Category: The Fright Stuff

Hey there ghouls and goblins, I’m Jessica Avery and I’ll be delivering your weekly brief of all that’s ghastly and grim in the world of Horror. Whether you’re looking for a backlist book that will give you the willies, a terrifying new release, or the latest in horror community news, you’ll find it here in The Fright Stuff

Hey there, Tiny Satan. Please don’t murder me.

Scary children are a horror staple. Where would we be without the Regan MacNeil’s and Gage Creed’s of the world? When I came up with the idea for this newsletter, the first thing I thought of was this joke about horror movies and toddlers that I’d seen once on the internet and never forgot. It took a little digging but I managed to track down the author of the blog it was originally posted to, Jill Krause of Baby Rabies, and found what seems to be the original post:

It’s just… so accurate. I mean let’s face it: kids are natural horror fodder. They’re small, seemingly innocent, surprisingly sneaky when they want to be, and periodically they talk to “nothing” or say the most terrifying things in their little terror cherub voices.

So here’s to the scary kids. We love you. Please don’t eat our souls.

Seed by Ania Ahlborn

Jack Winter has spent his whole life running from his past and his dark childhood. The sort of childhood he’d never wish upon his six-year-old daughter, Charlie. But the past has a way of catching us up no matter what we do, and though Jack did his best to protect her, in the end Charlie found that the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. When the darkness in his past manifests one night after a near fatal accident, Charlie sees it too, and Jack is forced to watch his daughter change before his eyes as she is slowly consumed by the hungry shadows he thought he had long since escaped.

Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay

When the Barretts’ 14-year-old daughter Marjorie develops what appears to be acute schizophrenia, and all medical attempts to help her fail, the family turns to the church for aid. But a local priest’s suggestion that he perform an exorcism on Marjorie is tainted with suspicion when he also invites a camera crew to accompany him. Then tragedy strikes. 15 years later, Marjorie’s little sister Merry agrees to an interview about the events of that night, and as buried memories surface it soon becomes clear that what she remembers, and what she’s been told, are two complete different stories.

The Icarus Girl by Helen Oyeyemi

Like most children with extraordinary imaginations, Jessamy – the child of an English Father and a Nigerian mother – has a hard time fitting in at school. She struggles to make friends until her mother takes her to visit Nigeria for the first time and she meets TillyTilly. TillyTilly understands Jessamy the way that no one else ever has, but the more time she spends with TillyTilly, the more Jessamy begins to realize that there’s something very wrong with her new friend.

Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage

Suzette loves her daughter Hanna. She does. But when Hanna is bad she’s really really bad, and she’s only ever bad for Mommy. After years of school expulsions, and struggling to home school her troubled daughter, Suzette’s physical and mental health are suffering. Her husband may be blind to Hanna’s real behavior, but Suzette knows the truth. There’s something not right with Hanna. Her tricks are becoming increasingly complicated, and violent, and if Suzette can’t find a way to get Hanna out of the house, it could cost her her life.

Sour Candy by Kealan Patrick Burke

Phil Pendelton and Adam seem like any other father and son pair when you first see them. They do normal father and son things; they go on trips and eat meals together. Maybe Phil’s a little indulgent, letting Adam stay up as late as he wants and eat candy whenever he wants. And maybe Adam’s a little hot headed, but hey every kid loses their temper in public sometimes, right? Perfectly normal. Except Adam isn’t Phil’s son. Phil met him a few weeks ago in the grocery store, and Adam just… never went away. You might even say that Phil can’t get Adam to go away, no matter how hard he tries.

Fresh from the Skeleton’s Mouth

Over at Book Riot we’ve got all the spooky content lined up as we creep our way into Fall. Our contributors are discussing Gothic Horror, diverse YA Horror reads, Indigenous Horror books, and Mary Shelley’s timeless Frankenstein. Cant decide what to read? Design your ultimate haunted house and find your next horror read!

Hello, have you SEEN the cover of Daka Hermon’s new MG horror Hide and Seeker? It’s so gorgeous, and so creepy. I can’t even.

As if I weren’t already salivating to get my fangs on my copy of Vampires Never Get Old, editors Zoraida Córdova and Natalie C Parker have just launched the companion Vampires Never Get Old Podcast, providing additional content about the creation of the anthology and the history of vampire literature. Warm up those headphones folks!

Author Adam Nevill is coming back to a stream near you with the Netflix adaptation of his novel No One Gets Out Alive.

Speaking of movie trailers, maybe you’ve seen the one going around twitter for Freaky, the delightful meta-slasher, Friday the 13th meets Freaky Friday movie coming out in November from Universal? Well I’m obsessed. And if the wait until November seems interminable, embrace the slasher by picking up a copy of Stephen Graham Jones’ equally meta, and equally delightful The Last Final Girl.

As always, you can catch me on twitter at @JtheBookworm, where I try to keep up on all that’s new and frightening.

Hey there ghost hunters and ghostly haunters, I’m Jessica Avery and I’ll be delivering your weekly brief of all that’s ghoulish and grim in the world of Horror. Whether you’re looking for a backlist book that will give you the willies, a terrifying new release, or the latest in horror community news, you’ll find it here in The Fright Stuff.

Let’s talk about haunted house boooooo-ks.

If I had to pick one horror plot to read for the rest of my life, it would be the haunted house. No other plot offers such a wealth of story telling options. It’s a recurring motif in horror literature, with some recognizable tropes and beats, but it’s also a plot made of silly putty. The more a writer pulls the more it stretches, and they can stretch it in any direction they please. Why? Because a ghost is never just a ghost.

Steven J. Mariconda described the haunted house story as “amazingly flexible” in its variety of themes such as “good versus evil, science versus the supernatural, economic conflict, class, gender, and so on” (“The Haunted House”, Icons of Horror and the Supernatural, p. 269). In her critical study The Literary Haunted House, Rebecca Janicker adds to that list “capitalism, consumerism, domestic turmoil, and race” (11), and goes further to posit that the motif of the haunted house “affords a distinctive type of literary encounter with ideological forces, one tied to specific socio-historical contexts through the physical spaces in which hauntings occur” (11).

Put simply: A ghost is never just a ghost because it always represents something more than itself. Something that you try not to think about. Something unpleasant you try to ignore or repress until you can’t any more and it rises up to – quite literally – haunt you.

