An orphaned governess takes up a new position in a remote manor and begins to develop inadvisable feelings for her employer. You’ve heard this story before—or have you? L. V. Russell puts a new twist on this classic Gothic premise in The Quiet Stillness of Empty Houses, which came out earlier this month from small indie press Quill & Crow Publishing House. Continue reading The Quiet Stillness of Empty Houses Review
Tag: horror
Review of FINNA and DEFEKT—Retail Terror
Anyone who has ever worked retail can probably regale you with tales of crazy customers, unreasonable managers, and hellish working conditions. Indeed, writer Nino Cipri’s traumatic experiences working retail inspired them to create the bizarre sci-fi horror world of their LitenVerse books. The two novellas in the series, Finna (2020) and Defekt (2021), are set in an IKEA-like big-box furniture store that has a tendency to open up portals into other dimensions…
Finna centers on two LitenVärld employees, Ava and Jules, who recently broke off a romantic relationship. After the breakup, Ava changed her work schedule so that she wouldn’t have to run into Jules on the shop floor. But when “Fucking Derek” doesn’t show up for his shift, Ava is called in to work awkwardly side by side with her ex. Then things start to get really weird when a customer’s grandmother goes missing. The LitenVärld staff is informed via cringey instructional video that the maze-like structure of the store’s showrooms occasionally causes wormholes to spontaneously open up into parallel dimensions—and it’s up to the employees to retrieve any customers who unwittingly wander through the portals. When Jules recklessly volunteers for the mission, Ava can’t just sit there and let them go alone. As the two traverse increasingly strange and dangerous worlds with alternate LitenVärld stores populated by carnivorous furniture and hive-mind clones, Ava and Jules begin to rebuild a tenuous friendship in the ruins of their romance.
A companion novel that stands easily on its own, Defekt slots into the empty spaces of Finna. It tells the story of Derek, whose absence spurred the events of the previous book. Derek is the perfect employee. He studies his LitenVärld Employee Handbook religiously, practices his customer service greetings in the mirror each morning, lives in a shipping container behind the store, and cannot understand why his coworkers don’t share his eager enthusiasm for selling Swedish furniture. It’s almost like he was made for this job…. But after a strange itch in his throat leads Derek to take his very first sick day, management reassigns him to a special inventory shift, locking him in the store overnight. Derek finds himself directed to hunt down defective products—mutant toilets and skittering toy chests that seem to have developed sentience—beside a team of four strangers that seem eerily familiar. But as he sees the brutality with which LitenVärld treats its defective products, he begins to question how his beloved employer might treat defective employees… Continue reading Review of FINNA and DEFEKT—Retail Terror
Review of Piñata—Possession in Mexico
It’s good to get in touch with your roots, but sometimes those roots don’t want to stay buried… Apocalyptic Aztec gods and the vengeful spirit of a murdered Nahua woman threaten to enact a bloody vengeance for the horrors of colonialism in Piñata by Leopoldo Gout, a Mexican horror novel that came out last month. Continue reading Review of Piñata—Possession in Mexico
Review of The Unknown—Algernon Blackwood Stories and Essays
Even the most celebrated of classic ghost story writers could use a bit of a boost to their visibility these days. British author Algernon Blackwood was essentially a celebrity in the early twentieth century. Revered for his contributions to the ghost story and weird fiction genres, he became a household name toward the end of his life when he shared his stories through popular radio and early television broadcasts. Today, he is best known for two stories in particular, “The Willows” and “The Wendigo.” But these two tales are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to his prolific career of both fiction and nonfiction writing that spans almost half a century. Publisher Handheld Press and editor Henry Bartholomew seek to introduce a wider audience to the breadth of Blackwood’s talents with a new collection, The Unknown: Weird Writings, 1900–1937, which came out last week. Continue reading Review of The Unknown—Algernon Blackwood Stories and Essays
Review of Hell Bent—A Descent to the Underworld
Would you go to Hell and back to rescue a friend? Alex Stern is prepared to do just that in Leigh Bardugo’s Hell Bent, which came out earlier this year. If you loved the dark academia vibes and intricate paranormal world of Ninth House, then you do not want to miss this high-stakes sequel! Continue reading Review of Hell Bent—A Descent to the Underworld
Review of Sister, Maiden, Monster—Pandemic Horror
At times during the COVID-19 pandemic, it felt like the world was ending. But what would a virus that could end civilization as we know it really look like? Lucy A. Snyder explores pandemic horror on a cosmic scale in Sister, Maiden, Monster, which came out from Tor Nightfire last month. Continue reading Review of Sister, Maiden, Monster—Pandemic Horror
Review of She Is a Haunting
“This house eats and is eaten.” The hunger of a haunted house is encapsulated in this stunning opening line of Trang Thanh Tran’s debut YA horror novel, She Is a Haunting, which comes out tomorrow, February 28. The novel is an innovative take on the haunted house genre, combining the coming-of-age story of a queer teen from an immigrant family with infestational horror that functions to critique colonialism, much like in Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic. If either of those themes sound up your alley, you do not want to miss this debut! Continue reading Review of She Is a Haunting
Review of The Gathering Dark: An Anthology of Folk Horror
It’s perhaps one of the earliest forms of horror fiction: the local legends of monsters, dark magic, or cursed places that are told in whispers, passed down from one generation to the next in every society. But, as with most things in the Gothic, everything old is new again. With the success of films like The Witch and Midsommar, folk horror is definitely having a moment, and here to ride that wave is The Gathering Dark: An Anthology of Folk Horror, edited by Tori Bovalino, which came out in September. Continue reading Review of The Gathering Dark: An Anthology of Folk Horror
Review of The Weight of Blood—A Modern Homage to Carrie
If there’s one piece of advice you need to survive a YA horror novel, it’s this: Stay home on prom night. Stephen King can probably be credited with kicking off the trope of blood-soaked proms in his 1974 debut novel Carrie, which famously ends with a massacre when a gory prom prank drives a bullied teenager to unleash her psychic powers upon her classmates and the surrounding town. In The Weight of Blood, which came out back in November, Tiffany D. Jackson takes the bones of Stephen King’s Carrie and reimagines the story for the twenty-first century, updating its themes for a modern audience. Continue reading Review of The Weight of Blood—A Modern Homage to Carrie
Spooky Stories to Consume Like Candy
Looking for some quick scares to get you in the mindset for Halloween? I’ve already written a post on ghost stories that you can read to get into the spirit of the season, but shades of the deceased aren’t the only things that will send shivers down your spine. Here are a few of my favorite stories featuring all sorts of other things that go bump in the night. These stories are all available online and perfect for giving yourself a quick horror fix before you go out to celebrate All Hallow’s Eve tonight:
