls instantly in love. She signs wherever she’s told, skips the fine print, waives the inspection, and agrees to buy it as is. And she’s about to learn exactly what 'as is' means as rain begins leaking through the windows, the walls (and the sweat runs down... oh gosh, sorry, wrong time and place lol), and inconveniently, the boundary between the living and the dead, where her mother starts dropping in for visits.

Think Julia Armfield’s Private Rights. Think Nicky Gonzalez’s Mayra. This isn’t quite horror, though it does have some eerie undertones. It’s cozy and tender until it suddenly isn’t, and you root for Eleanor to find her footing… until you’re not so sure you want her to.

At its core, this is a story about consequences — a “you get what you paid for” and “what goes around comes around” kind of tale, wrapped in ghosts, grief, and the price of wanting more than you’re ready to handle.

Scratch by Steve Himmer

Have you noticed that I tend to read in themes — even if it’s just a few books in a row? Earlier this week I accidentally paired two novels that both used infidelity as their inciting incident. Totally different vibes, same doorway in.

And now, apparently, I’m on a “new housing development in the woods with something uncanny lurking nearby” streak.

Two books ago, I read a christmas themed horror novel that took place in the new section of an already existing comminuty of homes where something evil climbed up out of the storm drain. And the last book I read followed a woman who buys a model home in a new housing development tucked waaay out of the way, complete with subtle ghostly undertones. Scratch shares that woodland‑development premise, only Steve Himmer takes it somewhere stranger, older, and far more folkloric.

Here, a developer named Martin decides to carve a neighborhood out of the woods. What he doesn’t know is that these woods already have a resident, an ancient entity known in local lore as Scratch — a shapeshifter parents invoke to keep kids from wandering too far. Scratch has been here long before humans started bulldozing their way through his home, and he’s more than a little tired of watching us stomp in, tear things up, and move on. So when Martin arrives, Scratch decides it’s time to intervene.

The story is told from Scratch’s perspective, in the same spirit as Henry Hoke’s Open Throat. He’s manipulative, ancient, observant, and bone‑deep weary of human disruption. Seeing the world through his eyes gives the book a wonderfully off‑kilter, uncanny tone.

And here’s the thing. Scratch is really, really good — and it’s flying under every radar. If you love folkloric fiction, creature‑narrated stories, or books that start grounded and slowly slide into the strange, this deserves a spot on your list. It’s the kind of quiet, clever weird fiction that should have a much bigger audience than it does.

You Have to Let Them Bleed by Annie Neugebauer

I’ve been really picky about short story collections this year. It’s a mood thing for me — or maybe more of a vibe thing — and when I requested You Have to Let Them Bleed on NetGalley, I wasn’t entirely convinced I’d be in the right headspace for it. Great title, great cover, great premise… but what if I just wasn’t in a short‑story mood?

Turns out I had absolutely nothing to worry about.

These stories are dark, haunting, and fabulously freaky in all the best ways. Redless follows a woman who would kill — literally — to see the color red again. The Little Drawer Full of Chaos starts with something as mundane as digging through a junk drawer for a hammer and then veers into a direction that’s wildly, delightfully unexpected. Several pieces feature unseen monsters stalking you from the shadows. There’s a deeply Kafkaesque tale about a woman whose husband falls ill and begins to transform in ways that are… let’s just say unsettling. And another about a woman who wakes in the night to the sound of a crying baby — which would be fine, except she doesn’t have one.

They’re creepy and cringey in exactly the right proportions. Neugebauer is a captivating storyteller, and the imagery she conjures in just a few pages is astonishing. This collection hits that sweet spot between uncanny and irresistible — the kind of stories that get under your skin and stay there.

And that's a wrap for 2025. 139 books read in total.

Not too shabby!!!

Top Five: Restaurants That Feed My Appetite and My Imagination

noreply@blogger.com (TNBBC Super Mod) — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 10:00:00 +0000

Top Five Restaurants That Feed My Appetite and My Imagination

There are many things I treasure in life—quiet moments with my family, meaningful conversations, the small joys that anchor us to the present. But somewhere very high on that list sits another delight: discovering a truly memorable meal. As a writer, I’ve always believed that food tells a story of its own. A restaurant can be a doorway into a culture, a mood, a memory. So when I was invited to share a personal “top five,” I immediately knew I wanted to celebrate the places that have fed not only my appetite, but also my imagination. These are the restaurants that linger with me long after the last bite—a blend of flavours, people, and moments that feel, in their own way, like chapters worth rereading.

Here they are in no particular order.