Perhaps one of the best examples of this phenomenon is Toni Morrison’s harrowing novel Beloved. Like all the best ghost stories, it’s ambiguous in its approach. You are constantly left wondering if the ghosts in question are real, or projections of the trauma of Sethe’s past. And is a ghost any less real if it is in fact a memory? Or are all ghosts memories? Grady Hendrix wrote a wonderful piece about Beloved’s place in horror history for Tor.com’s blog a few years ago, and in it he describes ghost stories as being “about one thing: the past. Even the language we use to talk about the past is the language of horror: memories haunt us, we conjure up the past, we exorcise our demons.”

Sethe’s guilt, the brutal violence she encountered in her life as a slave, and a history of racism that continues to haunt this country even today; all these things are the ghosts of Beloved.

In The Haunting of Hill House, another classic haunting novel, Eleanor’s anxieties and the emotional trauma of her shuttered life lived at the back and call of her overbearing mother, are either the source of, or a source of energy for, the forces that roam Hill House (depending on your reading). In Tess Gerritsen’s The Shape of Night, the ghost that haunts the main character punishes her for the guilt she feels for fatal mistakes in her past. In Helen Oyeyemi’s oft recommended White is for Witching, family history, family secrets, and race all serve as an impetus for the haunting of the Silver family home.

Hauntings come from us. From, as Hendrix pointed out, our past, and our fears, our sufferings, our longings, and our rage. We make ghosts of things that leave scars. Whether they be on us, on the physical locations where they took place, or on the world. And just like scars, Ghosts linger long after the initial pain has passed. They poke their fingers into our weak spots and the places where we still hurt.

Maybe that’s why I can’t get enough of ghosts. These days the past is a contentious issue. If you try to right – or even just acknowledge – the wrongs that left nothing but suffering and hatred in their wake, you’re “destroying the past”. But to ignore the dark, ugly corners of history entirely is to permit them to happen again and again, and never learn from our mistakes. And I guess for some people that’s rather the point. The past is a lot prettier when you’re wearing the rose colored classes of “the way things used to be”. I think that’s why, like Hendrix said, we “conjure up the past” with ghosts: so that we never forget. If the past is full of violence, pain, and injustice, then like hell should it rest in peace.

Maybe we deserve to be haunted.

Fresh from the Skeleton’s Mouth

Daniel Kraus’s forthcoming MG book They Threw Us Away is about discarded teddy bears on a mission to escape a terrifying dump landscape and find their way back into the arms of someone who will love them, and I am obsessed with the slightly creepy, painfully adorable cover. There’s also a book trailer!

Hailey Piper has a new cosmic horror book coming out November 15th, from Off Limits Press – The Worm and His Kings – and the plot promises a 90’s New York underground peopled with “enigmatic cultists” and “shadowy creatures”.

Rev up your CBS All Access subscriptions folks, because in the year of our Plague Lord Covid-19, the new adaptation of Stephen King’s The Stand will be premiering December 17!

Nightfire Books has an interview with Adam Cesare whose delightfully autumnal new YA horror, Clown in a Cornfield, is climbing the charts left and right! Have you got your copy yet?

Matt Redmon compiled a creature feature list of werewolf horror reads over on the Night Worms blog, and Kallie Weisgarber shared her eco-horror book and movie recommendations along with some tips on reducing your ecological footprint.

Emily Martin has also written a list of the Best Eco Horror Novels over at Book Riot, if Weisgarber’s list leaves you hungry for more!

Updates about The Haunting of Bly Manor (season two of Mike Flanagan’s Haunting series, this time based on Henry James’s eerie The Turn of the Screw) are finally starting to surface and I have ZERO chill.

As always, you can catch me on Twitter at @JtheBookworm, where I try to keep up on all that’s new and frightening.

Hey there horror fiends, I’m Jessica Avery and I’ll be delivering your weekly brief of all that’s ghoulish and grim in the world of Horror. Whether you’re looking for a backlist book that will give you the willies, a terrifying new release, or the latest in horror community news, you’ll find it here in The Fright Stuff.

Series Spotlight: Rewind or Die

This week in a new-to-The-Fright-Stuff feature, we’re putting the series spotlight on Unnerving Magazine’s gloriously retro horror series, Rewind or Die. Touted as the book form of your local movie rental store’s horror section back in the ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s, Rewind or Die is a fifteen book (so far) series of horror novellas that celebrate all that made classic horror so beloved. The monsters, the gore, the camp, the abundance of questionable fashion choices, a healthy dose of rock and roll, and even a little (or more likely a lot) of cannibalism. So here’s to the nostalgic joy of old school horror, and here’s to Rewind or Die!

Select Series Titles

Cirque Berserk by Jessica Guess

Nothing says summer like a carnival massacre. One night in 1989, at Cirque Berserk in the town of Shadows Creek, a group of teens murdered a dozen people, then vanished. Thirty years later a second group of teens, led by best friends Sam and Rochelle, decide to ditch their boring senior trip in favor of exploring the dark history behind abandoned Cirque Beserk carnival. One final adventure. Emphasis on final?

Benny Rose, the Cannibal King by Hailey Piper

A Halloween prank goes horribly wrong in Blackwood, Vermont when a vicious storm traps high school student Desiree St. Fleur, her friends, and the unfortunate new girl they were trying to prank. It was just supposed to be a bit of seasonal fun, inspired by Blackwood’s own dark legendary figure: Benny Rose, the Cannibal King. Now the girls are lost in an unfamiliar neighborhood, hunted through the streets by a figure straight out of the legend itself. Benny Rose is all too real, and oh so hungry.

Hell’s Bells by Lisa Quigley

Rock & Roll and Satanic summonings. Yes please! Four friends in 1991 who spend their time listening to rock music and dabbling in the occult. But when one of the girls, Hayley, becomes convinced that rock music is an evil straight from the devil, her determination to save her friends backfires when they accidentally summon the man himself. They find themselves trapped in a basement, face to face with real evil, and only rock & roll can save them.

