Josh Malerman’s Black Mad Wheel is an excellent tale of a 1950s army band recruited to track down a mysterious musical weapon (and its equally mysterious owner) in the South African desert. The title could refer to vinyl records or the spin of reel-to-reel recording decks. It might refer to the tires of an army… Continue reading Black Mad Wheel By Josh Malerman
Something amazing happens in Laird Barron’s The Croning. The hero saves the day simply by forgetting to act. He agrees to let his mind rot away (perhaps the most terrifying fate of all) while his witchy woman makes off with their newborn grandchild. That’s the happiest ending possible in this twisted tale that combines the legend… Continue reading The Croning by Laird Barron
In the interest of full disclosure, I was fortunate to read an early draft of C.L. Holmes’s Our Great Abbess, and I enjoyed it so much, I asked if I could publish it. Read more about Abbess below, or go get it here. Our Great Abbess blends historical fiction and religious horror to tell a… Continue reading Our Great Abbess by C.L. Holmes
Laird Barron writes weird. Barron is a good writer, but the stories contained in his collection, The Imago Sequence and Other Stories, are sometimes hard to figure. You’ll need a dictionary, good map skills, and a working knowledge of mythology, world religions, philosophy, horror fiction, and crime pulps to make heads or tails of these… Continue reading The Imago Sequence and Other Stories by Laird Barron
Is corn scary? It is a rather bizarre plant. It grows tall and fast and has vaguely human qualities, like corn-silk hair and ears. I never really thought corn was scary, until I read Stephen King‘s Children of the Corn as a teenager. King made corn creepy. But before King conjured the Children of the… Continue reading Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon
Every single one of us has got the devil inside, and nobody knows it better than Ignatius Parrish the narrator of Joe Hill’s novel Horns. Ig wakes after a night of sorrowful drinking to find he’s grown horns on top of his head. Worse yet, the horns bring out the worst in everyone Ig encounters.… Continue reading Horns by Joe Hill
These stories are a throwback to a simpler time; a time when people drove around in faux wood panel station wagons, wore bell bottoms, and read fiction magazines for entertainment. That’s right. People used to read. Fiction. For fun! In magazines! The first Richard Laymon story I ever encountered was “The Champion” published in an… Continue reading Short Stories: The Mystery and Men’s Magazines by Richard Laymon
Stephen King likes to travel back in time, and the creamy, apple pie era he enjoys visiting most often is America between1955 and 1965. King himself came of age during those years, and his personal nostalgia transforms into potent prose in works like “Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption,” “The Body”/ Stand by Me, Christine,… Continue reading 11/22/63 by Stephen King
The Girl on the Glider introduces us to one of Brian Keene’s most interesting and complex characters—himself. Keene’s foray into metafiction is a successful one. The Girl on the Glider chronicles Keene’s personal ghost story, as well as his private struggles as a husband, a father, and a cult horror writer with a big fan… Continue reading The Girl on the Glider by Brian Keene
We’ve all read gritty, NYC crime dramas and police procedurals before, but Joseph M. Monks’ Torn to Pieces, hits harder and cuts deeper than most. The chemistry between Detectives Jack Whelan and Burton Carver is similar to Joe R. Lansdale’s brilliant Hap Collins and Leonard Pine novels; I hope Monks has more Whelan/Carver tales to… Continue reading Torn to Pieces by Joseph M. Monks