1- Tony’s diNapoli, 147 W 43rd Street, NYC, USA

Tony’s diNapoli on West 43rd Street holds a special place in my heart, not just because I’ve been there many times, but because every one of those visits—at least five so far—has been unfailingly excellent. It’s rare to find a restaurant where the quality is so consistent, where each dish arrives just as delicious as you remembered it the last time. I’ve tried a wide range of their menu over the years, and somehow every plate has turned out to be memorable. If you ever go, don’t miss the Alfredo or vodka pasta, or the chicken pizzaiola—comfort food elevated to the level of something quietly extraordinary. For me, Tony’s has become a New York ritual, a place where great food reliably turns an ordinary evening into a cherished memory.

2- The Street Burger Bistro, Prague, CZECH REPUBLIC

When it comes to burgers, nothing has ever topped my experience at The Street Burger Bistro in Prague. It’s the kind of place you discover almost by accident and then spend the rest of your trip talking about. What makes it my favourite isn’t just the perfectly seasoned patties or the way each burger feels crafted rather than assembled—it’s the surprising sense of care behind every detail. The flavours are bold without being overwhelming, the ingredients fresh, and the balance impeccable. I’ve had countless burgers in my life, but there’s something about this little spot in the heart of Prague that lingers with me: the warmth of the staff, the laid-back atmosphere, and that first bite that makes you pause and think, Yes, this is how a burger is supposed to taste. It’s a reminder that sometimes the most unforgettable meals come from the places you least expect.

3- The Historic Sausage Kitchen of Regensburg, Regensburg, GERMANY

One of the most unforgettable food experiences of my life came from a place far smaller and older than most restaurants on my list: The Historic Sausage Kitchen of Regensburg. Long before you see the little stone cottage by the Danube, you can smell the aroma of grilling sausages drifting through the air—an irresistible invitation that explains why there’s always a line of people waiting outside. And it’s worth every minute of that wait. To this day, it remains the best sausage I’ve ever tasted. The combination of perfectly grilled meat, tangy sauerkraut, and fresh, warm bread is simple, almost humble, yet absolutely extraordinary. There’s something magical about enjoying such a timeless dish in a place that feels rooted in history—it’s as if the flavours themselves carry the stories of centuries.

4- Restaurant Jérôme Ferrer — Europea, Montréal, CANADA

For fine dining, nothing has ever impressed me quite like Restaurant Jérôme Ferrer — Europea in Montréal. It’s the kind of place where a meal becomes an event, each course arriving like a small work of art designed to surprise, delight, and linger in your memory long after the evening ends. Yes, it’s undeniably expensive—but every moment feels like a masterclass in culinary creativity. What truly elevated the experience for me was the spectacular wine pairing: each glass seemed to amplify the flavours on the plate, creating a harmony so precise and so unexpected that I found myself slowing down just to savour it fully. Dining at Europea isn’t something you do casually; it’s something you treat yourself to. And when you do, you walk away with the unmistakable sense that you’ve tasted excellence.

5-Tasca da Quinta, Peso de Régua, PORTUGAL.

The best dinner we had in all of Portugal—full stop. This warm, cozy little restaurant feels like a hidden gem. We shared an incredible pork shank and a salad whose name I can’t remember, but whose flavours I’ll never forget; everything on the table tasted vibrant, soulful, and unmistakably rooted in the Douro region. To make the evening even more special, we enjoyed a bottle from a local producer, Quinta de Tourais, who happened to be dining there the same night. It’s the kind of place you immediately want to return to, and I certainly will. Just one practical tip: bring cash, as they don’t take cards—though there’s an ATM nearby if you forget. Highly recommended in every way.

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Releasing January 28, 2026

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0G3H9ZXB1

When their four-year-old son Gabriel’s leukaemia relapses, Richard and his wife are thrust back into the nightmare they thought they had escaped. Every heartbeat feels like a countdown as they beg for a miracle to keep their child alive.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in time, Bill — a young university student reeling from heartbreak — suddenly glimpses a future that shouldn’t be his to see. Horrified by the suffering that seems to await, he vows to defy it at all costs.

As both men confront what they most fear, their stories converge into a haunting clash of destiny, courage, and life-altering choices. Will the actions they take be enough to rewrite fate, or are some destinies impossible to escape?

Bestselling author Richard Plourde is a retired Atlantic Canadian optometrist with a genuine passion for writing captivating stories. His two novels, originally published in French, were both critically acclaimed and were finalists for the coveted France-Acadie literary prize. Richard also published a children’s novel that was selected as a one of the top children’s book of the year by the consumer guide “Protégez-vous”. His books have been translated and published in English. Richard is currently working on his fourth novel and is also writing the screenplay for his first book.