Hairspray and Switchblades by V. Castro

Sisters Maya and Magdalena are determined to stay together after their parents die. Magdalena, the eldest, will do anything she can to make sure that happens, and to ensure that her baby sister Maya is able to continue the high school education that will guarantee her a better future. Even if it means Magdalena must give up her own dreams and taking up exotic dancing to make a living. But the San Antonio Stripper Ripper is on the loose, putting all Magdalena’s plans in jeopardy.

The Kelping by Jan Stinchcomb

Doctor Craig Bo lives a charmed life in a charming coastal town, with his wife, kids, and thriving dermatology practice. But as we know that sort of perfection is usually only, wait for it… skin deep. (You’re welcome). After being crowned Sea King of Beachside at a local festival, Craig’s life takes a strange turn. Something unknown is growing on his skin, his son is telling horrible tales about mermaids in museum attics, and his wife Penelope has been keeping dark secrets about her own connection to the sea.

Fresh from the Skeleton’s Mouth

Over on Book Riot, Danika Ellis wrote about the reclaiming of Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla in the 2019 Lanternfish Press edition, edited and introduced by Carmen Maria Machado

Nicole Hill over at Nightfire created a list of novels that explore the horrors of racism, including the forthcoming and much anticipated Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark.

Apex Magazine set up a kickstarter to finance a new run of the magazine in 2021, and they are now fully funded! Not only that but they have unlocked all of their stretch goals. It’s going to be really good to have this excellent magazine of dark speculative fiction back in print!

Hello childhood Goosebumps memories. Hello new nightmares. Seriously, how cool are these covers though?

Jessica, does the new stop-motion adaptation of Pinocchio really count as horror? Well it’s being directed by Guillermo del Toro so… probably? Either way, I’m excited. Just look at the cast they’ve got lined up!

I, surprising no one, have no willpower in the face of beautiful hardcovers. Which is why I jumped at the chance to preorder the first two books in Valancourt Press’ new Monster, She Wrote series featuring some of the often overlooked early women writers of the Horror genre. The hardcovers are currently $20 a piece instead of the usual $25 right now so, you know, strike while the iron is hot and the will is weak!

So this sounds amazing and I had no idea it was happening. I’m always a fan of supplementing my fiction reading with critical texts, and The Science of Stephen King by Meg Hafdahl and Kelly Florence falls squarely in my haunted wheelhouse!

As always, you can catch me on twitter at @JtheBookworm, where I try to keep up on all that’s new and frightening.

Hello my fellow Nightmares and Tiny Terrors, I’m Jessica Avery and I’ll be delivering your weekly brief of all that’s ghoulish and grim in the world of Horror. Whether you’re looking for a backlist book that will give you the willies, a terrifying new release, or the latest in horror community news, you’ll find it here in The Fright Stuff.

This week’s unnerving delights are brought to you by the fruitful world of Middle Grade Horror. Those of us who were baby horror fans, digging through the grade school library shelves for those few stray scary books that made it into the catalog and past the notice of concerned adults, remember all too well the joy of discovering new favorites. Of devouring terrifying tales beneath the safety of our blankets, by the light of a pilfered flashlight. Which is why this week we are celebrating all those bump in the night books introducing horror to a new generation of readers.

Backlist Middle Grade Horror

The Jumbies by Tracey Baptiste

Corinne La Mer knows that jumbies are just monsters made up by parents to scare their children, and they don’t frighten her. Until a mysterious, beautiful woman shows up in her kitchen, cooking for Corinne’s father and setting into motion an evil plan to take control of Corinne’s island home. With the help of some ancient magics, Corinne and her friends must fight to stop the strange woman before she and her kind take over the island forever.

Small Spaces by Katherine Arden

The smiling man is coming. When book-loving Ollie rescued the book about the smiling man from being thrown in to the river and destroyed, she never believed that the story inside might be true. But when on a field trip with her class she finds the graves of the “characters” in the book, she begins to wonder if the smiling man himself – a sinister, wish-granting creature, whose favors are sold for a terrible price – might in fact be real. Soon Ollie and her classmates are stranded in the middle of nowhere and on the run from with only an ominous bit of advice from their strange bus driver: “Avoid large places. Keep to small.”

City of Ghosts by Victoria Schwab

Cassidy Blake sees ghosts. Real ghosts, like her best friend Jacob, and like the ghosts her paranormal hunting parents, The Inspecters, are always searching for. When The Inspecters and their new TV crew head to Scotland, Cass finds herself surrounded by ghosts, and meets Lara, another girl who can see the dead. Lara calls people like them In-betweeners, tasked with sending ghosts to their final death. And with the malevolent Red Raven haunting Edinburgh, Cass has no choice but to embrace her new identity and fight to send this deadly ghost back beyond the Veil.

Recent and Upcoming Middle Grade Releases

Paola Santiago and the River of Tears by Tehlor Kay Mejia

La Llorona, the wailing ghost woman of the river. Paola Santiago and her friends know the rule: stay away from the river’s edge so that La Llorona can not pull you in. For most of the kids in their school, they’ve been hearing warnings about the river since a schoolmate drowned last year, but Paola has been hearing warning tales of La Llorona from her mother her whole life. Her mother’s tales are embarrassing superstitions to the science-minded Pao, so she plans a stargazing meet up near the banks of the river, the best spot for viewing the night sky. Only to find out when one of her friends disappears that her mother may have been right all along.

Don’t Turn Out the Lights: A Tribute to Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark edited by Jonathan Maberry

Don’t Turn Out the Lights is a collection of 35 stories from the authors of the Horror Writers Association, paying homage to Alvin Schwartz’s legacy. Subjects range from flesh hungry ogres, brains full of spiders (*sob*), and haunted houses, and are illustrated in truly terrifying fashion. The complete list of contributing writers is stacked with some of the most talented voices in modern horror. It includes, among others, Tananarive Due, Amy Lukavics, Josh Malerman, Madeline Roux, and even R.L. Stine!

The Girl and the Ghost by Hanna Alkaf

When Suraya’s grandmother died, she left Suraya a gift: a spirit that was hers to command. A pelesit, which Suraya named Pink and who quickly became her closest companion. But pelesits are dark spirits, and no matter how close Pink may be to Suraya, her dark side threatens both their lives. As Pink’s shadows loom large, Suraya and her pelesit must find a way to survive, or else be lost to the darkness forever.

