writer
Reef Mind by Hazel Zorn
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Had to bust out my dive watch for the decadently creepy REEF MIND from Hazel Zorn. This book is a climate anxiety-fueled nightmare: immediate, skin-crawling, and amorphic. Standing ovation for this brand new indie banger–Zorn packs a beautiful death punch into a slim, devourable novella.
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Vampires of El Norte by Isabel Cañas
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Wow. Isabel Cañas’ novel VAMPIRES OF EL NORTE is a stunning, searing book. Speculative fiction can reveal truth in ways that realism simply can’t, and Cañas uses that to her full advantage in a book balancing sweeping romance with seething horror in the Rio Grande Valley of the 1840s, as the shifting border between Mexico and America was being redrawn in blood.
While the historical basis of the book is nearly two centuries in the past, it is markedly relevant, vampires and all. As Cañas mentions in her final note, “…I wrote this book for my family. For every one of us has been asked variations of the question ‘when did your family come to this country?’ […]
I have realized that the answer is, in fact, a question itself. A question that became the heart of this book.
‘When did this country come to us?’ “
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The Stars Did Wander Darkling by Colin Meloy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Colin Meloy’s superbly eerie middle adult fiction doesn’t shy away from unanswered questions or grotesque imagery. THE STARS DID WANDER DARKLING is a wonderfully creepy tale inspired by 1980s American small town life and what I can only assume are some of the weirder wells of Meloy’s expansive imagination. Really appreciate how he trusts his readers to spin part of the web. Favorite character: Randy, the horror-movie obsessed video store owner.
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Model Home by Rivers Solomon
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Horror is done so incredibly right in MODEL HOME by Rivers Solomon. Uncanny, frighteningly heavy, intimately empathetic, and viscerally terrifying in about fifteen different ways, this novel feels unescapable in a way that only a masterful writer like Solomon could achieve. MODEL HOME is equal parts haunted house hell, seething social commentary, psychological thriller, and warning sign.
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Horror Movie by Paul Tremblay
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Unreliable narrator from hell, will give you the icky creepies, took me to a darker place than I personally wanted to go, but hey–it’s called HORROR MOVIE.
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Monsters We Have Made by Lindsay Starck
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Graceful literary writing pervades Lindsay Starck’s monster story MONSTERS WE HAVE MADE. Part horror, part psychological thriller, this novel layers fact, fiction, and figment together into nuanced character study and a riveting pursuit for the truth.
P.s. Always excited to read a midwest author!
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Eye of a Needle by Jessica Lynn
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
EYE OF A NEEDLE is a searing short form debut from author Jessica Lynn. It’s addictive to the point that you’ll blaze through it in one sitting. Tension on simmer and sumptuous prose explores religious trauma and the merits of gut instinct. Southern gothic meets supernatural in this tale drenched in dread, blood, and sticky summer heat.
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A History of Wild Places by Shea Ernshaw
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Shea Ernshaw brings a painter’s touch to this twisty-turny plot joyride that takes elements of mystery, fantasy, and horror, puts them in the woods, and sees how they all get along when cut off from the outside world.
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Whalefall by Daniel Kraus
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
The writing in Daniel Kraus’ WHALEFALL is assertively top-tier. A visceral, blood-pumping story with perfect emotional pitch, this novel is a breathless page-turner. I especially enjoyed Kraus’ strong research base which creates a very real-feeling crisis (believe it or not, this is a realistic “swallowed by a whale” tale). Science and poetry take turns shining through interesting action writing that plunges the readers into depths of multiple kinds.
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Fish Gather to Listen by Jes McCutchen
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
A memorable collection from a dynamic new press thematically unified around that most primal of fears: deep, murky water occupied by things unknown. The grotesque swims parallel to the lyrical in Fish Gather to Listen. There is much here to disturb and delight, often simultaneously.
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