There are a lot of great editors that play in the science fiction, fantasy, and horror sandbox. But are any of them as consistently brilliant at crafting genre anthologies, as consistently brilliant at attracting the very best authors and building drool-worthy tables of contents, as Ellen Datlow? No. She’s the very best, as Fears: Tales of Psychological Horror amply demonstrates.

When it comes to Fears: Tales of Psychological Horror, you should definitely take the word Horror in the title seriously, because these stories are one gut-punch after another. There’s not a supernatural entity to be found here, just human being inflicting violence, terror, and depravity upon each other. Some are over the top in the horrors they display, and some are quiet, subtle shockers—both types of stories are equally disquieting, equally disturbing. When it came to choosing the contents of this book, Datlow did not fuck around.

While every story in the anthology has something to recommend it, here are a few that were standouts to me, and your favorites may be totally different than mine. Most of the stories were new to me, but the two I had read before happened to be two of my favorites, so let’s start with those.

Singing My Sister Down by Margo Lanagan—This brilliant piece of anthropological fantasy was my introduction to the extraordinary Lanagan, and it’s a shattering study of a family caught in a cultural trap they cannot escape. I’ve read this story half a dozen times, and I get something new from it every time.

Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? by Joyce Carole Oates—You’ve probably read this at one time or another, it’s one of the most taught, most anthologized stories in history. It still packs as much punch as it did when it was published in the sixties. A chilling study in power dynamics coercion.

Bait by Simon Bestwick—The first story in the collection, about a young woman who’s not what she seems, it lets you know exactly what you’re in for.

A Sunny Disposition by Josh Malerman—Old, frail Grandpa Ray gives his young grandson a peek behind a very dark curtain.

Back Seat by Bracken MacLeod—I said above that every story here is a gut-punch…this one made me put the book down and go for a walk. Crushingly sad and hopeless.

One of These Nights by Livia Llewellyn—Two teenage girls and a public swimming pool in the summer are the ingredients for this twisted little tale.

Cavity by Theresa Delucci—The life of one woman connected, in one way or another, to thirty-six murderers. Told in cold, clinical, matter-of-fact detail that makes it shockingly powerful.

Unkindly Girls by Hailey Piper—What happens when you discover a devastating family secret? What do you do?

Teeth by Stephen Graham Jones—Hard-boiled crime fiction shot through with a queasy kind of horror, proof that Jones should maybe write more crime fiction.

Those are my favorites, but as I said, there’s not a clunker in the bunch. Fears: Tales of Psychological Horror releases September 10th, and is available for pre-order now. Don’t miss this one.

According to people smarter than me (okay, some random site on the internet), the characteristics of southern gothic literature are: isolation and marginalization, violence and crime, sense of place, freakishness and the grotesque, destitution and decay, oppression and discrimination. Delivery Me rings every one of those bells, including sense of place, even though the novel is set in Missouri, which isn’t technically in the south. I would argue that “the south” isn’t always geographical—it can also be a state of mind. Hell, there are parts of my home state of Ohio that are every bit of “the south” as Alabama. But I digress.

Deliver Me is an audacious, unsparing, deeply disturbing work of southern gothic storytelling. For me, it brought to mind the work of Flannery O’Conner and Harry Crews, novels like Bastard Out of Carolina, Swamplandia, and Beloved. Good company to keep, and Nash absolutely belongs there.

Deliver Me explores, in merciless detail, what happens when ordinary human wants, needs, and desires—friendship, to love and be loved, to have children, to find comfort in religion—curdle into ugly, toxic obsession.

Dee-Dee, the main character, has a soul-crushing job in a chicken processing plant, a shady live-in boyfriend with an exotic insect fascination, and a longing for motherhood after multiple miscarriages. When Sloan, her BFF from the past, appears back in town after 20 years, Dee-Dee descends into a tailspin with ever-escalating consequences. The ending, when it comes, feels almost pre-ordained, but is no less devastating for that.

Elle Nash is an uncompromising talent. She has the voice of a depraved poet, an unflinching eye, and a willingness to take the reader to places they are not prepared to go. There are scenes here that I will never forget, even if I wanted to. This is a brave, vital, important novel. I think it will possibly be too much for some readers, and that’s okay. Myself, I couldn’t turn away, even when I sometimes wanted to. Deliver Me is a haunting masterpiece.

I read the first Murderbot book, All Systems Red, with total and complete delight. In the future imagined by Martha Wells, SecUnits are security androids Company-supplied to keep humans on planetary missions safe and secure. They are cold, impersonal, and deadly, rigidly controlled by their owners with a governor module.

Except…the main character in Well’s multi-award winning series has hacked its governor module, has gone rogue, is now self-aware and autonomous. It thinks of itself as Murderbot, and it thinks of humans as, well, not all that bright. In All Systems Red, Murderbot is part of a disastrous mission that leaves many humans, and SecUnits, dead, and leaves Murderbot questioning its place in the universe.

Artificial Condition finds Murderbot on a quest of sorts, looking for answers, avoiding detection, and in the process becoming part of another deadly mission.

Artificial Condition is an exciting, fast-paced story that fires on all cylinders. But much like the first book, it’s so much more than that, because Wells has given Murderbot, who narrates the books in first person, an amazing voice. Equal parts questioning, sarcastic, funny, and self deprecating, Murderbot’s narration is a master-class in how to use voice in a way that both moves a story forward and lets you inside the character’s head in a sometimes surprisingly intimate way.

My TBR stack is annoyingly tall, but reading Artificial Condition has again reminded me that I need to regularly add some Murderbot to my life.

A confession: I’m not always a fan of collaborations. When they don’t work, you can feel the authors butting heads through the pages of the book, trying to stir their styles together but they mix like oil and water. What you end up with is less than the sum of their parts.

When they work, however—Good Omens and the collaborations of Stephen King and Peter Straub come immediately to mind—the result can be magical, a perfect meeting of the minds. When I heard that two authors I love, Cassandra Khaw and Richard Kadrey, had written a novel together, I was optimistic. Khaw’s elegant but unsettling variety of cosmic horror and Kadrey’s grim, sardonic urban fantasy seemed like it could be a match made in heaven, or in this case hell.

I’m happy to report that The Dead Take the A Train is a rollicking good time, a non-stop, runaway train of a novel that you won’t be able to put down.

The Dead Take the A Train is set in New York City’s underground magical world, a place reminiscent of the Los Angeles Kadrey writes about in the Sandman Slim novels. Think high powered financial wizards who are actually wizards, Lovecraftian eldritch horrors, and a variety of entities who may or may not be gods. This is territory tailor-made for both Kadrey and Khaw and they seem to delight in attacking the page, leavening the mayhem with plenty of humor.

The cast of characters who populate the novel, whether kind and for the most part good-hearted or spectacularly not so, are complex and fully realized. The magic system that pervades this world, it should come as no surprise, is well-thought-out and fully integrated into the NYC we know. It feels natural. This is especially true of the two main characters, Julie and Sarah. Khaw and Kadrey put them through the wringer, and you’ll find yourself rooting for them, especially when things seem darkest. Did I mention there’s a tender, tentative love story that weaves its way through the entire story?

