List – PSYCHOPOMP.COM https://psychopomp.com Just another WordPress site Wed, 14 Aug 2024 13:28:44 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.1 https://psychopomp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/cropped-gold-P-square-32x32.png List – PSYCHOPOMP.COM https://psychopomp.com 32 32 She’s Lost Control (Again): The Sad/Bad Female Novel Protagonist https://psychopomp.com/the-sad-bad-female-novel-protagonist/ Wed, 14 Aug 2024 13:28:42 +0000 https://psychopomp.com/?p=3002838 Feminine rage is all the rage! At least according to the countless Goodreads shelves and reading lists that illuminate this publishing phenomenon. Woman serial killers, egomaniac anti-heroines with internal monologues and ethics à la Hannibal Lecter, Dexter, or Norman Bates, girl meets boy/girl chases boy/girl hurts boy narratives in a reversal of the familiar gender roles.

So let us visit a few of these recently published novels:

Tell Me I’m Worthless by Alison Rumfitt

Alice, a trans woman in her twenties, spends her life in her small apartment, stumbling through a fog of anhedonia ever since she entered a haunted house with her two best friends, but only one friend made it out with her alive. However, neither Alice nor her former best friend/occasional lover made it out unscathed. Alice has a scar gouged into her forehead, the miasmic ghost of Morrissey haunting her room’s wall posters, and nightmare-tinged occurrences that follow everywhere she goes as she tries to make sense of what happened inside the House.

This is a breath-holding, breath-stealing novel that is simultaneously brutal and tender. Although you witness the characters falling down dangerous rabbit holes of retaliation and ideologies that correspond with Britain’s rising wave of fascism and gender-critical feminism, you cannot help but empathize with the characters as they flail between rage, pain, and futility.

Boy Parts by Eliza Clark

Irina, a female photographer who had once known small-scale fame but now struggles with feeling irrelevant and only having anonymous, seedy clients, scours the streets of Newcastle for strange-but-compelling looking men and boys to photograph. These garage studio photoshoots include nudity, bizarre props, and an air of exploitation that moves from the sphere of make-believe to pure, gritty realism as the novel progresses. Irina has no consideration for other people. She takes advantage of the best friend who is secretly in love with her, the local supermarket cashier who never had a girlfriend before her, as well as other people’s goodwill and generosity. But despite her self-obsession, she also engages in self-sabotage, including starving herself, putting herself in dangerous or uncontrollable situations, and eventually realizing that her brain is keeping something terrible from her. Something she has done that is impossible to be undone.

Irina struggles to leave her mark on the world, but even as she tries to fracture the world apart, it never seems to consider her a threat because of who she was born as.

Bunny by Mona Awad

Samantha is a creative writing scholarship student in a hyper-exclusive New England MFA program. She attends weekly Workshop with the Bunnies, a group of nauseatingly twee rich girls that wear kitten- and rainbow-patterned dresses and use catchphrases such as ‘I love you, Bunny/Bunny, I love you’ spoken as a creepy hivemind choir. Although Samantha feels derision toward the Bunnies and initially keeps her distance (while simultaneously objectifying them), she soon finds herself caught in her classmates’ destructive but all-encompassing orbit.

No one seems to be getting any writing done in the program, but not to worry! The Bunnies have a tradition of creating Drafts (also known as Darlings). These are rabbits stolen from the campus grounds, then sacrificed in a darkly hilarious sequence of spontaneous combustions to create Drafts—also known as Boys. The only problem is that these boys are rough drafts. They never seem to fully develop the necessary human anatomy and behavior (or be the romance heroes the Bunnies expect them to be), which leads to them often getting the axe (no, literally, those Darlings are Killed, and often). Until Samantha joins the Bunnies, and the draft-making process changes for good.

Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh

The titular Eileen is a disturbed young woman growing up in the early sixties. Living with her erratic, alcoholic father in a grimy house, she works in a correctional facility for boys, and spends her time lost in dark fantasies, shoplifting, and stalking those who catch her interest. One of her objects of obsession soon becomes the facility’s newest counselor, Rebecca. Their friendship soon evolves into something far more sinister, as Eileen spirals into a sinkhole of toxicity and complicity. This is a character study of a highly unlikeable, but also highly vulnerable, female protagonist. She becomes both recipient and perpetrator of misogyny and stifling oppression, and acts in ways that cannot fully place her as either the hero or the villain of her own story.

Sometimes this reversal of gender roles deconstructs and examines patriarchal and other societal structures, other times it recreates them uncritically—but, admittedly, in entertaining, often gory and absurd ways. It looks like the “melancholy, amoral woman protagonist” trend is here to stay (as it should).

]]> August Horror Titles to Look Forward To https://psychopomp.com/august-2024-horror-titles-to-look-forward-to/ Tue, 06 Aug 2024 13:58:53 +0000 https://psychopomp.com/?p=3002840 With August upon us, the summer is swiftly and (for many) sadly coming to an end. But with the dew point dropping and the days growing ever longer also comes the promise of spooky season. Of course, we have a couple of months to go before October and Spooky Season, but any time is a good time to read a scary book. 

Below you’ll find a collection of horror novels coming out during the month of August. 

The Unmothers by Leslie J. Anderson

Fans of folk horror will be thrilled to read Leslie J Anderson’s deeply unsettling and suspenseful new novel, The Unmothers. 

In the wake of her husband’s tragic death, a journalist by the name of Marshall travels to a small, remote town to investigate a rumor that sounds like it’s straight out of the pages of the Enquirer: a horse has given birth to a human baby. 

Hum by Helen Phillips 

From the author of The Need comes a new dystopian horror novel, Hum. Set in a near future in a city that has been taken over by intelligent robots, a young woman named May struggles with her day-to-day life after losing her job to artificial intelligence. 

Desperate for time away from the city, she splurges on a three night stay at the Botanical Garden: one of the last remaining green spaces. But things between May and her family become fraught when she insists that they leave their technological devices behind. 

House of Bone and Rain by Gabino Iglesias

Gabino Iglesias scared the pants off of readers with his novel, The Devil Takes You Home, and now he’s back to do it again with House of Bone and Rain.

House of Bone and Rain is a different kind of ghost story. Set in Puerto Rico, it tells the story of five teenage boys who decide to exact their revenge after one of their mother’s is shot and killed. But as they strategize against the drug kingpin who gunned her down, a deadly storm begins to manifest itself off the coast, posing a very different kind of threat to their lives. 

Mask of Flies by Matthew Lyons 

From the author of A Black and Endless Sky and The Night Will Find Us comes a new, gripping horror novel about a bank robbery gone horribly wrong. 

Anne Heller has been a criminal for her entire life. When a job goes sideways, she finds herself on the run with her badly wounded partner and the police officer they’ve taken hostage. She has no choice but to lay low at her family’s cabin, but the more time they spend there, stranger and stranger occurrences begin to happen. 

The Devil By Name (Fever House #2) by Keith Rosson 

The second in the Fever House series by Keith Rosson picks up five years after the first book took place. John Bonner keeps an eye on activity beyond the walls of the “Fever House” in Portland, Oregon while Katharine Moriarty has made way for the east coast. Meanwhile, overseas, a young girl begins to exhibit unimaginable power. 

Crypt of the Moon Spider (Lunar Gothic Trilogy #1) by Nathan Ballingrud

If you’re afraid of spiders, you might want to skip this one. 

The year is 1923 and Veronica Brinkley has just arrived at the Barrowfield Home for Treatment of the Melancholy, located on the surface of the moon (though not necessarily the one you’re thinking of). Treatment for said melancholy is strange to say the least; a bit of spider silk attached to the brain. 

Little does Veronica know that the caves beneath Barrowfield once housed an enormous spider and that its silk granted followers great power. 

]]> 16 SFFH Books We’re Looking Forward to in August 2024 https://psychopomp.com/16-sffh-books-august-2024/ Tue, 30 Jul 2024 13:47:32 +0000 https://psychopomp.com/?p=3002800

The Jaguar Mask, by Michael J. DeLuca

DeLuca’s surreal fantasy novel is set in Guatemala, in a society marked by political corruption, police brutality, and environmental destruction, but also by resistance and demonstrations. In the midst of all this walks Felipe, a young man who is really a jaguar and who can change his appearance, and the way most of the world sees him, by donning different masks. Pressured by a retired police officer, Felipe is pulled into a murder investigation and his life becomes more and more entwined with that of a young woman, Cristina, who is not exactly who or what she seems either. DeLuca skillfully weaves together the history and fates of two young people with the fate and history of a country.

The Dead Cat Tail Assassins, by P. Djèlí Clark

Not every book grabs me by the short-hairs and makes me laugh out loud while I’m reading, but this darkly funny and devastatingly entertaining rollercoaster ride of a book did just that. It’s a book full of undead, monsters, spells, and action, outrageous fight scenes, intricate intrigue, and all sorts of magical shenanigans. The tale is set in the ancient city of Tal Abisi, a place full of gods and assassins, where Eveen the Eviscerator plies her trade in the service of the Matron of Assassins. Eveen is not a cat and does not have a tail, but she is most definitely dead, and an assassin. Each deadly contract she takes on must be completed as the customer specifies, but things get wild (and then wilder) when her latest job does not go as planned.

The Mercy of Gods, by James S.A. Corey

This is the first book in The Captive’s War series, a brand-new space opera trilogy by S.A. Corey, AKA Ty Franck and David Abraham, AKA the writers behind The Expanse. (That fact alone has me pretty darn excited.) The Mercy of Gods is described as “a spectacular new space opera that sees humanity fighting for survival in a war as old as the universe itself” which makes me even more excited to read it. In an interview, the writers have, jokingly (I think), called it “the disappointing love child of Frank Herbert and Ursula Le Guin,” and you can read the first chapter at Polygon.

A Sorceress Comes to Call, by T. Kingfisher

A new book by T. Kingfisher is always a reason for readerly joy, and her latest work is a dark reimagining of the Brothers Grimm’s story “The Goose Girl.” In the story we meet Cordelia, a 14-year-old girl who lives with her extremely controlling mother. Add in the fact that this controlling mother is an evil sorcerer who uses magic to, among other things, make Cordelia “obedient” (essentially taking control of her body and voice), and you have a set-up for a pretty intense tale and after reading the excerpt at the publisher’s website I cannot wait to read all of it.