Blog Tour: First Descent

noreply@blogger.com (TNBBC Super Mod) — Tue, 09 Dec 2025 10:00:00 +0000

When the truth surfaces in winter, it rarely comes quietly. It cracks open, sharp and sudden—pulling everything else into its wake.

In First Descent by Mike Pace, winter feels less like a backdrop and more like a living force, threading through two different worlds that seem to inch closer with every revelation. The unfolding mystery carries hints of ancient magic and modern ambition, creating a sense that the cold itself remembers what others have tried to forget.

Amazon | Goodreads

Nick Landowski has long avoided the story of his father’s disappearance—a failed Arctic expedition fueled by belief in a mythical cave of red diamonds. But when a freak mining accident splits open the strange geode his father left behind and reveals a concealed key, Nick is drawn into a pursuit marked by rising danger. His search stretches across a modern landscape where powerful factions are desperate to control the legendary Coca-Cola formula and an ancient world where winter’s oldest magic bends time and reshapes reality. As Nick follows clues hidden in both timelines, he uncovers the real reason his father vanished and the link between a global corporate secret and a force far older than Christmas itself. Enemies from both worlds want the key for their own ends—and the closer Nick gets to the truth, the more he realizes that the season’s survival may depend on what he chooses to unlock.

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Excerpt

Seventy minutes later, his lungs about to burst, Virgil clawed his way to the top of a rocky ridge and found himself standing on the edge of a clearing. The impossible sun had long since disappeared. No moon or stars; the sky hovered tight overhead like a suffocating black blanket. He glanced again at his watch. Deadline approaching fast. He needed to reach the center of the clearing quickly.
Expecting the level terrain to ease his journey, he set out. Almost immediately he sank thigh-deep into the powdery snow and struggled to move. Before departing from Nevada he’d considered bringing snowshoes, but his boots had been too bulky to fit into the bindings. Again, the trade-off had been warmth over nimbleness, and he’d chosen warmth. In retrospect, given that his lack of cleats had almost cost him his life and now without snowshoes the whole purpose of his mission could dissolve because he would be delayed crossing the clearing, a big mistake.
He’d had some experience traveling across rugged terrain in Siberia for the company, but that had been a well-provisioned expedition. Here, he’d had to depart quickly with no time for planning or training in order to reach his destination on the precise date and at the exact time. And, according to the rules, he had to complete his journey alone. Rules? Set by whom? The guide who’d somehow convinced me he was much more than a guide? Too late for second thoughts. Too late to turn back. Either the guide’s fantastic story was true, or in a matter of minutes Professor Virgil Landowski, who was supposed to be one of the smartest geologists in the world, was going to die a complete fool.
He felt the snow harden. If he didn’t move he’d be locked inside an icy tomb. So close now, he couldn’t give up. Drawing on a last reserve of energy he didn’t know he possessed, he bent over and plowed ahead, wading through what now felt like thigh-high wet cement.
Finally, he stumbled to the center of the plain and stopped, gasping, his lungs screaming for oxygen. 23:59—I made it with a minute to spare! He slowly turned full circle.
Nothing.
The GPS coordinates were spot on. The timing was perfect . . .
Where is it?
Like a blindfold had been removed, his stupidity, his foolishness, his bull-headed pride were revealed to him. All that time, all that energy, wasted. His crowning achievement, the gift he’d wanted desperately for his son—for the world—was all a cruel hoax. The weight of disappointment crushed his body. His shoulders sagged. He staggered and swayed like a drunk trying to remain upright, fighting the wind’s attempt to tumble him into a white grave.
How could I have believed him? I was such a—
The wind stopped.
Completely.
Like someone had flicked a switch.
He gazed up to see stars now sparkling through the black like millions of pinpricks. The Aurora Borealis appeared and draped the entire sky with a curtain of brilliant cherry-red light.
A deep noise. The wind? No, something different. A moment later the sound increased to a guttural rumble. The ground vibrated, then trembled. Then shook violently. The rumble increased to a deep roar.
At the far end of the clearing the earth cracked open, and the jagged gouge rushed toward him through the deep snow as if some unseen hand pulled open an invisible crooked zipper. He turned to run, but more cracks in the field targeted him from all directions.
He attempted to zig-zag through the thick snow with little success, hoping to dodge the fissures, and bounced hard against huge chunks of ice ten feet high now suddenly shooting up from the surface all around him. The rising slabs moved, encircling him, closing in like converging soldiers. He tried to break through the tightening circle, but the slabs ricocheted his body back and forth like a pinball. Tighter and tighter. Herding him to a single spot.
He fought to keep his balance, but the violent shaking knocked him to his knees.
Before he could climb to his feet a giant crevasse split open beneath him, widening like
hungry jaws. He dropped instantly—
“AAHHHH!”
Then, silence.
The earth had swallowed him whole.
The shaking stopped. The red glow faded. The storm returned. The wind swept away his footprints.
It was as if Virgil Landowski had never been there.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thriller author Mike Pace has spent his entire life weaving stories across an extraordinary range of experiences. One of his earliest creative memories is helping write his fourth-grade Christmas play in Pittsburgh, a spark that carried him to the University of Illinois on an art scholarship, where he earned a BFA. He later taught elementary school in Washington, D.C.’s inner city, filling his classroom with imagination games and daily storytelling as “Mr. Paste.” While teaching by day, he attended Georgetown Law at night and went on to serve on the editorial board of the Georgetown Law Journal, clerk for a federal judge, and prosecute major felony cases—including murder—as an Assistant United States Attorney for the District of Columbia. After serving as general counsel for a national environmental services company, Mike shifted his focus to his first love: creative writing. He has written for stage and screen, earning praise from The Washington Post, and is an active member of the International Thriller Writers and the Maryland Writers Association. Outside of writing, he enjoys painting, skiing, golf, the Baltimore Ravens, and learning new skills such as the soprano saxophone. Learn more at his website.

