Man, this is bittersweet. Richard Kadrey has announced that In the Devil Wind, the 13th novel in the Sandman Slim saga, will be the last.

I’ve been a fan of the Sandman Slim novels since the very first one. Richard Kadrey’s blend of hard-boiled noir, urban fantasy, horror, and (this next thing is important and I don’t think talked about enough) pitch-black comedy, hits every sweet spot my brain has.

I love Kadrey’s memorable characters, and his deep dive into both angelic and demonic lore. I love that Kadrey never treats James Stark, aka Sandman Slim, as a hero, as a traditional savior. He’s also not an unstoppable antihero. Stark is brutal, sarcastic, deeply, deeply damaged, and relentlessly driven. He gives unwavering support, through Los Angeles, heaven, and hell, to the people he considers his found family. He’s a deadly killer with a giant capacity for love, which gives the books surprising heart.

In the Devil Wind is a richly conceived, if uncharacteristically melancholy, conclusion to the Sandman Slim series. Instead of wrapping up the series with a big, neat bow, Kadrey embraces and amplifies the messy consequences of the choices Stark has made. There’s plenty of Kadrey’s trademark savage action, supernatural intrigue, and razor-sharp humor, but in addition there’s a deeper sense of reflection. Stark is forced to confront the steep cost of vengeance, loyalty, and ultimate survival. For me, this is the most human Stark has ever been, which is weird, considering Stark is dead and the entire novel is set in Heaven, Hell, and points in between.

Kadrey’s mythology, which he’s built up since 2009, has reached its most ambitious scope. It’s audacious, powerful, and most of all satisfying.

Stark is one of urban fantasy’s most unconventional heroes. Yeah, forget what I said earlier, Stark is a hero, in all his messy, conflicted glory.

In the Devil Wind released November 17, 2026, and is available for pre-order now.

Also, speaking of bittersweet…my next read is Petrified Dreams, the final Hap and Leonard novel from Joe R. Lansdale. Damn.

Josh Malerman is on a roll. His last novel, Incidents Around the House, was a horror tour de force—harrowing, heartbreaking, and impossible to forget. And if you’re one of the millions of folks who have already seen The Odyssey, you were lucky enough to witness one of the scariest movie trailers I’ve ever seen. The movie is called Other Mommy, it stars Jessica Chastain, and it’s based on Incidents. The Odyssey was excellent, but I’d go see it again just to experience that trailer again.

Like I said, Malerman is on a roll, and that roll continues with his forthcoming novel, Pictures of You.

Malerman has a knack for transforming an unlikely, even impossible, premise into deeply unsettling horror, and that’s absolutely the case with Pictures of You. This is a darkly suspenseful supernatural thriller that blurs the boundaries between art, obsession, and identity.

Let me paint you a picture without giving away too much (see what I did there?):

After waking in an unfamiliar room with no memory of how she got there, Emily discovers she has become the unwilling centerpiece of a mysterious artist’s terrifying masterpiece, one that may hold both her life and her boyfriend’s fate within its frame. As reality bends and escape seems increasingly impossible, Emily must unravel the rules of her bizarre imprisonment before she is consumed by someone else’s vision forever. Equal parts psychological nightmare and high-concept thriller, Pictures of You showcases Malerman’s signature talent for combining relentless tension with surreal, thought-provoking horror that lingers long after the final page.

Pictures of You releases September 8, 2026, and is available for preorder now. This is prime Malerman, and that’s saying a lot.

In the interests of full disclosure, I have a story in this anthology. I always have second thoughts about reviewing a book that I’m a part of, but this is such a solid collection of excellent horror fiction that I want to tell the world about it. So I guess what I’m saying is, fuck second thoughts.

It Ends With Her deserves as wide an audience as possible.

The staff at Dead Fox Publishing—curation by Kelley York, editing by Kelley York, Kala Godin, and Syd Tomac—have put together a haunting anthology of sapphic horror that explores the beauty, terror, and tragedy of queer love through the unflinching lens of horror in all its permutations. Passion, obsession, desire, destruction, it’s all here. The stories range from supernatural nightmares to psychological dread, melancholy hopelessness to visceral body horror. If it’s that the deepest wounds are often inflicted by the people we love the most, there’s ample proof of that within these pages.

As with any quality anthology, your favorite stories may be different than mine. There’s not a dud in the bunch here, but for what it’s worth, these are a few of my favorites:

Salome by Mireya Higuera: A mysterious triptych of infamous paintings leads the reader on a dangerously seductive journey into the darkest corners of the art world.

