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Book Review: Starling House by Alix E. Harrow
A haunted and grim gothic narrative, "Starling House" by Alix E. Harrow explores a dying town, Eden, Kentucky. Opal, aiming to aid her brother, accepts a job tied to the sinister Starling House. As eerie events unfold, she and the house's heir, Arthur, must unearth hidden secrets or face nightmares overtaking Eden.
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Book Review: Wrath by Daniel Kraus and Sharon Moalem
In a future much nearer than you think, where scientific experimentation is exploited for commercial profit, unwisely under-supervised cutting-edge technology creates a menace that threatens the very fabric of human existence. Wrath is the story of a lab rat instilled with human genes whose supersized intelligence helps him to engineer his escape into the world outside the lab: a world vastly ill-equipped to deal with the menace he represents. Modified through advances that have boosted his awareness of humankind’s cruelty in the name of science, and endowed with a rat’s natural proclivity to procreate regularly, Sammy has the potential to…
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Book Review: Horror Hotel by Victoria Fulton and Faith McClaren
This addictive YA horror about a group of teen ghost hunters who spend the night in a haunted LA hotel is The Blair Witch Project for the TikTok generation. When the YouTube-famous Ghost Gang—Chrissy, Chase, Emma, and Kiki—visit a haunted LA hotel notorious for tragedy to secretly film after dark, they expect it to be just like their previous paranormal huntings. Spooky enough to attract subscribers—and ultimately harmless. But when they stumble upon something unexpected in the former room of a gruesome serial killer, they quickly realize that they’re in over their heads. Sometimes, it’s the dead who need our…
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Book Review: Eat Your Heart Out by Kelly deVos
Content Warnings: Fatphobia (challenged), gore and blood Shaun of the Dead meets Dumplin’ in this bitingly funny YA thriller about a kickass group of teens battling a ravenous group of zombies. In the next few hours, one of three things will happen. 1–We’ll be rescued (unlikely) 2–We’ll freeze to death (maybe) 3–We’ll be eaten by thin and athletic zombies (odds: excellent) Vivian Ellenshaw is fat, but she knows she doesn’t need to lose weight, so she’s none too happy to find herself forced into a weight-loss camp’s van with her ex-best friend, Allie, a meathead jock who can barely drive,…
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Book Review: Creature Feature by Steven Paul Leiva
THERE IS SOMETHING STRANGE HAPPENING IN PLACIDVILLE! It is 1962. Kathy Anderson, a serious actress who took her training at the Actors Studio in New York, is stuck playing Vivacia, the Vampire Woman on Vivacia’s House of Horrors for a local Chicago TV station. Finally fed up showing old monster movies to creature feature fans, she quits and heads to New York and the fame and footlights of Broadway. She stops off to visit her parents and old friends in Placidville, the all-Ameican, middle-class, blissfully normal Midwest small town she grew up in. But she finds things are strange in…
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Book Review: Chatroom With A View by Glenn Maynard
Lizzie Borden took an axe . . . and so goes the song depicting the 1892 axe murders of her father and step-mother. Research indicates that a killer gene could be passed down through generations of family members, and evidence begins with Lizzie’s ancestor who murdered his mother in 1673. Chatroom with a View opens with a bone-chilling episode, and what’s left of Troy Cullen’s dysfunctional family keeps him even further from the normal integration with society. Troy’s life further unravels when his ex-girlfriend, Veronica, announces that she is pregnant. Troy loses control and plots to do unto others as…
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Book Review: The Toll by Cherie Priest
State Road 177 runs along the Suwannee River, between Fargo, Georgia, and the Okefenokee Swamp. Drive that route from east to west, and you’ll cross six bridges. Take it from west to east, and you might find seven. But you’d better hope not. Titus and Melanie Bell leave their hotel in Fargo for a second honeymoon canoeing the Okefenokee Swamp. But shortly before they reach their destination, they draw up to a halt at the edge of a rickety bridge with old stone pilings, with room for only one car . . . When, much later, a tow-truck arrives, the…
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Book Review: Moon Child by Gaby Triana
The Craft meets The Shining in this slow-burn Florida gothic horror. 18-year-old Valentina Callejas was raised to do what her Catholic grandparents say to do. But Valentina feels a different pull--an affinity with nature, a desire to read tarot cards and study the occult. After ditching her church retreat, Valentina flees home and ends up five hours away at Macy’s house, a half-sister she’s never met until now. When a mysterious wolf leads Valentina to the abandoned Sunlake Springs Resort, she meets the “clairs,” young psychics drawn to the hotel’s haunted history. They’ve been waiting for her, they say, to…
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Can’t Wait Wednesday (1/20/21)
If you’re like me, you’re probably glued to Inauguration news right now. In case you’re taking a break though, it’s time to share what upcoming book I’m super excited for! Are you ready? Today’s pick is a little on the creepier side. I can’t deny that I love a good scare, but what I REALLY love is female written horror. This book looks SO GOOD. Want to join me in fawning over it? Cassandra Khaw’s Nothing But Blackened Teeth is a gorgeously creepy haunted house tale, steeped in Japanese folklore and full of devastating twists. A Heian-era mansion stands abandoned, its foundations…
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The Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher
A young woman discovers a strange portal in her uncle’s house, leading to madness and terror in this gripping new novel. Pray they are hungry. Kara finds these words in the mysterious bunker that she’s discovered behind a hole in the wall of her uncle’s house. Freshly divorced and living back at home, Kara now becomes obsessed with these cryptic words and starts exploring the peculiar bunker—only to discover that it holds portals to countless alternate realities. But these places are haunted by creatures that seem to hear thoughts…and the more you fear them, the stronger they become.