Fresh from the Skeleton’s Mouth

Over at Book Riot Giovanna Centeno has your must-read list of Awesome Zombie Books, and Isabelle Popp discusses 3 New Thought-Provoking Horror Novels you should add to your TBR.

Did you hear that Mexican Gothic has been optioned by Hulu, ABC Signature Studios and Milojo Productions? I am ridiculously excited.

Speaking of Hulu, I apparently missed the memo that the adaptation of Clive Barker’s Books of Blood was even happening, but it will be out on October 7th, any my little Halloween heart is fluttering with joy.

Topping off the horror adaptations news with some R.L. Stine goodness, according to Bloody Disgusting Netflix has acquired the film trilogy adaptation of Stine’s beloved Fear Street series. Coming to your screen summer of 2021!

If you don’t follow book reviewer and artist Cassie Daley over on twitter (@ctrlaltcassie) you might not have heard about the awesome coloring and activities book she’s been working on: The Big Book of Horror Authors. Well it’s finished! According to Daley’s blog, “the book will include coloring pages that will show off each author’s portrait, plus a mini-cover or two of theirs that you can color in on their page”, and the activities section will have everything from mad-libs to crossword puzzles and DIY bookshelves. Follow Daley for further updates, including when pre-orders open up!

As always, you can catch me on Twitter at @JtheBookworm, where I try to keep up on all that’s new and frightening.

Hello Phantoms and Phantasms, I’m Jessica Avery and I’ll be delivering your weekly brief of all that’s ghoulish and grim in the world of Horror. Whether you’re looking for a backlist book that will give you the willies, a terrifying new release, or the latest in horror community news, you’ll find it here in The Fright Stuff.

Horror has a stunning capacity for hope. In the midst of the darkest of fiction genres, which makes its living on terror and dread, I have often found more cause to hope – and more reminders of the power of hope – than in any other genre I have read. Which is probably why I refused to put down Paul Tremblay’s Survivor Song, even though it wrecked me emotionally and petrified me with its eerie prescience about life in pandemic America.

You’ve probably heard of Survivor Song by now. I wasn’t joking about its almost prophetic vision of what we’re all now living through, and that – combined with the fact that Tremblay is an amazing storyteller with a merciless ability to wring every last emotion from his readers – pretty much guaranteed that the book would be a hit. But what I loved most about Survivor Song, and why I insisted on finishing it, was its prevailing sense of hope even in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. What we’re living through right now? This sucks. The grief, the fear, and the uncertainty are universal. As with the rabies-like virus ravaging the northeastern US in Survivor Song, COVID-19 feels like an invisible monster that we’re trying to fight with our hands tied behind our backs. Honestly, clowns with red balloons are starting to feel like a cake walk

(Sorry, Pennywise.)

But what are our options, really? Stop fighting? Just sit back and hope the monster doesn’t eat us? Hope the virus doesn’t kill our friends and loved ones but well it’s not like there was anything we could do? Ramola and Natalie in Survivor Song don’t have that choice. Natalie is nine months pregnant, and infected. The clock is ticking, and you can feel its inevitable countdown in the breakneck pace of this book. There is no giving up – there’s only fighting through this thing. Together. With determination, love, and hope. We grieve together, we stick together, and we remember one of the most vital lessons horror has ever taught us: monsters were made to be defeated, and all nightmares end.

We aren’t going to come through this unscathed. We’ve lost so much already and our whole world has been changed. And in the meantime, we all have our ways of getting by. Me, I find that horror helps. It reminds me what we can do, what we’re capable of if we are willing to be brave and try. Horror is a genre about survival. It’s fundamentally hopeful. That’s something Tremblay conveys beautifully in Survivor Song – and something I desperately needed a reminder of at the time. Maybe you need reminding too.

Stay safe, creatures of the night. I love you.

Upcoming Releases

Crossroads by Lauren Hightower

If early reviews are to be believed, Crossroads promises to be an amazing read. Chris’s son died in a tragic car crash, and the loss nearly destroyed her. But when a drop of her blood falls on his roadside memorial and her son’s spirit starts to haunt her, Chris has to decide if it’s really him or something darker. She has to decide if seeing her son alive again is worth the risk of coming face to face with the unknown.

Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica, translated by Sarah Moses

Tender is the Flesh paints a gruesome picture of a world in which all animal meat has been rendered poisonous to humans, and human meat has replaced it on the menu. Marcos works in a meat processing plant after the “Transition”, quantifying his work in numbers and consignments to keep from thinking about the truth. But when he receives a live specimen the lines Marcos has drawn begin to blur as he finds himself treating her more and more like a human being instead of a hunk of meat.

Weird Women: Classic Supernatural Fiction by Groundbreaking Female Writers: 1852-1923 edited by Leslie S. Klinger and Lisa Morton

In this new anthology, award-winning anthologists Lisa Morton and Leslie S. Klinger have combined the works of those late-19th and early-20th century authors that remain legendary today, like Louisa May Alcott or Charlotte Gilman-Perkins, with those that were the bestsellers of their day but have yet to receive the contemporary recognition they deserve. Included are tales of terror about haunted houses, ghost stories, ancient curses, demonic dimensions, and more!

Night of the Mannequins by Stephen Graham Jones

Given how much I loved Stephen Graham Jones’s The Last Final Girl, I’ve been so hyped for his forthcoming September release: Night of the Mannequins. A simple revenge prank devolves into a night of mayhem and violence for a group of teens a their fun is interrupted by an evil unknown. Is it a malevolent supernatural force? Or a psychopath on the loose?

Fresh from the Skeleton’s Mouth

This fantastic article from Vanity Fair about Black storytellers in horror includes a sneak peak at the new novel author Tananarive Due is currently working on: The Reformatory.

Blunt magazine has an interview with Claire C. Holland. If you haven’t read the poetry collection they’re discussing in the interview, I Am Not Your Final Girl, definitely consider adding it to your fall TBR. It’s so good. Seriously.

Becky Spratford announced on Twitter that the 2020 Horror Writers Association’s 4th Annual Librarian’s Day is moving all the delicious horror fun online this year! It will be a free event, and there’s an amazing line-up of authors and librarians who’ll be participating. For more information on how to watch and/or participate check out the updated event information over at RA for All.

Over at Books in the Freezer they’ve compiled a list of horror titles for August’s Women in Translation month.

