Category: The Fright Stuff

Almost every horror fan knows about the trope of the Final Girl, the one who survives to the end of the film through no real merit of her own. She’s usually blonde. Usually small. Usually “pure.” She’s basically the one who DESERVES IT the least, but she doesn’t survive on any of her own merit.

That’s not necessarily how it works in real life, of course. Terrible things happen to good people all the time–but that doesn’t mean we can’t admire the strong women featured in horror novels. (Don’t worry, I’m not spoiling any plot points for you–I won’t say whether these girls make it to the end.)

By the way, I’m Mary Kay McBrayer, and I’ll be your Virgil through this realm of hell, the Final Girl. To commemorate this edition of The Fright Stuff, Book Riot’s weekly newsletter about the latest and greatest in horror, here’s a film still from the most epic Freudian horror film I’ve ever seen, The Descent. Here we go. Let’s talk about Final Girls (or women in horror in general) for Women’s History Month.

Earworm: “Bad Girls” by M.I.A.

Fresh hells (FKA new releases): 

The Return by Rachel Harrison

If you like the noir-style of narrator as well as milennial-accessible language, you’ll love this debut novel from Rachel Harrison. When the prettiest of a group of four close college friends goes missing for two years and then suddenly returns, they go on a girls’ trip. They realize almost as soon as they get to the hotel, though, that something is wrong with the one who has returned.

 

The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix

This is the fourth of Grady Hendrix’s horror novels, and if you loved his novel, My Best Friend’s Exorcism, like I did, you’ll love this one, too. The narrative moves at a clip, but it does not sacrifice the development of its characters–something that I found particularly refreshing about this book because, as the title implies, white-wine-drinking, affluent housewives are seldom taken seriously, much less in the Charleston of the 1990s, and much much less when a wealthy-yet-vampire stranger is involved. (This one has his trademark visceral descriptions of gore, too, don’t worry!)

Beneath the Rising by Premee Mohamed

Molecular biologist turned author, Premee Mohamed, introduces us to best friends Nick and Joanna. When Joanna “invents a clean reactor that could eliminate fossil fuels and change the world, she awakens primal, evil Ancient Ones set on subjugating humanity.” This novel is a bildungsroman set among a “war of eldritch horror.”

 

Cryptkeepers (FKA horrors from the backlist):

Men, Women, and Chainsaws by Carol Clover

If you’re looking for the ultimate horror criticism, this is the one you can’t do without. Carol Clover coined the term “final girl,” and she’s responsible for identifying a lot more of them, like “the terrible place,” for example. I particularly like her analysis of the occult in horror films, and what it means based on the characters’ genders.

 

“Inventory” by Carmen Maria Machado

This story is featured in her debut collection, Her Body and Other Parties, and I thought it was particularly apt since it deals with the theme of terminal disease spreading because people can’t stay away from each other. It’s also harrowing and sexy, and if you’re in the mood to read some horror about hypothetical plague, you can read the short story online here. 

 

Paradise by Toni Morrison

This narrative is set 17 miles outside of Ruby, an all-Black town in Oklahoma, at a decadent edifice nicknamed The Convent, which houses four women who are nothing close to nuns. The book opens with the men of Ruby waging war on the women’s homes. This novel is by Toni Morrison. Just go get it. You won’t regret it.

 

Harbingers (FKA news of the literary horror world):

According to this study, women authors lead literary fiction book sales, so that’s dope.

Check out this new research on one of our wonderful women classic horror/sci-fi authors, Octavia Butler, “Finding Octavia Butler’s Pasadena.”

The freaky medieval legend behind this holy well was one of the inspirations behind Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

Want to know why Stephen King is so hard to adapt? Check out this article.

While we socially distance ourselves in our own homes, you might want to read about the homes/manors of Gothic heroines… whose homes are always bigger than they seem.

Want to read horror literature about pandemics? Check this out.

What about the horrors of social distancing? Read here.

Though it may not seem to be on theme for horror literature, you can read about what it’s like to promote a book during a pandemic, and if you want to help those authors, here’s a list of book tours that have been canceled, and how to pay it forward.

Here’s what New York Indie Bookstores are doing to survive among the doom and gloom.

And if you’re looking for short-notice horror reads till your orders get delivered, did you know that FANGORIA is opening up its content digitally for two months free?

For more literary updates on the COVID-19 pandemic, click here. 

I’m Mary Kay McBrayer, and you can find me on Twitter or Instagram– make sure y’all get at me with any important news that I missed! Stay safe and sequestered!

Your Virgil,

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

Because Derek Waters of Drunk History won’t return my phonecalls, we hosted a Drunk History DIY party a couple weeks ago, and in preparation, I went DEEP into the research wormhole of Irish folklore (I wanted to talk about Bridget and Michael Cleary). Wow, y’all, that tide of terror runs deep AND wide… did you know that there are like, nine levels of fairies? And almost none of them mean humans well.

Anyway, it might interest you to know that the American cultural holiday of St. Patrick’s Day is one of the best, and despite that I look totally Arab because my mom’s genes are visually invincible, my dad’s side of the family is Scots-Irish–BTW, it will surprise no one that the McBrayer family crest is a red and gold lion and features the motto “IN DEFIANCE.” I will drink to that. Not beer, though. Never beer.

By the way, you’re in The Fright Stuff, Book Riot’s newsletter about the latest and greatest in horror. In observance of St. Patrick’s Day, this week’s theme is Irish folklore… which means that a lot of our texts will be by white authors, since Ireland is predominately white. (I honestly didn’t realize how much so until my best friend came back from a week’s trip over there explaining how excited she’d get when she saw another person of color.) That said, some Irish folkloric retellings will live up to our Book Riot standards of diversity, but it’s still a stretch, and I just felt like I owed y’all an explanation as to why. I’m Mary Kay McBrayer, and I’ll be your Virgil through this realm of hell, Irish folklore.

Earworm: “Black is the Color” by Nina Simone (Yes, this is a cover of an Irish folksong, but no one sings it as hauntingly as the American treasure, Nina Simone. Fight me.)

The Cooper’s Wife is Missing: The Trials of Bridget Cleary by Joan Hoff and Marianne Yeates

I mentioned this title in passing above, as the story of Bridget and Michael Cleary. It’s honestly what really piqued my interest in Irish folklore. The main narrative focuses on Bridget’s murder: I’m overgeneralizing for the sake of synopsis, but essentially, Bridget’s whereabouts were unaccounted for for a couple hours, and when she returned home acting strangely, her husband (Michael) mistook her sickness for a changeling, and he, her neighbors, and her family, all tried to exorcise the fairy from her. This is a work of NONFICTION, and to understand it fully, the authors go in depth about the beliefs of the fairy religion, too. It’s an incredibly well-researched text, and you’ll really love it if you like true crime, too.