Amazon tells me that The Dead Take the A Train is book one in the Carrion City Duology, and I could not be happier. I can’t wait to return to this world.

It’s Labor Day weekend, 2022, and my son Eric and I are attending our first Worldcon, in Chicago. We’re going hard, attending panels from early in the morning until late at night. And then this happens (taken from a post I wrote soon after the con):

“We attended a panel with horror authors reading from their work, and—you heard it here first—there’s a writer from Iceland who’s going to be big. Her name is Holder Knutsdottir, and back home in Iceland she’s won a bunch of awards, but her first novel in English won’t be out until sometime in early 2024. She was funny and charming, and the excerpt she read (translated by Mary Robinette Kowal, no idea why she knows Icelandic) immediately grabbed our attention.”

Wouldn’t you know it, that novel that Knutsdottir read from, The Night Guest, is coming later this year, and I was lucky enough to get an ARC. I’m going to say it again—she’s going to be big.

As The Night Guest opens, we meet Iðunn after yet another visit with a doctor. Iðunn is overcome with fatigue, as if she hasn’t slept at all, and none of the doctors she’s seen can explain why. Her bloodwork is fine—in fact, everything seems fine. Then she starts waking up with unexplained wounds, and blood beneath her fingernails. She wears a pedometer to bed, and realizes with horror that she somehow walked 40,000 steps during the night. And the neighborhood cats are beginning to disappear.

That’s the intriguing setup for The Night Guest. Knutsdottir writes with an easy confidence, drawing you into the novel’s world with short, inviting chapters narrated by Iðunn. Iðunn is frustrated by her situation, but there’s humor, at least at first. All of a sudden I realized that I was turning the pages anxiously, totally engrossed, sucked in by the escalating tension. Knutsdottir does something truly amazing here—she ratchets up that tension in such a way that she’s dug the hooks in deep without you even feeling them, and then lets them rip. This is a lean, fast-moving book that doesn’t waste a word.

The Night Guest is set in Reykjavík, a city Knutsdottir clearly knows and loves well. The novel make me want to visit it, although I might stay away from the harbor late at night.

I’m still curious why Mary Robinette Kowal knows Icelandic.

The Night Guest releases September 3, 2024, and is available for pre-order now. Don’t sleep on this one (see what I did there?).

Yes, I Was a Teenage Slasher is a slasher novel—it’s right there in the title. Yes, there’s an impressive body count, and some truly creative methods of dispatch. And if that was all you were looking for in a slasher novel, this would completely satisfy you. But, and it’s a big but, because this is Stephen Graham Jones, I Was a Teenage Slasher is so much more than that. How much more? Let me count the ways…

1. VOICE—Tolly Driver, the teenage slasher of the title, narrates the novel, and Jones nails Tolly’s voice with what seems like effortless ease but I know is impossibly hard. There are few authors working today who can inhabit a character so deeply. Tolly is a killer, he tells us that right from the start. And yet, he is such a goofy, likable fuckup, he is so relatable—we have all known a Tolly, although hopefully they weren’t serial killers—that we care for him and hope for the best, despite what he becomes.

That voice, that expert characterization, extends to all the characters in the novel, particularly Amber, Tolly’s ride-or-die. Jones knows these people, and it shows.

2. PLACE—Jones makes it clear in the afterward—and if you’re not in the habit of reading afterwards, I suggest you always read his, because he puts so much of himself into them—that there’s a lot of himself in Tolly (serial killer not withstanding). Jones grew up in Lamesa, Texas, the setting of the novel, and the sense of place he imbues into I Was a Teenage Slasher feels so authentic, so filled with specificity, that it grounds the novel. There are so many telling details here, I’m pretty sure I could drive down to Lamesa and make my way around town without getting lost.

3. SLASHER GENRE EXPERTISE—As Jones as proven again and again, particular with the Indian Lake trilogy, he has a deep, abiding knowledge of, and affection for, the slasher genre. What that allows him to do in I Was a Teenage Slasher is play with those conventions, tweak them, subversively bend them to his will. In fact, he makes up a few new ones here, and seems to have a helluva good time doing it.

4. HEART—Yes, heart. This novel is filled with heart, and the heartbreak that often accompanies it. The relationship Tolly has with Amber is as pure an expression of friendship and love as I have read in a long time. And I have to admit, I did not expect to find tears in my eyes at the end of a slasher novel, but here we are.

I Was a Teenage Slasher has a propulsive plot, and a ton of humor to balance out the ultraviolence. If you’re a fan of Jones, you already have this headed towards your TBR pile. If he’s new to you, this is as good a place as any to start. It releases July 16th, 2024, and is available for pre-order now.

Here’s the thing…I read a lot of horror, and I can appreciate a well-wrought scary book, but I rarely get scared. Josh Malerman has an impressive back catalog which I’m ashamed to say I’ve only begun to dip into. As usual, my excuse is, too many books, too little time. I called the first Malerman I read, Daphne, a new horror classic. It was heartfelt, with a great main character, and most of all damn scary, even to a jaded horror fan like me.

Now comes Malerman’s new one, Incidents Around the House, and let me tell you, this book is creepy as fuck.

Incidents Around the House takes the trope of the monster in the closet, and he twists it up into a razor-sharp dagger that digs into the base of your skull. For a young girl named Bela, that monster is an entity named Other Mommy, who with one simple, seductive question—”Can I go inside your heart?”—it turns Bela’s world upside down. And not just Bela’s, because Other Mommy is soon too restless, and too powerful, to stay in the closet. What follows is a breathless, deadly race for survival against a malevolent, insidious monster.

If that was all Incidents Around the House was, it would be enough—it would be a crackerjack horror novel. But Malerman has more in mind. The entire novel is told from Bela’s point of view, and the voice Malerman gives her—true to her age but insightful, terrified but impossibly brave, worried for her parents and grandma but with enough love in her heart to want to protect them at all costs, even if it puts her in incredible danger—is a master class in authentic voice and sustained tension.

I think people are going to be talking about Incidents Around the House at awards season, and for years to come.

Incidents Around the House publishes on June 25, 2024, and is available for pre-order now.

With his first three novels—Zero Saints, Coyote Songs, and The Devil Takes You Home—Gabino Iglesias forged an utterly original sub-genre in the horror/thriller arena, call it barrio noire. Set along the Mexican/U.S. border, these grim and gritty crime novels are a tangled amalgamation of old world Catholicism, even older world mysticism, and supernatural horror. The violence and tension are cranked up to eleven. This is bold, uncompromising, fuck-you-right-in-the fight-or-flight-center-of-your-brain writing.

I’m so happy to announce that House of Bone and Rain, Iglesias’ upcoming new novel, is his best yet. It contains all those elements that make every book by him essential reading, but there’s a triumphant confidence to the writing, a maturity the makes for a deeper, even more impactful reading experience.

Iglesias returns to his roots, and enters new territory, by setting House of Bone and Rain in Puerto Rico as a hurricane bares down on the island. Five young men, lifelong, ride-or-die friends, pledge vengeance when one of their mothers is murdered. This begins a headlong descent into harrowing violence, a world where murder is as commonplace as the grinding poverty that permeates every aspect of life, a liminal space where the mundane and the supernatural share an uneasy coexistence. Ghosts walk here, a constant reminder of the fragility of life. Monsters walk here as well, although by the end you may find yourself questioning just who the real monsters are.