Glass Houses, by Madeline Ashby

I devoured my review copy of this book in one (very long, way past my bedtime) reading session because, like any really excellent thriller, I needed to know wtf was going on and who was responsible. The book is a near-future, heart-pounding, suspenseful, and wickedly twisty science fiction novel that starts with a plane crash. A group of employees from a high-tech company, and the company’s “eccentric, boyish billionaire boss,” find themselves stranded on a mysterious island where they find an equally mysterious glass house with some very peculiar and disturbing features. Ashby unfolds the backstory of the company, and the complex backstory of the main character, Kristen (the company’s hyper-competent “chief emotional manager”) with finely honed skill, pulling all the diverse story threads together in an immensely satisfying ending. It’s a dark, unsettling, and thoroughly gripping book that kept me guessing right until the end.

Loka, by S.B. Divya

Loka is the second book in S.B. Divya’s Alloy Era series (the first book in the series is Meru), a space opera set centuries into a future where humans are confined to Earth while their posthuman, genetically engineered descendants, called alloys, explore the galaxy. In the first book, we followed the adventures of Jayanthi, a human who grew up with his adoptive alloy parents, and the alloy space pilot Vaka. In book two, the adventure continues on Earth as Akshaya, the daughter of a human and an alloy, explores a region called Loka, accompanied by her best friend Somya. I really love the scope and the adventurous spirit of these books.

Key Lime Sky, by Al Hess

Denver Bryant is a passionate but disgruntled pie aficionado. Denver keeps a pie blog and certainly never counted on a UFO sighting/possible alien invasion in their small town of Muddy Gap. After the UFO sighting, which only Denver seems to have noticed or remember or even be interested in, things get progressively weirder as there seems to be an alien presence in town. Denver uses their pie blog to try to get the message out about what’s going on, and, in the process, they get closer to a local bartender, Ezra. Ezra is the only person in town who seems to have any interest in the alien invasion Denver witnessed. This sounds like such an interesting, off-kilter twist on an alien invasion story, with some romance added to the mix.

Memento Mori, by Eunice Hong

I only had to see the description of this book once to add it to my to-read list: “Recasting the myths of Eurydice, Orpheus, Persephone, and Hades through the lens of a Korean American family, Eunice Hong’s debut novel offers a moving and darkly funny exploration of grief, love, and the inescapability of death.” I MEAN! If any book is a must-have at Psychopomp, this book is it. I cannot wait to see how Hong weaves together Greek mythology, neuroscience, and tales from a Korean grandmother in what certainly sounds like a thoroughly unique take on an ancient story. (Also! THAT COVER!)

Blackheart Man, by Nalo Hopkinson

Myth and history blend in Hopkinson’s new fantasy novel, set on the magical island of Chynchin, a place threatened both by the arrival of conquerors from outside and new dangers from within. On social media, Hopkinson describes this book as “alternate Caribbean history fantasy,” and the plot involves disappearing children, an invading army, witch-crafted statues coming to life, and the emergence of a fearsome demon known as the Blackheart Man. There was a terrific interview with Hopkinson in Locus earlier this year where she talked at length about this book, her writing career, and about the craft of writing in general, as well as writing this book in particular. You can read an excerpt online in Locus Magazine.

One Hundred Shadows, by Hwang Jungeun

This is a new edition of Jungeun’s book which was first published in Korean in 2010 and later translated into English by Jung Yewon. The story was inspired by the Yongsan disaster in Seoul in 2009 where renters occupied an abandoned building in the Yongsan District to protest against evictions and insufficient compensation as a result of urban redevelopment and gentrification. That’s the real-world backstory, but the book goes beyond reality with its darkly evocative, lyrical prose as Jungeun tells the story of two repair-shop assistants, Eungyo and Mujae, and their relationship, set in a community where people’s shadows have mysteriously begun to rise, taking on a disconcerting life of their own. This edition from Erewhon Books features an introduction by Han Kang, author of The Vegetarian, a historical note about the Yongsan tragedy, and an exclusive interview with the author.

She Who Knows, by Nnedi Okorafor

This book is a prequel and sequel to Okorafor’s 2010 novel Who Fears Death and is set in the same future, in a West African society that is shaped and marked by history, myth, magic, storytelling, and technology. Like so many of Okorafor’s books, this one seamlessly blends fantasy and science fiction, melding stories of gods and space visitors, new tech and old ways of life. We follow the spiritual/magical awakening and adolescence of Najeeba, a teenage girl who finds her own way, and her own strength, setting powerful forces in motion in the process. Who Fears Death and She Who Knows are both part of a trilogy. The final instalment is expected at a later date with no title yet announced and I’m already looking forward to it.

Sacrificial Animals, by Kailee Pedersen

Pedersen’s book is inspired by her own life story: she was adopted from Nanning, China in 1996 and grew up on her family’s farm in Nebraska. In the book, Nick Morrow is summoned back to the family home in rural Nebraska by his abusive father who is now on his deathbed. Once Nick, reluctantly, goes back, he finds himself in the company of his brother Joshua and Joshua’s wife, Emily, who is of Asian descent. The book is described as a study of a dysfunctional family in the process of destroying itself from the inside, while a shadowy presence stalks them from the outside. Pedersen has described the book as a “queer Gothic read” that blends Chinese mythology and supernatural horror, and every aspect of that sounds freaking awesome to me. 

When You Leave I Disappear, by David Niall Wilson

The publisher’s description says that this novella is about how “a bestselling author’s imposter syndrome draws her into a darker and darker world from which she may never escape” and I don’t know about you, but that sounds like a very realistic and haunting nightmare to me. The horrors of imposter syndrome are all too real for many of us, and certainly seems like a plausible source of horror. There’s a great guest post by David Niall Wilson at Track of Words where he writes about the novella and about how he specifically wanted to explore and evoke a specific kind of unease:  “There are moments when I’m reading something I know full well is made up, but find it so conceivable and well-grounded in reality that an entirely different sort of unease takes…they just trigger something in my mind that takes off on its own, a real concern, or a possibility that doesn’t require, for me, suspension of disbelief.” Color me further intrigued and interested.

Helga, by Catherine Yu

The best sales pitch for this YA book is Yu’s own description of it on social media as “a gender-bent Frankenstein retelling” which includes body and climate horror, rotten boys, and plenty of chaos. I read that description, and, well, it definitely caught my eye. The newly awakened, and very curious Helga is the result of her father’s science experiment, but she is nowhere near as obedient as her creator would like. When her father is out of town, she escapes the lab and explores a world of clubs, food, and boys. Beyond her dating schemes, she also gets involved in other serious, and more perilous, shenanigans.  

The Enchanted Lies of Céleste Artois, by Ryan Graudin

Graudin’s fantasy debut is set in “the hidden magical pockets of early 1900s Paris,” where Céleste Artois, a forger and con artist, has made a life for herself. (By the way, this book gets immediate bonus Psychopomp-points because Céleste and her thieving best friends have set up their hideout in the Pere Lachaise cemetery.) When Céleste gets sick, as in coughing-up-blood-sick, she encounters a devilishly beautiful and mysterious stranger named Rafe. Rafe introduces her to the magical parts of Paris and offers to extend her life in exchange for the use of her artistic forging skills. Of course, the price for such an infernal deal is no small thing and it all sounds delightfully Faustian to me.

The Crimson Crown, by Heather Walter

Fairytale retellings are my jam and in this book, the first in a “queer, witchy” duology, Walter lets the queen of Snow White tell her side of the story. Turns out, she was once a young witch named Ayeleth who got caught up in the White King’s war against witchcraft. To prove her worth and to serve her coven, Ayeleth ends up at the White King’s court, where the plot thickens as she runs into an old flame/acquaintance, Jacquette, who once betrayed her. Walter has called the book “an f/f origin story of Snow White’s Evil Queen x Anne Boleyn” and hey, mixing that real history with that fairytale sounds like a potentially winning concept to me.

]]> Six Sexy Specters of Cinema https://psychopomp.com/six-sexy-specters-of-cinema/ Mon, 08 Jul 2024 13:34:24 +0000 https://psychopomp.com/?p=3002732 Ghosts on screen are meant to make us moan with terror or mourn in torment, but sometimes it’s a little bit of both. Occasionally, ghosts are played by an actor so sexy, so compelling, as to confuse the basic drives of the onlooker. Sure, they’ve gone beyond flesh. But sometimes the flesh wants to follow into the beyond.

Here are the six sexiest ghosts on film.

6. Francesca in Ghost Ship (2002)

Played by Francesca Rettondini, this spectral songstress introduces the film, crooning the Italian song “Senza Fine” before a terrible fate befalls the unlucky upon the sea. Vamping it up in a red satin evening gown and opera gloves, both Rettondini’s voice and look are smooth as hell—which is exactly where she’s taking you. Ironically, the actress was also on board the infamous ocean liner Costa Concordia when it capsized in 2012. Life imitates art!

5. Moira O’Hara in American Horror Story S1 (2011)

Frances Conroy and Alexandra Breckenridge split duty as this seductive and unjustly murdered young woman. Moira’s story is long and weaves through all the history of the “Murder House,” because she’s a tireless domestic servant. Literally tireless, because a ghost never needs to sleep. Using her looks and charm as a young woman to seduce less-than worthy men, she also uses the wisdom and invisibility she enjoys as an older woman to gather secrets. That’ll teach us to overlook people in hospitality.

4. Candyman in Candyman (1991)

Tony Todd brings this vengeful spirit to life with a soupy-slow horror elegance and smoldering gaze that cannot be denied. Taken from a Clive Barker short story where the creep in question is as waxy-yellow as a beehive, later writers and directors have made this a distinctly Black series of films and legends linked to the Cabrini-Green housing project in Chicago. Thematically, Candyman has been enriched with the true experiences of extrajudicial murder of Black folks by people in authority, and the silence and mystery that often surrounds it. Is it weird to be turned on by the hook-murdering villain of a story as upsetting as that? Very well then, us horror nerds are weird.

