Synopsis: “Monsters aren’t real.” That’s what sixteen-year-old Lucy Brannigan has always believed, until, broke and desperate, she and her father move to an isolated farmhouse in the small Scottish town of Helsbridge. It’s their last chance, and they have to make it work. For Lucy, life appears to be over. With no friends, and surrounded […]
Folk
Review: Parthenogenesis by Stephen Graham Jones
Synopsis When their rental truck breaks down, two friends moving cross-country kill time by telling stories about the strange carving in front of the motel where they’re awaiting a mechanic . . . Review Grabbed this on kindle as soon as I saw it was being released. Two best friends have decided to move together. […]
Review: Beyond the Creek by Nico Bell
Synopsis When Alex Foster accepted the caregiver position with the eccentric Nox family, she was issued a single rule: don’t venture beyond the creek. Not a problem, because Alex isn’t interested in exploring the Nox’s vast rural property. She’s too busy rebuilding her life after escaping an abusive past, and she sets her sights on […]
Review: Where The Dead Brides Gather by Nuzo Onoh
Synopsis: Bata, a young girl tormented by nightmares, wakes up one night to find herself standing sentinel before her cousin’s door. Her cousin is to get married the next morning, but only if she can escape the murderous attack of a ghost-bride, who used to be engaged to her groom. A supernatural possession helps Bata […]
Review: Sacrificial Animals by Kailee Pedersen
Synopsis: The last thing Nick Morrow expected to receive was an invitation from his father to return home. When he left rural Nebraska behind, he believed he was leaving everything there, including his abusive father, Carlyle, and the farm that loomed so large in memory, forever. But neither Nick nor his brother Joshua, disowned for […]
Review: A Better World by Sarah Langan
Synopsis: As the outside world literally falls apart, Linda and Russell Farmer-Bowen and their teenage twins are offered the chance to relocate to Plymouth Valley, a walled-off company town with clean air, pantries that never go empty, and blue-ribbon schools. The family jumps at the opportunity. They’d be crazy not to take it. This might […]
Review: Bone White by Ronald Malfi
Synopsis: Paul Gallo saw the report on the news: a mass murderer leading police to his victims’ graves, in remote Dread’s Hand, Alaska. It’s not even a town; more like the bad memory of a town. The same bit of wilderness where his twin brother went missing a year ago. As the bodies are exhumed, Paul […]
Review: The Unmothers by Leslie J. Anderson
Synopsis: Marshall is still trying to put the pieces together after the death of her husband. After she is involved in a terrible accident, her editor sends her to the small, backwards town of Raeford to investigate a clearly ridiculous rumor: that a horse has given birth to a healthy, human baby boy. When Marshall arrives in […]
Review: The Unmothers by Leslie J. Anderson
Synopsis In this raw and lyrical folk horror novel, a journalist sent to a small town begins to unravel a dark secret that the women of the town have been keeping for generations. Marshall is still trying to put the pieces together after the death of her husband. After she is involved in a terrible […]
Review: Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart by GennaRose Nethercott
A collection of folklore-inspired familiar and unsettling stories. Nethercott also plays with format, such as in an encyclopedic section of spooky beasts.
Review: Death Aesthetic by Josh Rountree
Synopsis: “This whole collection is obsessed with death.” Josh Rountree makes no bones about the mood in Death Aesthetic, his third collection of short fiction. Rountree explores the boundaries set by grief and guilt. He cracks open all manner of skeletons to peer inside the chest cavity, wondering what remains after everything else has left. He […]
Review: Evil In Me by Brom
Synopsis: Aspiring musician Ruby Tucker has had enough of her small rural town and dysfunctional family. But a falling out with her best friend and bandmate has killed her dreams of escaping and making it big in the Atlanta punk scene. While helping her eccentric neighbor organize his religious artifacts, an ancient ring clamps down […]