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 […]
Psychological
REVIEW: Stay on the Line by Clay McLeod Chapman|Illustrations by: Trevor Henderson
SYNOPSIS REACH OUT After a small coastal town is devastated by a hurricane, the survivors gravitate toward a long out-of-service payphone in hopes of talking out their grief and saying goodbye to loved ones, only for it to begin ringing on its own. AND TOUCH SOMEONE As more townspeople answer the call, friends and family […]
Review: Brat by Gabriel Smith
Synopsis From a provocative new literary talent, a hilarious and haunted novel featuring an unlikable protagonist grappling with grief, inheritance, and the ghosts of his past We meet our ill-tempered protagonist—the story’s titular “brat”—at a low moment, but not yet at rock bottom. The Gabriel of the novel is mourning the death of his father […]
Review: Horror Movie by Paul Tremblay
Synopsis: Summer, 1993 – a group of young guerrilla filmmakers spend four weeks making Horror Movie, a notorious, disturbing, art-house horror film. Steeped in mystery and tragedy, the film has taken on a mythic, cult renown, despite only three of the original scenes ever being released to the public. Decades later, a big budget reboot is in the […]
Review: The Dead Spot: Stories of Lost Girls by Angela Sylvaine
Synopsis The Dead Spot: Stories of Lost Girls is the debut short story collection from the author of FROST BITE and CHOPPING SPREE. The Dead Spot. A corner drenched in shadow. An earthquake’s epicenter. The part of a roller coaster ride where the car rounds the final curve and all force dissipates, leaving those trapped […]
Review: Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang
Synopsis: Our narrator produces a sound from the piano no one else at the Conservatory can. She employs a technique she learned from her parents—also talented musicians—who fled China in the wake of the Cultural Revolution. But when an accident leaves her parents debilitated, she abandons her future for a job at a high-end beauty […]
Review: The House That Horror Built by Christina Henry
Synopsis: Single mom Harry Adams has always loved horror movies, so when she’s offered a job cleaning for revered horror director Javier Castillo, she leaps at the chance. His forbidding Chicago mansion, Bright Horses, is filled from top to bottom with terrifying props and costumes, as well as glittering awards from his decades-long career making […]
Review: In Excess of Dark by Red Lagoe
Synopsis: What if every terrible thing imagined came true? Every fleeting, nightmarish thought a reality? For grief-stricken Karina, her newfound ability to turn her worst daydreams into palpable truths has sent her into a downward spiral of depression and guilt. Coupled with the appearance of an enigmatic shadow figure and visions of her dead family, […]
Review: A Dark Corner by Celia Dale
Synopsis: Young Errol Winston arrives in London in search of a job and a better life, but he finds himself homeless when the city’s racist landlords refuse to rent to him. At last he seems to have a stroke of good luck when he accidentally winds up at the front door of Mr and Mrs […]
Review: Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder
Synopsis One day, the mother was a mother but then, one night, she was quite suddenly something else… At home full-time with her two-year-old son, an artist finds she is struggling. She is lonely and exhausted. She had imagined – what was it she had imagined? Her husband, always travelling for his work, calls her […]
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: Father of Lies by Steve Stred
Synopsis: Beginning in October, 2019, Steve Stred released three of the darkest, most depraved novellas – Ritual, COMMUNION, and Sacrament (**Nominated for a 2022 Splatterpunk Award for Best Novella!**). These three novellas completed the ‘Father of Lies’ trilogy, telling the story of a disturbed man trying to open the cosmic gates and enter the Black Heavens to […]