3. Helen of Troy in Doctor Faustus (1967)

Any director would have a lot of nerve trying to get Elizabeth Taylor, the highest paid actress in the world at the time, to take on a non-speaking role as a purely decorative ghost of seduction in a dreary and cut-down production of Christopher Marlowe’s 16th century devil-made-me-do-it play. But there she is, bejeweled and impossibly lovely, walking bridal-slow through a movie starring her fifth and sixth husband, Richard Burton. Someone must of talked her into it, and our money is on the smooth-talking Faustus himself, who in the end could charm anyone but the devil— or the critics of this flop. Suggestion: a cut of this movie that’s just Helen of Troy, strolling past her drooling co-star. No words need be spoken.  

2. The Maitlands in Beetlejuice (1988)

Young Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin are so charming and recognizable in the opening of this madcap goth adventure that it’s hard to believe they have to die to make way for Winona Ryder, Michael Keaton, and Catherine O’Hara to take over the plot. Davis and Baldwin have to really work at being terrifying, because in their natural state they’re two movie-star-gorgeous newlyweds and newlydeads we can’t tear our eyes off of. Fingers crossed for the sequel to bring us what we crave, though it will likely not involve the two original hotties from the hauntable house.

1. Sam Wheat in Ghost (1990)

This movie gives us so many gifts: an endlessly quotable Whoopi Goldberg as a medium, Demi Moore at a stage in life so beautiful as to render a terrible haircut powerless, and the unforgettable pottery scene that launched a thousand kiln purchases. But best of all that is Patrick Swazye in a starring role as Sam Wheat who must act from beyond the early grave to save the love of his life. Absolute heartthrob Swayze is the kind of ghost we root for to gain the power to move objects in the physical world mainly because we all want to be touched like that, by someone whose beauty makes their death (on and off screen) even more painful than the usual thing.

Ghosts can’t be lovers, but they can be loved. And these can crawl under the sheets and haunt our dreams any night of the week.  

[image: Paramount Pictures]

]]> 7 Haunting Works of Nonfiction https://psychopomp.com/7-haunting-works-of-nonfiction/ Tue, 02 Jul 2024 14:12:37 +0000 https://psychopomp.com/?p=2502367 When it comes to your towering to-be-read piles, fiction isn’t the only thing that can have a gothic flair to it. The same, of course, goes for the horror genre as well. There are plenty of thoroughly researched and unsettling works of non-fiction that will have you reading until the wee hours of the morning, ranging from the history of haunted houses, to books bound in human skin, to how we talk—or avoid talking completely—about death. 

Below you’ll find 7 examples of haunting works of nonfiction. 

Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places by Colin Dickey

Have you ever wanted to go on a roadtrip to visit some of America’s most haunted locations, but aren’t sure where to start? Well, Colin Dickey’s got you covered with his wonderful deep dive into our darker history, Ghostland. In Ghostland, Dickey travels across the country, visiting  hotels, abandoned hospitals, “zombie homes” and even an Indian burial ground.  All the while Dickey asks what makes a place haunted, researches who (or what) is doing the haunting, and whether or not ghosts are real or just a figment of our imaginations brought to life by troubled history. 

Dark Archives: A Librarian’s Investigation into the Science and History of Books Bound in Human Skin by Megan Rosenbloom

Out of all the books on this list of gothic titles, Dark Archives by might be the toughest one to convince your friends to read during their free time, despite the fascinating (if macabre) subject it covers. 

You see, Dark Archives covers the grim history and practice of binding books in human skin. Megan Rosenbloom has crafted an extensive and intensive look at the who, what, and why of this fleshy form of book binding, calling upon a team of scientists, historians, and librarians along the way. 

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes & Other Lessons from the Crematory by Caitlin Doughty 

If you consider yourself to be a goth and you somehow haven’t heard of Caitlin Doughty then let me enlighten you. Caitlin Doughty is a mortician by trade, as well as a popular YouTuber and advocate for funeral industry reform. She’s also the author of several wonderful works of nonfiction that tackle the subject of death. 

Fascinated but not sure where to start? Smoke Gets In Your Eyes & Other Lessons From the Crematory is a really excellent place to start. Smoke Gets In Your Eyes is Caitlin’s first collection of essays, and a thoughtful rumination about how conversations and general fear surrounding death and dying have shaped our country. Beyond being a well researched book, it’s also incredibly funny, and readers will find themselves chuckling as they learn about some of the more taboo subjects surrounding the deceased. 

Obitchuary: The Big Hot Book Of Death by Spencer Henry and Madison Reyes 

Spun-off from the popular podcast of the same name, Spencer Henry and Madison Reyes have 

joined forces again to write a book on the complicated relationship that many American’s have with death. Obitchuary is a clever, surprisingly moving, and painstakingly researched journey through death culture.

Horror for Weenies: Everything You Need to Know About the Films You’re Too Scared to Watch by Emily C. Hughes

If you’re anything like me when it comes to horror movies, then you head straight to the internet before watching certain ones so that you can be prepared for just how scary it is. Now, Emily Hughes (the veritable queen of scream thanks to her yearly horror novel roundups) has written a book to guide those of us who are a little too chicken for jump scares. Horror for Weenies is an expertly crafted and illuminating look at horror cinema that covers everything from Hereditary to The Blair Witch Project. 

Go to Hell: A Traveler’s Guide to the Earth’s Most Otherworldly Destinations by Erika Engelhaupt 

Has anyone ever told you to go to hell? Or have you had reason to use the phrase “to hell and back”? Well, Erika Engelhaupt has written a clever and highly detailed travel guide to some of the world’s underworld inspired locations. Engelhaupt has included 50 destinations and their fascinating histories including locations such as St. Patrick’s Purgatory in Ireland, Deadvlei in Namibia, and the Waitomo Glowworm Caves in New Zealand. 

Cult Following: The Extreme Sects That Capture Our Imaginations―and Take Over Our Lives by J.W. Ocker

J.W. Ocker, author of Cursed Objects and The United States of Cyptids, returns to the world of weird this fall with his new book, Cult Following, Ocker covers everything and everyone from David Koresh, to the earliest UFO cult, to Hogen Fukunaga who believed that he could tell fortunes by looking at feet. Cult Following promises to be an insightful look at some of the most terrifying cults that have existed across the globe as well as the unshaking, and often dangerous, power of trust. 

]]> 21 SFFH Books We’re Looking Forward to in July 2024 https://psychopomp.com/21-sffh-books-july-2024/ Fri, 28 Jun 2024 13:48:36 +0000 https://psychopomp.com/?p=3002607

The Gilded Crown, by Marianne Gordon

A book that opens with the line “The first time Hellevir visited Death, she was ten years old” should obviously be featured at Psychopomp, and after reading an excerpt of The Gilded Crown, I am definitely putting it on my to-read list. Hellevir has been able to raise the dead since she was a little girl, but the mysterious figure who rules the afterlife claims a part of her for every resurrection. After Hellevir resurrects Princess Sullivain, the heir to the throne, she is tasked with protecting the Princess from death for as long as it takes, and she might end up trading away more of herself than she can pay.

The Shadow on the Glass, by Jonathan L. Howard

Howard’s book is part of Aconyte’s Call of Cthulhu universe, and it’s a tale of dark secrets, human greed, cruelty, and cosmic horrors. I read an advance reading copy of this and loved the characters and the setting. Howard is a great writer (his Apex story “O Have You Seen the Devle with his Mikerscope and Scalpul?” still haunts me), and he infuses this tale with a real sense of both danger and adventure. I really had no idea where the ending was going to take me which usually makes for a thrilling ride. By the way: I had some really intense nightmares about giant sky-monsters after reading this book so be warned!

Masquerade, by O.O. Sangoyomi

Sangoyomi’s novel is loosely based on the myth of Persephone, but it’s set in a reimagined version of 15th century West Africa. The main character, a young woman named Òdòdó, is part of Timbuktu’s blacksmith guild. The women of the guild, including Òdòdó, are shunned as social pariahs, and things only get worse for them when the city is conquered by the warrior king of Yorùbáland. Òdòdó is abducted and ends up entangled in a new world full of power struggles, elaborate schemes, and hidden enemies.

Wilderness Reform, by Matt Query and Harrison Query

In the Query brothers’ previous novel, Old Country, a young couple uncovered the horrors held within their newly purchased dream house. In Wilderness Reform, there is a hidden evil at work beneath the surface in a remote camp for troubled teens. Thirteen-year-old Ben knows as soon as he arrives at the camp that something is off—the staff is friendly yet menacing, and there are rumors about mysterious events and disappearances—but he will have to work together with the other boys in his cabin to unearth the truth.

This Great Hemisphere, by Mateo Askaripour

Askaripour’s science fiction novel is set in a future where some people are born invisible and relegated to second-class citizenship. (That premise alone is tantalizing enough to pique my interest.) One such invisible person is a young woman named Sweetmint who goes looking for her older brother when he disappears in the aftermath of a political murder. Sweetmint sets out to find him before it’s too late, but will have to dodge a law officer, a ruthless politician, and a system stacked against her. Askaripour says that his novel is about “the nature of power, the lengths people will go to in order to gain and maintain it… It is a call to arms for the unseen, a rallying cry for those who are tired of being ignored and forgotten. And, of course, it’s a hell of an adventure.”

Navola, by Paolo Bacigalupi

The publisher’s description says that this fantasy novel has “echoes of Renaissance Italy, The Godfather, and Game of Thrones” which makes it sound like Machiavellian fantasy with something of a violent vibe and that sounds enticing. Bacigalupi sets his tale in Navola, a city-state where a few influential families rule society, and where “power is everything.” Young Davido di Regulai is a member of one of these powerful families, a family that is in possession of an eldritch dragon relic, and he is expected to take over after his father, but “strange and ancient undercurrents lurk behind the gilt and grandeur.” If that’s not enough to draw you in, just look at that stunning cover! (The cover illustration is by Sasha Vinogradova and the cover design by John Gall.)