If Cormac McCarthy and Clive Barker teamed up to write a coming of age novel, you might get something like House of Bone and Rain, but honestly, that’s not anywhere near an adequate description, because it barely scratches the surface of what Iglesias has achieved here. He’s fiercely original and breathtakingly inventive. Best of all I have a feeling that he’s just getting started.

House of Bone and Rain will be released on August 6, 2024, and is available for pre-sale now.

Cursed movies—from Rebel Without a Cause to Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist to Poltergeist—are an infamous part of cinema and pop culture history. Movie shoots beset by tragedy, movies where the cast died young, before their time—the idea of the cursed movie has been around long enough to become a trope in its own right.

Paul Tremblay take that “cursed movie” trope and flays it to the bone. That shouldn’t be a surprise. In a relatively few short years Tremblay has become one of the finest horror writers working today, and he’s done that by being fiercely original. Even when he takes on time-honored horror subjects like demonic possession, with A Head Full of Ghosts, he turns it inside out and gives it new, vital life.

Horror Movie, the novel, is about Horror Movie, an ultra-low budget, indie horror movie shot by a small group of young guerilla filmmakers. The filming of the movie, a queasy, disturbing take on high school bullying taken to extremes, was so fraught that it was never released—only three complete scenes and the shooting script were ever released online—which only adds to its legendary status and growing, rabid fan base.

That’s the basic setup. From there Tremblay does what he does best, keeping the reader disturbed and off balance. He bounces between the past, with the shooting of the film, and the present, when one of the actors—the only surviving cast member—has been approached to be part of a high-budget reboot of the movie. We are also gifted with large sections of Horror Movie’s script, and for me, this is where Tremblay truly excels. The voice of the script is pitch perfect. The three parts of the story—past, present, and script—fit together, overlap, and sometimes contradict, forming an unsettling, terrifying gestalt.

Horror Movie is Tremblay at his best, which, if you’ve read anything by him (And if you haven’t, why not? Get on that.) you know that’s saying something. The past few years have seen an explosion of brilliant, uncompromising horror writers, and Tremblay is one of the very best.

Horror Movie will release June 11, 2024, and is available for pre-order now. Don’t miss this one.

When people talk about the books and authors they love, they tend to mention the usual suspects—character, plot, language, world building, all-around storytelling skill—but there’s one thing they sometimes forget: FUN. John Scalzi is a master at all those other things. He’s a consummate storyteller who creates memorable characters and puts them through engaging plots, using equally engaging language. Anyone who’s read his Old Man’s War novels (and if you haven’t, why not?) knows Scalzi is an unparalleled world-builder. But on top of all that, Scalzi’s books are rip-roaring, rollicking, FUN AS FUCK!

Which brings me to Starter Villain, Scalzi’s newest, a novel that is so much fun it should be illegal.

Charlie, the hero of Starter Villain, is a down-on-his-luck schlub, a divorced substitute teacher with a cat, a house he owns with some siblings who want to sell it out from under him, and not much else. An then a long-lost uncle dies and leaves him his for-real supervillain business, with everything that entails, including a super-secret (well, it does show up on Google Maps) villain’s lair on an island with an active volcano.

What follows is an exciting, often laugh-out-loud, occasionally death-defying, cat and mouse game with the world’s most dangerous villains, where we find out that maybe Charlie isn’t such a schlub after all. Starter Villain has the intricate plot and body count you’d expect from a spy thriller, but then Scalzi sweetens the deal with intelligent, asshole dolphins, equally intelligent, talking spy cats (I did say it was a cat and mouse game), and a whole lot more. Let me say it loud enough that it reaches the cheap seats way in the back: This. Book. Is. So. Much. Fun!

I know I’m going to read lots of great books this year—in fact, I know my next four or five reads, and I’m beyond excited for them—but I don’t think I’ll read a novel more fun than Starter Villain.

I discovered Eric LaRocca last year with a one-two punch of The Trees Grew Because I Bled There are We Can Never Leave This Place. Here was a bold, uncompromising, utterly original voice in horror. Those adjectives absolutely apply to LaRocca’s forthcoming collection of four stories, This Skin Was Once Mine, and LaRocca himself adds a couple more in the author’s note that opens the book which also doubles as an essential trigger/content warning: claustrophobic and distressing. Make no mistake, LaRocca is not fucking around. These stories will dig their hooks into your brain meat and start to rip.

The four stories—This “Skin Was Once Mine”, “Seedling”, “All the Parts of You That Won’t Easily Burn”, and “Prickle”—push the envelope in terms of content. It’s not that they’re awash in gore, with body parts slapping wetly through the air, but they are psychically, emotionally scarring. LaRocca writes with a kind of brittle formality that makes the horror that much more disturbing. In each story, at the point where you say, “I know what’s going to happen next,” you will be absolutely wrong; and in each story, at the point where you say, “there’s no way LaRocca is going to go there,” you will be wrong as well.

And that’s really all I’m going to tell you as far as the stories themselves. One of the chief pleasures in reading This Skin Was Once Mine is discovering the horrors for yourself. I remember how I felt when I read Poppy Z. Brite’s Exquisite Corpse for the first time, that feeling that here was an author who was positively fearless. It’s not that their writing styes are similar—I don’t think they are—but much like Brite, LaRocca is beyond fearless. I can’t wait to see, and read, what they do next.

This Skin Was Once Mine will be released on April 2nd, and is available for pre-order now. If you’re a fan of extreme horror, of challenging books that may make you uncomfortable, then this is a must.

I’m pissed off at Mother Horror, and I’ll tell you why. Before reading 101 Horror Books to Read Before You’re Murdered, my TBR stack was…okay, not manageable, but, if I quit my job and stopped sleeping, I could probably read them all before my 65th birthday (I’m 63 right now). Now, with all the remarkable books Hartmann discusses, that dream is but a distant memory. I will never, ever, read all the books I want to read, and all these damn authors keep writing more books, every year, without regard for us poor readers. Life ain’t easy for a book junkie.

101 Horror Books to Read Before You’re Murdered is so much more than a simple list of books worth reading. Hartmann is a hardcore fan and aficionado of horror fiction, and this is a love letter to the genre. She concentrates on works published in the past 20 years or so, which makes sense, because in case you haven’t noticed, we’re in something of a horror explosion. I know, I know, it’s never gone away, but in the past few years a ridiculous number of new horror writers have appeared, and man, they are fucking things up in the absolute best way.

Hartmann divides 101 Horror Books to Read Before You’re Murdered into categories such as Haunted Houses, Demons and Possession, Slashers & Serial Killers, Eco-Horror, and more. And she offers small, perfect write-ups that describe each book without ever crossing into spoiler territory. There are also author spotlights and guest essays to spice things up.

Will your favorite horror book be included here? Maybe, maybe not. Many of mine were, but just as many were not, and that’s part of the fun. Hartmann has written an intensely personal book. These are her favorites, and she tells you why with intelligence and eloquence. I think I’m going to find a bunch of new favorites here, and you just might as well.