The Changeling by Victor LaValle

This contemporary novel is a reimagining of the changeling folklore of Ireland, the idea that fairies inhabit human bodies as a sort of possession. When new father Apollo realizes that his wife and child have disappeared, he goes on a quest to recover them, and on the way, he discovers a whole lot more.

 

Little Darlings by Melanie Golding

This novel also retells the changeling mythology, but this time from the perspective of the mother. Lauren Tranter is positive that she saw something at her hospital room window after giving birth, a creature who tries to exchange her own creatures with Lauren’s twins. Later, when her twins go missing and then are found, Lauren insists that they are not her children and tries to go about rectifying their hostage state. It’s dangerous, especially if she’s wrong.

The Good People by Hannah Kent

I learned who the Good People are from The Trials of Bridget Cleary, and I can tell you, among the fairies, these ones are the ones you want on your team. This novel is based on true events, too. Nora cares for her grandson who can neither speak nor walk, and in her superstitious community, rumors spread that Micheal is a changeling who will bring them bad luck. She bands together with Mary, the handmaid, and Nance, an “elderly wanderer who understands the magic of the old ways” to save the child from the village’s superstitions.

Devil’s Day by Andrew Michael Hurley

This novel focuses on the folkloric belief in Northern England (admittedly, not Ireland) of rituals that protect towns from the devil by drawing boundaries. The Gaffer, the one who redraws the villages boundary lines each year, dies the autumn this narrative begins. John Pentecost, his grandson, returns to the farm only to discover as they are burying the Gaffer and bringing the sheep down from the moors, as is custom, that the Endlands may have let the Devil in after all.

Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss

This book also takes place in Northern England, but I couldn’t resist including it on the list because of its impeccable folk horror! Silvie, a teenager on summer break, and her family attend an anthropology class’ reimagining of Bronze Age rituals because her father is basically obsessed. As normally happens when people in charge are obsessed with tradition, this reenactment quickly veers off the rails into more horrific territory.

Cast a Cold Eye by Alan Ryan

This book is less about folklore and more about Irish history, but it’s still a novel full of horrors worth exploring: when American writer Jack Quinlan travels to research the Irish Famine, he quickly notices some odd occurrences, like the hiding of the priest and some weird ritual in the cemetery. Obviously, Jack ends up researching a lot more than just the famine.

 

True Irish Ghost Stories by John D. Seymour

This anthology has collected early 20th century stories and true events, and they’re divided into chapters including hauntings, poltergeists, and bean sidhes and “other death-warnings.” Though the cover is a little photo-shoppy, the stories inside are bomb–plus, who are we to judge books by their covers?

 

 

The Tain translated by Thomas Kinsella

When I asked my best friend for a recommendation for this list, Sara said, The Tain, which  “rhymes with ‘coin.’ (Gaelic, y’all.) The hero has a ‘warp spasm’ that turns his knees backwards and makes him an unbeatable killing machine that can only be stopped by looking at boobs, and the antagonist queen gets her period in battle, and it carves trenches in the earth as deep as a house. Her name is Medb, which rhyme with ‘stave.’ Also the whole war is because the queen found out that the king had one more cow than her, so she went to steal Ireland’s best cow from another country so she would have more riches than the king. There’s one boring chapter that’s just like, listing who’s in the battle, but the rest is dope.” There’s no way I could have paraphrased it any better, so there you go.

News: 

A lot of stories about folklore are oral histories commemorated in ways other than literature, so if you want to learn about the Cornish story of a mermaid abducting a preacher’s son, look no further.

This might be literature-adjacent, but did you know that you can spend a night in The Addams Family’s manor? 

Ann Napolitano says you should honor your weird obsessions in your writing, and the weirder the better. Learn why here.

Rest in peace, Max von Sydow. (In case your memory needs jogging, the horror community knows this actor best from his portrayal of Father Merrin in the film adaptation of William Peter Blatty’s novel, The Exorcist.)

Stephen King is “uneasy” about “muzzling” authors like Woody Allen.

Looks like another Dracula adaptation is in the works, but this time directed by Karyn Kusama. 

Speaking of films, Robert the Doll is the inspiration for both Chucky (of Child’s Play) and Annabelle (of The Conjuring). If you want to know more about him, check out this article. Though it seems that this horror news has little to do with literature, this bit from the link above is really haunting to me: “To date, the walls near his glass case are covered in numerous letters from previous visitors and naysayers, begging for Robert’s forgiveness and asking him to remove any hex he has cast.” YIKES.

While we’re all busy being freaked out by the Corona Virus, we should also acknowledge that from disease like this comes a lot of inspiration for horror writing. Shakespeare himself is known for embracing the plague’s existence in his plays. I wouldn’t exactly call it a silver lining, but the Scottish play wouldn’t be the Scottish play without the plague.

I’m Mary Kay McBrayer, and you can find me on Twitter or Instagram, and this has been The Fright Stuff. If y’all know some good stories about banshees, get at me. But if you ARE a banshee, stay over there.

Until next time, Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Your Virgil,

 

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

Monsters are much scarier (to me) when I can’t see them… case in point: once, I was cleaning my plate at my boyfriend’s house. I flipped on the garbage disposal switch, and at the unholy din that vibrated from the sink I shrieked, “HERE THERE BE MONSTERS.” (I’m not exaggerating when I say it sounded like he’d shoved a bear trap down there and it was grinding its teeth on the thing that was supposed to be shredding it into smithereens.)

Basically, what I’m saying is the moment a monster comes on screen, some of the fear diminishes. That’s why that garbage disposal was such a terror. And that’s why reading about monsters is such a delight–the concepts of them live in your head.

By the way, you’re in The Fright Stuff, Book Riot’s weekly newsletter about latest and greatest in horror. I’m Mary Kay McBrayer, and I’ll be your Virgil in this realm of hell, MONSTERS.

Earworm: “Monster” by Kanye West (but let’s be honest, we all know who’s the real star of the show here… HEY NICKI HEY NICKI) Also, fun fact, I definitely taught this verse to my English Composition 1102 class so they could hear the difference between meter and rhyme. #litprofessor

Fresh Hells (FKA New Releases)

The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones

If you ain’t pre-ordered this yet, seriously, what are you doing? When I tell you that this is a genuinely compelling monster horror book that utilizes Native American folklore without that old tropey chestnut “it was built on a graveyard,” believe me. The scenes themselves are so suspenseful and imagistic that you won’t want to put this novel down. The drama starts when a group of four Blackfeet on the Reservation hunt and kill a herd of elk, but before they can field dress them all, a blizzard comes in and prevents them from using all of the animals. Needless to say, Po’noka is not happy.

Miscreations edited by Doug Murano and Michael Bailey

This anthology contains works about “Gods, Monstrosities, and Other Horrors,” and it features works by authors you already love, like Alma Katsu, Theodora Goss, and Victor LaValle, plus several that you’re GOING to love. Every story rotates on the idea of a created monster, whether man or gods created them. It’s super compelling, and you don’t want to miss it.