The Nightmare Box and Other Stories, by Cynthia Gómez

This short story collection goes right to the top of my TBR-pile, because what I’ve already read of Gómez’s short fiction is sharp and fierce and all-around delicious. For example, check out “The Books Would Like a Word” in Fantasy Magazine, and “The Ones Who Come Back To Heal” in Strange Horizons. The publisher calls the collection “a magic-soaked love letter to Oakland, brimming with feminist rage. Its twelve stories center ordinary people—Latine, queer, working class-as they wield supernatural powers against oppression, loneliness, and dread.” In other words, a must-read.

Afterlives: The Year’s Best Death Stories, edited by Vajra Chandrasekera

From our very own Psychopomp publishing house comes the inaugural edition of a new annual anthology, Afterlives: The Year’s Best Death Stories. This anthology is edited by Vajra Chandrasekera, and includes fabulous, deathly tales by Isabel J. Kim, Diana Dima, Eugenia Triantafyllou, M.L. Krishnan, B. Pladek, and many more. A full table of contents is available here on Psychopomp.

Beyond the Bounds of Infinity – An Anthology of Diverse Horror, edited by Vaughn A. Jackson & Stephanie Pearre

This anthology from Raw Dog Screaming Press features stories by L. Marie Wood, S.A. Cosby, Jessica McHugh, Mary SanGiovanni, Cassius Kilroy, Jessica L. Sparrow, Pedro Iniguez, Vicky Velvet, and more. It’s weird fiction and cosmic horror that is “diverse down to the cellular level” featuring Taíno folk horror, horrors from the cozy to apocalyptic, with dark gods feasting on suffering, and where the unexplained lurks beneath crumbling urban structures. The anthology was funded by a Kickstarter campaign with the goal of publishing horror and weird fiction by people from marginalized groups.

Slow Burn, by Mike Allen

I was lucky enough to get my mitts on an early review copy of this collection of short stories and poetry. Spoiler alert: I loved it so much that I blurbed it. If you like your horror darkly beautiful, disturbing, and profoundly unsettling then Allen’s work is definitely for you. There’s a blend of visceral, under-your-skin, into-your-bones horror and gorgeously crafted prose (and poetry!) that is hard to beat. I particularly love the way Allen twists and skews the reality of everyday places and people, tucking evil and terror into the cracks of what we think is real. For a taste of Allen’s fiction, check out “The Feather Stitch” in Lackington’s.

The Bright Sword: A Novel of King Arthur, by Lev Grossman

I have a real thing for stories about King Arthur, and from what I’ve read about it, Grossman’s book approaches the story from a different point of view. It’s set soon after Arthur’s death when a young knight named Collum arrives at Camelot. He finds a few surviving knights of the Round Table and they are joined by Nimue, who is Merlin’s former apprentice. While Arthur’s Britain starts to fall apart around them with kingdoms turning on each other, warlords besieging Camelot, and old gods and monsters returning, Collum and his companions must try to “solve the mysteries of this ruined world.”

The World Outside, by Elad Haber

I’m reading a review copy of Haber’s debut collection right now, and it begins with a selection of reimagined fairytales—Rapunzel, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and more— where the characters in the old, well-known stories move past their old worlds and old settings into new places. There are also several stories that center on music in a variety of incisive and uniquely imagined ways, including “Number One Hit” and “The Conductor Sighs,” two of my favorites so far from this collection. For a taste of Haber’s storytelling, you can read “Number One Hit” at Interfictions Online.

Yoke of Stars, by R.B. Lemberg

I am a huge, unabashed fan of Lemberg’s writing and their Birdverse is one of my favorite fantasy realms, so it was a real thrill to read an advance reading copy of this book earlier this year. It’s a beautiful, tender tale where stories are told and shared between two people: Stone Orphan who is an apprentice assassin, and their visitor, Ulín, who turns out to be an inquisitive linguist. These two are connected in ways they do not understand when they first meet and Lemberg weaves their story, and their lives, together with thoughts on language and translation and how we shape ourselves with language while we are also shaped by it. For the best description of this book, I give you Lemberg’s own words: “it features assassins, linguistics, and FISH COMMUNISM.”

That Which Stands Outside, by Mark Morris

A horror novel inspired by Nordic folklore will always grab my attention, and That Which Stands Outside also has the tantalizing tagline “On an isolated Nordic isle, ancient forces awaken.” The story follows Todd Kingston who meets and soon falls in love with Yrsa Helgerson in London. When her mother dies, Todd accompanies Yrsa back to her childhood home, where the locals greet them with suspicion and hostility. They believe Yrsa is a child of the mythic Jötnar, something Yrsa denies. But strange things are afoot, and Todd finds himself drawn into a battle that might decide the future of the entire world.

The West Passage, by Jared Pechaček

I read an advance reading copy of this book a couple of months ago and it has not quite left my mind since. This book is strikingly original, beautiful, and also profoundly strange and I loved every phantasmagorical, darkly lustrous crumb of it. It is set in a realm/city/palace ruled by giant magical ladies where the threat of the beast, the beast that rises, must be kept at bay by the Guardian of the West Passage. I could say more about the plot, but nothing I write will really prepare you for the unsettling majesty of this book. It’s like the unholy and gorgeous love child of The Wizard of Oz (on acid), Alice in Wonderland, Lowery’s The Green Knight, and the works of Hieronymus Bosch, with a dash of Piranesi. It’s the kind of book that will twist your head around in the best possible way.

The Atropine Tree, by Sarah Read

A book of gothic terror from Bram Stoker Award-winning author Sarah Read? You’d best believe I’m all in for this. To quote a post on Read’s Instagram: “Check it out if you like ghosts, witches, big houses, alchemists, poison gardens, and matters of questionable inheritance. Mostly ghosts.” I MEAN, what else do you need? The story involves one Alrick Aldane who returns home to his family’s estate to inherit his father’s land and title. But things are complicated by the property’s disturbing history and a mystery that might condemn Alrick to a fate worse than death.

The Spice Gate, by Prashanth Srivatsa

Srivatsa’s fantasy novel is set in a world where Spice Gates connect eight far-flung kingdoms. The novel’s protagonist, Amir, is born with the spice mark, meaning he is a Spice Carrier, one who can travel through the gates. This isn’t such a good thing, though, as it only means he is forced to carry spices for the rich and powerful through the gates, with little or no means of changing his own fate. When Amir begins to plot a path to freedom, he is drawn into a dangerous conspiracy that makes him question everything he has ever known. You can read an excerpt at the publisher’s website, and I must say, after reading it, I am thoroughly intrigued.

In the Shadow of the Fall, by Tobi Ogundiran

This is the first in a new epic fantasy novella duology that follows Ashâke, an acolyte in the temple of Ifa, who has been waiting for years to become a priestess and serve the orisha. But during all that time, the orisha have stubbornly refused to speak to her: “Her own peers were five seasons into their priesthoods. Yet here she was, stuck as an acolyte, suffering the jeers of the little runts who had come up behind her and now thought themselves her equal.” Frustrated, Ashâke takes matters into her own hands and tries to summon and trap an orisha. A bad idea? Oh, you bet. There is a great excerpt from the novella at Reactor to whet your appetite.

The Body Harvest, by Michael J. Seidlinger

Will and Olivia, the main characters in Seidlinger’s book, are virus chasers. Meaning: their hobby is to seek out sickness. Will wants to catch the latest flu; Olivia yearns for fevers; and both of them think they can overcome any affliction they encounter. Then they meet Zaff who tells them of a new outbreak and says he knows when and where it will happen, and Will and Olivia definitely want to catch the latest strain. That premise sounds pretty twisted, and yet, after years of pandemic denials, anti-vaxxers and the like, it doesn’t seem that far-fetched that people would try to get infected. The publisher describes it as “J.G. Ballard’s Crash meets Albert Camus’s The Plague” and color me seriously curious because that is some heavy-duty comparison titles.

Ghost Camera, by Darcy Coates

Stories and movies featuring creepy, haunting, and haunted photos and/or movies are one of my favorite kinds of horror, so Coates’s Ghost Camera sounds pretty freaking great and terrifying to me. Jenine finds an abandoned polaroid camera, snaps a photo and finds something unexpected in the image: a ghostly figure in the background, watching her. For every picture she takes, the figure moves one step closer. When Jenine shares the camera’s secrets with her friend Bree, the ghostly figures start to follow both of them.

Navigational Entanglements, by Aliette de Bodard

On social media, de Bodard has described her new science fiction novella as “disaster queer space romance with extra jellyfish” while the publisher calls it “a compelling tale of love, duty, and found-family in an exciting new space opera that brings xianxia-style martial arts to the stars.” Either way it sounds amazing and after reading an excerpt (available here), I am even more excited to read the whole thing. It’s space sci-fi with jockeying navigator clans, space creatures called Tanglers, and a dangerous mission that might be doomed right from the start.

]]> 5 Great Eulogies in Film https://psychopomp.com/5-great-eulogies-in-film/ Thu, 27 Jun 2024 13:46:42 +0000 https://psychopomp.com/?p=3002567 The only way to give a good eulogy is to really have known the dead. There’s not a set rhythm to them; it isn’t like a wedding where there are always vows. There may be prayers or no prayers; we might be graveside or at a wake far from any place of rest. The eulogy is a free-form tribute to the dead, and it arises from grief for a person one has known.

With that knowledge, a good example is key. If you haven’t had the displeasure of many live funerals in your life, there are great examples in cinema that can serve as instructions.

5. Guardians of the Galaxy 2

Following the death of Yondu, a space Fagan and violent step-father to bumbling human hero Star-Lord, a funeral happens in space. The surviving stepson must find a way to make the man who was his father when he had none, the man who showed him little mercy or comfort and nonetheless taught him how to be a man. When Yondu’s fellow Ravagers pay their final respects, even Rocket Raccoon must accept that the people Yondu had worked his whole life to alienate him loved him still. Star-Lord admits that his found father terrified him, beat him, and kept him on edge his whole life. And yet, he could also make peace with the old man:

“Yondu didn’t have a talking car but he did have a flying arrow. He didn’t have the beautiful voice of an angel but he did have the whistle of one. Both Yondu and David Hasselhoff went on kick-ass adventures and hooked up with hot women and fought robots. I guess David Hasselhoff did kind of end up being my dad after all, and it was you, Yondu. I had a pretty cool dad.”