The Lake Between Us by Ren Mercer: A couple rent a secluded cabin hoping to reignite their curdled relationship. Trust me when I say that if you think you know what happens next, you don’t.

Salt by Liz Pinto: This is an absolutely ravishing story that will make you taste the sea and feel the salt spray on your skin. And then your skin will begin to crawl…

Like the Flower of the Field by L.B. Waltz: First rate, squishy body horror. Also, it’s funny.

Riptide by C.A. Larkin: A story written in second person that pulls you in and doesn’t let go.

Home by Alchemy Dawn: A zombie story of sorts that manages to be fresh, original, and unexpected.

Again, these are the stories that sank their fangs into me the deepest, but all of them have something to offer. Dead Fox Publishing is a small but mighty indy publishing company, and with offerings like It Ends With Her, I think they’re going to make waves in the horror community.

Special callout to Dona Vaigand for the gorgeous cover art.

By the way, if you’re curious, my story here is titled A Scream Is a Sigh Turned Upside Down, and I think it’s one of my best. I also have an illustration in the book.

It Ends With Her is available in all the usual places, but you can purchase directly from the publisher and support a great team:
https://deadfoxpub.com/products/it-ends-with-her

My son and I were lucky enough to meet Meg Elison at the Worldcon in Chicago a couple years back. She was a panel guest, and we were both impressed by her fierce intelligence and humor. I happily got her to sign her then-new novel, Number One Fan, and I was thrilled to discover she was just as good a writer as she was a speaker. Number One Fan is a creepy, propulsive page-turner that I recommend to anyone who will listen.

Founding Fathers is very different, but no less compulsively readable. It’s a satirical, bitingly hilarious novel, but the laughs are hiding something profound and disturbing. This is humor with wickedly sharp teeth.

In Founding Fathers, a group of cloned teenage Founding Fathers—Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Ben Franklin, and John Adams—has been raised in isolation to recreate an idealized vision of the nation’s past. The Antediluvian Society, a cabal of extreme right-wing billionaires, are hoping that when their charges come of age, they can set the country on what they believe will be the right, very right, track. But the teenagers discover the truth about the twenty-first century when Ben finds a cell phone (it doesn’t take him long to also discover the wonders of online porn), and their handlers’ carefully engineered social experiment begins to unravel in spectacular fashion. Founding Fathers blends science fiction, political commentary, and coming-of-age chaos as Elison explores whether history can ever be recreated, or whether every generation inevitably writes its own future.

As much as I loved this novel, I have to admit it gave me pause. I can’t help wondering if certain members of the current administration would treat Founding Fathers as more of a how-to manual than a work of fiction.

Founding Fathers will be published June 23, 2026, and is available for pre-order now. Don’t miss this one.

Tenebrous Press, the small but mighty publishing house that’s responsible for this collection, has a wonderful mission statement that begins like this: To define, highlight, and celebrate the genre of New Weird Horror.

Brave New Weird, Volume Four, does just that, with twenty-three stories that define, and sometimes redefine, what horror fiction can be. There’s something for everyone here, from relatively straightforward to downright experimental storytelling. The one thing that ties these disparate stories together is their uniformly high quality—Woodroe and Blairstone have a real talent for combing through the vast quantity of fiction out there and bringing you the best.

As I said, there’s something for everyone here, so your favorites may be different than mine. But here are my standouts:

Drought’s Vengeance by Wen Wen Yang: Story as myth, the personification of a vengeful spirit. Elegantly written, dark as pitch.

The Sunflower Farmer by Chris Scott: Mysterious, compelling, and surprisingly apocalyptic.

In the Amygdala of the Beholder by D. Marmara: Sexy, I think, and utterly alien.

Two’s Company, Three Might Be a Sign of Demonic Possession by Audrey Ahou: An original, twisted take on demonic possession.

Drosera Regina by A.L. Goldfuss: Quite simply, my favorite story in a stellar collection. I’ll be thinking about Jackie, the main character, for a long time.

Letter of Apology from Eldritch Appliances, LLC by Daniel Loring Keating: This story put a huge smile on my face.

Brave New Weird, Volume Four, will be released July 14th, and is available for preorder now. I’m already looking forward to Volume Five.

My son and I were lucky enough to attend Chicon 8, the 80th World Science Fiction Convention, in Chicago in 2022. We had a wonderful time, and perhaps the high point was being there for the awarding of the Hugo Awards. That year, Seanan McGuire took home the Hugo for best series, for her masterful Wayward Children series. I could not have been happier.