Monstress (Volume 4) by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda

Who DOESN’T love a graphic novel featuring monsters–let alone a series featuring a monSTRESS!? In case you missed the first three installments, this narrative is set in “an alternate matriarchal 1900s Asia, in a richly imagined world of art deco-inflected steampunk,” and it follows a girl as she navigates the “trauma of war.”

 

Bites of Terror by Liz Reed and Jimmy Reed

This is the husband and wife team behind the webcomic Cuddles and Rage, which they call “disturbing stories with heart.” These ten short stories are told in comic book format, but with photographs of the creations instead of illustrations. Hear the macabre stories of a strawberry that has been quarantined to avoid a mold pandemic, or the “widowed watermelon attempts to regrow her chopped-up husband from seed.” What a damn delight, am I right?

The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix

You’re likely familiar with his work already, whether it’s his novels My Best Friend’s Exorcism, Horrorstor, or We Sold Our Souls, or maybe the film Satanic Panic, or maybe his Paperbacks from Hell project, but regardless, he’s back for more. Be sure to pre-order this novel from the new master of horror so you can read it hot off the press when it releases at the end of the month!

Cryptkeepers (FKA as dope reads from the backlist): 

North American Lake Monsters by Nathan Ballingrud

I mentioned in the Book Riot litfic podcast that I co-host (Novel Gazing) that one of my most effective ways of finding book recommendations is through authors whom I love, and this book of short stories comes with high praise from Carmen Maria Machado, one of my faves. In this collection, people face monsters, real or imagined, and they “face the loneliest corners of themselves and strive to find an escape.”

My Favorite Thing is Monsters by Emil Ferris

This graphic novel is a beautiful imagining of a girl in Chicago who believes herself to be a werewolf. It’s a fascinating look at her relationship with her super-cool brother as well a mysterious past of the Holocaust survivor who lives above them.

 

Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi

This novel has a super cool premise of retelling: an oddball junk collector in the rubble-strewn streets of Baghdad collects body parts. He strings them together so that the government will give them a proper burial, but once he makes a complete corpse, it disappears. WHAT.

 

 

News

Big news from Quirk! Grady Hendrix’s latest is destined for the screen! According to the publisher, “After a 10-buyer bidding war, Grady Hendrix and Quirk Books sold rights to The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires to Amazon Studios, with Hendrix and Quirk serving as executive producers.” HOW DOPE.

Learn here how Gothic novels paved the way for domestic thrillers.

This plot twist in science shows how Edgar Allan Poe actually probably DIDN’T die by suicide.

Looks like Bram Stoker Award-Winning poet, Stephanie M. Wytovich will be teaching a Witch Lit course on LitReactor this summer, so be sure to stay tuned for that! (And until then, you can look at our Season of the witch-themed newsletter from November.)

And speaking of witches, this astrology book club chooses their monthly reads based on horoscopes ad the zodiac.

If you want to know more about Toni Morrison (the author that I consider to have written THE BEST literary horror book, Beloved) and her Catholic faith, read this article.

Need inspiration for your next writings? Visit this Torture Museum in Bruges, Belgium, which displays its torture devices in chronological order.

Have you heard of The Black Vampyre? It’s an 1819 text that is among the first to cross the vampire narrative with the American slave narrative. You can read more about it in a forthcoming book from Open Graves & Open Minds about the Polidori (2021).

If you want more books by Authors of Color, check out this list by Book Riot’s own Jessica Avery!

I’m Mary Kay McBrayer, you can find me on Twitter or Instagram, and this has been The Fright Stuff, monsters edition. Until next time, beware the Kraken.

Your Virgil,

 

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

Look me in the eye and admit to me if you weren’t freaked out when your Furby started talking from deep within your closet where you thought you’d safely stashed it after it learned to speak.

If that didn’t freak you out, I don’t know what to tell you. The idea of being constantly surveilled, or influenced by technology beyond our control is one of the freakiest things about our contemporary world–I mean, just this past weekend when I was narrating my audiobook, the technician said that another author’s phone kept coming on until they realized it was listening, and every time she said the word “Syria,” it was ready to take orders. Don’t get me wrong, I put plenty of my business out in the street/on the internet, which is why I don’t need to be wondering if not having a band-aid over my webcam means someone is watching me from the other side of the world. And although fame would make this hair justifiable, and all press is good press, et cetera, I just DO NOT NEED A SWIMFAN.

In case you didn’t realize it yet, you’re in The Fright Stuff, Book Riot’s weekly newsletter featuring the latest and greatest in horror. I’m Mary Kay McBrayer, and I’ll be your Virgil through this realm of hell, science and surveillance–but, a big thanks goes out to the Book Riot community, who recommended a LOT of these books to us.

Ear worm: “She Blinded Me with Science” by Thomas Dolby

Little Eyes by Samanta Schweblin

This new novel from the inimitable Samanta Schweblin will be released in its English translation this May, but that doesn’t mean you can’t pre-order it immediately, like I did. If you’re not familiar with her other novel, Fever Dream, or her collection of short stories, Mouthful of Birds, this book is a great one to start with: it’s a true work of horror focusing on what happens when you let strangers (in the forms of robots) into your home.

The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware

In this retelling of the Henry James classic, The Turn of the Screw, Ruth Ware tells of a governess accused of murder awaiting trial. Her letters inform her lawyer of the strange goings-on at the house, the lack of any adults nearby, the odd behavior of the children, and the constant surveillance of the “smart” house.

 

Follow Me by Kathleen Barber

Just the web copy of this description will have you rushing to erase your digital footprint: when the it-girl with the broken apartment lock and hundreds of thousands of Instagram followers gets ONE follower who is SUPER interested in following her… it turns into a creepy stalker situation. Even in 2020, y’all got to remember to be careful what you put on the internet.

Cryptkeepers (FKA the backlist):

“The TV People” by Haruki Murakami, in the book The Elephant Vanishes

This story creeped out both me and my world literature class A LOT. When people–regular people, but all dressed alike, and just slightly smaller than most people–show up to deliver TVs unannounced, it’s not the last uncanny thing that happens. Also, why are they here? And WHAT IS GOING ON?

 

The Changeling by Victor LaValle

In plot, the synopses are correct, but in practice, according to one reviewer, the book is a changeling itself. It says, “It plays with memory, fairy tale, and the stories we tell each other about ourselves; it walks around the walls we build of our stories — whether out of family memorabilia or photos on Facebook — and probes them for holes.”

 

I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison

Aside from having the immediately most horrifying title ever, this classic science fiction horror novel demonstrates one instance of what happens when artificial intelligence gains sentience. In this version, the AMs obliterate nearly all of humanity, and, out of the spite of not having its own agency, entertains itself by torturing the species who made it.

 

Rant: The Oral Biography of Buster Casey by Chuck Palahniuk

You likely are familiar with this author from his cult classic, Fight Club, but this book made my brain loud in such a way that even a near decade after reading it, I still remember details of its plot: when time travel overlaps with the technology of sensory experiences that can be LITERALLY recorded and inserted into someone else for them to experience, what IS authentic?

