Diavola is a great ghost story, that really, like most ghost stories, isn’t really about the supernatural, but more about what haunts us without us knowing.
Gothic
Review: Now, and the Hour of Death by Karen Lykkebo
Synopsis Five short tales of the eerie, tragic, and macabre. Three friends venture into an abandoned church, unaware the foundation is haunted.An expert in the occult is asked to remove a presence from the beach.Two survivors of the zombie apocalypse watch a final sunset together.Two lovers will do anything to keep their home and love […]
Review: Compound Fracture by Andrew Joseph White
Synopsis On the night Miles Abernathy-sixteen-year-old socialist and proud West Virginian-comes out as trans to his parents, he sneaks off to a party, carrying evidence that may finally turn the tide of the blood feud plaguing Twist Creek: Photos that prove the county’s Sheriff Davies was responsible for the so-called “accident” that injured his dad, […]
Review: Sinophagia by Xueting C. Ni
This is an utterly incredible collection of Chinese Horror. Xueting has done a truly incredible job of curating and translating collection, it’s got a stunning variety of stories, in length, content and horror type. It has ghost stories, it has locked-room horror, it has horror with a twist at the end and every single one deserves it’s place in Sinophagia.
Review: Helpmeet by Naben Ruthnum
Synopsis: It’s 1900, and Louise Wilk is taking her dying husband home to Buffalo where he grew up. Dr. Edward Wilk is wasting away from an aggressive and debilitating malady. But it’s becoming clearer that his condition isn’t exactly a disease, but a phase of existence that seeks to transform and ultimately possess him. Review: […]
Review: Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Synopsis: An isolated mansion. A chillingly charismatic aristocrat. And a brave socialite drawn to expose their treacherous secrets… After receiving a frantic letter from her newly-wed cousin begging for someone to save her from a mysterious doom, Noemí Taboada heads to High Place, a distant house in the Mexican countryside. She’s not sure what she […]
Review: This Cursed House by Del Sandeen
Synopsis In this Southern gothic horror debut, a young Black woman abandons her life in 1960s Chicago for a position with a mysterious family in New Orleans, only to discover the dark truth. They’re under a curse, and they think she can break it. In the fall of 1962, twenty-seven-year-old Jemma Barker is desperate to […]
Review: Vampires of El Norte by Isabel Cañas
In short, Isabel Cañas’ Vampire of El Norte is everything you could possibly wish for in a Mexican gothic, with rich folklore, beautiful and atmospheric prose, complex characters, and a forbidden romance rooted in cultural and historical authenticity, to die for. Not to mention how incredibly it shows the “other side” of the Mexican-American war of the late 1840s, in ways you rarely see in mainstream media.
Review: Midwestern Gothic by Scott Thomas
Synopsis In The Door in the Field, a construction worker’s bad day becomes a far worse night when drinks at an off-the-books bar send him down an unforeseeably bloody path.In The Boy in the Woods, something evil has infected the counselors at a summer camp, and a young boy will have to do anything he can to […]
Review: All the Hearts You Eat by Hailey Piper
Synopsis: What really happened to Cabrina Brite? Ivory’s life changes irrevocably when she discovers the body of Cabrina Brite on the sands of Cape Morning, along with a mysterious poem. How did she die, and why does it seem she was trying to swim to Ghost Cat Island, the center of so many local mysteries? […]
Review: All the Hearts You Eat by Hailey Piper
Synopsis: What really happened to Cabrina Brite? Ivory’s life changes irrevocably when she discovers the body of Cabrina Brite on the sands of Cape Morning, along with a mysterious poem. How did she die, and why does it seem she was trying to swim to Ghost Cat Island, the center of so many local mysteries? […]
Review: A Sunny Place for Shady People by Mariana Enríquez
Synopsis A diabolical collection of stories featuring achingly human characters whose lives intertwine with ghosts, goblins, and the macabre, by “one of Latin America’s most exciting authors” (Silvia Moreno-Garcia) On the shores of this river, all the birds that fly, drink, perch on branches, and disturb siestas with the demonic squawking of the possessed—all those […]