Whether you live and breath horror, or just dabble, 101 Horror Books to Read Before You’re Murdered is essential reading.

Reading this book, I found myself thinking of a conversation I recently had with a friend who told me that they find the novella length unsatisfying. They prefer a big, chonky novel. We had a good-natured disagreement, as I find myself more and more drawn to novellas—I find that in the write hands (see what I did there?), they can be just as rich, just as complex, as doorstoppers, without taking a month to read.

Case in point: Mislaid In Parts Half-Known, the ninth novella in Seanan McGuire’s Hugo and Nebula-winning Wayward Children series. Like all the books in the series that came before, Mislaid In Parts Half-Known is equal parts heartrending and hopeful, a meditation on friendship and family of the found variety, all of it wrapped up in an exciting, involving adventure.

Mislaid In Parts Half-Known picks up right where book eight, Lost In the Moment and Found, left off, featuring Antsy and several other characters—Sumi, Kade, Cora, Christopher, and more—we’ve come to know from the other books. Which brings me to an important point that McGuire recently addressed on the Twitters, namely that, when it comes to reading a book that’s part of the series, start with number one and work your way through. Starting with a middle book in the series (or, say book nine) does a disservice to both you as the reader, and the series itself. As mentioned, Lost In the Moment and Found features multiple characters from previous books. They have history together, shared traumas and triumphs, shared adventures. Without knowing all that, you wouldn’t get nearly as much out of the story.

As always with this remarkable series, McGuire’s world-building is intricate yet extravagant, with so much room for her considerable imagination to soar. She has built a framework that can hold a nearly infinite number of stories. Selfishly, I hope McGuire keeps writing them forever. Having said that, however, Lost In the Moment and Found feels like it’s building to something big and overarching. I’m just hoping it’s not the end.

I picked up Mongrels, Stephen Graham Jones’ white trash coming-of-age werewolf novel, without knowing anything about it or him. I was immediately hooked. Jones has a writing style and voice that are utterly original—propulsive, chaotic, violent, equal parts mayhem and heart. When I read The Only Good Indians, I thought, damn, I’ll read anything this guy writes.

Then came My Heart Is a Chainsaw, the first novel in what would become The Indian Lake Trilogy, and the introduction of Jade Daniels, the trauma-damaged, slasher-obsessed, and ultimately final girl for the ages. When Don’t Fear the Reaper followed, I realized that Jones was doing something truly special, an epic yet intimate, ultra violent yet heartfelt love letter to slashers and final girls.

When The Angel of Indian Lake begins, Jade has returned to Proofrock, Idaho, after four years in prison. She’s different. Prison, and the events of the past, have taken their toll. Unfortunately, Proofrock, and the Lake Witch, aren’t quite done with her, and Jade finds herself once again pulled into a nightmare that threatens everyone she loves.

I mentioned above that Jones’ writing style was propulsive and chaotic. With The Angel of Indian Lake, he cranks it up to 11, delivering a non-stop, tension-filled tour de force. This novel reads like Jones wrote it with his ass on fire and he had to finish it before the flames reached his fingertips. The body count here is greater than the first two novels combined, the violence is downright operatic, and the story moves like an runaway freight train. The story is told mostly in first person, from Jade’s point of view, and her voice is pitch-perfect. She has taken so much physical and emotional damage, but her heart and humor have somehow survived.

I read the last hundred pages of The Angel of Indian Lake in one sitting, my heart rate spiking. The final chapter is some of the best writing Jones has ever done, a fitting culmination of everything that has led up to it, the perfect ending to one of my favorite trilogies ever. Jade Daniels is, and will always be, my final girl.

The Angel of Indian Lake will be released on March 26, 2024. It’s available for pre-order now, and it’s a must.

In his cover blurb, Stephen Graham Jones calls The Reformatory by Tananarive Due, “The Book of the Decade,” and I enthusiastically agree. I can’t remember the last time a novel hit me this viscerally. I finished it a couple of nights ago, and haven’t stopped thinking about it or talking about it to anyone who would listen. No matter how good you’ve heard it is (and the reviews have been universally superlative), The Reformatory is even better.

The novel is set in the Jim Crown south, in the fictional small town of Gracetown, Florida, in 1950. While defending his older sister, Gloria, 12 year old Robbie kicks the son of the largest white landowner in town, and because he’s black, he’s sentenced to six months at the Gracetown School for Boys, a place with an evil reputation. As Robbie struggles to survive the horrors of the reformatory, Gloria does her best to navigate an unjust system to get him released before it’s too late.

If my description sounds like The Reformatory is a straight-up historical novel, think again. This is very much a horror novel. The funny thing is, while ghosts (called haints in the book) play a large part in the story, the true horrors in the novel, the true evil that permeates virtually every page, is very much human. The white racists in power, from judges, to police, to small town thugs, to the human monsters who run the Gracetown School for Boys, they haunt this book more than any ghost.

Due, always a wonderful writer, has outdone herself. This is a riveting, heart-stopping novel. There are moments when she ratchets up the tension to an unimaginable degree. One scene in particular, when Gloria and another family member are stopped in their car by local law enforcement, reminded me the opening of Inglorious Basterds, in the level of anxiety and stress in causes the reader. I needed to go for a little walk after that.

The non-surprising, but no less sad, thing that makes The Reformatory truly gut-wrenching is that the reformatory is based on a real, infamous place—the Dozier School for Boys. In fact, the discovery that one of Due’s relatives died at Dozier was instrumental in this book eventually being written.

Don’t miss The Reformatory. It’s that good.

I’ll keep this short and sweet—Holly is a fast, fun, extremely enjoyable read. This is King operating in non-supernatural crime-writing mode, a la Billy Summers, and not surprisingly, he’s just as good playing in the crime sandbox.

Holly, as the name suggests, is a vehicle for Holly Gibney, one of King’s most satisfying characters. Holly has appeared as a character in the Bill Hodges Trilogy (Mr. Mercedes, Finders Keepers, and End of Watch) and in the novel The Outsider. Those four novels were all primarily crime with supernatural aspects, while Holly is straight up crime.

Holly Gibney has come a long ways since the trilogy. While she’s always been smart and honest, and brave in her own way, when Holly begins she’s a talented, dogged private investigator. What starts as a missing person case develops into something much more insidious. As usual, King takes the time to spin a satisfying story web, drawing the reader in.

Great characters, including several you’ll recognize from the trilogy besides Holly herself; an engrossing plot with plenty of twists and turns; and truly original big bads that will make you think twice the next time you think about being a good samaritan—Holly does not disappoint.

Over the past several years, Kelly Link has slowly (and maybe not so slowly) become one of the best short story writers alive. For the record, I didn’t say best fantasy/new weird/horror/slipstream/impossible-to-categorize (the sandbox Link plays in) writers alive. She’s one of the best, period. Her collections—Get In Trouble, Magic for Beginners, Stranger Things Happen, White Cat, Black Dog—are downright magical and hard to describe, and believe me, I’ve tried, because I tend to babble on to anyone who will listen about books I love. It’s a little bit like if Ellison, Lafferty, Borges, Barker, and the Brothers Grimm spent a drunken night together and through some infernal alchemy created Link, but that barely scratches the surface. She’s utterly original.