The Dark Net by Benjamin Percy

You’ve probably heard of the mysterious dark web where anything goes, from criminal trade to bitcoin exchange, but in this novel, an “ancient darkness” gathers there as well, and a group of unlikely heroes has to band together to stop it.

 

 

The Mall by Richie Tankersley Cusick

This YA novel is a great one for any fan of Stranger Things who is nostalgic for the 1990s. When Trish notices a familiar face in the crowd around her work at the mall, she can’t unsee him. If you can stomach a stalker plot line, you’ll love this read.

 

 

 

News:

Want to know how the famous painter, Peter Brueghel, interpreted the census as a Doomsday book? Check out this article.

Want to know why absolutism is almost always a horrorshow? Of course you do.

Book Riot’s own Zoe Robertson writes about what Eco-Horror teaches us about ourselves.

If you’re looking for horror reviewers and horror reviews, this list seems to be the truest utopia.

Women in Horror Month has just wound to a close, but the Women in Horror Film Festival in Atlanta is still riding that wave. Though it’s literature-adjacent, there’s a ton of literary stuff written ABOUT these films.

And if you missed Women in Horror Month–or, who do I think I’m talking to?–if you just MISS Women in Horror Month, here’s a great list of women authors of horror whom you may have missed!

Check out this article about Queer Characters in Horror from Book Riot’s own S.F. Whitaker, too!

Time to turn off all my electronics forever! JUST KIDDING. But seriously, that’s all the horror I can stand for this week. Until next time, I’m Mary Kay McBrayer, and you can FOLLOW ME (see what I did there?) on Twitter or Instagram, as long as you’re not the dreaded SwimFan.

Your Virgil,

 

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

Dear reader, you know that I can’t deal with demons or evil kids, and now it’s time to reveal the third arm of the trifecta of shit I can’t handle: aliens. I’ve feared them since I was a small child running upstairs to hide under the covers when I heard the Unsolved Mysteries theme music, and I did it during the first half of the movie Arrival, too. Don’t get me started on Honeymoon or Annihilation, or especially this new one, Horse Girl. I CANNOT EVEN. I CANNOT.

Don’t judge me: even Stephen Hawking said it was rational to fear extraterrestrial beings, and I will continue to do so until they suck me up by my chest into the mothership. (Seriously, even E.T. freaked me out, like, I’m gone fling these Reese’s Pieces to create a diversion while I Scooby-Doo run until my legs give out BYEEEEE.)

In case you couldn’t tell from my frantic ramblings about the horrors of aliens, you’re in Book Riot’s weekly horror newsletter, The Fright Stuff. This week’s theme is all about outer space, AKA number three in the trifecta of shit I can’t handle, and I’m Mary Kay McBrayer. I’ll be your Virgil through this realm of hell, the extraterrestrial.

Earworm: “On & On” by Erykah Badu: “You rush into destruction ’cause you don’t have nothin’ left. / The mothership can’t save you so your ass is gone get left. / If we were made in his image, then call us by our names. / Most intellects do not believe in God, / But they fear us just the same.”

Fresh Hells:

Exhalation: Stories by Ted Chiang

So… this is Ted Chiang’s new collection of short stories, and they’re every bit as creepy as the one on which the movie Arrival was based, “The Story of Your Life.” That novella is in the collection Stories of Your Life and Others, and both collections are definitely worth checking out if you can steel yourself against the extraterrestrials.

 

“Fallow” by Sofia Samatar, in her collection Tender: Stories (f, AOC)

The stories in Tender are all retellings of fairy tales and folk lore, but the one entitled “Fallow” is about a colony in space that was founded by fundamentalist Christians. The rules that they put into place are terrifying, and when our protagonist becomes extremely interested in the man from Earth… it gets twisted.

 

Broken Places & Outer Spaces by Nnedi Okorafor

This book is an autobiography of one of the most prolific authors of science fiction and horror, Nnedi Okorafor. It talks about how she found refuge in speculative fiction while undergoing an operation to correct scoliosis and then woke up to partial paralysis. It’s a story of how limitations can become outlets to creativity, and it details a formative experience of the writer of Akata Witch, Binti, Who Fears Death, and many other well-beloved science fiction works.

Cryptkeepers:

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin

Genly Ai, the ambassador of the planet Terra, gets sent to Gethen, a planet of gender-fluid beings. This novel is the one that earned Ursula LeGuin much of her early fame, and the novel is a first among feminist science fiction in that it examines the roles that gender and sex play on a society.

 

 

 

Amatka by Karin Tidbeck

When Vanja is sent into the colony of Amatka as a government informant, she finds a huge government cover up that puts the entire colony at risk. In this novel, “everyone is suspect, no one is safe, and nothing—not even language, nor the very fabric of reality—can be taken for granted.”

Under the Skin by Michael Faber

You might recognize this book from its film adaptation of the same name, starring Scarlett Johansson. The premise is similar: a woman drives through the Scottish Highlands sizing up and picking up hitchhikers. It’s not long before the audience realizes that she’s an alien, and the men are her prey. The book goes into much gorier detail than the adaptation about what happens to her victims, but it’s certainly not one to be missed.

Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer

You might also recognize the first of his trilogy from its film adaptation of the same name, too, this time starring Natalie Portman. Four women (a biologist, an anthropologist, a psychologist, and a surveyor) are called to explore Area X, a mysterious environment that seems to be growing. Former expeditions have been met with catastrophe, and the people studying it don’t know why. It’s gotta be aliens, right?

Dawn (Xenogenesis) by Octavia Butler

This book is basically what I thought Annihilation was going to be: Lilith Iyapo wakes up in a spaceship full of tentacled aliens who saved her and all the other surviving humans from a ruined Earth. They’ve rehabilitated the planet, and now they’re welcoming humanity back to Earth in exchange for genetically merging with human civilization.

News:

Apollo 14 took seeds into outer space in 1971. Want to know what happened when the Moon Trees sprouted?

Want to win a $50 Barnes and Noble gift card? Sign up for Book Riot’s Daily Deals.

2019 saw the release of Memory: The Origins of Alien, which details how the franchise was created, including all its literary references like Greek mythology, H.P. Lovecraft, a ton of comics, and more.

Wired Magazine says the newest trend in cli-fi is Doomer Lit. Read here to learn more.

The Safdie Brothers (the writers of Uncut Gems) are producing a show about a cursed couple who flip houses.

Check out these blue slime Ghostbusters Twinkies!

Have a drink at this Lovecraft Bar in Portland.

And if you want more women in horror to honor Women in Horror month, look at Erin Al-Mehairi’s article about how women CAN write horror.

And last but not least, the 2019 Bram Stoker Award Finalist list has been posted! A LOT of great contenders!

