Tag: horror

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Book: “We Call Them Witches” by India-Rose Bower

Publishing Info: Poisoned Pen Press, April 2026

Where Did I Get This Book: I received an ARC from the publisher

Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | Indiebound

Book Description: Most people have been devoured by the eldritch creatures, but Sara and her family have been fighting for survival, armed with their knowledge of folklore and pagan rituals – the only weapon that seems to work against these monsters.

And then a young woman, Parsley, comes out of nowhere into Sara’s life. Found in their garden, they have no idea where she is from.

Sara and Parsley begin to fall in love, but disaster strikes when Sara’s brother Noah is taken by the creatures. They set out to find him, across a landscape of merciless terror, haunted by death.

But can Parsley truly be trusted in a world where humanity is as scarse as humans themselves?

Review: Thank you to Poisoned Pen Press for sending me an ARC of this novel!

It’s been a bit since I read a post-apocalyptic horror tale. It wasn’t really a purposeful decision to do that, and it’s not like I’ve been having the same anxieties about it as I did during COVID (though I will say this war in Iran hasn’t exactly been giving me confidence about global stability at the moment). It just hasn’t been on my radar as much. But when “We Call Them Witches” by India -Rose Bower ended up in my mailbox I realized it had been some time, and that this one sounded like it was going to tell an end of the world story that felt different from previous ones I’ve read as of late.

It’s such a unique take on the end of the world and a post-apocalyptic life, and some of the ways that it is presented felt like “28 Days Later” just in how the environment and the survivors are coping and living a more unstable life by necessity. Our family at the heart of the story is close knit but stressed to the bone, with Sara feeling connected but the constant worry bearing down on all of them. We are seeing the tensions by the time the mysterious Parsley arrives, and while Sara gets closer to her, it causes strife between her and some family members, especially oldest sibling Danny. Sara is a pretty straight forward protagonist, and while in some ways her characterization read a bit more ‘young adult’ to me I liked the hints of tension of a family that has been pushed to the brink, and how that pushes her more towards a new and seemingly open person like Parsley. I don’t know if I bought the insta-love that Sara and Parsley fell into, but I do believe the way that Sara could be looking for that connection given how dangerous the world is and how her family has been buckling under the pressure.

It was the mystery and body horror/folk horror elements of the ‘witches’ that worked best for me in this book. We aren’t given a full on explanation as to what exactly happened to bring these creatures forth, but their menace is intense from the jump, opening with their arrival and a particularly brutal massacre that sends Sara and her family on the run to try and stay alive in a new dangerous world. Some of the descriptions were really nasty, and I really enjoyed the differences between some of the creatures and how we never really get big answers about why they function the way they do. I also liked the use of folklore and mythologies and how it does tend to work as a weapon against them to some degree. As mentioned above, it’s a fun way to explore an end of the world scenario that we haven’t seen as much before in the sub-genre.

“We Call Them Witches” was entertaining and strange. I liked the unique take on the end of the world and the monsters that lurk within.

Rating 7: A creative take on a post apocalyptic world with some interesting folk horror elements.

Reader’s Advisory:

“We Call Them Witches” is included on the Goodreads list “Folk Horror” .

This post may contain affiliate links for books we recommend.  Read the full disclosure here.

Book: “The Curse of Hester Gardens” by Tamika Thompson

Publishing Info: Erewhon Books, March 2026

Where Did I Get This Book: I received an eARC from the publicist via NetGalley

Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | Indiebound

Book Description: We Need to Talk about Kevin as if written by Jason Reynolds and Tananarive Due meets Model Home by Rivers Solomon in an innovative twist on the haunted house about a mother desperate to protect her sons from the twin specters of gun violence and otherworldly menace in their public housing project.

Nona McKinley raised three boys in the Hester Gardens section of Medford, Michigan, an impoverished community divided by those who follow their faith in God and those who turn to crime to survive. With her drug dealer husband behind bars and her eldest son shot to death at eighteen, Nona has devoted herself to ensuring her other children escape their brother’s fate.

Her second son Marcus is on the right path. He’s a valedictorian heading to an Ivy League school. He can get out.

But then, strange things start happening to Nona and other mysterious footsteps are heard when she’s alone, people have phantom encounters in the streets, unattended appliances go off at all hours. Even more concerning is the state of Nona’s living sons. Her youngest, Lance, is hanging around with a bad crowd, and Marcus becomes moody and secretive. Sometimes he even seems to act like a different person entirely.