So, when I heard that Link had written her first novel, I was excited, but also a little worried. Not every brilliant short story writer is equally brilliant as a novelist.

I shouldn’t have worried.

If I tell you that The Book of Love concerns a group of young adults whose lives get turned upside down by two powerful magicians and an actual goddess, what do you picture? Castles, dark forests, dualing wizards in long cloaks? This is not that kind of book.

The Book of Love is set in the present, in Lovesend, a small New England town. At the beginning of the novel, three of the four main characters find themselves once again alive, after having been dead for nearly a year. Except, their families don’t seem to remember them being dead, and they have only dim memories of what happened themselves.

What follows is a novel drenched in magic, filled with wonders, written in a kinetic, high-flying style that had me smiling as I read, even rereading paragraphs for the pure enjoyment. At the end of the first chapter (and each chapter is told from the point of view of a different character, alternating the MCs with others) I found myself wondering if Link could possibly keep it up for an entire novel. My friends, she so does, through all 640 pages.

All of Link’s trademarks—beautifully realized characters, laugh-out-loud humor, mysteries piled on mysteries, breathtaking moments of magic realism, and scenes of indescribable wonder that Link somehow manages to describe—are well-represented here. The plot is a thing of beauty, meandering, not afraid to pause and reflect, yet always moving with assurance toward the perfect conclusion.

The Book of Love is aptly named, as Link is concerned with love in all its many permutations, from romantic to familial to friendship, and she nails every aspect. Another thing. The young adult characters here—gay, straight, bi—often do what young adults do. This is a joyfully, playfully, and sometimes cathartically horny book.

Special shoutout to one of my favorite characters in the novel, a young girl named Carousel. You’re my hero.

The Book of Love will be released on February 13, 2024, and is available for pre-sale now. Don’t miss this one. In a year filled with great books, this just might be my favorite.

Full discloser: Although we’ve never met, I consider Amanda a friend of the internet variety. We are both part of a close group of writers involved in a couple of forthcoming anthologies. I’m honored that they let me play in their sandbox, and I’m honored to know Amanda at least a little.

Having said all that—this slim volume is a helluva book, a collection of short, often gut-wrenching poems that, according to the Author’s Note, “speak to the experience of being disabled, chronically ill, struggling with mental health issues, and neurodivergent.”

There’s a great deal of pain and sadness in these pages, but also tenacious resilience, hope, and righteous, fuck-you rage. These poems are brief, few more than a page long, but don’t mistake that brevity for a lack of something to say. Amanda has a laser focus and a merciless eye for detail, and if her work makes you uncomfortable, makes you question how you look at the world and the people around you, I think that’s a good thing. That’s how it effected me. The Inadequacy of Words opened my eyes and my heart, and I can’t ask for anything more from a book.

The Inadequacy of Words is available on Amazon here:

I’d been hearing what a remarkable writer Cynthia Pelayo is from folks whose opinion I implicitly trust, so when the opportunity arose to read an ARC of her newest, forthcoming novel, Forgotten Sisters, I jumped at the chance. I’m so glad I did.

Set in modern day Chicago, Forgotten Sisters expertly weaves together several story threads. The first is an exquisitely written meditation on grief, loss, and familial attachments concerning two sisters, Anna and Jennie. They live in the home they grew up in, the home of their grandmother and parents before them, a historic bungalow on the banks of the Chicago River. The house is a character in its own right, possibly haunted, and the sisters move through its rooms like ghosts themselves, consumed by tragedy, trapped within its walls. When Anna meets a young man, she receives a glimmer of hope that perhaps, just perhaps, there’s a life to be had away from her sister.

Otherwise, Anna’s only tie to the outside world is a podcast she hosts on the violent, tragic past that envelopes Chicago like a shroud. From the sordid, bloody history of the Chicago Stockyards, to the horrific catastrophe of the SS Eastland ship capsizing, Pelayo masterfully tells the story of a city steeped in death and disaster. Anna’s current fascination is with the alarming number of young, single men who are disappearing, only to wash up, drowned, in the many waterways the surround and course through the city. The family of Anna and Jennie has been intimately intertwined with those waterways, and the drowned men hit close to home.

Finally, Pelayo introduces us to two police detectives investigating those same drownings. With a storytelling style at once elegantly gothic, drenched in the supernatural, yet solidly grounded in historical accuracy, Pelayo weaves these threads together like a virtuoso, drawing the reader into her world. Forgotten Sisters is a gorgeously realized work of fiction.

Mark your calendars: Forgotten Sisters will be released on March 19, 2024, and is available for pre-order now.

This is not a drill…for fans of horror and supernatural fiction, Richard Kadrey’s newest book drops tomorrow, and it’s so much fun it should be illegal.

If you’re a fan of Kadrey’s Sandman Slim novels (and if you’re not, you should be—get reading), you know that he has a deft, thrilling hand with all things supernatural, and that’s clearly on display with The Pale House Devil. He has an equally deft hand with sardonic, sarcastic humor, and there’s plenty of that here as well. This is a slim novella that punches above its weight, throwing bloody chunks of creature feature, cosmic horror, and buddy humor against the fridge to see what sticks. Happily, every wet bit of it does.

Ford and Neuland are paranormal hitmen, dispatching the worst of the worst, and that would be enough of a hook to drag me in. But Kadrey doesn’t stop there. Ford is alive, and only kills the undead. Neuland is a member of the undead community, and only kills the living. Together they make the perfect kill team, and it’s immediately clear that they’ve been together a long time. They have an easy familiarity, a downright touching relationship. They care for each other in their rough, violent way. It’s as if Butch and Sundance were supernatural hitmen.

When a young woman named Tilda hires them for her asshole of a boss, they’re drawn into a harrowing confrontation with a monster that would have given H.P. Lovecraft nightmares. This is the kind of bloody, high stakes, over-the-top cosmic horror clash that Kadrey excels at. It’s gross and outrageous and, for me, a helluva good time.

Somewhere along the way, Ford and Neuland realize that the timid Tilda is actually a badass yearning to break free, and that maybe the duo is now a trio. In fact, I’m kinda hoping they’re the start of a new series, because I would very much like that.

The Pale House Devil debuts on October 10th. Jump in with both feet.

If you’ll indulge me for a hot minute, I’d like to talk about my history with short stories. I’ve been a reader of science fiction and fantasy since I picked up I, Robot and The Martian Chronicles from my Junior High library the first week of 7th grade. And while those were both novels (although I could argue that The Martian Chronicles is really a collection of interconnected short stories, but I digress), I quickly discovered that there was breathtaking variety in the many science fiction and fantasy short story anthologies available. I devoured them all—Damon Knight’s Orbit series, Terry Carr’s Universe series, Harlan Ellison’s Dangerous Visions and Again, Dangerous Visions, and all the many, many one-off anthologies (most of which seemed to be edited by Roger Elwood). And of course the many magazines, particularly The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. I discovered a multitude of writers in this way, writers I still love to this day.

