Book #77 of 2025: Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell One of fantasy’s most truly distinctive protagonists anchors this delightful tale, achieving a tone that’s somewhere between Hell Followed With Us and Killing Eve. Our antiheroine narrator is an inhuman creature who begins her story by describing how she ate her …
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Book #58 of 2025: The Night Guest by Hildur Knútsdóttir The main problem with this horror novel is that it’s simply far too short. The heroine’s escalating situation is relatively gripping, but the root cause is still pretty unexplained at the end and the conclusion is hugely underwhelming. While I’m sure there’s some cultural variation …
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Book #55 of 2025: Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix Another outstanding horror title from author Grady Hendrix, this one focusing on the real-life horrific institution of mid-twentieth-century homes for expectant teenage mothers. Parents would forcibly check their daughters into such places for the duration of their pregnancies, after which the girls were strong-armed …
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Book #33 of 2025: Last to Leave the Room by Caitlin Starling Dr. Tamsin Rivers is losing her mind. She’s not sleeping well, she’s exhibiting odd memory lapses, and she’s going long periods without remembering to eat or leave the house. She’s also studying a strange House of Leaves phenomenon where her basement seems to …
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Book #27 of 2025: An Academy for Liars by Alexis Henderson The opening sequence to this horror-fantasy novel is appropriately chilling: our protagonist, standing between two mirrors in the bathroom, notices a distant figure in the receding reflections that isn’t behaving like the others. In fact, it’s slowly walking towards her, weaving through all the …
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Book #177 of 2024: Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder by William Hope Hodgson This 1913 short story collection consists of six entries initially published in various British magazines a few years prior, all concerning the titular occult detective, Thomas Carnacki. His methods are somewhat like those of Sherlock Holmes, but his domain is the supernatural and especially …
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Book #158 of 2024: Ghost Station by S. A. Barnes An atmospheric example of space horror, but sadly not as effective as author S. A. Barnes’s earlier novel Dead Silence (unconnected except for occupying the same narrow genre). The premise here is fine: a psychologist joins a small crew on a corporate excursion to a …
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Book #155 of 2024: ‘Salem’s Lot by Stephen King Author Stephen King has said that he wanted his second published novel to be a modern American version of Dracula, and almost half a century on, I think it’s fair to say that he succeeded in that aim. The parallels are there if you seek them …
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Book #151 of 2024: Stories to Keep You Alive Despite Vampires by Ben Acker I picked up this short story collection on the strength of author Ben Acker’s writing for the Thrilling Adventure Hour podcast / stage show series, and I can confirm there’s a similar cleverness propelling many of its loosely interconnected entries and …
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Book #143 of 2024: Compound Fracture by Andrew Joseph White YA horror / thriller author Andrew Joseph White’s third novel is unfortunately the first one that doesn’t wholly work for me, although I appreciate the continued #ownvoices trans and autistic representation. The strongest thing about this story, in fact, is the confidence in its characterization, …
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