Even someone we have complicated feelings about can be eulogized well.

4. Four Weddings and a Funeral

This one is a stone-cold tearjerker. Kicking off with calling a gay man’s lover his “close friend,” this is the Scots-accented eulogy to end them all. Matthew, the surviving man, tells stories about Gareth. “So very fat and so very rude,” the dead man is described, but also a great host with an enormous capacity for joy and drunkenness, as the “most splendid, replete, big-hearted and jolly bugger most of us ever met.”

Matthew reads from “Funeral Blues,” by W. H. Auden. If you need to make people cry with your words at a burial, this is a sure thing. It’s the kind of thing that makes us wonder what else is there, when love is gone.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

3. The Wrath of Khan

What love is there in the galaxy to rival that between James T. Kirk and Spock, his half-Vulcan science officer? Spock sacrifices himself to save the ship at the end of this epic saga of revenge and obsession. Starfleet is a space navy, after all, so the revels are kept brief.

Eulogizing Commander Spock as both his commanding officer and as a beloved friend, Kirk says of his fallen comrade: “Of all the souls I have encountered in my travels, his was the most human.” Spock is laid to rest with the sounds of Earth mourners: “Amazing Grace” is played on the bagpipes by his fellow officer, Montgomery Scott, and Spock’s body is fired out a torpedo tube.

Brevity does not take away from the deep feeling of this one, because it is built on that crucial knowledge. Kirk knows Spock, and we know them both from their five-year mission to seek out new life. A shared adventure has ended, and the next must begin.

2. My Girl

Nothing can be said at the funeral of a child. The tragedy is too large to be spoken, and the life to be spoken of wasn’t lived. The knowing that we bring to the eulogy is brief and unformed, and all that’s left to commemorate is the small hole where that person should be, making the hole a little bigger every day.

True to that impossibility, the funeral for Thomas J. Sennett (a name too grown-up for any character played by Macaulay Culkin at his zenith) is mostly made up of bible verses rather than any actual eulogy. Best friend Vada is the only one to speak for him, demanding his glasses and telling everyone that the kid in the box was gonna be an acrobat.

Better to be known for just the dreams of who we wanted to be than for nothing at all.

1. Big Fish

What we know of the dead might not be good. In Big Fish, a eulogy must account for a man who seems to have lied about everything he ever said or did. It’s a classic father and son tale: the son who has never gotten enough from a larger-than-life father must face all the hollow places inside the old man. He must accept the truth, even though he has known it all along.

It is that knowing that allows us to shape our lives and the lives of others into stories worth telling. It makes the mess of a life into something neat enough to fit into newspaper columns, something people can sit through without wailing or calling the speaker a liar to their face.

That’s the magic of it, in the knowing. Knowing the truth, knowing the lies. Knowing how to tell a story, at the moment it’s needed most.

]]> 5 Moments of Gothic Splendor In Interview With a Vampire https://psychopomp.com/5-moments-of-gothic-splendor-in-interview-with-a-vampire/ Wed, 19 Jun 2024 13:55:27 +0000 https://psychopomp.com/?p=3002551 It’s June and that means it’s Pride Month. All year should be a celebration and a time for folks to learn whether they’re part of the community or not. There’s so much history to uncover and understand. And there is history within all media as far as queer depictions go. In regard to horror, I’ve said it many times, but it bears repeating that horror is inherently queer. There’s something thrilling about how angry that makes homophobic horror fans. Leading me to the topic at hand: Interview with the Vampire television adaption. Move over Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise.

Interview with the Vampire and The Vampire Chronicles series in general have always been queer as hell. Even if you’ve never read a single one of the books in Anne Rice’s infamous book series, you’ll have read an article or post about them by now. The AMC series adaptation of Interview with the Vampire in particular has garnered a lot of discussion. More importantly, in its unapologetic queerness. Unlike the ‘94 film adaptation, this gothic series leans all the way in. And I’m about to give you a few moments of gothic splendor.

Note: These aren’t all the moments because the series is gothic horror as a whole. And season 2 is still airing.

Lestat Murdering the Priests (1×01)

“In Throes of Increasing Wonder…” (season 1, episode 1) is a wonderful premiere, and it makes no apologies for Louis (Jacob Anderson) being a Black man in this adaptation or showing us queer sex that results in literal levitation. But it also gives us a scene in which Lestat (Sam Reid) finds Louis at church, feeling absolute despair and confessing to a priest (showing how he’s still struggling with internalized homophobia), and murders the priests in the most violent of ways. It’s a rejection of religion and conformity and a bold moment of no fucks given.

Lestat Turning Louis (1×01)

The twisted romance of it all, right? Lestat’s beautiful speech to Louis before he turns him, the declaration of love, and the moment after Louis is turned serve as tremendous gothic imagery. And the fact that it all happens in a church is even better. There’s something to be said about unabashed queerness occurring in a church or a churchlike atmosphere. Everything gothic has always been revered by judgmental religious people. So the irony is fantastic. After all, in that church, the death and the undeath of a Black gay man in the 1900s occurred.

The Party Massacre (1×08)

A dysfunctional vampire family throwing an after party and choosing a specific amount of guests just to slaughter them incites bonkers imagery. And the scene itself is brilliantly violent. A room full of horrible rich white people thinking they’re going to get the gift of eternal life. Only to be killed? It’s ironic. Of course Lestat’s “death” at the hands of Louis (only for it to be revealed that Louis spared him) is gothic tragedy at its finest. Vampire romances don’t always end well and while it’s not permanently over between them, it’s still tragic.

Louis’ Conversation with Imaginary Lestat in the Cemetery (2×01)

Being tormented by the hallucination (that’s the best way to describe it) of your former lover is something that Louis finds himself struggling with. The atmosphere with a bunch of corpses on the ground, Louis’ grim appearance, hallucination Lestat having a bat come out of his neck, and the bleak feeling of it all is perfection. Louis’ undying heartache and guilt over Lestat is the epitome of gothic. And the madness of it all is just the cherry on top.

The Murder on the Théâtre des Vampires Stage (2×02)

Exploring this point in the flashback is quite the journey because Paris obviously has a different feeling to it. The vibes during this current season of the show aren’t remotely the same as Louis and Claudia (Delainey Hayes)’s live in New Orleans. And part of that comes from the introduction of the Théâtre des Vampires. This coven of vampires isn’t like any other coven; they delight in theatrics and murder people on stage as part of the show. But naturally, the human audience doesn’t think it’s real.

During the first show we saw in the second episode of the show, there’s a memorable performance from one of the prominent members of the coven, Santiago (Ben Daniels). He draws in the audience, especially when he bites a captured woman named Annika (Sinead Phelps). And after that very intense moment, she is swarmed by some of the coven, drained and killed. Any aspiring vampire would be proud.

]]> Animalia: Horror with (Emotional) Teeth and Claws https://psychopomp.com/animalia-horror/ Mon, 17 Jun 2024 15:15:14 +0000 https://psychopomp.com/?p=3002549 Canines and talons and beaks. Prowling, biting, clawing. A pair of red eyes in a field, a fin disappearing underwater, a blackbird’s caw of doom. Animal imagery is used in horror often to increase the fear factor through humanity’s natural fear of predator species and the wild unknown. Sometimes it goes even deeper than that, past base instinct, to a many-layered symbolism that borrows its traits from the animal kingdom. The animal as a mirror image to humankind, or an anthropomorphized version of us. An emotionally heavy metaphor, or a psychosomatic manifestation. More than anything, a haunting.

In Lowry Poletti’s “The Dead Return in Strange Shapes” (Fantasy Magazine), an orphaned young man named Thais can see the souls of the departed, who live a second half-life on earth in the form of various animals. He is haunted by a lone wolf, a dead warrior who speaks to his own loneliness, but he cannot bring himself to embrace what the wolf means to him. In that way, Thais’ inner world is also reflected in the solitary, ignored, restless animals. Thais goes on a journey with a strange man—god, creature—who too is haunted by the tiger draped around his neck who is ghost and familiar, hated and beloved. A lot of Poletti’s stories revolve around animals who are eerie and human-like in their passions and devotions, while the roles of predator and prey often get mixed up and reversed, with philosophical repercussions.

Meanwhile, in Kel Coleman’s “I Wear My Spiders in Remembrance of Myself” (Apparition Lit) and S. Qiouyi Lu’s “Anything Resembling Love“(Tor) people contain insects inside them—in the former story, spiders and in the latter, centipedes. In both worlds, it is taboo to mention the insects in polite company; to acknowledge that human bodies can produce those insects when triggered by an emotional stimulus. The stories work in conversation with each other: both center young characters trying to navigate the rules of their worlds, then rejecting them as unfair, and learning to name that unfairness. Other themes include dealing with bigotry, rigid societal norms, rape culture, and breaking the binds of propriety when it is used to conceal and excuse heinous things.

Tamara Jerée’s “A Serpent for Each Year” (Strange Horizons) is a small story that packs a big emotional punch. “Our relationship is almost a year old when I ask Nal why she is covered in snakes.” The narrator learns that the reason why Nal wears these snakes is because her mother put them on her body to protect her before she died. The snakes speak of survival, but also grief, concealment. The story of two new lovers and the way their bodies—and cultures—operate is both tender and melancholy (also a bit grotesque) in the best combination possible.

Snakes also make an appearance in Priya Sharma’s “Fabulous Beasts” (Tor), a dark, devastating story about escaping familial abuse and embracing monstrosity—in the self, and the other. Animals appear often in Sharma’s horror short fiction, another notable example being “The Crow Palace” (The Dark). It is a story about sisters and, as the opening line informs us (“Birds are tricksters.”), about feathered, wily things. Julie, a successful, determined woman, must return home after the death of her father, who had built a palace for Corvidae in his backyard. There, she must reckon with the past—her and her twin’s conception and true nature—as well as the town’s increasingly erratic behavior toward her and her family. Most of the stories in Priya Sharma’s collection (All the Fabulous Beasts from Undertow Publications) feature the animal kingdom in a meaningful, and often chilling, capacity.

