Synopsis Three years after running away from home, Olivia is stuck with a dead-end job in nowhere town Chapel Hill, Pennsylvania. At least she has her best friend, Sunflower. Olivia figures she’ll die in Chapel Hill, if not from boredom, then the summer night storm which crashes into town with a mind-bending monster in tow. If Olivia’s […]
Monsters
Review: Big Bad by Chandler Baker
Synopsis For a family trying to make an isolated farmhouse into a home, fear and rage are getting harder to control in a primal short story by the New York Times bestselling author of Whisper Network and Cutting Teeth. The Strauss family is on knife’s edge. Sam is a resentful stay-at-home dad. Rachel feels the restlessness in her blood […]
Review: Best of Luck by Jason Mott
Synopsis Did you ever hear the one about the man with a string of bad luck? The worst is still to come in a chilling short story of an insatiable friendship by the New York Times bestselling author of Hell of a Book. For best friends with vastly different fortunes, what’s left to hash out other than […]
Review: In Bloom by Paul Tremblay
Synopsis There’s something in the water in this hallucinatory short story by Paul Tremblay, bestselling author of The Cabin at the End of the World and The Beast You Are. Journalist Heidi Cohen is in Cape Cod investigating the sources of recurring toxic algae blooms along the coast. A local named Jimmy has his own theory for her. […]
Review: It Waits in the Woods by Josh Malerman
Synopsis Some chilling campfire tales ring too true to ignore. For one young woman, an urban legend calls her into the woods in a spine-tingling short story by the bestselling author of Bird Box. The dense Michigan forest. Haunting wails. The clip-clop of demon hooves on a bridge to nowhere. It’s more than a tall […]
Review: Ankle Snatcher by Grady Hendrix
Synopsis Obey the rules. It’s the only way to survive the night in a short story about what hides in the dark by the New York Times bestselling author of The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires. Marcus grew up believing his father killed his mother—then blamed it on the boogeyman under the bed. Always leave the […]
Review: Before The Devil Knows You’re Here by Autumn Krause
The best way I can think to summarize this book would be to say that Krause writes up an atmospheric homage to a mixed cultural background and the memory of a person dear to her, depicting a different, darker, and more folk gothic side to early 19th century americana. Bringing to life that solid and vivid mix of folk tales and myth that were also paired with the Christian overtones informing the 1800s American short story. Think Washington Irving’s The Devil and Tom Walker but add more monsters and a gutsy young woman willing to do anything for her family.
Review: Girls of Little Hope by Sam Beckbessinger and Dale Halvorsen
Synopsis Three girls went into the woods. Only two came back, covered in blood and with no memory of what happened. Or did they? Being fifteen is tough, tougher when you live in a boring-ass small town like Little Hope, California (population 8,302) in 1996. Donna, Rae and Kat keep each other sane with the […]
Review: Black River Orchard by Chuck Wendig
Synopsis A small town is transformed by dark magic when a strange tree begins bearing magical apples in this new masterpiece of horror from the bestselling author of Wanderers and The Book of Accidents. It’s autumn in the town of Harrow, but something else is changing in the town besides the season. Because in that town there […]
Review: Such Sharp Teeth by Rachel Harrison
Synopsis Rory Morris isn’t thrilled to be moving back to her hometown. There are bad memories there. But her twin sister, Scarlett, is pregnant and needs support, so Rory returns to the place she thought she’d put in her rear-view. After a night out at a bar where she runs into Ian, an old almost-flame, […]
Guest Review: The Ungodly Duology by S.H. Cooper
Synopsis The Ungodly Duology features two horror novellas from author S.H. Cooper – The Festering Ones: Faith York was a young girl when she saw her father dragged into the ground by a spider-armed woman, never to be seen again. Twenty years later, the events of that day continue to haunt her, and her need for answers has […]
Review: Red Rabbit by Alex Grecian
Synopsis A folk horror epic about a ragtag posse that must track down a witch through a wild west beset by demons and ghosts―and where death is always just around the bend. Sadie Grace is wanted for witchcraft, dead (or alive). And every hired gun in Kansas is out to collect the bounty on her […]