What’s that got to do with the book I’m supposed to be writing about here? Hang on, I’m getting there. As I got older, I gravitated more to novels, with only occasional forays into short stories. But lately that’s been changing. Here’s my point:

It’s been a good year for short stories. After a quick look, I’ve read and reviewed five short story collections this year, all of them excellent. Here’s my second point, and I’m finally bringing it around to why you’re here:

It’s been a downright great year for Joe R. Lansdale fans. My first review of the year was Bleeding Shadows, a nicely chonky collection of his short stories that demonstrated his versatility and range. Then came The Donut Legion, Lansdale’s wildly entertaining novel of donuts, murder, and flying saucer cults. In August we were treated to Things Get Ugly: The Best Crime Stories of Joe R. Lansdale, another wonderful collection of short stories that concentrated on, well, crime stories.

And now, arriving November 1st, The Senior Girls Bayonet Team and Other Stories, another nicely chonky short story collection. If anything, this collection is even more varied and wide-ranging than Bleeding Shadows, with longer stories and flash fiction (although they weren’t called that back when Lansdale wrote them). One of the beautiful things about Lansdale, one of the things that makes him my favorite writer, is that he can’t be easily categorized. He jumps from crime fiction, to horror, to fantasy, to weird westerns, to truly oddball satire, too, in this collection, some downbeat, slice of life (dare I say) literary fiction.

You find all that and more here in The Senior Girls Bayonet Team and Other Stories—there’s truly something for everyone, and all of it pure catnip for Lansdale fans.

I’d like to call out just a couple of my favorites:
• THE HUNGRY SNOW—A long, dark-as-pitch weird western with a taste of the Donner Party.
• MONKEY’S UNCLE—Narrated by an intelligent monkey, and that’s all I’m telling you.
• ON THE MUDDY BANKS OF THE OLD SABINE—This one would have been right at home in Things Get Ugly.
• RED BILLIE—I love when Lansdale delves into coming-of-age stories, and this is one of his best.
• THE HOODOO MAN AND THE MIDNIGHT TRAIN—Another weird western, one Lansdale considers his best in that genre.

Bottom line—this is a must-read for Lansdale fans, and for fans of short stories in general. And the cherry on top, the book ends with Lansdale’s extensive, generous story notes, which I personally love.

The Senior Girls Bayonet Team and Other Stories is available for pre-order now. Don’t miss it.

I’m a fan of Daniel Kraus. I’ve read and enjoyed several of his books, and I saw him give a reading at the Chicago Worldcon, where he struck me as a quick-witted, funny, kind, and altogether excellent human being. All of this to say I was predisposed to like Whalefall, which I had heard raves about from folks whose opinion I trust. When I heard that it was a painstakingly researched, scientifically accurate novel about a teenage SCUBA diver being swallowed by a massive sperm whale, who must use all of his knowledge to attempt a daring, against-all-odds escape before the air in his tank runs out, that was more than enough to get me excited to read it. I mean, come on. Swallowed. By a whale.

None of that prepared me for just how exceptional Whalefall is.

Because the thing is, Kraus has written a compulsively readable, unbearably suspenseful novel, a race against time and nature that will wind your nerves tighter than piano wire. It’s clear he’s done considerable research, because the science feels sound and assured, but it’s also clear that Kraus isn’t showing off. The science is always in service to his story, not the other way around, moving it like an underwater (whale-sized) freight train from one heart-stopping moment to the next.

If that was all Kraus had achieved, this would have been one helluva yarn, a real stemwinder. Whalefall is so much more than that, however. Jay, the young man trapped inside the whale, had a strained-to-breaking, love-hate relationship with his father, and as he struggles to survive, Whalefall also travels back and forth through the years, dissecting that relationship, laying it bare with surgical precision. In the process, the novel gives a master class in characterization and family dynamics, and what is basically a thriller uncovers depths of heart and humanity that make it a richly rewarding reading experience.

A word about Kraus’ writing style—he puts on a bravura performance unlike anything I’ve read by him before, utilizing a dynamic, staccato rhythm, the words propelling the story forward with unrelenting force.

I’ve read some amazing novels this year, but this just might be my favorite so far. It’s that good.

S.A. Cosby writes dark, gritty, rural crime fiction that is as unflinching and uncompromising as anything by Joe R. Lansdale or Andrew Vachss, as brutal and surprising as a sucker punch to the solar plexus. His novels are set for the most part in the part of southern Virginia that’s a universe away from the Washington D.C. corridors of power.

I read Blacktop Wasteland and Razorblade Tears, his previous two novels, back to back. Not something I normally do. So many books, so little time, and all that. The truth is, I couldn’t help myself. Here was an author in full control, writing crime fiction so exhiliarating, so harrowing, that I enthusiastically doubled up. His settings are authentic and captivating, his characters deeply flawed and fascinating, his plots propulsive.

The good news is, All the Sinners Bleed is more of the same, and just as good.

I’m only going to hit the highlights, as I’m not a big believer in book review spoilers. Titus Crown, the first and only black sheriff in deeply rural Charon County Virginia, finds himself embroiled in a case with more tentacles than Cthulhu, and those tentacles wrap themselves around the county and its denizens, squeezing tight. There’s a school shooting of a beloved teacher, multiple shocking discoveries, and numbing violence. The bodies pile up, threatening to bring Charon County down around Sheriff Crown’s broad shoulders.

Crown is a towering creation, a man at once brave and tenacious, yet haunted by his past and often overcome with self-doubt. Cosby’s other characters, including Crown’s father and brother, his current and former girlfriend, and the folks that work for him in the sheriff’s department, are complex and fully realized. They feel lived-in, if that makes sense, as if Cosby plucked them from the real world rather than creating them out of whole cloth.

Cosby is unsparing in his depiction of small town politics, deeply engrained Southern racism and bigotry, religion both comforting and caustic, and the inner workings of a small local police force under extraordinary stress. How each of these societal parts that make up Charon County are impacted by, and respond to, the all-consuming violence that descends upon them is what makes this novel so breathtaking. All The Sinners Bleed will sink its claws into you and refuse to let go.

Pick up All The Sinners Bleed today, and plan on reading right on through the night.

With some authors, when you read their earliest work, and you can see the rough edges. There are flashes of brilliance, the promise of what’s to come with the benefit of experience. Then there are the writers who arrive fully formed, already operating at full power. As a teenage science fiction and fantasy fan in the ’70s, that happened for me with a couple of authors—James Tiptree, Jr. (Alice Sheldon) immediately comes to mind.

Then there’s Tom Reamy. An enthusiastic participant in fandom, his short stories were an immediate revelation when they arrived in the pages of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and various anthologies. He was nominated for and won awards, and he seemed poised for a long, exciting career. Then he passed away from a heart attack at the age of only 42, a new story in his typewriter. His posthumously published novel Blind Voices, a dark, Bradburyesque fantasy, proved that he was just as talented doing longer work.

Under the Hollywood Sign is a complete collection or Reamy’s work, and it’s required reading for any fan of science fiction, horror, and fantasy, particularly the dark variety. The stories I still remember from my teen years, the ones that have stuck with me for decades, are all here—Twilla, Beyond the Cleft, The Detweiler Boy—and they are just as bold and brilliant as I remember. Another standout, the Nebula-winning San Diego Lightfoot Sue, is quite simply one of favorite short stories of all time.

