Book Review: THE HAUNTING OF VELKWOOD by Gwendolyn Kiste
The Haunting of Velkwood is an interesting take on the haunted house trope, one that blurs the lines between who are the living and who are the ghosts and expands the supernatural milieu from a building or property to an entire community block.
Double review: What Grows in the Dark, by Jaq Evans, and Terror at Tierra de Cobre, by Michael Merriam
I’ve been in a mood for reading horror lately, and a fair number of interesting stories in that field have been crossing my path, so I’m combining reviews here of two debuts from this week. Although they’re both pretty brisk reads that include LGBTQ+ protagonists and diverse casts, they’re quite different in focus and tone.
Book Review: What Feasts at Night
As always, Kingfisher does a wonderful job immersing the reader in whatever environment she’s describing; I was reveling in the description of the countryside from the first page.
Book Review: 12 HOURS by L. Marie Wood
The reader of L. Marie Wood’s short novella 12 Hours will realize what has happened to this cabbie long before he grasps the truth about himself. And that’s an integral part of the construction of the novella, of how Wood is directing the reader’s emotions and connection to her protagonist through his psychological horror.
Book Review: CHRISTMAS AND OTHER HORRORS, Edited by Ellen Datlow
… [The] majority (even those that might be set around Christmas) are really about solstice, that moment when the sun stops on its journey across Earth’s skies to change course. As many traditions of modern Christmas celebration are really appropriation and secularization of more ancient pagan festivities, several stories could be seen from either or combined perspectives.
Book Review: BLEAK HOUSES by Kate Maruyama
Bleak Houses, by Kate Maruyama, represents the debut of this line, consisting of two novella-length stories: Safer and Family Solstice. The small independent press Omnium Gatherum previously published Family Solstice in 2021, when Rue Morgue Magazine named it Best Fiction Book of the year. The release of Bleak Houses by RDSP thus represents an opportunity for new readers to discover that story while also being treated to another previously unpublished story born from the horrors of pandemic isolation.