Lastly, in Alyssa Wong’s “Rabbit Heart” (in the late Fireside), an underground scientist uses rabbit stem cells to illegally revive the dead so they can fulfill the family expectations they failed to meet in life. As the story progresses, it becomes clear how much the characters match the rabbit’s elegance, and the rabbit’s cowardice.

Animals can often represent monstrosity, but also our innate human nature pushed to an intriguing extreme. It allows for stories and characters to be viewed through a lens removed from conformity to societal norms. Symbolism arising from, and merging with, animal traits and behaviors can open new storytelling windows, especially when it comes to horror and dark fiction.

]]> 5 of Dan Stevens’s Strangest and Scariest Roles https://psychopomp.com/dan-stevenss-strangest-and-scariest-roles/ Tue, 11 Jun 2024 13:26:55 +0000 https://psychopomp.com/?p=2502365 If there’s anything that we’ve learned from the internet’s reaction to Dan Stevens’s turn in the recent vampire ballerina movie, Abigail, it’s that people love to watch him be weird. He is, quite frankly, extremely good at it, and it’s clear—at least based on the projects that he continues to appear in—that he enjoys being cast as these types of characters just as much as we all enjoy watching him. Long gone are the days of Edwardian country houses and lavish, upstairs/downstairs historical drama, replaced instead by horror movies and hidden superpowers. 

In Abigail, Stevens plays the head of a group of misfit criminals who find themselves fighting for their lives against a young vampire, but this is far from the strangest or scariest role he has taken on. Below you’ll find a mix of movies and TV shows that showcase Stevens’s talent. 

The Guest (2014)

Not sure where to start when it comes to Dan Stevens’s stranger body of work? Adam Wingard’s explosive, blood soaked thriller, The Guest, is an excellent movie to kick things off with. 

After departing from Downton Abbey, Dan Stevens returned to the big screen in 2014 looking and acting nothing like his beloved character, Matthew Crawley. The Guest tells the story of a soldier named David (Stevenson), who pays a visit to the Peterson family after the tragic death of their oldest son, Caleb, during the war in Afghanistan. David claims that he and Caleb were friends, and that he wanted to check in on their family after their son’s death. Polite and charming, David is invited to stay and quickly inserts himself into their day-to-day lives. When a series of increasingly violent deaths occurs in town, the Peterson’s eldest daughter begins to suspect that David might be responsible for them. 

Apostle (2018)

Set on a beautiful, remote Welsh island in 1905, Apostle (written and directed by Gareth Evans) is a gothic folk horror movie that tells the story of a deeply troubled man by the name of Thomas Richardson (Stevens) and the cult that he is sent to infiltrate in order to save his sister. It’s a deeply creepy and extremely gory Wickerman-esque tale, and Stevens shines as a formerly religious man haunted by his past who is forced to go toe-to-toe with human—and inhuman—enemies. 

Legion (2017-2019)

Probably best known now for his work on the stellar TV show, Fargo, Noah Hawley is the mastermind behind the short lived—it sadly only aired for three seasons—mind blowing, and incredibly unsettling show, Legion, based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name. 

A veritable feast for the eyes and the mind, Legion tells the story of a troubled young man by the name of David Haller, who has been diagnosed with schizophrenia. But that’s not the whole story. What David doesn’t know, and viewers eventually come to find out, is that he is the mutant son of the one-and-only Charles Xavier, founder of the X-Men. The show proceeds to follow David as he learns how to control his powers and evades a sinister force trying to track him down. 

Cuckoo (2024)

Slated to come out this August, Cuckoo is a psychological horror movie written and directed by Tilman Singer and stars a truly incredible cast including the likes of Hunter Schafer as the movie’s final girl, John Malkovich, Jessica Henwick, and Dan Stevens. 

Cuckoo begins when Gretchen (Schafer) is sent to live at a remote, mid-century alpine resort in Germany with her estranged father, his new wife, and their daughter, all three of whom she doesn’t seem to feel any emotional connection to. It quickly becomes clear that not everything or everyone is as they seem, including Herr König (Stevens), the resort’s skeevy, bespectacled owner. 

The Ritual (???)

While not much is known about The Ritual, which is currently in post production, there are a few details about the plot that have been shared. We know that it stars Dan Stevens and Al Pacino (which is exciting in and of itself) and that they’ll star as two priests—one who has a mysterious, troubled past, the other who is questioning his faith—who have been called upon to perform an exorcism on a young woman possessed by a demon (or so they think). Needless to say, The Ritual sounds like it will be a nail biter and terrifying to boot, and we cannot wait to see who Stevens will be playing and how he’ll tackle the role. 

[Image: Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP/REX/Shutterstock]

]]> Horror and Wonder – 13 of the Best and Creepiest Short Stories by Ray Bradbury https://psychopomp.com/13-best-short-stories-ray-bradbury/ Thu, 06 Jun 2024 14:06:35 +0000 https://psychopomp.com/?p=3002517 Ray Bradbury wrote 600 (give or take) short stories in his long career. Not all of those stories are memorable but many of them are, and while his legacy (like the legacy of a lot of “Golden Age” spec-fic writers) is a mixed bag, he is often described as one of the writers that brought science fiction into the so-called literary mainstream. Some of Bradbury’s short fiction could be called quirky, melancholic, and beautifully poetic. And much of it, like these 13 stories, might still be quirky, melancholic, and poetic, but it’s also dark, surreal, and profoundly creepy.

The One Who Waits

I live in a well. I live like smoke in the well. Like vapor in a stone throat. I don’t move. I don’t do anything but wait. Overhead I see the cold stars of night and morning, and I see the sun. And sometimes I sing old songs of this world when it was young. How can I tell you what I am when I don’t know?

Any list I make of Bradbury short stories will likely start off with “The One Who Waits” because, to me, it’s the quintessential Bradbury story, and also one of my favorite short stories, ever. Like so many Bradbury stories, it’s set on Mars where a group of explorers land, but it’s not told from their point of view. It’s told by a ghostly entity that haunts an old, abandoned well. This story has everything I love about Bradbury: achingly beautiful prose, gruesome and mysterious deaths, and a profound sadness running through it like a dark undercurrent.

  • First published in The Arkham Sampler (1949)
  • Included in The Machineries of Joy (1964)

The Veldt

And here were the lions now, fifteen feet away, so real, so feverishly and startlingly real that you could feel the prickling fur on your hand, and your mouth was stuffed with the dusty upholstery smell of their heated pelts, and the yellow of them was in your eyes like the yellow of an exquisite French tapestry, the yellows of lions and summer grass, and the sound of the matted lion lungs exhaling on the silent noontide, and the smell of meat from the panting, dripping mouths.

This is probably one of the most well-known of Bradbury’s short stories and it’s easy to see why it’s made such an impression (and why it still hits so damn hard). There’s VR-technology used for murderous purposes, there’s child’s play turned sinister, and there’s the dark twist of children turning on their parents. “The Veldt” has been adapted for TV several times (by NPR, and Canadian television for example) and has been turned into a movie. I also feel its influence in several of Star Trek TNG’s holodeck episodes.

  • First published in The Saturday Evening Post (1950)
  • Included in The Illustrated Man (1951)

The Small Assassin

I am dying and I can’t tell them now. They’d laugh and call me one in delirium. They’ll see the murderer and hold him and never think him responsible for my death. But here I am, in front of God and man, dying, no one to believe my story, everyone to doubt me, comfort me with lies, bury me in ignorance, mourn me and salvage my destroyer.

One of Bradbury’s strong suits is taking something we tend to assume is innocent and good and turning it into something unsettling and disturbing. And what is more innocent than a baby? In this short story, a pregnant woman suspects that the child she is carrying is evil. A completely ridiculous idea, of course. Unless she’s right.

  • First published in Dime Mystery (1946)
  • Included in The October Country (1955)

Skeleton

Mr. Harris stood. His SKELETON held him up! This thing inside, this invader, this horror, was supporting his arms, legs, and head! It was like feeling someone just behind you who shouldn’t be there. With every step, he realized how dependent he was on this other Thing.

This is one of the creepiest and wildest ideas in all of Bradbury’s short stories (and that’s saying something). In “Skeleton” a man becomes obsessed with the idea that his own bones are a malicious and alien presence in his body. As his condition progresses, as he gets more and more paranoid, his mental and physical health deteriorates. Looking for a cure, he consults a “bone specialist,” but the treatment is of a highly unusual nature.

  • First published in Weird Tales (1945)
  • Included in The October Country (1955)

“Boys! Raise Giant Mushrooms in Your Cellar!”

“What if Roger was right this morning? Mrs. Goodbody, what if she’s right, too? Something terrible is happening. Like—well—” he nodded at the sky and the million stars —“Earth being invaded by things from other worlds, maybe.”

Alien invasions rarely happen with all ray-guns blazing in Bradbury’s stories. Instead, he often imagines something more insidious and devious and bone-chilling. For example, what if those mushrooms everyone is suddenly growing in their cellar’s aren’t just mushrooms? Bradbury’s bent for twisting darkness into the everyday is on full display here as we start to wonder what is really happening in all those basements.

  • First published in Galaxy Magazine (1962)
  • Included in The Machineries of Joy (1964)

Zero Hour

Mink went to the door. “We’re having trouble with guys like Pete Britz and Dale Jerrick. They’re growing up. They make fun. They’re worse than parents. They just won’t believe in Drill. They’re so snooty, cause they’re growing up. You’d think they’d know better. They were little only a coupla years ago. I hate them worst. We’ll kill them first.”

This is another alien invasion story where the invasion is hiding in plain sight and where children and a children’s game become a menacing and powerful force. Like so many of Bradbury’s darkest stories, “Zero Hour” finds the deepest and most disturbing kind of terror in a nightmarish subversion of children and childhood.