The 40 But 10: Christopher Ruíz

noreply@blogger.com (TNBBC Super Mod) — Tue, 09 Dec 2025 10:00:00 +0000

Today we are joined by Christopher Ruíz. Christopher is a fiction writer specializing in horror. Born in the City of Angels and raised in the shadows of the Rocky Mountains, he now writes of the demonic, supernatural, and psychological in the Midwest. A veteran of both combat and crisis response, his stories draw inspiration from both the real and unreal, from years of sleep paralysis and nightmares, revealing the darker corners of the human experience.

What made you start writing?

In a word, storytelling. My mother read to me frequently in childhood. I was fascinated, not just by the stories, but the way they were conveyed. I wanted that. I wanted to move others, to elicit laughter and, even at a young age, fear. I remember late nights watching the Crypt Creeper give one liners followed by a howling cackle. It was delightfully goofy and spooky. So, I set forth to tell stories of my own, trying to frighten my younger brother with scary, campfire-style tales, writing and drawing comics (typically of a mouse engineering silly contraptions to access various cheeses around a kitchen, generally all ending with “SUCCESS!”), and, most importantly, reading.

How do you celebrate when you finish writing a new book?

The Wishing Well was my first book, and as such my first opportunity for celebration. We rented the upper-half of a downtown bar to do a combination book launch and Halloween party. I did some book signings and sales but it was mostly a celebration of my debut. We played horror-themed party games, ran a raffle with four prize baskets, each containing book/horror-related items, and we even had a bartender who was herself a published author (through HarperCollins, no less). It was a wonderful time. I think the horror-themed celebration worked so well, I’d love to make it a recurring event!

If you could spend the day with another author, who would you choose and why?

H.G. Wells. With neither reservation nor doubt, it would be the man so many consider the father of science fiction. He was the first author whose writing demanded I explore the rest of his bibliography. He was a genius and true master of the craft, even prophetic in his writing. Oh, if I could spend a day his pupil, or even just learning how in the world the man came to be so imaginative that he conceived inventions and sociocultural changes so far beyond his time.

What are some of your favorite websites or social media platforms?

There was roughly a 10-year stretch during which Reddit was the only social media I was really using. I prefer being able to filter the content I’m consuming through specific subreddits rather than being exposed to everything everywhere all at once. However, I am now on an uphill journey trying to learn other platforms as I establish an online presence as an author. It has been grueling. I really struggle with self-promotion, as it has always felt to me like I’m gathering friends and family in my living room to discuss tupperware, especially as I focus on my own website and blog. I’m seeing a lot of great people in online book communities, though, like TNBBC. I had no idea there was such support for indie authors, and it has really made the post-publication plight feel a little less daunting.

What are some of your favorite books and/or authors?

H. G. Wells was my first favorite writer. I absolutely devoured his works early on, with particular appeal for The War of the Worlds and The Country of the Blind.