Beginning with Every Heart a Doorway, the Wayward Children series of fantasy novellas tell the stories of the children who have traveled through magical portals to fantastic, often dangerous worlds, and then returned to our own, ending up at Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children, a sort of boarding school for the returned. McGuire blends fantasy with horror, fairy tales, mystery and more into some of the most original coming-of-age fiction ever written. This is portal fantasy at its absolute finest.

Through Gates of Garnet and Gold is the 11th novella in the series, and McGuire shows no signs of her imagination and superlative storytelling flagging.

Nancy, who we first met in Every Heart a Doorway, returns to Eleanor West’s from the Halls of the Dead, where she’s been happily spending her time as a living statue. A mysterious darkness has been attacking and killing her fellow living statues, and Nancy as returned to seek help from her former classmates. Alway up for a quest (although they’re specifically forbidden), Nancy and her friends’s friends join her and they embark on a journey back in an attempt to save the world she loves.

Like all the Wayward Children books, Through Gates of Garnet and Gold is populated with wonderful characters we’ve come to know, love, and sometimes hate, from previous installments. As good as McGuire is at creating utterly original settings, I think what makes her work truly special is her characters. They are unique, unforgettable, and heartbreakingly human, even the ones who no longer technically are.

Through Gates of Garnet and Gold is a more than worthy addition to McGuire’s ongoing story. I hope the Wayward Children series never ends.

If Sarah Gailey wasn’t so damn good at what they do, they’d be downright annoying. Why do I say that? Glad you asked! My point is, Gailey’s literary output, from American Hippo to When We Were Magic, from Magic for Liars to The Echo Wife, from Upright Women Wanted to Just Like Home, is so breathtakingly varied that it puts other writers to shame. Every book I’ve read by them is a unique experience. The only thing they have in common is the uniformly stellar quality of the writing.

Make Me Better continues that tradition.

This is twisted, complex, slow-burn psychological horror novel, a masterclass in how a lonely, depressed person can be seduced and gaslit. Celia is yearning for a sense of belonging, and Kindred Cove is a seemingly idyllic island community that promises healing, moral improvement, even transformation. As she finds herself immersed in the group, Gailey uses shifting perspectives and assorted timelines to slowly reveal the disturbing dynamics beneath the surface, the monstrous rot at the center of the community. Celia wants to be seen as good, as worthy, and Kindred Cove seems to offer a path forward through brutal, unsettling forms of devotion. It should be mentioned that Kindred Cove is set on an island surrounded by a mysterious, ever-growing reef that the community seems to have an unnatural affinity for.

The most important word in the above paragraph may be transformation. Gailey is concerned with transformation in every sense of the word. Mental, emotional, and perhaps most importantly, physical. While Gailey has always had a rare gift for characterization and superlative storytelling, they show an equally rare gift for body horror with Make Me Better.

Make Me Better isn’t an easy book. It gives up its secrets slowly, skipping back and forth across the years, layering the horror like a master painter adding brushstrokes. But for the careful reader, it’s richly rewarding. This is one of Gailey’s best, and that’s saying something.

Make Me Better will be published on May 12, 2026, and is available for preorder now.

I’m going to guess that most readers discovered the singular talent that is C.J. Leede when they read Maeve Fly, her audacious, blood-soaked debut horror novel that put a feminine twist on American Psycho. For me it was an ARC of American Rapture, her scarifying descent into a very much American apocalypse. I then immediately read Maeve Fly, because, well, holy shit, American Rapture is a modern masterpiece. I was not disappointed by either novel.

Headlights is just as harrowing, just as dark, as Leede’s first two novels, written in a brutal, propulsive, stripped down prose style that sucks the reader in and never lets go.

Daniel Stansfield is a beyond burned out FBI agent who fled Denver on the heels of a chilling series of savage, inexplicable killings he wasn’t able to solve. Now those crimes have begun again, and Daniel is drawn back helplessly. As he tracks the mystery across Colorado’s lonely wilderness, he’s forced to confront the trauma of his childhood he’s tried his best to bury, and must deal with a presence that may have been stalking him since he was a child.

If it seems like I’m being purposely vague, I am. One of the many pleasures of reading Headlights is discovering the terror for yourself. This is part devastating psychological horror, part hard as nails police procedural, all of it twisted up in frightfully unique serial killer vibes. Leede excels at creating flawed—forget that, downright damaged—characters, and then putting them through an emotional shredder. No one in this novel emerges unscathed. Make no mistake, Leede seems to take a special delight in putting her readers through a shredder as well.