 

I hope that you’ve enjoyed this realm of hell, extraterrestrial horrorscapes.

Until next week, you can find me hiding under the covers in fear of abduction (I DO THIS FOR YOU.), or on Twitter @mkmcbrayer and Instagram @marykaymcbrayer. I always love to hear of what news I missed OR what topics you want to read about in the upcoming newsletters, so let me know!

Your Virgil,

 

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

For a while now, one of our pop-culture obsessions has been with animated corpses. Whether it was The Walking Dead (I totally have a framed “Terminus” map behind my desk at my home in Atlanta, no joke), George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (I have always wanted to throw a Molotov cocktail), to the Game of Thrones Whitewalkers (don’t get me started), or even Jordan Peele’s Get Out, zombies are all around us.

Except, of course, those aren’t zombies. Those are ghouls. Even Romero insisted that people pleeeease not call his corpses zombies–that’s something different. Zombies originate in Haitian and voodoo culture, and in an oversimplified definition, they’re not resurrected corpses. Zombies (or zombis or zombiis) are not dead at all. They’re people whose actions are being controlled for them. The soul is IN THERE, but it has no agency.

Right here, right now, our theme is the zombie. By the way, 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 realm of hell, the zombie.

Ear worm: “Black History Month” by Saul Williams. You might know this spoken word artist from the movie Slam, his performances on Def Poetry Jam (“Black Stacy” and “List of Demands), or his books of poetry, Said the Shotgun to the Head and Dead Emcee Scrolls. He’s amazing.

 

Race, Oppression, and the Zombie: Essays on Cross-Cultural Appropriations of the Caribbean Tradition by Christopher M. Moreman

This text is an anthology of essays that critique the presence of zombies in popular culture, and it’s a MUST if you want to learn about both the historical beliefs and practices around the zombie as well as how they have been articulated in the entertainment industry.

Hadriana in All My Dreams by Rene Depestre, Translated by Edwidge Danticat

Okay, first of all, Edwidge Danticat translated this novel into English, so that alone should be a raving endorsement. But, if you want to actually know about the book and not just go into it blind, here’s the deal: Hadriana is a beautiful Haitian girl engaged to a great Haitian boy. On the day of her wedding, she drinks a zombie potion by accident, and her wedding becomes, instead, her funeral. I can’t tell you anymore. I need you to read it and then @ me about it as you have strong reactions.

Tell My Horse by Zora Neale Hurston

Y’all know I won’t ever shut up about Zora Neale Hurston, but if you didn’t know (as I didn’t know until last year) that she was an anthropologist as well as a writer of fiction, well. I’m here to help with that. This book, though slammed in its time for not being wholly autobiographical or ethnographical, is a detailed account of when Hurston went to study Voodoo culture in Haiti and Jamaica, and when she underwent indoctrination as a priestess in the religion. I learned about it from her ethnography of oral tradition, Mules and Men, which I also highly recommend.

The Serpent and the Rainbow by Wade Davis

This book is a really interesting scientific perspective on the practice of making zombies. Wade Davis was a researcher charged with the task of isolating, documenting, and explaining the use of the “zombie powder,” or the drug that allegedly (though his sponsors did not quite believe in it) turned people into zombies.

 

The Girl with All the Gifts by M.R. Carey

This work of fiction (the film adaptation of which is pictured above) undertakes a very interesting concept: what if zombies were born, not made? What if there was a triggering event that turned normal children into zombies? It’s a fascinating idea about the apocalypse, and if you haven’t read the book, do that, and also watch the movie, which you can stream for free with Amazon Prime.

 

Zone One by Colson Whitehead

In this literary horror novel, after a viral pandemic has devastated civilization, armed forces and civilian “sweepers” are tasked with sorting the living from the living dead. As you can imagine, as with any apocalyptic scenario, things go horribly wrong.

 

 

Dread Nation by Justina Ireland

This young adult novel is an alternate history in which the war between the states is derailed by walking corpses. Its protagonist is a young Black woman born to a white mother who is sent to a boarding and etiquette school to hone her fighting skills, out of legal obligation.

 

 

My Life as a White Trash Zombie by Diana Rowland

A high school dropout who lives with her alcoholic father survives a car crash without so much as a scratch… but that’s not the weird part. Angel craves brains. And she’s been called to a new job–unlike the dead-end ones from which she’s already been fired–at the parish morgue.

 

 

News:

And, do you want to know more about Black Women in Zombie Film & Television History? Check out this piece on Graveyard Shift Sisters (and go ahead on and subscribe to them because everything they publish is gold).

Want to know what the color “haint blue” means to the descendants of enslaved Africans? Read this article.

Check out this article on NPR by Matt Thompson of the CodeSwitch podcast, “Why Black Heroes Make Zombie Stories More Interesting.”

Here’s a fascinating historical look at the history of women’s illness and the power of naming it, “Of Womb-Furie, Hysteria, and Other Misnomers of the Feminine Condition” by Clare Beams

This excerpt from Something That May Shock and Discredit You comes from one of my favorite authors of horror, Daniel Mallory Ortberg. In this selection, he talks about transitioning and the end of The Golden Girls. 

Want to know about how the earliest crime scene investigators identified murder victims? Of course you do. 

And it’s never too late for a Victorian vinegar Valentine… right?

I hope that you’ve enjoyed this realm of hell, the zombie.

Until next week, you can find me on Twitter @mkmcbrayer and Instagram at @marykaymcbrayer, and I’d love to hear of what news I missed OR what topics you want to read about in the upcoming newsletters!

Your Virgil,

 

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

I had a friend once defend the guests on the Jerry Springer Show by saying, “Nu uh, that ain’t scripted. People do wild things for the people they love.” She was right, and that’s why love is such a common undercurrent in horror stories. I mean, I know that Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy, technically, and not a horror show, but tell me you wouldn’t be horrified if you woke up to find that your daughter stabbed herself because you wouldn’t let her be with the bad boy.

And I’m not saying I’ve done that exact thing, but in defense of Juliet (and hell, even Romeo), who among us hasn’t done something they wish they hadn’t for an insincere jerk or two? As a veteran of jumping in feet first, let me forewarn all you novices: these violent delights have violent ends.

In case you didn’t know yet, or maybe it’s your first rodeo, you’re in The Fright Stuff, Book Riot’s weekly newsletter featuring the latest and greatest in horror. In honor of St. Valentine’s Day, this week’s realm of hell is a cautionary tale about the horrors of love. I’m Mary Kay McBrayer, and I’ll be your Virgil through this realm.

Earworm: “Lilac Wine” by Nina Simone: “I made wine from the lilac tree, / put my heart in its recipe. / It makes me see what I want to see, / be what I want to be. / / When I think more than I want to think, / do things I never should do, / I drink much more than I ought to drink / because it brings me back you.” The best, creepiest love incantation I’ve ever heard, hands down. You might recognize it from the interlude during Beyonce’s Homecoming in “Drunk in Love.”