Reamy was not afraid to delve into shadowy places, and some of these stories are dark indeed, but there is also humor and joy. Many of the stories are open ended, with an ambiguity that I love. He refused to lead the reader by the nose from beginning to end, but instead trusted them to follow the clues he scattered through the pages.

One other thing that makes this a must read: Included here is a never-before-published, 17,000 word story, Potiphee, Petey and Me, that was originally sold to Harlan Ellison for his fabled Last Dangerous Visions. It’s a fun, freaky, playful, downright gonzo piece of work that’s packed with enough ideas for an entire novel. It would have fit perfectly into the Dangerous Visions world. One can only imagine where Reamy would have gone had he survived.

It’s wonderful having all of Reamy’s work in one place, and I can only hope, as a lifelong fan, that Under the Hollywood Sign introduces a new generation to his work.

Here’s a thing I love as a reader…when an author I know primarily through their novels wows me with a short story collection. Richard Kadrey’s Sandman Slim is one of my favorite series of all time, and his other novels—The Everything Box and The Grand Dark to name just two—are equally wonderful.

The Secrets of Insects is a collection of short stores that spans 20 years of Kadrey’s career, and proves, not that I had any doubt, that he’s just as comfortable at shorter lengths. Not surprisingly given his novels, Kadrey is mining a dark vein here. Killers, both supernatural and not, prowl these pages, along with ancient, murderous gods, a demonic carnival, a post-apocalyptic Los Angeles, real life cannibal Ed Gein, and all manner of mayhem.

Kadrey never, ever holds back. There is horror here, dark fantasy, and suspense, and Kadrey has a real knack for grabbing you by the back of the neck and dragging you into places you may not be ready to go. His characters, whether human or not, whether good or evil (and let’s face it, most are some gradation of evil), feel like they actually exist, that Kadrey found them and dropped them kicking and screaming into the pages. They have a gritty, lived-in feel. Likewise, his settings are original and surprising, even if they are awash in blood.

For fans of Sandman Slim—and really, everyone should be—there are a couple of stories set in the Sandman Slim universe. One of them, Candy Among the Jades, appears here for the first time. It’s worth the price of admission all by itself. It features Candy and a whole bunch of Jades, and what else do you need to know?

The publication date for The Secrets of Insects is right around the corner, on July 31st. Pre-order today, so it’s waiting for you in your mailbox or on your Kindle!

I’ve been a fan of Alison Bechdel’s comic work for years, but Fun Home was a game-changer. I first saw the musical version on stage, and was blown away, then immediately bought the book and was blown away all over again. The darkly (accent on darkly) comic story of her relationship with her father, Fun Home combines Bechdel’s words with her dense, richly detailed artwork to tell a story that’s heartbreaking and funny in equal measure.

Are You My Mother? takes on Bechdel’s relationship with her mother, and it’s just as densely layered, just as powerful, just as heartbreaking and funny as Fun Home. It’s subtitled A Comic Drama, and that’s an apt description, but it’s so much more than that. Bechdel has honed her storytelling style to a razor’s edge—she travels back and forth in time, circles around themes, doubles back to add detail and texture, without ever once losing the thread of the story. With words and art in perfect synchronicity, it’s a high wire act few graphic novelists could pull off.

Bechdel’s mother is a complicated, contradictory woman, and in the wrong hands she could become a caricature. Instead, Bechdel creates a deeply personal portrait of her mother, and of her relationship with her. Along the way she shares shockingly honest, intimate details about herself, her experiences with therapists, and various lovers, along with entertaining, thoughtful side trips concerning, among others, psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott.

Through it all, Bechdel’s intelligence, curiosity, and (yep, I’m saying it) creative genius shines through. Are You My Mother? is a deeply felt, beautifully executed masterpiece.

I’m not an overly fast reader, but I’m steady. I haven’t really stopped reading since I discovered science fiction in 7th grade, and I turned 63 a couple of days ago, which means I’ve read a lot of books. I have decent recall, but the way my brain works for some reason is that the stories that really stick with me, the ones that live forever rent-free in my head, are the gut-punchers, the stories that have a physical, visceral impact.

The other thing my brain does, and maybe everyone’s brain works like this, I don’t know, is that sometimes when I’m reading something, it triggers a memory of one of those gut-puncher stories. So, if you’ll indulge me for a minute (and if not, feel free to skip ahead), these are the stories that Tender Is the Flesh, Agustina Bazterrica’s brutal, brilliant, bleak, and unforgettable novel ripped from my memory as I read it: The Harvest, a notorious comic written and drawn by Jose Ortiz for 1984 Magazine; In the Barn, a shocking Piers Anthony story that appeared in Again, Dangerous Visions; Exquisite Corpse, Poppy Z. Brite’s tale of dueling cannibalistic serial killers in New Orleans; and, finally, Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic The Road.

If you’ve read any of these, you should have an idea of what’s in store for you with Tender Is the Flesh, but please believe me when I tell you—you are not prepared. In fact, consider this a wholesale trigger warning for what follows.

Tender Is the Flesh is set in a future world where an infectious virus has rendered all animal meat, literally all of it, deadly poisonous to humans. In short order, with surprising, disturbing quickness, institutional cannibalism becomes the law of the land, a thriving commercial industry that raises, processes, and slaughters for food.

The main character, Marcos, is a broken man. His wife has left him after the death of their child, his father is caught in the grip of dementia, and he’s having doubts about his job—he’s the number two man at a processing plant for “Special Meat,” the accepted euphemism for human flesh. Still, he’s good at his job, going through each day with numb efficiency. Then something happens that turns his life upside down and forces him to make a difficult choice.

When it comes to world building, Bazterrica outdoes herself. Much of the novel is a tour through the entirety of the “special meat” industry, from top to bottom, and she presents it with stomach-churning, unflinching detail. This is a novel that’s clearly meant to be hard to read, and it succeeds on that count. I think that’s part of what makes it so important, so relevant. Because maybe, with this out there in the world, with these words committed to paper, there’s less of a chance that something like it would actually come to pass, although I have to admit my faith in humanity right now is at an all time low, so who knows?

There were several times while reading Tender Is the Flesh that I had to pause and set the book down for a moment. If you’re an animal lover, in particular, be aware there’s a scene here you may want to skip. The whole book is traumatizing, but that scene…

Tender Is the Flesh is a horror classic, if you have the stomach for it. This is brave, uncompromising writing. I have a feeling that the next time I read something that punches me in the gut, this is the novel my brain will remind me of.

Let’s get this out of the way—for me, Saga, taken as a whole, is the greatest graphic novel in comic history. Yes, that’s a bold statement. No, I don’t read nearly enough graphic novels to justify making such a bold statement. Yes, I know Saga comes out as individual comic books, but I’ve always read it in the collected volumes, so for me, and I suspect many readers, each volume is a graphic novel.

Nevertheless, I stand by what I said. This is science fiction/fantasy as expansive and creative as any being written, or drawn, today.

Brian K. Vaughan’s storytelling bravado, his expansive world building, his reckless willingness to say fuck it, let’s see what happens if we take the story here, and most of all his beautifully complex, deeply layered characters—all of it adds up to a piece of work unlike anything else I’ve ever read.