As always, you can catch me on twitter at @JtheBookworm, where I try to keep up on all that’s new and frightening.

Hello Ghouls and Spirits, I’m Jessica Avery and I’ll be delivering your weekly brief of all that is ghoulish and grim in the world of Horror. Whether you’re looking for a backlist book that will give you the willies, a terrifying new release, or the latest in horror community news, you’ll find it here in The Fright Stuff.

This week’s horror is brought to you by the deep freeze of winter. Why am I taking you to the dark, cold depths of winter in the middle of July? Because (depending on which hemisphere you’re in) it’s summer, and summer this year has not been kind. In fond memory of the mercury in the thermometer that hasn’t seen 60 when the sun is out in what feels like an age, let’s talk about some horror that might just make us grateful for the heat.

The Winter People by Jennifer McMahon

A freezing Vermont winter, a small town full of legends and suspicious disappearances. Nineteen-year-old Ruthie, her younger sister, and her mother Alice live in a house haunted by one of West Hall, Vermont’s darkest mysteries, the disappearance and death of Sara Harrison Shea. When Alice vanishes, and Ruthie uncovers a hidden copy of Shea’s diary, she finds that history is threatening to repeat itself and she may be the only one who can stop it.

The Hunger by Alma Katsu

The Donner Party. The pinnacle of snow-bound terror. And Alma Katsu, with her gift for haunting historical horror, takes this grim tale and spins it into an elegantly terrible new nightmare. The party makes their way into the mountains plague by disaster and the gut feeling that something terrible is stalking them. When the group becomes stranded, struggling to survive the elements, and members of the party begin to disappear, fear and suspicion grow.

White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi

Ever since Lily died, her husband Luc and her twin children Miranda and Eliot have lived with both their grief, and the strange happenings inside their home. Whatever lurks inside the Silver house strains against the walls until they groan, and turns its rooms and hallways into a threatening, shifting maze. In the garden apples grow out of season. Miranda is more sensitive to the spirits than her father and brother, she can feel the women in the walls. Then she disappears.

The Shuddering by Ania Ahlborn

Blizzards in Colorado never bode well. I mean Stephen King wrote two separate books about the evil that lurks in a Colorado mountain blizzard. But Ania Ahlborn gives that terror new form in her winter creature feature, The Shuddering. Twins Ryan and Jane Adler used to spend happy days at their parent’s cabin when they were kids. During a snowboarding party at the Colorado cabin with some of their friends, a last fling before the cabin is sold, a blizzard strands the group. Inside interpersonal tensions mount, and outside monsters lurk in the snow, waiting to strike.

Taaqtumi: An Anthology of Arctic Horror Stories

Taaqtumi (an Inuktitut word meaning “dark”) is an anthology of own voices horror short stories from Northern writers. Featuring award winning authors Richard Van Camp, Rachel and Sean Qitsualik-Tinsley, Aviaq Johnston, and more, Taaqtumi is made up of tales of the darkness and the cold. From zombies to mysterious doors to post-apocalyptic towns deep in the Arctic, these tales of terror on the ice are not to be missed.

August Releases

Clown in a Cornfield by Adam Cesare

Clowns will always be the worst. And Frendo – mascot of the Baypen Corn Syrup Factory – is particularly creepy. Baypen used to be the heart of Kettle Springs, the tiny town Quinn and her father moved to for a fresh start, but then the factory closed. Kettle Springs is dying, split between those who want to see the town thrive again and the youth who are just biding their time until they can get out. That’s when Frendo the Clown goes berserk, determined to remake Kettle Springs anew, minus all those troublesome, ungrateful kids.

Harrow Lake by Kat Ellis

When Lola Nox’s father is attacked in their home, he sends her away to the safety of her estranged grandmother’s house in Harrow Lake, the eerie little town where her father filmed his most famous horror movie. But things are not what they seem in Harrow lake. The locals are obsessed with the film that made their town famous, people are disappearing left and right, and Lola is certain that something is stalking her as she tries to get to the bottom of the town’s dark mysteries.

The Living Dead by George Romero and Daniel Kraus

I couldn’t very well leave this book out of the August releases when it promises to be one of the top books of the year. The zombie plague of George Romero’s beloved Dead series walks again, bringing together a range of characters in a battle for their lives against the undead. Told in a series of interconnected stories, reaching from a Midwestern trailer park to a US aircraft character, The Living Dead is, as expected from Romero, as much about the struggles of humanity as it is about the rising dead.

Fresh from the Skeleton’s Mouth: 

Lookout and Chernin have announced that they will be adapting R.L. Stine’s YA horror series, The Babysitter, for TV! It’s one of a number of Stine adaptations currently in the works.

The Ladies of Horror Fiction announced the winners of their inaugural 2019 Ladies of Horror Fiction Awards. Congratulations to all the winners! Also, this list makes a pretty good TBR killer.

Both Off Limits Press and Nightfire have hinted that they’ll be dropping information about new books next week! Follow now to make sure you don’t miss the latest horror news!

Speaking of Nightfire Books, over on their blog Nicole Hill has created a list of 6 Horror Short Stories That Haunt Us, and the books in which you can find them, if you’re looking to add a little short fiction to your reading list.

Over on Book Riot, Blair Carpenter is revisiting the Scary Books that Doomed Millennials as Kids. It’s a feast of horror nostalgia for all those of us who spent our formative years reveling in the macabre.

Until next time, you can catch me on twitter at @JtheBookworm, where I try to keep up on all that’s new and frightening. See you there!

Hello, spook-pals! You’re in The Fright Stuff, Book Riot’s weekly horror newsletter about the latest and greatest in horror. I’m Jenn Northington, and I’m here to share some of the Get Booked podcast‘s favorite horror favorites from over the years.

Over at Get Booked, we take reading recommendation requests from across genres and do our best to come up with the right next read for each asker. We’ve had more than a few horror questions over the years, and Amanda and I both have our own (sometimes fraught) relationship with the genre — we tend to be a little squeamish, albeit about different things — but we’ve also managed to find books perfect for both us and our listeners. So I thought I’d give y’all a tour of some of our picks!

Bonus: You’re actually getting an advance peek at next week’s show, on which we have two askers looking for indie horror reads to help them finish the 2020 Read Harder Challenge.