  • First published in Planet Stories (1947)
  • Included in The Illustrated Man (1951)

The Third Expedition

It had moved in the midnight waters of space like a pale sea leviathan; it had passed the ancient moon and thrown itself onward into one nothingness following another. The men within it had been battered, thrown about, sickened, made well again, each in his turn. One man had died, but now the remaining sixteen, with their eyes clear in their heads and their faces pressed to the thick glass ports, watched Mars swing up under them.

Bradbury had a real knack for story-openings, and this story is a prime example (part of the story’s opening is quoted above). “The Third Expedition” was first published in 1948 and was later incorporated into The Martian Chronicles which strings together several Bradbury stories into a tale about what happens when humans try to colonize Mars (which, btw, turns out to be a really, really haunted planet). In the story, an expedition from Earth to Mars finds a town that seems comfortingly (and eerily) familiar to them. It’s also populated by their long-dead relatives and family. It was originally published with the title “Mars Is Heaven!” and of course, it does not have a happy ending.

  • First published in Planet Stories (1948)
  • Included in The Martian Chronicles (1950)

The Martian

The cold wind blew and the thin rain fell upon the soil and the figure stood looking at them with distant eyes.

“The Martian” is also part of The Martian Chronicles and it explores a similar idea to “The Third Expedition”—but here, the perspective, and the outcome, are twisted in a new direction. An elderly couple from Earth have moved to Mars and one night, they find their long-dead son at the door. Or at least, someone who looks exactly like their dead son. He’s not, of course, and once the rest of the settlers finds out who, what, the old folks are harboring, things go real bad, real quick. What I love most about this story is how Bradbury infuses it with such a deep sense of sadness and foreboding, and how it uses the desperate darkness of grief.

  • First published in Super Science Stories (1949)
  • Included in The Martian Chronicles (1950)

Marionettes, Inc.

“I’ve had him for a month. I keep him in the cellar in a toolbox. My wife never goes downstairs, and I have the only lock and key to that box. Tonight I said I wished to take a walk to buy a cigar. I went down cellar and took Braling Two out of his box and sent him back up to sit with my wife while I came on out to see you, Smith.”

There are a lot of science fiction stories about the dangers of making humanoid robots, and in “Marionettes, Inc.” Bradbury puts his own spin on this idea. Here, a man buys a robot look-alike so that he can spend more time away from his wife without her noticing. Sharing your life and your wife with a robot? Yeah, definitely creepy. Two things stand out for me about this story.  First, it involves a robot husband which in my experience is a lot less common than a robot wife. And secondly, while sci-fi is full of robots gone bad (and while this robot might not be following the famed laws of robotics), I feel like Bradbury’s sympathies are with the robot. (That sentiment comes through even more strongly in his 1969 story “I Sing the Body Electric.”)

  • First published in Startling Stories (1949)
  • Included in The Illustrated Man (1951)

The Crowd

How swiftly a crowd comes… like the iris of an eye closing in out of nowhere.

This one, like so much of Bradbury’s work and so many of the stories I’ve listed here, is a masterclass in taking something everyday and familiar, in this case the way crowds gather at the site of an accident, and turning it into disturbing and menacing horror:

“Is he dead?”
“No, he’s not dead.”
“He won’t die. He’s not going to die.”

  • First published in Weird Tales (1943)
  • Included in The October Country (1955)

The Fog Horn

“Sounds like an animal, don’t it?” McDunn nodded to himself. “A big lonely animal crying in the night. Sitting here on the edge of ten million years calling out to the deeps. I’m here, I’m here, I’m here. And the Deeps do answer, yes, they do.”

OK, so this one might not be super creepy, per se, but it’s an inspired monster story. “The Fog Horn” shines with Bradbury’s trademark gorgeous prose and it’s pervaded by a sense of profound loneliness and longing. It’s my favorite kind of monster story, one that empathizes with the monster. According to Bradbury, the story was inspired by the ruins of a demolished roller coaster on Los Angeles beach that made him think of a dinosaur skeleton.

  • First published in The Saturday Evening Post (1951)
  • Included in The Golden Apples of the Sun (1953)

There Will Come Soft Rains

The entire west face of the house was black, save for five places. Here the silhouette in paint of a man mowing a lawn. Here, as in a photograph, a woman bent to pick flowers. Still farther over, their images burned on wood in one titanic instant, a small boy, hands flung into the air; higher up, the image of a thrown ball, and opposite him a girl, hands raised to catch a ball which never came down.

The threat of nuclear annihilation haunts a lot of science fiction written during the Cold War, and this story focuses on that particular apocalyptic nightmare. But rather than describing the brutal destruction and suffering of war, Bradbury describes an automated house that has survived humanity. It’s a story haunted by the emptiness, by the void left behind by those who died. In an interview in 1980 (published in The Christian Science Monitor), Bradbury himself picked this as the story “that represents the essence of Ray Bradbury.”

  • First published in Collier’s (1950)
  • Included in The Martian Chronicles (1950)

The Long Rain

The rain continued. It was a hard rain, a perpetual rain, a sweating and steaming rain; it was a mizzle, a downpour, a fountain, a whipping at the eyes, an undertow at the ankles; it was a rain to drown all rains and the memory of rains. It came by the pound and the ton, it hacked at the jungle and cut the trees like scissors and shaved the grass and tunneled the soil and molted the bushes. It shrank men’s hands into the hands of wrinkled apes; it rained a solid glassy rain, and it never stopped.

Once again, Bradbury shows off his gift for story-openings. The way the rain is turned into a powerful and sinister force in those first lines absolutely sets the tone for the rest of the tale. “The Long Rain” takes place on Venus where a rocket has crashed. Four survivors are now on a harrowing trek through the planet’s perpetual rains, trying to find the safety of a Sun Dome, while in perpetual danger from the hostile Venusians. All four seem to be losing their grip on reality and one by one, they perish, until only one of them is left.

  • First published in Planet Stories (1950)
  • Included in The Illustrated Man (1951)
]]> 22 SFFH Books We’re Looking Forward to in June 2024 https://psychopomp.com/22-sffh-books-june-2024/ Tue, 28 May 2024 14:21:41 +0000 https://psychopomp.com/?p=3002480

Lockjaw, by Matteo L. Cerilli

“Death is neither the beginning nor the end for the children of Bridlington in this debut trans YA horror book for fans of Rory Power and Danielle Vega.” With a tagline like that, this book sounds like it was made to order for us here at Psychopomp. When one of the kids in the small town of Bridlington dies at the community’s abandoned old mill, his friend Paz Espino knows it was no accident. Paz knows she has to hunt down a monster, but she’s up against a bigger kind of evil than she imagines, and she has to deal with all the monsters (both living and dead) that haunt people’s minds as well as the streets.

Moonstorm, by Yoon Ha Lee

A new book by Yoon Ha Lee is always a reason to be excited, and Moonstorm is a brand-new sci-fi adventure/space opera set in a society where conformity isn’t just valued above all else, but where that conformity shapes reality. Oh, and there’s an empire, there are rebels trying to save their world, there are giant fighting robots, and there are lancer pilots who fly into battle with those robots. Hwa Young, a girl with a rebel past who is now part of the empire’s forces, dreams of becoming a lancer pilot, but once she gets into training, there are secrets and conspiracies aplenty.

The Wren in the Holly Library, by K.A. Linde

The Wren in the Holly Library is the first book in Linde’s new book series, The Oak & Holly Cycle. It takes place a New York City that has been irrevocably changed by the emergence of monsters and the destructive war that followed. A truce was worked out, years ago, but Kierse, a thief, is about the break the truce and will end up making a dangerous bargain with a charming, alluring, and terrifying monster hiding inside the Holly Library.

Mirrored Heavens, by Rebecca Roanhorse

This is the final book in Roanhorse’s Between Earth and Sky trilogy, a book series which is heavily inspired by the culture of the Pre-Columbian Americas. What to expect from the finale? Political intrigue, magic, and the looming threat of war. There’s also a new and ominous prophecy by the Coyote God, the avatar of the Sun God has visions of fire, and the Jaguar God is on the hunt. If you want a taste of Roanhorse’s latest, you can read an excerpt on the publisher’s website.

Grim Root, by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam

I read an advance reading copy of this entertaining horror novel, and if you like your horror gothic and twisted with some dark humor in the mix, then this is for you. It’s pitched as “The Bachelor meets The Haunting of Hill House” and that captures the book’s set-up and essence pretty well. The cast of a Bachelor-like reality TV-show end up in a haunted house where things get weird, gory, and very very bloody. The interactions (friendly, more than friendly, and downright hostile) off-camera between the female contestants was one of my favorite parts of the book, and the story just gets better the more grisly and twisted things get in the mansion.

Song of the Tyrant Worm, by Hailey Piper

This is the final instalment in Piper’s cosmic horror series The Worm and His Kings, and it sure sounds like we’re in for a horror-ifically awesome time where “time breaks and starlight dies beneath uncompromising gods.” As in the two previous books (The Worm and His Kings and Even the Worm Will Turn), Song of the Tyrant Worm is set in 1990s New York City, where a hungry and terrifying monster stalk the streets and the underworld. A sinister presence lurks beyond the universe’s skin, and the whole world, and any hope of a future, might already be doomed.

Lovely Creatures, by K.T. Bryski

This novella comes to you right from Psychopomp’s own ghostly and gorgeous novella series, and it is an exquisitely wrought, dark, and unsettling twist on folklore and fairytales. I read an early review copy and found myself pulled right into Bryski’s haunting tale where the Devil stalks a storm-whittled landscape while a woman called Bryony searches for her long-lost sister. The story is written as a dark and devastating weave of tales, centered on a small group of travelers, journeying together in the belly of a wooden whale (!) toward a distant, mythical river. A woman finds her sister sleeping in a glass coffin. There’s a wolf and swan-maiden, and there is a man who holds everyone in thrall with his stories. Bryski delves deep in heartache and guilt, love, and friendship.

The Stars Too Fondly, by Emily Hamilton

Hamilton’s debut novel is described as “part space odyssey, part sapphic rom-com” and as “a suspenseful, charming, and irresistibly joyous tale of fierce friendship, improbable love, and wonder as vast as the universe itself.” All that  sounds pretty darn delightful to me. The book is about Cleo and her friends who steal a dark-matter powered spaceship (even if they didn’t mean to) and end up on voyage to Proxima Centauri. Along for the ride is a hologram version of the ship’s captain, Billie, and things heat up in more ways than one the deeper Cleo’s crew gets into space.