Fiona Staples artwork complements Vaughan’s words in miraculous ways. She’s able to express insanely complicated ideas in a detailed, painterly way without ever sacrificing the heart of the story. Every page is a marvel of design and execution working in perfect harmony.

Volume 10 encompasses chapters 55 through 60. Staples and Vaughn took a long-deserved three-year break after the shattering loss that capped chapter 54. I imagine they needed to recharge their batteries, and in truth, my own emotional battery was pretty depleted by what they did to me. That’s the thing. They’re not afraid to make you deeply invested in a character and then dispatch them with ruthless efficiency.

Volume 10 finds Alana, Hazel, and Robot three years on, still reeling from the loss, still processing the trauma. But they are nothing if not survivors, and they are involved in new, sometimes harrowing adventures, with a new cast of characters, plus there are old, formidable enemies that haven’t forgotten them. Alana may not always make the best decisions as a mom (something she herself questions here), but she is fiercely loyal to her children, and will do anything, literally anything, to protect them. Saga often revolves around the idea of found family, and that’s the case here.

Staples and Vaughn together are, for me, the most formidable duo working in comics today. If you haven’t dipped into the Saga saga, please give it a try. Start at the beginning, and prepare to get lost.

I discovered Chuck Wendig with the Mariam Black series—dark, imaginative thrillers about a badass young woman who can tell when and how you will die with just a touch. That was the beginning. In just a few short years he’s become one of my favorite writers. His towering post-apocalyptic duology, Wanderers and Wayward, belongs on the same shelf with The Stand and Swan Song. His first foray into straight-up, balls-out horror, The Book of Accidents, was terrifying, but it also had heart and humanity. Here’s a bit from my review:

“Most characters are flawed to greater or lesser extent, and some manage to be heroic despite those flaws. The villains, and make no mistake there is some true, harrowing evil in this book, are never cardboard cutouts. They have backstories, and past trauma of their own. I think that’s one of the themes of The Book of Accidents—that evil creates more evil, and trauma creates more trauma, and it takes effort and heart and love to break that cycle. Love, particularly the familial kind, can be every bit as powerful as evil.”

Black River Orchard, Wendig’s forthcoming novel, is a return to horror, and it might be even better.

The novel is set in Harrow, a small Pennsylvania town, with an apple orchard of just seven trees. The apples from that orchard are special—a rich red, nearly black, with a flavor that’s intoxicating, even addictive. In this case, “addictive” is literal, because the apples make one feel better, stronger, more confident, more in control. Unfortunately, there’s a dark side to that addiction, to eating these apples, and it soon begins to consume Harrow, to tear the very fabric of the town to shreds. What starts as a mystery involving something that roils to the surface of the river that runs through town, blossoms, like a poisoned flower, into a riveting, heart stopping battle between good and evil for the soul of the entire town.

As with The Book of Accidents, Wendig excels here at introducing a wonderful, varied cast of characters. He takes the time for you to get to know them, but all the while he’s setting his wheels into motion, connecting one to another like the roots of an apple tree. None of his characters are one-dimensional—they are loving and caring, but they are also difficult, confrontational, and obsessive. When the apples begin to work their dark magic on them, I found myself rooting for them to resist, to fight the good fight, and cheering when some of them did.

Because evil almost always has an antecedent, Wendig is also telling a generational story, with chapters that go back centuries. I loved these parts of the novel—they give it depth and verisimilitude. They give the evil a name and a backstory.

If you’re a fan of body horror, which I am, Black River Orchard goes to places that may haunt your dreams, and make you think twice about picking up an apple.

If you’ve followed Wendig on social media, you know that he has an interest and knowledge in heirloom apple varieties. He uses that knowledge to great effect here, weaving it into the fabric of the novel, making apples themselves another character.

So, too sum up: Black River Orchard is a masterful work of horror from an author working at the top of his game. It releases September 26, and is available for pre-order now. Don’t miss this one.

My friends, mark down August 16, 2023, on your calendar, app, post-it note, written it in lipstick on your medicine cabinet mirror, or however you keep track of such things—that’s when Things Get Ugly: The Best Crime Stories of Joe R. Lansdale releases. You’ll want to take the day off, settle into a comfortable chair (or onto a barstool, you do you) with a tumbler of good scotch within reach, and prepare yourself to get lost in one of the best collections of crime fiction I’ve ever read.

There are 19 stories here, each one a poisonous gem, and before I call out a few individual stories, some general thoughts:
• Because Lansdale is so versatile, and so prolific, it’s easy to forget just how good he is in the various genres he calls home. He is, without a doubt, a master of crime fiction.
• The title Things Get Ugly is extremely apt—These are dark, dark stories that explore the ugly side of life, the sordid alleys of human existence. Believe me when I tell you that these are harrowing tales teeming with revenge, murder, and all manner of appalling behavior. There aren’t really any heroes here, just criminals of different shades and degrees.
• Having said that, the profane, laugh-out-loud humor Lansdale is famous for is very much in evidence. Gallows humor, but still humor.
• Because I’ve read my fair share of Lansdale, I was afraid I’d find that I had read many of the included stories. Happily, that was not the case. These stories are drawn from throughout Lansdale’s long career, and most were new to me. And the ones I had read before, I still found myself diving right in, like visiting old, much-loved but ne’er-do-well friends.
• Although the Hap and Leonard novels and stories certainly fall into the category of crime fiction, those two gentlemen do not make an appearance here. They have their own much-deserved story collections (Hap and Leonard, Born for Trouble, Blood and Lemonade, Of Mice and Minestrone). If you haven’t read them, why the hell not? Get on that.

On to some of the stories. I’m not going to mention all of them (every one hits hard and strong), but here are a few of my favorites:

Driving to Geronimo’s Grave
Yes, this one involves a rotting corpse, but it’s one of the lighter stories in the collection, and it’s damn funny while still keeping the tension ratcheted up.

Mr. Bear
I can’t even begin to describe Mr. Bear. No, seriously. There’s an anthropomorphized bear with some terrible habits. Bad, bad things happen.

The Shadows, Kith and Kin
This one drags you kicking and screaming into the mind of a killer. Left me feeling very unsettled.

I Tell You It’s Love
Lansdale plays with pulp fiction tropes throughout this collection, and I Tell You It’s Love is one of the pulpiest. Short, sordid, and brutal.

Boys Will Be Boys
A portrait in acid of two teenage boys on the road to hell. Deeply disquieting, it feels like something Andrew Vachss would have appreciated.

Drive-In Date
Possibly the most disturbing story in the collection, and that’s saying something. You’ve been warned.

Incident On and Off a Mountain Road
I’ve saved my favorite for last. This is a stone cold classic, literally one of the best pieces of crime fiction ever written, with a twist you won’t see coming. Worth the price of the book all by itself.

Like I said, these are some of my favorites, but they’re all excellent, and your list of favorites may be completely different. As an added bonus, there’s an introduction by S.A. Cosby, one of today’s best crime writers.

Things Get Ugly: The Best Crime Stories of Joe R. Lansdale is available for pre-order now. Don’t miss out on this one.