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 […]
Folk
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: 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 […]
Review: Crota by Owl Goingback
Synopsis: Sheriff Skip Harding is investigating a double murder that has shaken the quiet town of Logan, Missouri. A slaughter that seems too brutal for a human perpetrator. A bear, maybe? But there are no bears in the area…Bodies begin to pile up, and Skip soon discovers that bullets are useless against this foe. Only […]
Review: Looking Glass Sound by Catriona Ward
Synopsis: In a windswept cottage overlooking the sea, Wilder Harlow begins the last book he will ever write. It is the story of his childhood companions and the shadowy figure of the Daggerman, who stalked their New England town. And it is the story of Sky, Wilder’s one-time friend, who stole his unfinished memoir to […]
Review: From the Belly by Emmett Nahil
Synopsis: The whaling vessel Merciful has just made its strangest catch yet: a massive whale containing a still-living man secreted within its stomach lining. Sailor Isaiah Chase is tasked with keeping the enigmatic man alive. As their relationship grows, a series of accidents, injuries and deaths quickly befall the ship and its crew. Isaiah is […]
Review: The Tickle Monster by David Washburn
Synopsis There is comfort in the wholesomeness of family. Pure joy to be cherished in the innocence of a child. …But what happens when a looming sense of dread has a death-grip on a child’s mind? Teddy is ‘only a boy’ but there is a rebellious fire in his belly that urges him to forge […]
Review: The Only Way Out is Through by Paul Michael Anderson
Synopsis: You move to a new area, hoping for a fresh start.You bury yourself in a new career, hoping for an identity.But the new area has roads no one travels down if they can help it, and the people stare at you with secrets behind their eyes that were old before you were born. But […]
Review: A Spectre Is Haunting Greentree by Carson Winter
Synopsis: REAP WHAT YOU SOW In the wake of a series of panic attacks, isolated and introverted Carina takes a friend up on an offer: go to Greentree, Oregon, escape her abusive ex, and start a new life. But upon arrival, the town is stranger than Carina could have ever imagined. For one, they still […]