One final note…there is a scene in Headlights set in the Stanley Hotel’s notorious Room 217, and it is the most gloriously gonzo mindfuck I’ve read in a long time. I loved every page of it.

Headlights debuts June 9, 2026, and is available for preorder now. Don’t miss this one.

Let’s start this review with a somewhat embarrassing confession: I finished reading King Sorrow on an airplane, and the bittersweet gut punch of an ending had enough tears dripping down my cheeks that a flight attendant asked if I was okay. The answer to that question is a qualified yes…I’m fine, I guess, and I’ve already moved on to another excellent read, but King Sorrow will stay with me for a long time.

Like The Fireman and NOS4A2 before it, King Sorrow is a thick doorstop of a novel, but not a page is wasted. The length gives Joe Hill the room to let his story breathe, to dig deeply into questions of the morality of revenge and the nature of evil, and perhaps most importantly, to deliver one helluva yarn. There are several breathtaking set pieces that are given the space to build, and build, and build. This might be Hill’s most thrilling novel, which is saying something.

This sprawling horror epic follows a close-knit group of six friends who recklessly unleash an ancient, malevolent dragon-like entity from an alternative realm called the Long Dark. While Arthur Oakes and his friends summon the creature in the hopes of protecting them from a very real earthly threat, the pact they forge with King Sorrow comes at a terrible price…they must offer a human life to the dragon each year, or sacrifice one of their own. In the decades that follow, the six must come to terms with the fallout of that fateful decision, as it affects every part of their lives, including their very souls. It turns out, once you open the door to unspeakable horror, it’s nearly impossible to close.

Hill isn’t afraid to fill his story with characters who are flawed, morally compromised, sometimes unlikeable, and all the more human for that. There are no white-knight heroes here, but when called upon they are sometimes truly heroic. King Sorrow asks a simple but profound question: just who is qualified to decide who should live and who should die?

I’ve talked about the human characters, but I should also mention that King Sorrow itself is a daring, darkly compelling character in it’s own right. Alternately sly, sarcastic, blackly funny, and evil incarnate, the dragon is one of Hill’s most fully realized creations.

I have an ever-growing list of must-read authors, and Hill is right up there at the top. King Sorrow is a more than worthy addition to his catalog.

I read a lot of dark fiction. Horror, dystopian science fiction, gritty crime, you name it. It’s what I like. Even with the toxic shitshow we’re currently living through, I still gravitate in that direction. Maybe it’s cathartic, who knows?

But every once in a while I need to come up for air and read something hopeful, something positive. When that happens I often reach for something by Becky Chambers. Cozy fantasy has been having a moment for a few years, but I think Chambers is one of the few proponents of cozy science fiction. Science fiction that isn’t afraid to let the light in.

So while on vacation in Bozeman, Montana a couple of months ago, I chanced upon a wonderful indie bookstore (shoutout to Country Bookshelf) and found a lovely softcover edition that included Chamber’s two novellas, A Psalm for the Wild-Built and A Prayer for the Crown-Shy. It turned out to be the perfect read to end my year.

Both slim volumes follow the adventures of a tea monk named Sibling Dex and a robot named Mosscap as they travel together. I say adventures, but really, these books are quietly contemplative, more conversation than action, and I was there for every moment of it.

The world Chambers has created is overwhelmingly optimistic, a place where robots long ago gained consciousness and withdrew into the wilderness, leaving humans to rebuild their society in a way more in keeping with ecological balance and the value of caring for one another. When Dex and Mosscap meet each other, it’s the first interaction between humans and robots in centuries. Mosscap yearns to know what humans are like, what they need to live a good life, and Dex, as his thoughtful guide, finds himself reflecting on his own purpose. As they interact with each other and the other humans Mosscap meets along their journey, Chambers manages to ask and answer a lot of crucial questions about endless growth at the expense of nature, the meaning of autonomy, and what it means to live a good, humble life.

A Psalm for the Wild-Built and A Prayer for the Crown-Shy are two separate books, but can easily be read together. They are a beautiful examination of a world in harmony and balance. Feeling overwhelmed and hopeless? Reading these books may provide you an antidote, however brief.