1984, which I first read fairly young. It was the first book that ever had a perception-altering, emotional impact on me. Oddly, I did not have the same interest in Animal Farm, possibly due to having read it so much later in life.

Stephen King's Dark Tower series, particularly the third and fourth books, was the only literature that affected me like 1984 had. What a journey. So many sleepless school nights.

What is your favorite book from childhood?

From my early childhood, the book that truly hooked me was Bruce Coville’s The Dragonslayers. I was fascinated by dinosaurs and dragons, that even as a child I had aspirations of becoming a paleontologist; and not the fun aspirations of a child. I would actually spend hours in front of the television watching videos on paleontology, of adults digging around in the dirt and dusting rocks, of monotone discourse. And as I was obsessed with dinos, I was equally obsessed with dino-like things: reptiles, dragons, and Godzilla. Thus, The Dragonslayers and its wonderful illustrations immediately caught my eye in the school library and became a childhood obsession.

What are you currently reading?

I recently finished Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in preparation for Guillermo Del Toro’s adaptation. Admittedly, this was my first time reading it. I’m a big fan of the Romantic era of the arts. I love the music and the writing, particularly that of Chopin and Dumas, respectively. Needless to say, I was totally captured by Shelley’s writing. Sincerely, I was engrossed. And I frequently found myself asking why a more faithful adaptation of such beautiful writing, of such profound reflections on human nature and the clashing of Romanticism and Enlightenment had yet to be translated to film. But, perhaps some things cannot adequately move from text to screen.

Do you read the reviews of your books or do you stay far far away from them, and why?

For now, I am reading the reviews. The Wishing Well is my debut work and I want to see what did and did not work for its readers so that I may learn and adjust as I write the second volume.

I see a lot of discussion about reviews in author forums. I think the “Don’t read the reviews” advice is pretty conditional. If an author is unable to navigate critical or even unfair reviews, they would likely be better off avoiding them altogether. I’m reminded of my time working crisis response at an adolescent psychiatric residential treatment facility. It’s hard not to personalize the rough reactions and bad words and overall negativity. But it’s often not about you. Someone can dislike the work without necessarily disliking the person behind it. I think the authors that successfully explore their reviews are the ones that understand the reader is not giving direct feedback to them, but rather expressing their opinion to other readers. Authors are human, though, and the bad reviews will sting and the curiosity will force our eyes to seek them out.

If you were stuck on a deserted island, what’s the one book you wish you had with you?

FM 21-76. It is the Army field manual on survival, and a great toilet read. It is honestly an excellent tool for writers. There is, in the physical publication I own, a section on the “psychology of survival,” which discusses stress and the natural reactions to it, which can be applicable to almost any story with conflict. More importantly, for this scenario, it has full breakdowns on surviving both the open sea and seashores, tropical environments, building shelters, securing food and water, signaling for help. I can’t think of a better book to have in this situation.

What is under your bed?

The same things that reside under every bed: the boundless possibilities that exceed even our fear-driven imaginations; the things beckoned by darkness that only daylight can banish; hands awaiting ankles; eyes awaiting eyes. And sometimes my cats when the smoke detector goes off.

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Released October 26th

Signed copies as well as other purchase options can be found here

Step into The Wishing Well, where your deepest desires are granted … and your soul is forfeited.

A horrifying collection of interconnected tales, The Wishing Well centers around an ever-shifting, unearthly bar where desires are commodities and the price is everything. Each story follows a different patron, driven by want, ambition, or desperation, who casts a wish into the bar’s namesake.

Join our patrons as they discover this well is less a cheap gimmick and more a dark conduit for twisted fulfillment, revealing the true horror of getting exactly what you wished for.

In this malignant mess of the macabre you’

Meet “The Captive,” a man who’d do anything to escape his past and present. Anything …

Join a young student who hopes to find happiness once again with a little help from “The Substitute.”

Take a dip in “The Lake” for rest, relaxation, and a final, permanent reprieve.

From a woman’s late-night visit by “The Creeper” to a child’s Christmas visit by something not quite Santa in “The Unholy,” these nine creepy cocktales are served neat by newcomer Christopher Ruíz.

What do you desire? The Wishing Well has what you need …

The 40 But 10: Molly Gaudry

noreply@blogger.com (TNBBC Super Mod) — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 10:00:00 +0000

Today we are joined by Molly Gaudry. Molly is the author of the verse novel We Take Me Apart, which was a finalist for the Asian American Literary Award and shortlisted for the PEN/Osterweil. Desire: A Haunting, its sequel, and Fit Into Me: A Novel: A Memoir, are further explorations of the same storyworld and characters. An assistant professor at Stony Brook University, she teaches nonfiction and poetry in the BFA and MFA programs. Summers, she teaches fiction at the Yale Writers’ Workshop.