Indie horror (tune in on Thursday, 7/30, to hear us talk about these):

Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix, illustrated by Michael Rogalski, published by Quirk

This is a horror novel inspired by an Ikea catalog, and I honestly feel like that should be enough? But if you need more, it’s set in a furniture superstore in Cleveland, OH, in which things are mysteriously being broken after closing, and three employees volunteer to stay overnight to figure out what’s happening. It’s a haunted house story but also a product catalog, and it’s funny and weird and creepy all at once.

Elegy for the Undead by Matthew Vesely (publishing October 13, 2020) from Lanternfish Press

I’m so excited to crack into this book, which is a queer zombie tragedy from a publisher local to me here in Philadelphia. This tweet thread from Seanan McGuire (you might also know her as Mira Grant) really sells the heck out of it.

Read-alikes for Bloodborne (gothic, dark urban fantasy, cosmic horror):

From the Wreck by Jane Rawson

Another Amanda pick, this is one I’ve got on my own TBR. It follows the survivor of a shipwreck, plagued by PTSD, and a woman from another dimension and it’s a twisty, weird, head-scratcher of a gothic historical novel.

Under the Pendulum Sun by Jeanette Ng

Dark fae and colonialism are the subject of this incredibly intense, extremely strange gaslamp fantasy, from one of my current favorite genre-busting authos. Ng’s work is always complex and unexpected, and you’ve never seen Queen Mab like this before.

Sci-fi + Horror:

The Outside by Ada Hoffmann

Speaking of genre-busting! Hoffmann has created a space opera with an autistic, queer scientist heroine that busts up Lovecraftian horror with modern-day sensibilities. Sentient AI gods, interdimensional eldritch horrors, and some truly weird body-horror all come together in this vibrantly imagined novel that, for my money, is a must-read.

Horror that will scare the living hell out of you:

The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher

This one came recommended by Rioter Jessica Woodbury, who has a stronger constitution than myself by a whole lot. Our heroine Mouse is asked to clean out her grandmother’s home in rural North Carolina, and she has to deal with hoarding, her step-grandfather’s strange journal, AND terrifying encounters in the woods. Tread carefully and maybe sleep with the lights on??

Horror read-alikes for Stephen King, but with less racism, sexism, and homophobia:

Mapping the Interior by Stephen Graham Jones

Graham Jones is a perennial Get Booked favorite, and this haunted house story is a great introduction to his work if you haven’t already been exposed. Amanda picked it as a comp for The Shining, in case that’s a thing you’re looking for.

The Book of M by Peng Shepherd

While it’s not an exact comp for The Stand, it comes close in the ways that matter to me. It’s got a pandemic, it’s got elements of horror and the supernatural, but it’s also deeply about the relationships you build at the end of the world, traveling across America when everything is going to hell, and what it means to fight for good. It’s also got an absolute heart-breaker of an ending, so consider yourself warned!

Spooky reads that don’t rely on gore or body horror:

The Moth Diaries by Rachel Klein

This claustrophobic, deeply overlooked YA novel is a favorite of both mine and Amanda’s. A 16-year old girl attending boarding school becomes obsessed with a fellow student, Ernessa, who may or may not be a vampire?! Told through journal entries, it’s got one of my favorite unreliable narrators; do yourself a favor and make sure you’ve got some time when you pick this up, because you won’t want to stop.

His Hideous Heart, edited by Dahlia Adler

Speaking of YA! I L-O-V-E, love this collection of stories, all riffs on Edgar Allen Poe, by 13 truly excellent YA authors. Creepy, gothic, horrifying, supernatural, understated, gory — the range is huge, the talent is breathtaking, AND the original stories that the authors were retelling are included so you can do comparisons if you are so inclined. This is a solid choice even if you’re not a Poe fan; you don’t need to know the originals to appreciate the stories, and there are some killer (heh) ones just waiting for you.

A horror graphic novel:

Hexed Vol. 1: The Harlot and the Thief by Michael Alan Nelson, Emma Rios, and Dan Mora

There are so many great horror GNs, but this is a personal favorite that I just can’t resist gushing about whenever I get the chance. Our main character, Luci (a.k.a. Lucifer, obviously!) is a con-artist and thief for hire with supernatural skills. When she accidentally unleashes the evil in a painting, she sets herself on a journey that also reveals the layers to her own journey, and some unanswered questions about her past. Sort of like if Coraline was about a young adult who stayed on the other side and made friends with Other Mother without losing her soul, is one way to describe it. Utterly awesome, is another way.

And this concludes our tour into the Get Booked horror rec archives! I hope you’ve found something for yourself; swing by the show anytime, and happy hauntings.

-Jenn

Hey Spookies!

Are you familiar with the Summer Scares program?

This volunteer partnership among the Horror Writers Association, United for Libraries, Library Journal, and Book Riot — us! — is aimed at bringing more attention to great horror books. Though the focus is for libraries, the resources made for the program are perfect for anyone who loves scary reads.

Each year, beginning last, a volunteer team selects three books from the backlist that represent a wide range of types of horror for three categories: adult, young adult, and middle grade. The team them works to build an array of tools to make talking about these books and learning about horror more broadly easy.

In addition to those titles, the team has created read alikes, expanding the opportunities to go deeper into horror.

Here are this year’s selected titles in each category:

Adult

In the Valley of the Sun by Andy Davidson (Skyhorse, 2017)

The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle (Tor.Com, 2016)

She Said Destroy: Stories by Nadia Bulkin (Word Horde, 2017)

Young Adult

The Agony House by Cherie Priest, Illustrated by Tara O’Connor (Scholastic 2018)

Labyrinth Lost by Zoraida Córdova (Sourcebooks Fire, 2017)

Daughters Unto Devils by Amy Lukavics (Harlequin Teen, 2015)

Middle Grade

Spirit Hunters by Ellen Oh (HaperCollins, 2017)

Case Files 13: Zombie Kid by J. Scott Savage (HarperCollins, 2012)

Hoodoo by Ronald L. Smith (Clarion Books, 2015)

So what kinds of resources are available? Many! Here’s a peek at what the team has pulled together for you to get to know these books, these authors, and, of course, even more excellent scary reads.