I have to start off this review with a public apology to my son, Eric. Let me explain. He’s an ex-high school English teacher and current Phd student, and we have nearly the same taste in reading. Oh, he reads a little more epic fantasy than I do, and I probably read a little more horror than he does, but honestly, we overlap about 98%. And he’s been telling me to read R.F. Kuang for years. I have Yellowface, Babel, and The Poppy War on my shelf, I’ve heard nothing but wonderful things about her, and I kept meaning to, but, so many books, so little time and all that. So finally he plopped the Broken Bindings edition of Katabasis in my hands—damn, they do beautiful editions—and pleaded with me to read it.

Damn, he was right. Katabasis is one hell of a book, and I mean that literally.

Alice and Peter are rival grad students at Cambridge in a world much like ours, except for one important detail…magick is real, it’s a field of study, and Alice and Peter are determined to be masters in the field. When their professor Grimes, who happens to be one of the world’s most legendary magicians, dies in a magical accident that Alice just might have triggered, the two students travel to hell to bring Grimes back.

Yes, is this world traveling to hell is indeed possible. The tales of Orpheus, Dante, and others are guidebooks rather than fictions. Alice and Peter are armed only with the knowledge they’ve gained at Cambridge, and enough chalk to sketch the Pentagrams for the spells they may need to survive.

What follows is a phantasmagorical masterclass in imagination and world building. Hell is nothing like the traditional fire-and-brimstone underworld. It’s a surreal, layered, constantly shifting landscape that in some ways holds up a mirror to the sometimes absurd and cruel vagaries of academic life at Cambridge. As Alice and Peter make their way through the eight courts of hell, they are tested physically, mentally, and spiritually. They face formidable opponents; deadly, ingenious traps; and challenges that force them to confront their own deepest insecurities, rivalries, and obsessions.

This is bravura level writing that is fiercely intelligent, breathtaking, and sometimes surprisingly funny. While reading Katabasis I caught echoes of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, Piranesi, and His Dark Materials, but make no mistake—Kuang has created a world all her own. This novel is a must read for any fan of dark academia, or, really, any fan of fantasy, period.

Like I said, Katabasis is one hell of a book.

I don’t read enough graphic novels. There, I said it, and the truth is I say it every year, but here we are. As both a writer and artist, I have a deep appreciation for storytelling where the art and the words elevate each other and soar to ever greater heights. Since 2012, Saga has constantly, continually, reached and exceeded those great heights.

And yes, I know that Saga is technically a comic book, but since I read the trade paperback collected volumes, it’s a long-running graphic novel to me. That’s my take and I’m sticking to it.

Saga is science fiction, fantasy, and family drama, all mixed into a glorious stew. It’s a war story between two groups, the Horns and the Wings, with always shifting alliances. But part of the genius of what Vaughan and Staples do is that, while the war is always in the background, and sometimes in the foreground, they concentrate on the true heart of the story—Alana, Hazel, and Squire. We get to see the world—make that worlds—through their eyes. Their joys. Their heartbreaks. Their tenacity in the face of sometimes overwhelming odds. And as always, Hazel’s narration, her asides, provide crucial information.

In Volume 11, Hazel and her family are living on the street, struggling to survive. Meanwhile, the return of dangerous characters from their past threaten their existence.

In Volume 12, Alana has accepted a potentially deadly new role amidst shifting political alliances, and Hazel has made a new friend that changes their family dynamic.

As long as Vaughan and Staples are willing to continue this audacious, intoxicating high-wire act of creativity, I will be there for it. If you haven’t yet discovered the magic that is Saga, do yourself a favor and do it. I promise you won’t be disappointed.

I haven’t read the books Matt Dinniman is most famous for, the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. I’ve heard nothing but raves about those novels, but as I’m not much of a gamer (I still firmly believe that the finest video game ever created was Mario 64), I wasn’t sure they were for me. Still, when an ARC of Dinniman’s new, stand-alone novel became available and I read the description, I was intrigued, and I took a chance.

I’m so glad I did, because Operation Bounce House is a ton of fun.

New Sonora is a planet far from Earth, colonized by humans from generation ships that left the home planet hundreds of years ago. Despite many setbacks, some of them catastrophic, the largely agrarian civilization is thriving, due in part to the guidance of the AI intelligence and agriculture bots that help run the family ranch where most of the story takes place. The settlers are looking forward to a transfer gate finally opening, which will give them instant travel to, and communication with, Earth.

And then everything goes to hell, when the settlers are attacked by war machines piloted by remote gamers back on Earth, thanks to a game called Operation Bounce House. The settlers much come together and fight for their lives against advanced technology and overwhelming odds, with only their ingenuity, their bravery, and a mediocre rock band to save them.