Describe your book in three words.

And so on.[1]

Describe your book poorly.

My first two books were verse novels, my new one is a memoir-in-essays with a novel-in-progress inside it, and hundreds of literary quotations collaged throughout.[2]

Would you and your main character get along?

Yes, because I used to think I sewed us together at the edges with my own hands, pulled the stitches tight and I could unpick them any time I wanted. Now I think it always ran deeper than that and farther, underground; out of sight and way beyond my control.[3]

What would you do if you could live forever?

Read, most likely, because, well, this is what I am already imagining for an immortal character in my current work-in-progress: By now, Beauty has spent nearly two centuries, total hours tallied, curled on a velvet divan beneath a tall stained-glass window, reading her way through the endless shelves of books in the castle’s great library. This library, it should be noted, is home to every book that has ever been written and every book that has yet to be written, so when the Queen declares their story should be recorded for posterity, Beauty, who has already read it—has read dozens of Aarne-Thompson-Uther type 425C stories and novels, not to mention hundreds of ATU type 402 and 425A animal bride and bridegroom variants—sends at once for me, the author. Well, not exactly the author, because there are too many to count, really, but suffice to say that I am the author of Beauty’s favorite version, which, as you will see in the pages that follow, is a retelling of my favorite version: Madame Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve’s The Story of Beauty and the Beast, first published in 1740.[4]

Do you DNF books?

Absolutely, because grown-ups shouldn’t finish books they’re not enjoying. When you’re no longer a child, and you no longer live at home, you don’t have to finish everything on your plate. One reward of leaving school is that you don’t have to finish books you don’t like.[5]

What’s the one book someone else wrote that you wish you had written?

Jhumpa Lahiri’s Whereabouts, because I’ve never stayed still, I’ve always been moving, that’s all I’ve ever been doing. Always waiting either to get somewhere or to come back. Or to escape.[6]

What’s the single best line you’ve ever read?

This one, from Raven Leilani’s Luster: Slowly, he eases me down onto his grand, slightly left-leaning cock, and for a moment I do rethink my atheism, for a moment I consider the possibility of God as a chaotic, amorphous evil who made autoimmune disease but gave us miraculous genitals to cope, and so I fuck him desperately with the force of this epiphany and Eric is talkative and filthy but there is some derangement about his face, this pink contortion that introduces the whites of his eyes in a way that makes me afraid he might say something we cannot recover from just yet, so I cover his mouth and say shut up, shut the fuck up, which is more aggressive than I would normally be at this point but it gets the job done and in general if you need a pick-me-up I welcome you to make a white man your bitch though I feel panicked all of a sudden to have not used a condom and I’m looking around the room and there is a bathroom attached, and in the bathroom are what look to be extra towels and that makes me so emotional that he pauses and in one instant a concerned host rises out of his violent sexual mania, slowing the proceedings into the dangerous territory of eye contact and lips and tongue where mistakes get made and you forget that everything eventually dies, so it is not my fault that during this juncture I call him daddy and it is definitely not my fault that this gets him off so swiftly that he says he loves me and we are collapsing back in satiation and horror, not speaking until he gets me a car home and says take care of yourself like, please go, and as the car is pulling away he is standing there on the porch in a floral silk robe that is clearly his wife’s, looking like he has not so much had an orgasm as experienced an arduous exorcism, and a cat is sitting at his feet, utterly bemused by the white clapboard and verdant lawn, which makes me hate this cat as the city rises around me in a bouquet of dust, industrial soot, and overripe squash, insisting upon its own enormity like some big-dick postmodernist fiction and still beautiful despite its knowledge of itself, even as the last merciless days of July leave large swaths of the city wilted and blank.[7]

If you were stuck on a deserted island, what’s the one book you wish you had with you?

Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, because they went into José Arcadio Buendía’s room, shook him as hard as they could, shouted into his ear, put a mirror in front of his nostrils, but they could not awaken him. A short time later, when the carpenter was taking measurements for the coffin, through the window they saw a light rain of tiny yellow flowers falling. They fell on the town through the night in a silent storm, and they covered the roofs and blocked the doors and smothered the animals who slept outdoors. So many flowers fell from the sky that in the morning the streets were carpeted with a compact cushion and they had to clear them away with shovels and rakes so that the funeral procession could pass by.[8]

What are you currently reading?