Fresh Hells (FKA new releases):

Verge by Lidia Yuknavitch

Not all the stories in this collection feature lovers, but the author herself has called it her “love letter to misfits, broken down people, broken hearted people, and those who live on the edge.” One story in particular, “The Garden of Earthly Delights,” is named after the Hieronymus Bosch painting for a reason–though the protagonist is obsessed with love and loving the young boy he works with, he continues to experience horrifying flashbacks of growing up with his mother. And of fish. It’s disturbing and delightful all at once.

The Country will Bring Us No Peace by Matthieu Simard, translated by Pablo Strauss

The couple, Simon and Marie, flee the city from grief. They try to re-start their lives, but the semi-ghost town they land in is too weird, too haunted, too clannish to incorporate them. The grief they want to escape instead consumes them. This short novella was recently translated from the French, and it’ll keep you rapt for its entirety.

 

You Have Never Been Here by Mary Rickert

This collection of uncanny stories is not exclusively about love, either, but each protagonist deals with their own fantastical yet distinctly human interactions with love. In “Memoir of a Deer Woman” for example, when the protagonist hits a deer on New Years’ Eve, it is her relationship with her husband that holds the reader’s attention as impossible events and repercussions unfold.

Who Killed Buster Sparkle? by John W. Bateman

This dialogue between a gender-fluid drag queen and a ghost with partial amnesia explores the intricacies of loneliness, love, identity, and time. It’s a compelling interaction of two unlike individuals seeking to understand each other in the setting of the deep south.

 

 

Crypt Keepers (FKA horrors from the backlist): 

Of Love and Other Demons by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

I really can’t over-sell this book: it’s short, but it’s dense, too. When a thirteen year old girl is bitten by a rabid dog after being raised exclusively by the slaves of her family’s plantation, her father becomes convinced that she has rabies. She has strange ways, he notices, once he’s paying attention, and when none of the alleged cures work to cure her of them, he decides that she is possessed. While in her cell, the priest designated to exorcise the demon from her falls in love with her. You got to get this one. It’s the ultimate in horrific love.

The Cooper’s Wife is Missing: The Trials of Bridget Cleary by Joan Hoff & Marian Yeates

This work of nonfiction is based on the true story of Bridget Cleary in 19th century Ireland. When her husband became convinced that she was a changeling, he spared no expense to rid her body of the faerie, even when it came to torturing Bridget’s body.

 

The Last Final Girl by Stephen Graham Jones

In a fun genre crossover of horror movie and novel, this book toys with the tropes of the final girl. Billie Jean, the murderer in the Michael Jackson mask, plays with the meta-film archetypes in a figurative chess match with the homecoming queen, who stacks a team to defend herself against the killer. It’s a competition to see who can fulfill the role of the last final girl, and it’s loaded with pop culture allusions like “just a girl who thinks that I am the one.”

The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo

This coming-of-age story invokes the Chinese folklore of ghosts and the custom of “spirit marriages.” Li Lan has to choose between marrying a very much alive suitor whom she falls for HARD during the day, or choosing to marry the man that she visits in the Chinese afterlife at night, among ghost cities and vengeful spirits. (For more details on this book and other horror books by authors of color, check out this article.)

 

Now You’re One of Us by Asa Nonamni (Translated by Michael Volek & Mitsuko Volek)

This one is a newlywed horror novel–when our protagonist, Noriko, marries into a family full of idiosyncrasies, things get weird. Especially when a strange encounter with a man who rents from the family dies unexpectedly.

 

 

News:

Want to see Juliet’s tomb? You do.

And I know that I showed you The Edible Museum and Sarah Hardy’s beautifully sculptured chocolate hearts last week, but in case you missed it, you HAVE to go look at these anatomically-correct masterpieces. They are truly amazing. And follow The Edible Museum on Instagram, for posts about these specimens in their new habitats!

You thought “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins was spooky? This library has a book of actually poisoned wallpaper samples from the Victorian era.

On February 7, Shudder debuted their Horror Noire: Uncut podcast series, which features extended interviews from the acclaimed documentary!

Happy belated birthday to George Romero–be sure to enter the giveaway of his book.

For more horror reads, collaborations, or if you just want to ooh and ahh over some of the books listed here, be sure y’all follow me on Twitter @mkmcbrayer or Instagram at @marykaymcbrayer. And happy Valentine’s Day….

Go, girl. Seek happy nights to happy days.

Your Virgil,

 

Mary Kay McBrayer

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

I don’t lend out books or pens because they almost never get returned, and nothing makes me want someone to go ahead and go die worse than not returning a book or a pen. (Another new pet peeve of mine is when I eavesdrop on strangers’ conversations and they are insufferably boring.)

Anyway, it turns out I’m not the only one who is super protective of their books–especially when they have all my notes and work in the margins. In medieval times, they protected their library books the old fashioned way, with curses.

But say you’re not a person who’s super territorial about books. There are other curses for you, from love potions to maybe just immortal life. By the way, you’re in The Fright Stuff, Book Riot’s newsletter on the latest and greatest in horror. I’m Mary Kay McBrayer, and I’ll be your Virgil through this realm of hell, the curse. To paraphrase the Stephen Sommers’ iteration of The Mummy, death shall come on swift wings to whomsoever reads from these books.

Earworm: “St. James Infirmary” by Louis Armstrong.

Fresh Hells (FKA new releases):

The Necronomnomnom by Mike Slater and Thomas Roache

This beautiful cookbook features recipes all inspired by the eldritch horrors of H.P. Lovecraft. Even the title is modified from his legendary, cursed book of the dead, The Necronomicon. The foreword to this tome states that “if cooking is science, then eldritch cooking is alchemy, prayer, and sacrifice.” The book itself is gorgeously illustrated with images of the recipes/spells come to fruition, and scribblings of those driven mad by the curses gone awry decorate the margins in a way delightful to anyone familiar with H.P. Lovecraft’s work–this book is PERFECT for you if you’re a big fan of his, and you like to cook.

The King in Yellow by Robert Chambers, edited by John Edgar Browning

Speaking of Lovecraft, The King in Yellow is said to have been a major influence on his work. Essentially, this collection of stories is one of the prototypes for an entire genre of weird fiction, and the “cursed” aspect of it comes mostly from the story entitled “The Yellow Mark.” I’ll let you determine whether seeing it actually marks you forever. Also, this collection has been noted as bridging the transition from Gothic literature into the horror of the twentieth century, which is a pretty epic feat.

The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones

This master of horror is at it again, and what an AWESOME title, right? Like, way to completely set up a horror novel that is also a deep social commentary about the mistreatment of indigenous people. The narrative follows four American Indian men after an ordeal in their childhood places them as a target for a vengeful entity. This novel is available for pre-order–and you know you’re going to buy it anyway, so go ahead on and help this author’s publisher know that WE DEMAND THIS LEVEL OF LITERATURE.