Dinniman excels at creating fully-realized characters you’ll root for, and does some truly exceptional world-building. And somehow, while building tension, amidst life and death stakes, he manages to inject laugh-out-loud humor when you least expect it. Like I said earlier, Operation Bounce House is a ton of fun.

This novel reminded me, in the best ways, of authors like Heinlein and Varley, and novels like The Forever Way, Old Man’s War, Ender’s Game, and Armada, but Dinniman has his own story to tell, and he does it well.

Operation Bounce House will be published February 10, 2026, and is available for pre-order now. Don’t miss this one.

I know Chizmar through Chasing the Boogeyman, a riveting serial killer novel, and the Gwendy’s Button Box trilogy, a wonderful set of novels that leapfrog through various genres. Two of the Gwendy books were written with Stephen King, and speaking of King, he says, on the cover of Memorials, that Chizmar’s stores are, “creepy, eerie, and propulsive. Noboby does suburban horror better.”

When it comes to Memorials, King, who knows a thing or two about horror, couldn’t be more right. This is a creepy, compulsively readable novel. The setup is fiendishly simple: three college students set off on a week-long journey into the Pennsylvania backroads to film a documentary on roadside memorials. The three students, two men and a woman, are thrown together by happenstance, but soon form an inseparable bond. Chizmar does a brilliant job of letting us get to know them, and like them, through their interactions with each other and the people they meet along the way.

As an aside, do you get nervous when a horror author makes you care about characters at the beginning, because you just know they’re going to do terrible things to them eventually. Just me?

Anyway, things soon take a sinister, unsettling turn, as their trip into the Appalachian countryside becomes filled with strange symbols, unexplained events, and locals who may not be what they seem. Chizmar takes his time, but sets the hooks in deep. Memorials is a dark, twisty thriller not to be missed.

By my count, Never Flinch is Stephen King’s 6th novel featuring the character Holly Gibney. It’s not my favorite Holly novel (that would be The Outsider) but it’s a solid and very welcome addition. At this point, I think Holly is one of King’s most successful creations, and I’m guessing by how often she’s appeared that he agrees.

Never Flinch follows two parallel tracks—a feminist speaker with a stalker who hires Holly to be her body guard, and a serial killer targeting innocent people in the name of a man who was unjustly imprisoned and subsequently murdered while incarcerated. While it takes a little while for King to set up his chess pieces, once the two stories begin to intertwine and come together, it’s a breathless and satisfying race to the end of the novel.

King brings back some characters we’ve met before, including Barbara and Jerome, and introduces some new ones—police officer Izzy Jaynes and soul singer Sista Bessie in particular. King is still a master at creating characters that you’ll either root for or hate. And there’s no one better at ratcheting up tension.

Chances are, if you’re a King fan, you’ve already read Never Flinch. If not, give it a read. It’s a good one.

I rarely read two books by the same author back to back—so many books, so little time, pesky things like working and sleeping getting in the way—but it happened with S.A. Cosby’s one-two punch of Blacktop Wasteland and Razorblade Tears. Here was an author writing crime fiction as good as anyone in the business, with ferociously feral criminals and flawed but deeply human good guys. Set in Virginia, Cosby’s stories are lean, violent, and relentless. He’s not afraid to tackle tough subjects like racism and homophobia. Call it southern gothic or gritty noir, Cosby is a modern master of his craft.

Like its predecessors, King of Ashes is set in Virginia, in this case the crumbling, crime-ridden town of Jefferson Run. When his father is severely injured in a car accident, Roman Carruthers is drawn home to Jefferson Run from his glitzy life in Atlanta as a financial planner for the rich and famous. There he finds his sister Neveah desperately trying to keep the family Crematorium business from going under, and his drug-addicted brother Dante in debt to a pair of psychotic brothers who hold the town in their bloody grip.

Roman soon finds himself deeply involved in the brothers’ criminal enterprises, trying against all odds to keep his brother and sister alive. Roman is no stranger to bending the law for his high-end financial clients, but this is something all-together different. As the bodies begin to pile up, the furnace at the Carruthers Crematorium is working overtime, and Roman finds himself crossing lines he never thought he would cross.

Cosby reminds me at times of Joe R. Lansdale in his eloquent depictions of the chaotic, violent side of crime, and of Harry Crews in his merciless dissection of the American south. But he’s a true original, plowing the fertile ground of southern Virginia as a relatively new but superb voice in crime fiction. King of Ashes is a more-than-worthy addition to Cosby’s already impressive resume.