Mariana Leky’s What You Can See from Here, because while I was considering what to do next, I noticed I was holding a butter knife as I stood in front of the bookshelf that had not been unpacked for eight years. I cut open the packaging. The assembly instructions included twenty-six steps, but I still gave it a try. And while I was assembling the bookshelf, I thought of Frederik’s letter in which he’d asked what real life was in my opinion. I thought of Martin and the fogged-up window he had leaned against with his eyes closed in intense concentration, also of the strand of hair on his head that never stayed combed down. I thought of Elspeth’s hydrangea-like swim cap, of Mr. Rödder’s breath that smelled of violets, of Selma’s old skin that looked like bark. I thought of the table in Alberto’s ice-cream parlor at which I’d been rewarded with a small Secret Love the first time I read the sugar packet horoscope aloud by myself. I thought of Alaska and how he lifted his head when we left a room, how he weighed whether it was worth getting up and coming with us, and how he usually decided it was. I thought of the optician, who, all his life, was always ready to help others. I thought of Palm, of Palm’s wild eyes when I was young, and of Palm now, how he nodded and said nothing, nodded and said nothing. I thought of the station clock, under which the optician taught us to tell time and about time zones. I thought about all the time in the world, all the time zones I’d had anything to do with, and of the two watches on my father’s wrist. That’s real life, I thought, the whole expanse of life, and after the seventh point in the instruction manual, I crumpled it up and kept assembling without it.[9]

If you could time travel, would you go back to the past or forward into the future?

Neither. I would get stuck in a time loop and happily stay in it until I finished my next book, which is a scenario I have already considered and written in The Time Loop: A Speculative Memoir: A Novel, which is currently on submission.

NOTES

[1] Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five: A Novel (New York: The Dial Press, [1969] 2009), 1.

[2] Molly Gaudry, interview by Robert Lopez, “Beyond the Trilogy: Robert Lopez and Molly Gaudry on Writing Interconnected Books that Defy Expectations of Traditional Series,” Vol. 1 Brooklyn, November 14, 2025.

[3] Tana French, The Likeness (New York: Penguin Books, 2008), 3.

[4] From the chapter, “Concerning the Story of Beauty & the Beast, and the Queen, and Me,” which opens my current work-in-progress, Finding Beauty: On Love, Death, and Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve’s ‘The Story of Beauty & the Beast.’

[5] John Irving, interview by Ron Hansen, “John Irving, The Art of Fiction No. 93,” The Paris Review 100 (Summer–Fall 1986).

[6] Jhumpa Lahiri, “Nowhere,” Whereabouts, trans. Jhumpa Lahiri (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2021), 153.

[7] Raven Leilani, Luster (New York: Picador, 2020), 40–41.

[8] Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude, trans. Gregory Rabassa (New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 1998), 153.

[9] Mariana Leky, “Meadow, Meadow,” What You Can See from Here, trans. Tess Lewis (New York: Picador, 2022), 263–64.

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December 9, 2025

Rose Metal Press | Author Website

In her most innovative book yet, Molly Gaudry embarks on a search for belonging amid loss, framing her memoir around a fictional narrative featuring the tea house woman—a character who appeared first as bride-to-be and then as widow in her earlier books. As Gaudry grapples with traumatic brain injury, family secrets, repressed memories, and the job market in her essays, the tea house woman goes on a parallel quest of identity and desire. Gaudry also delves into literature as guide and comfort, using the words of authors as wide-ranging as Sappho, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Marguerite Duras, and Jose Saramago to form yet another text within a text. Artfully braided into a hybrid-genre tour de force, the many strands of Fit Into Me: A Novel: A Memoir ask: to what extent can a fiction reveal more about an author than nonfiction?

As the tea house woman manages a mercurial lover, a family business, and caring for her dying father during the winter holidays, Gaudry, too, reflects on some of her own challenges: relearning, post-skating injury, to read and write while in the midst of earning a PhD; questioning her loneliness, desires, and ability to connect; wondering what it would be like if her biological brother flew in from Korea to inform her that their father has died; and navigating her identity as a transnational adoptee. Each essay in Fit Into Me, the memoir, is a testament to resilience, and as those true stories merge with Fit Into Me, the novel, they reveal how literature can become a lifeline that guides us back to ourselves.

Blog Tour: Dark Matter

noreply@blogger.com (TNBBC Super Mod) — Tue, 02 Dec 2025 12:00:00 +0000

We're happy to help Meerkat Press support the release of their latest title, Kathe Koja's Dark Matter, the final book in the Dark Factory Trilogy, by participating in their blog tour.