• The Summer Scares YouTube channel features videos from the selected authors, committee members, and the Summer Scares spokesperson/author of honor this year, Stephen Graham Jones.
• Stephen also interviewed several of the selected authors, including Ellen Oh, Ronald Smith, and Andy Davidson.
• The Ladies of the Fright Podcast are official partners in the venture and offer up a dedicated episode to each category of books. Here’s this year’s episode featuring the adult authors of the Summer Scares selections.
• Thanks to Konrad Stump and his team at the Springfield-Green County Public Library in Missouri, there’s an extensive programming guide for these books, perfect for librarians or teachers looking to incorporate these books — and horror more broadly — into their book discussions or reader advisory work. The full-color resource is available to use freely.
• As a member of this committee and overseeing the YA selections, I took a deep dive on Book Riot into the YA picks, as well as a number of great YA horror books that would make for great next books to pick up.
• All of the resources and information about 2019 Summer Scares picks are available, too, over on Becky Spratford’s blog.
• And, of course, you can follow Summer Scares updates as they happen, including new interviews and podcast episodes, over on Twitter.

Scary-Good Ebook Deals

Pick up a new-to-you read or revisit a favorite with these great horror ebook deals. These are current as of Friday, July 17.

First up: grab The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle for $4!

Alden Bell’s The Reapers Are The Angels is $2.

Read some classic short stories with Dark Tales by Shirley Jackson. $2.

The Good Demon by Jimmy Cajoleas — about a girl who befriends the evil exorcised from her — is $3.

Cuckoo Song by Frances Hardinge is a must-read and absolutely so at $3.

Thanks for hanging out, and we’ll see you again soon!

— Kelly Jensen, @heykellyjensen on Instagram and editor of Body Talk, (Don’t) Call Me Crazy, and Here We Are.

It’s felt like the end of days for a while now… and while we’d all like to hope the cycle rebirths us into a kinder new world, the literature just doesn’t support that. By that, I mean, horror literature (in particular when it crosses over with science fiction) just won’t allow the future to be anything but bleak. If you don’t believe me, you’ve come to the right place. You’re in The Fright Stuff, Book Riot’s weekly horror newsletter about the latest and greatest in horror. I’m Mary Kay McBrayer, and I’ll be your Virgil through this realm of hell, dystopias and worst case scenarios.

Earworm: “Sleeping In” by The Postal Service: “Again last night I had that strange dream / where everything was exactly as it seemed. / No concerns about the world getting warmer. / People thought that they were just being rewarded / for treating people as they’d like to be treated, / obeying stop signs, and curing diseases. / For mailing letters with the address of the sender, / now we can swim any day in November.”

Blue Ticket by Sophie Mackintosh

In this dystopia, on the day of your first period, women are assigned tickets to determine whether they will get marriage and children (a white ticket) or a career and freedom (a blue ticket). “You are relieved of the terrible burden of choice.” Calla, who received a blue ticket, starts questioning that assignment when she becomes pregnant, and she has to go on the run while considering if “the lottery knows her better than she knows herself.”

Killers Keep Secrets: The Golden State Killer’s Other Life by James Huddle

Joseph D’Angelo has been arrested, we know, but do you want to know more about his family life? This work of nonfiction is told by someone who knew him IRL, his brother-in-law. (Think of it as the Golden State Killer’s Extremely Wicked, Shocking and Vile Bundy equivalent.) It may not be a dystopia per se, but finding out decades later that one of your family members raped and killed tons of people? WORST CASE SCENARIO.

Survivor Song by Paul Tremblay

This new release from acclaimed horror author Paul Tremblay tells the story of a pregnant couple at the start of a super-rabies epidemic in New England as Natalie and her best friend Dr. Ramola race to get the baby delivered before Natalie succumbs to infection. It’s a true stress-inducing horror story.

Lakewood by Megan Giddings

Everyone is loving this novel–so much so that most online booksellers have it on back order. Described as a combination of The Handmaid’s Tale and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, this medical dystopia follows Lena Johnson as she undergoes medical experimentation in order to pay off her family’s debts.

Cryptkeepers (FKA horror from the backlist):

Kindred by Octavia Butler

It’s a classic, and you’ve likely already heard of it, but it’s such a page turner that I had to mention it here. Though some consider dystopia to happen only in the future, when Dana, a Black woman living in 1970s California, gets sucked back in time and place to the antebellum south… well, I’ve never understood why ANYONE would want to travel back in time. I mean, even though times are tough right now, this is nothing compared to the atrocities of, for example, slavery. Anyway, time traveling horror dystopia coming up hot!

Paradise by Toni Morrison

The unsung hero of Morrison’s novels, this one shows what happens when refugee women settle outside of town, in a decadent edifice known as “the Convent.” The townsfolk see them as a threat, and I’m not spoiling anything when I say the book opens on a multiple murder crime scene.

Harbingers (FKA news):

HBO’s Lovecraft Country finally gets its August premiere date.

Want to learn more about the women authors behind Alfred Hitchcock’s films? Here’s how reading Patricia Highsmith and Daphne Du Maurier changed one reader’s understanding of the Master of Suspense.

Ottessa Moshfegh, author of My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Homesick for Another World, and Eileen, talks in-depth and reads from her latest novel of haunting, metaphysical suspense, Death In Her Hands, about an elderly widow whose life is upturned when she finds a cryptic note on a walk in the woods.

Anton Chekhov’s trip to Sakhalin puts lockdown in perspective… When he crossed the strait to the island prison colony, the writer felt he was entering hell.

Perched above the Yoshino River in Japan’s Iya Valley is a small museum that tells the history of the many monsters, demons, and spirits that inhabit the region.

Want to hear a brief history of queer women detectives in crime fiction? Uh, of course you do.

A miniature fairy village lies nearly forgotten in the forest by the side of a major highway in Waterbury, CT… and if you don’t know why fairies=horror, go ahead on and pick up The Cooper’s Wife is Missing: The Trials of Bridget Cleary by Joan Hoff.

Want to know why in England, coroners decide what is treasure and what is not? “It’s a bizarre holdover from a previous age.”

According to the A.V. Club, The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, “the supernatural Archie-verse series, will wrap up later this year, when Netflix airs the fourth season (part, whatever) of the well-received mixer of teen angst and immortal stakes.”