You know what I love in a piece of fiction? Well, a lot of things, but when it comes to The Night That Finds Us All by John Hornor Jacobs, I love it’s sense of authenticity. Authenticity in place, in scene, in characters—Jacobs nails it all.

The Night That Finds Us All is set on a huge, hundred-year-old sailboat as it attempts to makes the journey from Seattle to London. Jacobs makes you feel the salt spray in your face, the wind singing in the ropes, the suffocating claustrophobia below deck. When his characters talk, it’s in the language of seasoned sailors, technical terms and jargon intermixed and lived-in. Like I said, authentic.

Samantha Vines is an alcoholic, world-weary sailor on the skids, broke and desperate. When she’s offered a job to tend the engines on The Blackwatch by an old crewmate, she takes the job. The ship is an ornately decorated wooden monstrosity, supposedly haunted, which Sam doesn’t take seriously, at least at first. Things soon turn south, however, and she finds herself doubting her sanity and facing challenges she could never have imagined.

This may not make sense, in fact it may sound downright silly, but when tragedies of both the human and supernatural variety begin to occur, those feel just as authentic as the sailing. Jacobs has done such a miraculous job of grounding his story, that he makes you believe the impossible as much as you believe in bilge pumps and mainsails.

Jacobs excels in creating nearly-overwhelming creeping dread punctuated with moments of sudden violence and terror. And because his characters are so genuine and fully-realized, it hurts that much more to see them suffering. Sam, in particular, is a winning narrator, fighting her demons with equal parts humor, obstinance, and gritty bravery.

The Night That Finds Us All is a bravura performance, a novel of horror on the high seas that will haunt you like The Blackwatch. The novel will be released on October 7, 2025, and is available for pre-order now.

When I love a book, I want to tell it to the world. I will sing its praises to anyone who will listen (and even folks who won’t, as long as they don’t protest too loudly).

Most of the time.

There are, however, books that I love, and I mean really love, that I have to consider carefully before sharing my enthusiasm. Why? Glad you asked! Some books are extreme enough, transgressive enough, that I have to think twice before making a recommendation. Do I know my fellow reader well enough to suggest a book that for some people would be too much to handle? I’m talking about books like Exquisite Corpse, Tender Is the Flesh, Santa Steps Out, A Feast Unknown, books that I love but which don’t just push the envelope but shred it into confetti.

I’m talking about Eric LaRocca’s books. In a few short years, LaRocca has become a must-read author for me. They’re redefining what horror can be, and they’re doing it in the most uncompromising way possible. Book after book, LaRocca has gleefully served up a big fuck you to horror conventions, and I’m there for it.

They’re forthcoming We Are Always Tender With Our Dead is book one of the Burnt Sparrow trilogy, and it is their biggest, baddest fuck you yet.

Burnt Sparrow is a small New Hampshire town where a brutal, senseless act of mass murder transforms the lives of everyone involved. For a teenage boy named Rupert, the violence forces him to confront a family consumed by trauma and brutality. It forces the rest of the town to test the limits of vengeance, cruelty, and perversion. At what point does retribution cross the line and become just as evil as the event that ignites it?

LaRocca writes with visceral, lyrical intensity. We Are Always Tender With Our Dead is harrowing from first page to last, a portrait of cruelty and overwhelming grief. There are scenes here that will stay with you for a long time. Honestly, LaRocca has outdone themself. For me, this is their best, most fully realized work yet.

One final note…LaRocca has included a heartfelt content warning. Please take it seriously. This book may not be for everyone, but if you like your horror deep, dark, and devastating, with no holds barred, We Are Always Tender With Our Dead is made for you. It releases September 9th, 2025, and is available for preorder now.

I’m just gonna say it—Joe Lansdale is a national treasure who should be talked about in the same breath as American writers like Twain, Steinbeck, and Faulkner. His novels and short stories, most set in East Texas, confront violence, racism, and poverty in language that can be both lyrical and downright ugly, sometimes in the same sentence. And unlike those other fellas (Twain excepted) he’s often howlingly funny. He’s also a better dialogue writer than any of them.

