Of Wonder Years and Childhood’s Fears: C. D. Kester’s Trailer Park

Four Houston youths find their nice, normal lives interrupted as mundane and supernatural threats collide in C. D. Kester’s novella length dark fantasy. Teenager Richie Sterling lives with his dad in the Los Hermanos Trailer Park along with his best friends Jose, Frankie, Jaime, and Roberto. They live normal lives, playing capture the flag or […]

Made of Secrets, Sorrow, Laughter, and Mistakes: Tomi Champion-Adeyemi’s The Garden

Lęina has come to Brazil in search of her mother, following a trail of clues in search of The Garden, a place documented in one of her mother’s journals. Lęina’s journey is not going to be an easy one and the parameters are somewhat unclear from the start: After all, her chase may result in […]

Poop Happens: Stephen King’s “If It Bleeds”

In 2018, Stephen King released the fifth Holly Gibney story in his novella collection If It Bleeds. That story, which is the titular tale, “If It Bleeds,” is something of a follow-up to Holly’s previous adventure, The Outsider, and might have been conceived as something of a closure for Holly herself, but it nevertheless leaves […]

Harlequin Romances and Clown Orgies: Joe R. Lansdale’s The Events Concerning

Years ago, when Joe R. Lansdale was finding his footing as a writer, his fan base, and his career, the author published a collection called Stories by Mama Lansdale’s Youngest Boy for Author’s Choice Monthly. When it came time for the paperback edition, the author added a lengthy story he penned for the Dark At […]

One Woman’s Life as a Train Wreck of Lousy Opportunities and Worse Choices: Patrick C. Harrison III’s The Sludge Tab

Patrick C. Harrison III (aka PC3) is a horror author with plenty of ideas. Recently he announced a leap into semi-regular self-published novella length works, a line of books dubbed PC3’s Splat Life. The first of these, The Sludge Tab, might only clock in at about 40 pages of story, but it is a surprisingly […]

An Offering of Blood and Salt: Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s The Return of the Sorceress

Yalxi has escaped her pursuers, outfoxing them enough to take stock of her situation and weave one more spell. Her one hope is to summon the shapeshifting nahual and bargain for its assistance. A risky move, but one she will have to take. Otherwise, between bloody gashes on her forehead, her gut, and her foot, […]

Sick Psychologies: Ed Gorman’s The End of It All

When he was a young man, Roger Daye was not the prettiest model in the box. He was a homely sort, the kind who walked the beautiful homecoming queen Amy Towers home and longed for her from afar but never had a chance with her for anything else. Especially when her beau, Randy, showed up, […]

Burdens: Tom Piccirilli’s All You Despise

Danny was a screw up as a kid, but his Dad wanted his older brother to take charge. Sure, their Dad was an even worse screw up, an abusive son of a bitch who belonged as dead as he got. But the request remains. It is what rings through the unnamed narrator’s mind when Danny […]

A Face Made for Murder: Tom Piccirilli’s The Last Deep Breath

During his cross-country journey, Grey found a lot of women who wanted their husbands dead. He met several in bars, slept with some, dodged others. He’s never stupid enough to take them up on their requests, but he does have to wonder why they think he’d be game for this. She turned over in bed, […]

Stories and the People They Haunt: Ronald Malfi’s Ghostwritten

With his latest quartet of novella length pieces, Ronald Malfi tries something a little different: he approaches the subject of storytelling from four different angles and finds plenty of anxieties to analyze and fears to foment. In “The Skin of Her Teeth,” Hollywood agent Gloria Grossman goes in search of a missing client and finds […]