We're thrilled to have Kathe Koja hanging with us today, giving us a sneak peak into Page 69 of Dark Matter.

Kathe Koja’s books include The Cipher, Skin, straydog, Buddha Boy, Velocities: Stories, Under the Poppy, and the Dark Factory trilogy, Dark Factory, Dark Park, and Dark Matter. Her work has won awards, including the Stoker, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the ASPCA’s Henry Bergh Award. She also creates and produces live and online experiences that bring the story directly to you. Find her at kathekoja.com and on IG, FB and Bluesky.

Check it out:

Set up page 69 for us.

The driving engine of Dark Matter is the compelling and combustible Bunny Graves, who laces up her spike-heeled boots and goes after whatever she wants, while keeping her own background secret. On page 69 she’s busy musing over her last lunch with Felix Perez—a gifted DJ who literally brought the house down at a rave—because Felix is married to the man Bunny wants to annex, event producer par excellence Ari Regon, whom Bunny recognizes as a force of nature just as she is. By asking questions and listening, listening, listening, Bunny’s learning more about Felix, so she can use that knowledge to pry Ari away, and involve him in her own explosive plans.

What is the book about?

Dark Matter is about connection, how we find, or don’t find, the people we really need, how we struggle to connect through chaos, jealousy, loss, whatever life throws at us, no matter how dark it all gets. Bunny and Felix both prize connection with Ari, Ari seeks connection with the world itself. And Ari’s friend Max, the gaming guru, finally admits he truly needs that connection, when he meets the quiet genius Charmskool.

Dark Matter is the third book in the Dark Factory series, and each book blends and interacts with the others, and with the Dark Factory site as well. The story takes place in all those places, in the art, the videos, everything shared by its readers, everything’s there for the reader to interact with—and an ongoing invitation to add to that story, too.

Do you think this page gives our readers an accurate sense of what the novel is about? Does it align itself with the novel’s theme?

Oh it does—everything that happens on this page links, like life does, to everything else these characters do, what they want, how they navigate their relationships, the mistakes they’re about to make . . . Makes me wonder what our own page 69 would say, if our lives were novels (and maybe they are!)

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PAGE 69

Page 69 – DARK MATTER

She had asked Felix, finally, about the Jericho set, as they sat in late afternoon shadow on some restaurant’s walled-in patio, over the dregs of a salad niçoise and shaobing bread and a bottle of overpriced Riesling. At first he was quiet, then What was it like? he said. The whole place was moving, I was making it move, the people, walls, all of it. I wasn’t even wearing the mask that time, the Mister Minos face, does Felix still have that, is it lost somewhere or trashed? And they never wanted me to stop, Alaine didn’t want me to stop—

Then why did you?

I had to.

Why did you have to?

I couldn’t handle it then, picking up the bottle, refilling their glasses. Let’s finish this off.

But that opened him, finally, to talk about his music, how he studies the power of polyphony, acoustic ecology and musique concrète, the subtle body and the autonomic nervous system and the way sound releases dopamine and serotonin, how certain frequencies can change perception, change behavior, simulate the effects of nitrous oxide and regulate vascular function, and There’s this surgeon, he said, Dr. Ibrahim Abra, he uses music in the ER instead of anesthesia.

And his twin sister is a tournament backgammon player. Razia Abra.

Seriously? you know her? Did you ever play her?

No. I never played tournaments, only money games.

What’s a money game?

I’ll show you sometime.

Only now there is no more time, Ari is in a hurry, so “Expedite,” she says, and the car accelerates, past rowhouses and bodegas, people queueing, walking, hurrying, even stressed and diminished this is still a real city, Ari and Felix have never lived in a place like the place they will live in now. But she knows exactly what it will be like there, a shitty town with a shitty language no one speaks, bad roads and iffy grid access, at least two overpriced state liquor shops and a very old church with a Virgin on top, like the towns around the shrine—

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December 2, 2025

Speculative Fiction | LGBTQ

Meerkat Press | Bookshop.org | Amazon

When the world ends, chaos begins–

–for feral Bunny Graves, playing life like a high-stakes game, where the only way to win is to smash the board to bits–

–for Max Caspar and Charmskool the scholar, chasing ancient myth all the way to the real world–

–and for Ari Regon, caught between dangerous jealousy and passionate love, corporate war and ambition so intense that failure is death, making the party to end all parties, a party that never ends.

Dark times.

Dark dreams.

DARK MATTER

The third and final book in the DARK FACTORY series.