I love all of Lansdale’s work, but the Hap and Leonard books are my absolute favorites. After all this time—the first, Savage Season, was published in 1990—Hap Collins and Leonard Pine have grown into complex, fully realized characters. Lansdale has done something downright profound with the many novels and short stories that make up their history. He’s let them age. In the new novel, Hatchet Girls, Both Hap and Leonard are feeling the years, feeling their own approaching mortality. They aren’t quite as spry as they used to be. Hap especially. Leonard isn’t quite as willing to admit he’s slowed down a step.

Hatchet Girls starts with a murderous, meth-crazed hog, and then things go off the rails. Any Hap and Leonard novel is rife with violence and danger, and Hatchet Girls has plenty of that. There are drug-dealing gangs, and a group of hatchet-wielding young women let by a psychotic woman with a taste for vengeance. Lansdale has a real knack for describing explicit violence that’s very much in evidence here. The action, punctuated by moments of black-as-pitch humor, is non-stop. As the bodies, and assorted body parts, pile up, the danger, to Hap, Leonard, and their loved ones, feels real.

Speaking of loved ones, Brett and Pookie are deeply involved in the story, and their appearance is welcome as always.

A new Hap and Leonard novel is always a cause for celebration. It’s like when good friends who have been away for awhile come back for a visit, ready to make up for lost time, hit the town, get rowdy, and generally fuck shit up.

Hatchet Girls drops August 19, 2025, and is available for pre-sale now.

As a reader, Joe Lansdale makes me happy. He somehow writes exactly what I want to read. To paraphrase a recent Stephen King title, I like it darker, and Lansdale always, always delivers.

As a sometimes writer, Joe Lansdale makes me pissed off. Despite how prolific he is—and make no mistake, he’s very prolific—and despite working in a wide variety of genres, including horror, crime, suspense, science fiction, fantasy, and often a mix of any and all of them, his work is always so damn good. He sets unreasonably high expectations for the rest of us. I mean, come on, Joe. Slip up once in a while. Write a shitty sentence.

The Essential Horror of Joe R. Lansdale is, as the title suggests, essential reading for horror fans. This collection is a retrospective of sorts, dipping into every part of Lansdale’s career, including some of his earliest work. While there is plenty of humor here, as there nearly always is with Lansdale, this is a dark, dark, bunch of stories. There are monsters here, of both the supernatural and human variety. Lansdale never looks away from violence, racism, hate, and evil, and he never allows the reader to look away either. In prose honed to a razor sharp edge, he plays all over the horror sandbox, from crime and suspense to southern gothic, science fiction to Lovecraftian horror.

If you’re a Lansdale fan, as I am, you’ll find many of your old, bloody favorites here. Mine include:
• God of the Razor
• Tight Little Stitches in a Dead Man’s Back
• On the Far Side of the Cadillac Desert with Dead Folk
• The Bleeding Shadow
• Bubba Ho-tep
• Night They Missed the Horror Show

Honestly, I could have made it easier and listed all the stories. Lansdale is a national treasure.

The Essential Horror of Joe R. Lansdale will be published October 7, 2025, and is available for pre-order now. If you’re easily frightened, or easily offended, this might not be your cup of tea. Otherwise, don’t miss this one.

Horror is a big, beautiful genre with a sub-genre for every type of reader—slasher, gothic, psychological, supernatural, folk, the list goes on and on—and I like them all, but one of my personal favorites is body horror. There a select few authors who are capable of doing things to the human body on the printed page that can make you set the book down, back away slowly, and go for a long walk.

One of the very best when it comes to crafting body horror is Nick Cutter, the pseudonym literary fiction writer Craig Davidson uses when writing horror. His novel The Troop is a masterclass, a stomach-churning, virtuoso performance that makes you read things your brain absolutely does not want to process.

Late last year, Cutter released The Queen, and it just might equal The Troop in balls-to-the-wall, gonzo, body horror mind-fuckery.

Margaret’s lifelong best friend Charity disappeared over a month ago after a traumatic event, and the missing persons case has gone cold. That is, until the morning Margaret discovers a new iPhone on her doorstep, with a text message from Charity. What begins as a harrowing scavenger hunt, a cat-and-mouse game with deadly consequences, reveals secrets that have been long buried.

Cutter tells this story over the course of just one day, and it’s a bravura performance, ratcheting up tension to an almost unbearable degree. At this point you may be asking yourself, hey Dave, sounds great, but where does the body horror come in? Here’s the thing…I’m not telling. I had to learn it for myself, and so do you. Suffice to say that it involves insects, and you may never look at those little creepy crawlies the same way again.

As long as you have the stomach for it, literally, The Queen is a helluva ride. I loved every minute of it.