Enter to win a copy The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix.

Enter to win 12 hardcover books chosen for YOU specifically.

Enter to win $250 to spend at Barnes & Noble.

Until next week, follow me @mkmcbrayer for minute-to-minute horrors or DM me there to let me know of other books I should include. I’m also on IG @marykaymcbrayer. Talk to you soon!

Your Virgil,

Mary Kay McBrayer
Co-host of Book Riot’s literary fiction podcast, Novel Gazing

When I was teaching English composition, nothing gave me more delight than starting off a semester by close-reading “Siren Song” by Margaret Atwood. I’d hear a couple of students giggle at the end, and when I’d ask, “What’s funny?” they’d clam up. When I rephrased the question, “No, you’re right. It’s funny. In a macabre sort of way… what is a siren? Google it right quick.”

Then they’d read about them being birds from the chest down, and I watched the confusion materialize on their faces: “But not THIS siren. She’s a human.”

“Oh, nope. She got you. You died.” Because that’s the thing about animal/human hybrids, right? You can never tell which part is human and which part is animal, and that’s what makes those monsters dangerous.

You might have guessed by now, you’re in The Fright Stuff, Book Riot’s weekly newsletter about the latest and greatest in horror. I’m Mary Kay McBrayer, and I’ll be your Virgil through this week’s realm of hell, the cryptids.

Ear worm: “Committing Love” by Lynx & Kemo… but the performance here, with Zoe Jakes the bellydancer, complete with antler headdress, is exactly the visual interpretation of this song to cement its creepiness.

Fresh Hells (FKA new releases): 

The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones

According to popular culture, Indians use every part of the animal… but when the ill-willed game warden shows up just before a blizzard to a group of First Nations hunters who have hit the jackpot out of season, the warden makes them abandon the elks’ carcasses. One doe’s spirit does not take this slight on the chin…

Bunny by Mona Awad

Weird things happen at Warren University, not only with the bunnies ubiquitous on its campus, but also with the women in the MFA writing program who call each other “Bunny.” This novel perfectly illustrates the kind of false intimacy that can happen among artists as well as the exploitation that female friendships often foster. But more than that, it’s a dark fairy tale for the creative imagination. I can’t recommend this one enough.

Little Eyes by Samanta Schweblin

There’s a new toy on the market, a Furbee-like robot that you can host in your home… except for the fact that, rather than operate like a computer who learns, there’s a dweller inside, a stranger operating the robot from somewhere far away. Though the robots’ shells look like different animals, inside, they’re all human… or maybe monster.

The Low, Low Woods by Carmen Maria Machado, illustrated by Dani

You’re likely familiar with Machado from her collection of short stories, Her Body and Other Parties, or her memoir, In the Dream House, and this graphic novel does not fall short of the high bar she’s set for herself. Best friends Vee and El wake in a movie theater to an absence of memory–what just happened to them? And when the animals in their hometown Shudder-to-Think start acting weird, well, there’s more to that amnesia than the reader anticipates.

Cryptkeepers (FKA horror from the backlist):

“The Mermaid in the Tree” by Timothy Schaffert

You’ve heard me sing this author’s praises before, in the form of his novel The Swan Gondola, among his other writings, but this short story is the one that first grabbed my heartstrings. It’s located in the anthology My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me, and it tells The Little Mermaid narrative from the perspective of the non-mermaid woman that the prince DOES marry. More than that, though, the mermaids in their coastal town are treated like monsters, embalmed and set afloat in their personal aquariums to be literally paraded by bicycles through the gritty fairy tale.

Book of Imaginary Beings by Jorge Luis Borges, illustrated by Peter Sis, translated by Andrew Hurley

A classic for y’all: this bestiary compiled by Jorge Luis Borges is a compendium of cryptids, or mythological creatures that inspire fear and imagination. And, bonus, it’s full of illustrations! (This one is truly amazing–when I taught it to gifted middle-schoolers, they loved it, and it inspired them to imagine their own cryptids.)

Harbingers (FKA news):

“Why are horror and fantasy so queer-coded?”: LGBTQ celebs discuss the appeal of magic and monsters at The A.V. Club.

Art Young’s Dante-Inspired Satire Replaced Demons with Exploitative Capitalists: Steven Heller on an Old Master of Political Cartoons.

What’s the deal with eels in literature? They don’t show up often, but when they do, they’re gross and creepy.

You have to read Octavia Butler’s motivational notes to herself!

Here’s what Patton Oswalt has to say on surviving his late wife, the author of I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, the horrifying true crime book about the now-pleading-guilty Joseph DeAngelo, or as she called him, the Golden State Killer.

Near the allegedly haunted pub, The Witch Stone of Great Leighs, you can find strong spirits on the rocks.

Atlas Obscura is hosting a number of “wonder from home” virtual tours. Check out the list of freaky literary spots here. (Past tours have included Weird Homes: Ghosts in the Machine, and Ascend Ascend: A Poetic Performance.)

While we’re on the Atlas Obscura trail, co-founder Brian Thuras interviews an auctioneer of “the unusual” (like catalogs detailing “magic-related material,” Ernest Hemingway first editions, automatons, taxidermy, sideshow and circus, and more), on their Show & Tell series.

And, more in the worlds of cascading disappointment, J.K. Rowling tweets praise for Stephen King, deletes it after he voices support for trans women. But… glad we got King in our corner!

Everything gets reborn, including the Midsommar Director’s Cut. Now available in a special edition Blu-ray exclusively at shop.a24films.com.

Speaking of Midsommar, Ari Aster, along with horror director Robert Eggers, horror actors Florence Pugh, Lakeith Stanfield, Cynthis Erivo, and most of the cast of Parasite are all now part of the Motion Picture Academy.

Want to see the 50 different covers of The Plague by Albert Camus? Of course you do.

Enter to win a copy The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix.

Enter to win 12 hardcover books chosen for YOU specifically.

Enter to win $250 to spend at Barnes & Noble.

Until next week, follow me @mkmcbrayer for minute-to-minute horrors or DM me there to let me know of other books I should include. I’m also on IG @marykaymcbrayer. Talk to you soon!

Your Virgil,

Mary Kay McBrayer
Co-host of Book Riot’s literary fiction podcast, Novel Gazing