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Cover of Ruiner, by Lara Messersmith-Glavin, featuring a bounding hare with wings, and hooved rear legs, above a murky area.
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Book Review: Ruiner, by Lara Messersmith-Glavin

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Ruiner is a novel about a world where old ways and new are clashing, with a city that extracts resources from outer territories to benefit some of its citizens, and where disputes are settled via combat storytelling. The two protagonists start far apart, as one is a desert-dweller and another is a street rat, but events and elements in their lives draw them into each other’s arcs. Author Lara Messersmith-Glavin does a great job of drawing characters with rich backgrounds and inner lives. I really enjoyed diving into this world and learning about its people, and the ending definitely left me wanting more.

Dolly (2025) movie poster, featuring a creepy eyeless doll (or person wearing a doll mask) reaching into a cradle, from the Baby's POV. Tagline: Mommy knows best.
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Movie Review: DOLLY (2025) Directed by Rod Blackhurst

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Normally I try to keep features covered here within the confines of speculative or fantastic fiction, particularly when considering things classified as horror. From what I initially read about Rod Blackhurst’s new slasher feature Dolly, I somehow thought that there was some supernatural or fantastic element to it, but it turns out not. I imagine there still may be some readers of this with general horror interest though, even if within mundane fully human realms of ‘monstrosity.’

Accelerated Growth Environment
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Book Review: Accelerated Growth Environment by Lauren C. Teffeau

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Accelerated Growth Environment is the newest SF climate fiction novella from Lauren C. Teffeau. Accelerated Growth Environment is the story of Dr. Jorna Benton. In a near- to mid-future, she is the principal scientist aboard the Climasphere, a mobile ecosphere that grows a variety of plants from different biomes. Its goal is to be a mobile nursery and a special, rapid growth environment, for plants being developed to try and help restore biomes all over the Earth. From the arctic to the desert, there is a wide variety of plants that are being developed and made ready for transplant into the world, all around the world.  It’s a big job with a big responsibility. But when things start happening to Jorna’s work, her slowly-revealed past appears to be catching up with her.

Cover of The Geomagician, by Jennifer Mandula, featuring trilobites, ammonites, a pterodactyl, a skeleton of an ichthyosaur, and various plants, with a cameo brooch of a woman.
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Book Review: The Geomagician, by Jennifer Mandula

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Mary Anning was a real-life professional fossil collector and dealer in the first half of the 19th century; given the breadth and depth of her knowledge, she was also a paleontologist, but that wasn’t officially acknowledged until after her death, since she was a woman and therefore ineligible to join the Geological Society of London. In her excellent debut novel The Geomagician (coming March 31), Jennifer Mandula reimagines Mary as a woman living in a world with magic, in which fossils are the best medium for storing magical power. Hunting for freshly exposed fossils after a landslide, she is thrilled to discover a pterodactyl skeleton — and then one of the fossilized eggs comes to life and hatches in her hands! Mary is suddenly faced with new opportunities in her life, and new challenges.

Cover of It Came from the Floodwaters by Seann Barbour, featuring a blue skull against a black background, with red lettering.
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Book Review: It Came from the Floodwaters, by Seann Barbour

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If you’re looking for an entertaining, tightly focused horror tale with interesting, diverse characters and a strong arc for the protagonist, you should consider Seann Barbour’s new novella, It Came from the Floodwaters, coming March 13. It starts out with people trapped in their Savannah apartment building by rising floodwaters, throws in some spooky notes, and then quickly escalates to pulse-pounding action with a high body count. But because the Big Bad is particularly interested in one special person, there’s also lot of creepiness woven throughout the story, along with the adrenaline rushes.

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