“That book you’re listening to is creepy,” my spouse mumbled, under the weather and less than half awake from the passenger seat as we were crossing the state of Virginia yesterday.

He wasn’t wrong. The Bone Queen by Will Shindler did have creepy moments, and beautifully narrated by Tamsin Kennard, was clearly effective enough to pervade a sleeping spouse’s dreams.

Part commentary on mental health and patriarchal beauty standards, part suburban horror, and all slasher novel, Dollface by Lindy Ryan is a fun read anytime but perfect for March and Women in Horror Month.

I was not aware of Joe R. Lansdale until my spouse turned me onto the show Hap & Leonard, which was just our kind of off-tilt comedy. I knew that show was based off novels, but that’s as far as it went.

With The Essential Horror of Joe R. Lansdale, I saw my chance to fill what I thought was a gap in my experience and get to know the horror side of “the guy who wrote Hap & Leonard”.

In Wolf Worm, T. Kingfisher is once again giving me everything I want from one of her horror novels: a strong, funny female hero, science doing unexpected things, and Gothic elements.

Futility is the second book I’ve read from Nuzo Onoh, and it’s the second time I’ve laughed out loud within the first paragraphs - though a sympathetic wince may have accompanied it this time.

This book is a gonzo dark comedy. It’s got revenge, sacrifice (the “to the gods - or demons” kind not the “for my family” kind), cannibalism, Freaky-Friday style body swapping, mutant powers - you have to read it to believe it.

If you ever wanted to experience a real haunted house without having to experience the real haunted house, reading Temple Fall by R. L. Boyle is possibly the closest you can get.

The first page of Carter Keane’s Morsel provides some content warnings, but what I could have used was some advice: Remember to breathe. The tension was so effective that several times, I became the cliché and had to release the breath I didn’t realize I was holding.

One thing I love about Gemma Amor: she does not give a f@#! as evidenced by the opening paragraphs of First Date.

In as many words as I’m taking for this review, she subverts sex, beautiful sunsets over the water, and even good old-fashioned run of the mill serial killing. But she does it using language (for the most part) that lulls you into believing you’re reading classical  literature. Don’t fall for it! She’s here to take us on a delightfully disturbing ride.

I was never a big Peter Pan fan; I could never really understand the desire not to grow up; that’s all I ever wanted. But the homage to the Peter Pan story in Catriona Ward’s Nowhere Burning is effective and evocative, as we are introduced to Riley and her little brother Oliver, who are wards of a relative they call Cousin. He forces them to live a meager existence, under feeding them and enforcing punishment on them lest they should succumb to demons. 

I have read most, if not all, the published books in A. G. Slatter’s Sourdough Universe, and A Forest, Darkly is my favorite so far.

As a cranky middle-aged lady with witchy tendencies of my own, I felt a kinship with Mehrab, and her honesty (with us, at least, through the first-person narration) about her negative as well as positive traits made her likable (probably against her will).

A Veritable Household Pet by Viggy Parr Hampton is one of the saddest horror books I’ve read in a while, but, like all of her works, is beautifully written and filled with characters who are complex and imperfect and feel like real people. 

Humboldt Cut by Allison Mick is a beautifully written horror book that combines elements of eco-horror with some body and folk horror.  "A million-million imperceivable eyes barely registered the goldenshine pollen dancing through the forest air." This is how the main character - the forest - of Humboldt Cut is introduced.

The Rotting Room by Viggy Parr Hampton was a wild ride of unreliable narration, religious trauma, and evil nuns (not to mention a little gothic vibe with the creepy nunnery and the damsel in distress), and I couldn't put it down.

Chicano Frankenstein by Daniel A. Olivas reimagines Mary Shelley's work in modern America where reanimation of corpses is an everyday medical possibility for the average young, healthy person, such as the man, a paralegal, whom we follow through his budding relationship with Latina lawyer Faustina Godinez. 

In How to Lose a Goblin in Ten Days, Jessie Sylva builds a recognizable fantasy world populated by halflings, goblins, dwarves, and humans; in this world, halflings and goblins are nemeses, pitted against each other in the last Great War which, though ending several decades earlier, left a lasting resentment between the two.

Much Too Vulgar by Viggy Parr Hampton is a funny, sad, horrific dark academia thriller about a girl whose entire self is consumed by the desire to earn her mother’s approval, which manifests in the tangible goal of becoming a surgeon.

X Marks the Haunt by Lindsay Currie is exactly the kind of book I wish existed when I was in middle grade, and it was a ton of fun - and a little scary! - as an adult.

This debut is tightly written and fast paced, even with so many threads and the psychological heft. It doesn’t sacrifice character for its sharp look at a true crime and fame obsessed society.

The Wind Witch Murders by Casey Dunn is a modern Southern gothic coming-of-age novel that follows Raven, who lives with her strict religious grandmother since her mother Deanne - the Wind Witch - was sentenced to a psychiatric facility, having been convicted of the murders of two boys.

This is going to sound weird, but I’m surprised by how much I liked The Poet Empress by Shen Tao. Epic fantasies are not always my thing - I always feel like I’m going to have to invest all my time on a dozen 800 page books - but this one was recommended to me, and good job whoever that was.