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 […]
Monsters
Review: The Dissonance by Shaun Hamill
Synopsis: “You can never go home again,” the saying goes—but Hal, Athena, and Erin have to. In high school, the three were students of the eccentric Professor Marsh, trained in a secret system of magic known as the Dissonance, which is built around harnessing negative emotions: alienation, anger, pain. Then, twenty years ago, something happened […]
Meg: Angel of Death: Survival (Meg #1.1) by Steve Alten
Synopsis From the best-selling author of the MEG series comes an action-packed trilogy that takes place during the four-year gap between Meg (book one) and The Trench (book two). While the stories focus on Angel, the Megalodon pup that was captured at the end of book one, in Survival, Steve Alten delves into the major characters and the challenges they […]
Review: Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle
Synopsis: Misha is a jaded scriptwriter who has been working in Hollywood for years and has just been nominated for his first Oscar. But when he’s pressured by his producers to kill off a gay character in the upcoming season finale―”for the algorithm”―Misha discovers that it’s not that simple. As he is haunted by his […]
Review: Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle
Synopsis: Misha is a jaded scriptwriter working in Hollywood, and he’s seen it all. All the toxic personalities and coverups, the structural obstructions to reform, even dead actors brought back to screen by CGI – and finally, maybe, the hint of change. But having just been nominated for his first Oscar, Misha is pressured by […]
Review: A Spectre is Haunting Greentree by Carson Winter
Outstanding in its field 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. […]
Review: A Child Alone With Strangers by Philip Fracassi
Synopsis: When young Henry Thorne is kidnapped and held prisoner in a remote farmhouse surrounded by miles of forest, he finds himself connecting with a strange force living in the woods—using that bond to wreak havoc against his captors. Unknown to the boy, however, is that this ancient being has its own reasons for wanting […]
REVIEW: Cicada (Killer VHS Series #4) by Tanya Pell
SYNOPSIS Ash is stranded at a rural horror film festival about a giant killer cicada and can’t decide what’s worse, the movie or her idiot boyfriend, until she realizes she’s starring in the bloody sequel when people start dying and the locals won’t let them leave. REVIEW For the fourth time, the Killer VHS Series, […]
Review: Transmuted by Eve Harms
Synopsis: Her doctor is giving her the body of his dreams…and her nightmares.Isa is a micro-celebrity who rarely shows her face, and can’t wait to have it expertly ripped off and rearranged to look more feminine. When a successful fundraiser makes her gender affirming surgery possible, she’s overjoyed—until she has to give up all her […]
REVIEW: Teleportasm (Killer VHS Series #3) by Joshua Millican
SYNOPSIS Four friends unearth a unique VHS tape that, when viewed, causes short-distance teleportation with euphoric after-effects, inadvertently launching a perilous trend. As copies of the original tape are made, the results become less predictable and ultimately gruesome due to analog generational decay. Despite the danger, some will risk everything for just one more trip. […]
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: Reanimated Rex by Alex Ebenstein
SYNOPSIS Welcome to Prehistoric Park—Is something no longer said in these remote Michigan woods.After a freak accident took the life of the co-owner, the long-abandoned theme park grew wild. Home to little more than decaying structures, resin dinosaur statues, and a mythic recluse, converging outsiders hope to find opportunity, nostalgia, family, and vengeance in the […]