Something amazing happens in Laird Barron’s The Croning. The hero saves the day simply by forgetting to act. He agrees to let his mind rot away (perhaps the most terrifying fate of all) while his witchy woman makes off with their newborn grandchild. That’s the happiest ending possible in this twisted tale that combines the legend… Continue reading The Croning by Laird Barron
We create rules as a way to manage our time, personalities, and behaviors. We make rules in order to control our lives and give order to the world around us. Rules let us agree on a common way of acting, of certain expectations being met, and of certain boundaries not being crossed. Rules tell us how… Continue reading Rules by Cynthia Lord
This is a good book written for a great cause; to help fund the medical bills of writer Tom Piccirilli. Pic’s colleagues in hardcore horror decided to pitch-in on a round robin novel to help support their friend. For that reason alone the book is worth buying. Sixty-Five Stirrup Iron Road is written by, and… Continue reading Sixty-Five Stirrup Iron Road by Edward Lee, Jack Ketchum, Brian Keene, Bryan Smith, J. F. Gonzalez, Wrath James White, Nate Southard, Ryan Harding, and Shane McKenzie
There is something beautiful and poetic about the splatterpunk redneck fiction on display in Edward Lee‘s novella Header (1995) and the long-form novel Creekers (1994). Lee’s redneck horror pays homage to Richard Laymon‘s novels of backwoods terror as well as James Dickey‘s classic, Deliverance. Lee’s work is violent and nasty, but his pacing and dialogue are… Continue reading Header and Creekers by Edward Lee
In the interest of full disclosure, I was fortunate to read an early draft of C.L. Holmes’s Our Great Abbess, and I enjoyed it so much, I asked if I could publish it. Read more about Abbess below, or go get it here. Our Great Abbess blends historical fiction and religious horror to tell a… Continue reading Our Great Abbess by C.L. Holmes
“Give sorrow words,” William Shakespeare says. “The grief that does not speak whispers the o’er-fraught heart and bids it break.” Joyce Carol Oates gives her sorrow words in A Widow’s Story: A Memoir, which chronicles the death of her longtime husband, Ontario Review editor, Ray Smith, and the first year of Oates’ widowhood. “Widowhood is… Continue reading A Widow’s Story: A Memoir by Joyce Carol Oates
We all want to be Hugh Howey when we grow up. Howey is a folk hero to those of us who dip our toes in the waters of self-publishing. After publishing Wool with a small press, Howey self-published his post-apocalyptic sci-fi series on Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing, where it found a huge audience. The following… Continue reading Wool Omnibus Edition (Wool 1 – 5) (Silo series) by Hugh Howey
Laird Barron writes weird. Barron is a good writer, but the stories contained in his collection, The Imago Sequence and Other Stories, are sometimes hard to figure. You’ll need a dictionary, good map skills, and a working knowledge of mythology, world religions, philosophy, horror fiction, and crime pulps to make heads or tails of these… Continue reading The Imago Sequence and Other Stories by Laird Barron
Is corn scary? It is a rather bizarre plant. It grows tall and fast and has vaguely human qualities, like corn-silk hair and ears. I never really thought corn was scary, until I read Stephen King‘s Children of the Corn as a teenager. King made corn creepy. But before King conjured the Children of the… Continue reading Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon
