Synopsis To eight-year-old Bela, her family is her world. There’s Mommy, Daddo, and Grandma Ruth. But there is also Other Mommy, a malevolent entity who asks her every day: “Can I go inside your heart?” When horrifying incidents around the house signal that Other Mommy is growing tired of asking Bela the question over and […]
Occult
Review: It Haunts the Mind and Other Stories by Nick Roberts
Synopsis From Nick Roberts, the best-selling author of The Exorcist’s House and Anathema, comes fifteen dark tales that are as horrific as they are moving. “Come for the horror, stay for the heartbreaking emotion that bleeds into every page. Roberts really shows his range here, and it’s obvious early on in these stories that they will stick with […]
Review: Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Synopsis Montserrat has always been overlooked. She’s a talented sound editor, but she’s left out of the boys’ club running the film industry in ’90s Mexico City. And she’s all but invisible to her best friend Tristan, a charming if faded soap opera star, even though she’s been in love with him since childhood. Then […]
Review: Split Scream Vol. 4 by D. Matthew Urban and Holly Lyn Walrath
Synopsis Nonsense Words by D. Matthew Urban An aging professor of ancient history strikes up a friendship with her new colleague, Dr. Paul Duncan, a scholar of undecipherable inscriptions. As she finds herself drawn into Dr. Duncan’s life—his brilliant wife and mystical daughters, frightened students and uncanny associates—darker forces behind his research emerge, plunging her […]
Review: Brainwyrms by Alison Rumfitt
Synopsis When a transphobic woman bombs Frankie’s workplace, she blows up Frankie’s life with it. As the media descends like vultures, Frankie tries to cope with the carnage: binge-drinking, sleeping with strangers, pushing away her friends. Then, she meets Vanya. Mysterious, beautiful, terrifying Vanya. The two hit it off immediately, but as their relationship intensifies, […]
Review: Mister Magic by Kiersten White
Summary Thirty years after a tragic accident shut down production of the classic children’s program Mister Magic, the five surviving cast members have done their best to move on. But just as generations of cultishly devoted fans still cling to the lessons they learned from the show, the cast, known as the Circle of Friends, have spent […]
Review: Schrader’s Chord by Scott Leeds
Summary Heart-Shaped Box meets The Haunting of Hill House in Schrader’s Chord , Scott Leeds’s chilling debut about cursed vinyl records that open a gateway to the land of the dead. I told you they were real. After his estranged father’s mysterious death, Charlie Remick returns to Seattle to help with the funeral. There, he […]
Review: Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Synopsis Montserrat has always been overlooked. She’s a talented sound editor, but she’s left out of the boys’ club running the film industry in ’90s Mexico City. And she’s all but invisible to her best friend, Tristán, a charming if faded soap opera star, though she’s been in love with him since childhood. Then Tristán […]
Guest Review: Mosaic by Catherine McCarthy
Synopsis SOMETHING WICKED WAITS. When Robin Griffiths embarks upon the restoration of a stained-glass window in a thirteenth-century church, little does she comprehend the stakes involved. The more slivers of glass she pieces together, the more she realizes things are not what they appear to be in the seemingly cozy hamlet of Bilbury. Piece by […]
Review: Whisperwood by Alex Woodroe
If you go down to the woods today… you’re in for a fairly terminal surprise Synopsis When curious nomad Anna hears about Whisperwood, a town that’s not on any maps, that nobody goes to, and nobody comes from, she sees an opportunity to hide from her violent witch-hunting ex. But not everything is peaceful in […]
Review: Our Crooked Hearts by Melissa Albert
Our Crooked Hearts is a double tale of mother and daughter coming into magic and its consequences, when they were each 16-17 years old. The mother’s half of the story is told in flashbacks so as to create parallelisms with her daughter’s present storyline, cleverly woven in such a way that what happened in the past is slowly revealed to optimally fit and complement what is happening in the present.
Review: Equinox by David Towsey
Towsey has created a deeply atmospheric and captivating book that brought together the aging inspector Adamat from McClellan’s Powdermage trilogy, the ambience and eerie feel of the tv series The Alienist, as well as that near constant sense of the uncanny present throughout Neil Gaiman’s the Sandman comics. Talk about a right mix huh?