What Should be Wild by Julia Fine

This coming of age fairy tale novel features a girl who can kill or resurrect with a simple touch. When her father goes missing, she has to leave the world that has been constructed for her safety to find him–what she learns in the process features the family curse that gave her this double-edged gift.

 

Cryptkeepers (FKA as horrors from the backlist):

The Book of Speculation by Erica Swyler

This novel follows a family of cursed circus performers–for some reason, all the women in Simon’s life are great at holding their breath (like, circus-mermaid-level great), but generations of women have died by drowning, and always on July 24. Simon worries that his sister, who reads from a deck of never-smudged tarot for a traveling circus, is next in line.

 

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

My tried-and-trusty classic book about a family curse! If you haven’t yet picked up this iconic work, you absolutely have to. The master of magical realism, Gabo, writes about a family who endures a curse as a result of the patriarch’s murder. I’m definitely oversimplifying it, but that’s because you’re going to love it so, so much that I don’t want to spoil it for you. PLUS, there’s talk of Netflix adapting it for the screen soon.

“The Revenge of Hannah Kemhuff” from In Love and Trouble by Alice Walker

This was one of my favorite texts to teach in my ENGL 1102 class because of its ambiguity. After being slighted in a rations line during the Great Depression, Hannah Kemhuff’s life falls apart. She visits a root worker to seek retribution on the woman who denied her, in the form of a curse. Y’all are going to love this one–that is, if you, like me, are a sucker for a vigilante beat-down.

Madeleine is Sleeping by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum

In this novel, the lovely Madeleine is horribly punished for a sexual encounter with a man in a French provincial village, and for reasons unknown, she falls into a prolonged sleep. In it, she dreams of the circus fantastical, the magical, and tries to distinguish between her waking and dreaming life.

 

News:

If you really love your S.O., you will buy them one of these edible hearts that are modeled after actual hearts and hand-painted to look STUPID realistic.

The mummified bodies of seven ancient Egyptian women from the time of Ramesses II were found to have tattoos.

Learn about Casa Figueroa, or “the cursed house” in Taxco, Mexico, named for all the horrors that happened in its walls.

Or if you’re headed to Bali, learn about this ghost palace that’s full of ghosts, curses, and corruption.

Shirley, a biopic of the inimitable author, Shirley Jackson starring the also-inimitable actress, Elisabeth Moss debuted at Sundance, and it’s seeking U.S. distribution.

Louis Vuitton’s new look book is based on sci-fi and horror novel covers!

It’s time for me to GTFO, but I sure hope you enjoyed this list of cursed books. If you end up chased by a vengeful entity and you need backup, you can contact me through Twitter or Instagram… but also you can just follow me and we can share great horrors with one another. Until next week…

Your Virgil,

 

Mary Kay

In the long-ago time before social media, my college roommate wrote all her favorite lyrics and quotes on index cards and taped them to her side of the dorm. When her sister visited, she said, “No one is EVER going to read all of that. Unless you die.” My roommate laughed, and I said back, “Or maybe if you killed someone?”

I realized much later, when I was studying nonfiction in my MFA program that it’s really hard to make someone GAF about your true story. Much nonfiction leaves readers wondering, so… what? But there’s something about crime and creeps that makes us need to know more. I personally need to know all that shit so I can avoid it, but I also, like, can’t NOT know. It’s not so much the voyeuristic secondhand adrenaline as the WAIT WHAT WHO NOW impulse that has me read biographies, especially those with the element of horror. By the way, 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 circle of hell, Horrific Biographies.

Earworm: “Bad Girls” by M.I.A.… live fast, die young, bad girls do it well.

Fresh Hells (FKA New Releases):

Born to Be Posthumous: The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey by Mark Dery

This biography of the eccentric author and illustrator is not straight-up horror: it more so shows how the author conceptualized the horrors from his pseudo-children’s books like The Gashleycrumb Tinies, The Doubtful Guest, and The Hapless Child. If you love learning about the childhood and inspirations of your horror icons, you’ll really like this book.

Little: A Novel by Edward Carey

Edward Carey calls this book a “fictionalized biography,” but it reads like a novel, and I mean that in a good way. So often, biographies lose the human condition for the sake of facts, but that’s not the case at all with this book. It’s based on Marie Tussand, of the Wax Museums. You, like me, probably associate the wax museum with kitschy tourist traps, but it started out as the exact opposite: the wax museums were a way that art preserved the history of the French Revolution, and Marie, or “Little,” as they call her in the book, because of her jarring appearance, is the one who kept it going. I know you’re thinking, but where is the horror? UM, DID YOU KNOW that she cast the heads of the aristocrats beheaded by the guillotine? And that’s not even the most harrowing of it….

Magnetized: Conversations with a Serial Killer by Carlos Busqued, translated by Samuel Rutter

Though this book is not exactly a biography, it definitely paints a vivid picture of the real-life serial killer in Buenos Aires, Ricardo Melogno. The author visited Melogno in prison and interviewed him, and in this mixed-media book which includes everything from newspaper clippings to Santeria indoctrination, you’ll start to fear the “something dense” that Melogno says inhabits him. Seriously, from the jump, the actual epigraph about magnets and their currents, I was like… yo, I don’t know if I’m gonna make it through this one–y’all know that demons are in my trifecta of shit I can’t handle! (I should mention that this one is only available for pre-order in English, but if you are a Spanish speaker, GET IT NOW.)

Crypt-Keepers (FKA horrors from the backlist): 

Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo” by Zora Neale Hurston

Though this biography does not have the goal of scaring its readership, everyone with a conscience will be straight shook. Zora Neale Hurston (whom you may know from Their Eyes Were Watching God or Tell My Horse) authored this book decades ago, but the tale of the last “Black Cargo” was only published in 2018. It’s based on the interviews she conducted in 1928 with Cudjoe Lewis, the last presumed living survivor of the Middle Passage.

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Suskind

This novel chronicles the life of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, fictional personage who, though he has no body odor of his own, can smell literally everything. He fixates on an odor that he follows through the smelliest place on earth, the fish market of Paris, where he finds a beautiful woman. Grenouille spends the rest of his life trying to manufacture scents–even objects that have no smell, like glass–in order to recreate the scent of that woman. It’s a story of true obsession, art, and overall horror.

Life Among the Savages by Shirley Jackson

This book is one of Shirley Jackson’s memoirs, but I think it counts here. You probably know her work from We Have Always Lived in the Castle or The Haunting of Hill House, or even “The Lottery,” and she’s certainly well known for her slow-burn terror. This book, though, illustrates motherhood as though it is a horror movie.

 

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

When I was studying creative nonfiction, they called this book “science nonfiction,” which is just a way of rebranding… call it what you will, this book is genius. It documents Henrietta Lacks, a Black woman who noticed that something was wrong and went to the doctor, where she was diagnosed with cervical cancer, and a sample of her tumor was taken without her consent. If you have not yet read this book, then you are doing yourself a disservice.