The Stardust Grail, by Yume Kitasei

After reading an advance reading copy of this book, I am happy to report that it is a rollicking ride through a universe full of various kinds of aliens, lots of mysterious artifacts, a deep-dive into space-archeology, fascinating spaceships, and featuring multiple high-stakes heists and battles. Kitasei has described The Stardust Grail as “an anti-colonial space heist book” and it has a bit of an Indiana Jones/anti-Indiana Jones vibe. We find ourselves in the company of Maya Hoshimoto, once the best art thief in the galaxy, now a graduate student of anthropology. She has tried to live a quiet life of academia after a disastrous incident ten years ago and isn’t really looking to return to her art-thieving ways, but when an old (alien, tentacled) friend asks for help, she can’t say no. As it turns out though, while the job might help save an alien race from extinction, it could also spell doom for humanity.

The Afterlife of Mal Caldera, by Nadi Reed Perez

“Mal’s life is over. Her afterlife is only just beginning…” A book about the afterlife, and about ghosts either abandoning or clinging to their old lives, is right up Psychopomp’s alley of course. In this contemporary fantasy, former rockstar Mal Caldera has died, and while she could be partying the afterlife away at an abandoned mansion called the Haunt, she is still worried about her younger sister, Cris. Mal gets in touch with a medium, hoping to get a message through to Cris, but this only leads to further complications. Described as “funny and life-affirming”, this book sounds like an entertaining take on life after death.

Running Close to the Wind, by Alexandra Rowland

I don’t know about you, but the phrase “queer pirate fantasy standalone adventure” sounds absolutely freaking awesome to me.  On Instagram, Rowland describes Running Close to the Wind as “a comedy adventure about a heist on the high seas, featuring queer pirates, sea monsters, a plot relevant cake competition, and wall-to-wall gremlin hijinks” and heck yeah, now I’m even more excited. You can read an excerpt from this book (which is all about the adventures of Avra Helvaçi, former field agent of the Araşti Ministry of Intelligence) at Gizmodo.

Moonbound, by Robin Sloan

Sloan’s Moonbound, takes place eleven thousand years from now, and it’s set in a world where fantasy mixes with science fiction. After reading an excerpt, I am utterly intrigued: the narrator is “a sentient, record-keeping artificial intelligence that carries with it the perspective of the whole of human history.” A boy named Ariel, destined for adventure, comes across this AI, and while the boy doesn’t know what he’s found, the AI literally jumps on board, into Ariel: “His heart whomped and his blood crackled. I knew, because I was in it; I had caught the train. Brave, curious, a bit morbid, and, best of all: alive.” Moonbound is part of Sloan’s Penumbraverse books, which also include The Suitcase Clone and Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore.

The Runes of Engagement, by Tobias S. Buckell & David Klecha

I read an advance reading copy of this book and I could say a lot about it, but my main takeaway was that it was so much fun to read. Buckell and Klecha have dreamed up a far-out/awesome premise: portals to a fantasy/LOTR/D&D-like world have opened up in various places in our world and now, soldiers and marines from the US to Finland and elsewhere, are on the ground through the portals, fighting orcs, trolls, elves, and other fantasy monsters to protect Earth from incursions and invasion. We follow a group of marines as they try to escort a very important elf on a mission that might turn the tide of the conflict. Along the way they run into several epic monsters and more than one enemy trying to stop them. It’s fast-paced, it’s action-packed, and Buckell and Klecha tell their story with so much humor and so much wonderful, pure fantasy-nerd joy. You can read an excerpt (that includes a tavern and a mysterious, stealthy stranger) at Civilian Reader.

Rakesfall, by Vajra Chandrasekera

Chandrasekera’s Saint of Bright Doors was one of the best books I read in 2023 so you’d best believe that I’m counting the days until I can read his brand new novel Rakesfall. It’s described as “a science fiction epic about two souls bound together from here until the ends of time” and follows Annelid and Leveret, who meet as children during the Sri Lankan civil war. There’s a great interview with Chandrasekera at Five Books where he talks about his favorite science fantasy books and also about Rakesfall: “Rakesfall is about people being reincarnated, but it’s also a critique of the whole concept of reincarnation—of what it actually means to have other people who are ‘you’ in the future or in the past.” Curious? I certainly am, and if you want a sneak peek, you can check out an excerpt at Civilian Reader.

Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil, by Ananda Lima

Ananda Lima is a poet, fiction writer, and translator whose work has appeared in several chapbooks and publications, including The American Poetry Review, Poets.org, Kenyon Review, Gulf Coast, and Witness. She’s originally from Brazil, and currently lives in Chicago. The stories in Craft are threaded together by what happens in the first story: at a Halloween party in 1999, a writer sleeps with the devil, and through her life she then writes stories for him. There’s a surreal, dreamlike tilt to the world and reality in this collection and Lima’s stories are beautifully dark, wickedly sharp, and they all have such lovely teeth.

We Speak Through the Mountain, by Premee Mohamed

Mohamed’s new novella is a sequel to her award-winning The Annual Migration of Clouds, and if it’s not one of your most highly anticipated books of 2024, it should be (and not just because it’s science fiction set in Canada, though that is a good reason too.) The novella is set in the climate-crisis-ravaged wilds of Alberta’s Rocky Mountains where Reid Graham is doing everything she can to reach the domes of Howse University, home to “the last remnants of pre-collapse society.” But once Reid gets there, the university turns out to be much different than what she had expected and she is faced with a choice “between herself, her family, and the broken new world.” Oh, and while you’re waiting for We Speak Through the Mountain, you can read Mohamed’s wonderful novelette “Not Lost (Never Lost)” here at Psychopomp.

Hollow Tongue, by Eden Royce

Hollow Tongue is part of The Selected Papers from the Consortium for the Study of Anomalous Phenomena (CSAP), a line of novellas curated by R.J. Joseph where each tale is introduced as a document and part of the fictional journal produced by the CSAP society. Royce’s novella tells the story of Maxine Forest who returns to her childhood home after a serious accident. Her parents are gone but the house holds a lot of memories and while “escape is impossible—succumbing, and metamorphosis, are inevitable.” I do love books with an epistolary/found document angle, and I also love Royce’s writing, so this one is going into my TBR-pile.

Echo of Worlds, by M.R. Carey

This is the second book in the Pandominion duology (the first book is Infinity Gate), by M.R. Carey who is probably best known for The Girl With All the Gifts. I’ve read both books, and if you’re into science fiction in general and multiverses in particular, I highly recommend them. They’re set in a multiverse where an alliance called the Pandominion rules a million worlds that are all the same world—Earth—in many different dimensions. Their new-found nemesis is another multiverse-alliance consisting of mechanical beings connected by a hive-like intelligence. Caught in the middle of an escalating, potentially multiverse-destroying conflict is a scientist from Nigeria, a rabbit-girl and her robot, a cat-human warrior, and a human cyber-soldier. (There’s also a sort of sentient moss involved.) Along the way, Carey explores the ramifications of colonialism in a multiverse and what happens when radically different lifeforms/intelligences meet, among other things. It’s action-packed, it’s slightly bonkers, and there’s a rabbit-girl vs. cyber-soldier chase scene that had me falling off the edge of my seat.

Foul Days, by Genoveva Dimova

Described by the publisher as “The Witcher meets Naomi Novik”, Foul Days is a fantasy novel inspired by Bulgarian folklore (Dimova grew up in Bulgaria before moving to Scotland), and the author has also said in interviews that it draws inspiration from recent European history including the Cold War and the Berlin Wall. Add all that up and well, I’m definitely intrigued. On Instagram, Dimova describes her book as a “Balkan fantasy about impossible to escape, monster-filled cities and impossible to escape, monstrous exes.” There’s a witch named Kosara, there’s a suspiciously honorable detective, there’s lycanthropes, kikimoras, bloodsucking upirs, and there’s a man known as the Tsar of Monsters. You can read an excerpt at Tor/Forge Blog.

Invaginies, by Joe Koch

This new short story collection from Koch contains “17 disturbing tales exploring plagues, possessions, gender & corruption set in apocalyptic eras not much unlike our own.” The title-word, Invaginies, is defined by Koch as “an invasion, it is a perception that is bodily and transcendent creating holes, paths, or pockets of alternate truth—and not always voluntary—enlightenment.” What to expect from this collection? Horror, queerness, the grotesque and the weird and the strange, plus: references to “the early work of Kenneth Anger and David Cronenberg, film noir, Herzog’s Nosferatu remake, and the notorious lost film footage from Event Horizon.” If that whets your appetite and you want to read some of Koch’s short fiction, check out “Oakmoss and Ambergris” in Three-Lobed Burning Eye or “Coneland” at Shortwave Magazine.

Incidents Around the House, by Josh Malerman

A new book by Malerman (author of Bird Box) about a haunted house and a haunted family would likely catch my attention no matter what, but this bit from the publisher’s description clinched the deal: “To eight-year-old Bela, her family is her world. There’s Mommy, Daddo, and Grandma Ruth. But there is also Other Mommy, a malevolent entity who asks her every day: “Can I go inside your heart?” The story is told from the perspective of Bela herself, and it seems that Malerman is doing something quite interesting, prose-wise and formatting-wise, while using Bela as the story’s narrator. To see what I mean, head over to the publisher’s website and click the “Look Inside” link beneath the book cover.

The Bound Worlds, by Megan E. O’Keefe

This is the third and final book in O’Keefe’s space opera trilogy, the Devoured Worlds series. It’s a series incorporating some pretty awesome ingredients, including secret identities, space empires, revolutionaries, alien intelligences, and forbidden love. The first two books about Naira and Tarquin (who first meet as enemies when they’re stranded on a dead planet) are The Blighted Stars and The Fractured Dark, and after reading up on this series, and after listening to an excerpt of The Blighted Stars on Soundcloud (read by Ciaran Saward), I am now making space in my TBR pile for this trilogy.

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