Nona has her secrets too. Her affair with the married church pastor has been weighing on her conscience, but that’s not the only guilt haunting her. She fears that someone—or something— is seeking revenge for an act she made in a moment of weakness to protect her family. And now everyone in Hester Gardens must pay the price…

Review: Thank you to Sparkpoint Studio for sending me an eARC of this novel via NetGalley!

I read Tamika Thompson’s short story collection “Unshod, Cackling, and Naked” a few years ago and really enjoyed it. There were so many horror tales that she had in it that were so well done and so compelling, and when I was asked to read her debut novel “The Curse of Hester Gardens” I was really eager to take a look. After all, she had some really strong short stories, and I wanted to see what she could do with a full length novel. And once I started reading, it became quite clear quite quickly how special of a book it was I was reading. I was hooked immediately, knowing that it was going to destroy me.

Given that this is a horror story, I will talk about the supernatural and slow burn dread first. In a similar vein to the film “Candyman” (it’s not a one to one comparison but I was thinking about its themes as I read), we have a housing project that is not only dealing with violence and poverty and being left to the wayside, but is also dealing with hauntings and ghosts of those who once lived there, and an escalating presence. It starts with a bang right from the start, with our protagonist Nona getting ready for her son Marcus’s graduation from high school, and believes that someone, or something, has entered her home, only to be alone. I was hooked from the start, and the creep factor slowly builds and builds with occurences that seem ghostly, but could also be explainable by the realities of living at Hester Gardens. But Thompson does a great job with the kind of weird to the all out terrifying, with resident ghosts making their presences known, and a potential possession of Marcus as he starts acting strange and out of character. There were so many beats with ghosts that could either just be straight forward realities (like a little boy ghost who just pops in and out and the residents are used to it), or something that seems to be growing in malevolence, and Thompson was able to pull different vibes from the various kinds of hauntings and they all worked. There is also some really quiet beats of creepiness, like a stove that keeps turning on, or a voice that could be a family member in the hallway but may NOT be, or straight up nightmare fuel, like a ghost climbing out of a wall to try an grab someone. I loved EVERY level, and the tension builds and builds until it’s unbearable and in need or release.

But the most impactful aspect of this book is the way that Thompson has taken a haunted house and ghost story theme and made it more explicitly about the spectre of American Racism, bringing in aspects of poverty, housing projects that fall to the wayside and become run down and left behind, gun violence and gang violence and the desperation of the residents who feel there is no other way to survive, and the infighting between people who have similar experiences but can’t get past their trauma that just keeps on cycling. Nona has experienced so much loss, whether it’s her husband who has been incarcerated (and whom she has a great anger towards), or her son Kendall who was murdered in a senseless drive by shooting. She is desperate to hold onto Marcus and Lance, and tries to do everything right by pushing Marcus to pursue his education, leaning into the Church (and getting too close to the married pastor), and looking down at Lance’s choices with who he’s hanging out with (which alienates him all the more), as if she has control in a situation where all of the odds are stacked against her and her sons because of their race. So much of my anxiety in this book was directly related to the seemingly insurmountable circumstances that Nona and her boys had to deal with, and as Marcus seems to be come possessed by a rageful spirit, there is also just the stark reality that systemic racism has built these traps for the Black community that directly lead to tragedy and more cycles of violence and loss and trauma, ghost involvement or not. It’s a devastating aspect of this book and I thought that Thompson captures the complicated natures of these things. I loved how complex so many of these characters were, even those who would so easily just be moustache twirly evil in the hands of other authors (such as a local gang leader who is violent and scary, but also adores his baby son and cares for his kind and well loved grandmother). Thompson really shows the pain and also the sense of community of the people at Hester Gardens, and decries the racist systems that keep these traumatic cycles going. It’s stunning work. I was weeping openly by the end.

“The Curse of Hester Gardens” is an incredible debut novel from Tamika Thompson. It’s scary and sad and kind of hopeful and just so, so well done. Horror fans, get your hands on this book.

Rating 10: Haunting, evocative, devastating, and powerful, “The Curse of Hester Gardens” is a haunted house story, but is also the story of racism, gun violence, cyclical trauma, and a woman desperate to keep her sons safe in a world in which they are constantly in danger, ghosts or not.

Reader’s Advisory:

“The Curse of Hester Gardens” is included on the Goodreads list “Horror to Look Fordward to in 2026”.

This post may contain affiliate links for books we recommend.  Read the full disclosure here.