Smoke Gets In Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory by Caitlin Doughty

Caitlin Doughty writes of her own life in this book, from her obsession with death when she saw a child fall through an atrium in a mall as a child, herself, through her training in mortuary science. This book takes it upon itself to destigmatize death through the story of her life, and while it is definitely fascinating, it is also wildly uncanny for anyone unaccustomed to the subject matter.

Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo by Hayden Herrera

Oh, my love, Frida. I’ve been obsessed with her and her surrealist art since I was in high school, fell in love with the biopic starring Salma Hayek in college, and have just been poring through this biography since then. The Julie Taymor film was based loosely on this biography, but in case you are unfamiliar with her work, Frida Kahlo was a Mexican painter in the 1930s and 1940s, and she painted works inspired by her life. From the trolley accident that rendered her infertile through her miscarriages, marriages, and love affairs, this book shows the horrors that the artist endured.

News:

Preliminary nominees for the Bram Stoker Awards are listed here!

Mardi Gras designer finally credited.

Did you hear that Netflix is dropping a new show called Murder House Flip… which is exactly what it sounds like?

Memorial installed to commemorate victims of the European witch hunt.

This tweet from author and translator of Aladdin, Yasmine Seale shows “the fish glue, leather and other substances that made up Arabic and Ottoman manuscripts appealed to insect appetites.”

Want to know why the devil came to Salmon Street? Check this shit.

Visit Qumran National Park in Israel to see where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered!

Want to hear about the whistleblower of one of the most horrific experiments of all time, the Tuskegee Syphilis experiment? Read this article, which goes in depth about why medical whisteblowers are so rare.

In case you missed the drama about American Dirt, here’s Book Riot’s TLDR version.

That’s it. I hope you’ve enjoyed this tour through the hell of horrific biographies. As always, please follow me or send your recommendations on Twitter or Instagram.

Your Virgil,

 

Mary Kay
TW: @mkmcbrayer
IG: @marykaymcbrayer

This one time I wore a blue cape to teach my English composition class–you read that right–and as my students all fell silent to add the “so what” to their thesis statements as instructed, I heard one woman whisper, “You look like a Black Snow White.” Another whispered back, “No! She looks like A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night.” In the sitcom version of this story, I leap onto the podium and announce “I AM DOING EVERYTHING RIGHT.” In real life, however, because I cared a lot about that job, I just grinned wildly because even though there are MANY new stories being greenlit, this generation is one of remakes… and despite my ambivalence, a horror story retold or re-imagined, especially for inclusion, is the bomb.

(I should mention that I am neither Black, nor white, nor Iranian, as my students’ comparisons implied, but as an Arab person in the south, sometimes these ethnically ambiguous representations are as close as we get. Case in point: my unbridled childlike enthusiasm of Tom Cruise’s remake of The Mummy featuring A GIRL MONSTER WHO ONLY WANTED POWER, and then, of course, immediate disappointment that the narrative was literally and inexplicably hijacked by Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde… this is why we can’t have nice things: Tom Cruise.)

So with no further preamble, this is 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 circle of hell, the remake.

The Thing about Hell is It’s Eternal (FKA, I meshed “new releases” with “backlist classics” because that is the nature of the remake)

The Turning by Henry James

This collection was re-released in tandem with the upcoming fill The Turning, based loosely on “The Turn of the Screw” and ghost stories by Henry James. This Christmas ghost story (never too late, always the season, et cetera) is one narrative that founded the motif of, Is it a ghost, or is it a hallucination? If not being able to trust your own mind wasn’t scary enough, it also has evil kids involved, which, as you might remember, is the worst kind of scary for me personally.

The Remaking by Clay McLeod Chapman

If you haven’t already picked up this novel, I need you to go ahead and do it. Though this book is not a remake itself, it does focus on remakings as a trope of our generation, and how the subjects of those horror stories do. not. like. that. It makes total sense that a witch and her daughter would haunt the shit out of anyone who misrepresented their story, right? I mean, I would do that, given the chance.

Medusa’s Daughters by Theodora Goss

If you like the Gothic, and I assume you do, because here you find yourself, you’re gonna love these showcase pieces from various female authors during the fin de siècle. Theodora Goss, Victorianist and author of horror and speculative fiction books, edits these long-lost and long-loved stories and poems. You’re gonna love it!

 

Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan LeFanu, Edited by Carmen Maria Machado

If you’re making a list about remade horror, you can’t NOT include Carmen Maria Machado’s edit of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s classic novella–not only is it easier to read than the original translation, but its footnotes and introduction frame it in a way that you’ve never seen before.

 

The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood

I guess technically most people wouldn’t classify The Odyssey as horror, but hot damn does it have a ton of monsters and murder and war to not be scary af. Not to mention the 12 maids of Penelope that Odysseus and Telemachus hang to death for consorting and conspiring with the suitors… so, maybe Odysseus wouldn’t have considered the mass murder of the suitors horror, but Penelope does, and this re-envisioning of the Classic myth, told in both verse and prose, depicts the perspective of the wise yet vulnerable Penelope. Just wait until she runs up on her maids in the Underworld. Or when she runs into Helen.

The Icarus Girl by Helen Oyeyemi

Though the title suggests this novel–Oyeyemi’s first, in fact–would reimagine the story of the boy flying too close to the sun, this book deals more with the hyphenated identity (Nigerian-English) of a little girl, Jess. When she falls into uncontrollable screaming fits, her mother takes her to Nigeria for a visit. The book more-so remakes the idea of the doppelgänger or double, because when Jess meets her new friend Tillytilly, playdates get real scary.

News:

A monument honoring reporter Nellie Bly is coming to New York.

Forget a solid gold toilet–in the 18th century, toilets and entire bathrooms were designed to look like books.

And don’t forget about this forgotten Subway entrance, the historical marker of the Shakespeare Riots, which were a real thing.

In case you want to know about cursed films, a documentary series on many of them (directed by Jay Cheel) will debut at SXSW! And if you’re not going to that festival, it will be on Shudder soon afterward!

Stephen King has clarified his Tweet about diversity and quality, in case you haven’t heard.

Want to know the real killer who inspired the play, Arsenic and Old Lace? Here you go.

The Edgar Allan Poe House is Maryland’s first literary landmark.

The Romantic poets made punny nicknames for each other… and Lord Byron used to call William Wordsworth “Turdsworth.”

Are you, too, tired of coffeehouses that don’t look like Victorian Bordellos? Then you should check out the Raven Cafe in Port Huron, Michigan.

And see about this project, Women in Translation, which is translating horror literature!

If I missed important things, don’t forget to get at me (or follow me) on Twitter @mkmcbrayer or Instagram @marykaymcbrayer. And if you need more literary reads, check out Book Riot’s new podcast that I co-host with LH Johnson, Novel Gazing. Until next week, y’all be careful about whose stories you tell, and how you tell them.

Your Virgil,

 

Mary Kay