Book:”Nothing Tastes As Good” by Luke Dumas

Publishing Info: Atria Books, March 2026

Where Did I Get This Book: I received an eARC from NetGalley

Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | Indiebound

Book Description: Retail worker Emmett Truesdale has never fit the Southern California mold of six-pack, suntanned masculinity. Over three hundred pounds, he carries the weight of his childhood trauma and millennial ennui around his waist and in his soul. After trying every diet under the sun, he remains stuck—in his dead-end job, in love, and in his body.

Desperate for help, he enrolls in a clinical trial for a new weight loss product called Obexity. The treatment is as horrifying as the results are miraculous and as Emmett sheds pounds at superhuman speed, every part of his life improves overnight.

Unfortunately, Obexity comes with some killer side effects, including lost stretches of time and overwhelming cravings. Worse, people who were cruel to him have started disappearing and when the police warn of a cannibalistic killer on the loose, he fears that Obexity is turning him into a monster. But how can he give it up now that people are finally starting to treat him like he’s human?

Nerve-racking, sinister, and at times surreal, Nothing Tastes as Good is an unputdownable thriller that combines The Substance with the best of Stephen King and keeps you guessing until the final page.

Review: Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an eARC of this novel!

I’m an elder millennial, so I was a teenager around that Y2K time when heroin chic bodies were in and they were calling Britney Spears and Jessica Simpson fat when they had perfectly svelte bodies. And yeah, it absolutely affected me. Story time! When I was a freshman in college I had to go to the student health center for positional vertigo, and while I was being examined the doctor told me that I was at 140 pounds (probably due to not having lunch in my meal plan, not really having snacks, and walking around the U of MN Duluth campus basically all day). This was the lightest I had been in years, and the doctor said that at 5’9″ and with my frame I was actually bordering towards underweight. And in my mind I was like ‘AWESOME!!! Underweight!!!!’ instead of ‘hmm, that may be an issue’. I’m still not really at peace with my body (decades later, hitting perimenopause, and after having a kid), but I’m trying to be at least more neutral about it. Especially since I now have a six year old daughter who has already told me that she didn’t want to wear her winter jacket because it makes her ‘look fat’. I had a lot of these thoughts swirling in my head as I read “Nothing Tastes As Good” by Luke Dumas, which takes diet culture, corporate greed, a little bit of MAHA ideals about body presentation, and throws it in a “The Substance” flavored blender. It’s gross, it’s upsetting, and it’s a really good horror read. More so given that we’re starting to see these really thin trends coming back.

As a body horror book, this one has a lot of nasty and stomach churning moments. I already have a fair amount of squick when it comes to body horror (I actually still haven’t seen “The Substance” outside of clips here and there before I feel like I may barf), and it’s not just because of the weird thing Emmett Truesdale’s body is doing whilst participating in a drug trial for a product called Obexity. It sure seems like a miracle drug as the pounds start to fall off in record time, and Emmett is more than happy to ignore the side effects because of his new body making his self perception and the perception of others so much more positive. But I’m sure that you can imagine that the side effects get worse and worse and crazier and crazier, and there is gore, there are weird body moments, and I was squirming a bit as I kept reading and the pounds kept dropping. I enjoyed the slow burn suspense, with the story being told through a fairly typical narrative, but also through Emmett’s body transformation discovery blog, through interviews after SOMETHING happens, and through notes and other hints from news articles and the pharmaceutical notes as the study goes on. And some descriptions were just so gross, but it’s exactly what I would expect from this kind of horror tale.

Dumas also has some really interesting and pointed commentary about how society views fat people and fat bodies, and clearly has a lot to say about how Emmett is treated throughout the narrative, be it while he is dropping pounds while on Obexity (with the aforementioned side effects wreaking havoc but being brushed away), or how he is treated during his time as a child whose disordered eating can be mapped due to trauma cycles done to him or even to his caregivers before him (specifically his stepfather), or even when he is yo-yoing and reminiscing about losing weight then gaining it all back and then some before the drug trial. I imagine that a lot of this is familiar to those who have struggled with disordered eating or body image issues, and Dumas doesn’t really mince words when showing how dehumanized Emmett feels when he is fat, and how the very fact he is actually seen and treated as a human being when he is thinner propels his desperation to stay on a drug that is making him do horrifying things out of his control. It’s scathing and a clear indictment on fatphobia from ALL fronts, be it family, friends, lovers, strangers, or even medical professionals, where someone is more comfortable being monstrous if they are at least treated like a human. Oof. It was rough.

“Nothing Tastes As Good” is an effective commentary and doesn’t hold back with the squirmy bits you want in a body horror tale.

Rating 8: A nasty and unnerving body horror tale that has a lot of insightful points about fatphobia in society.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Nothing Tastes As Good” is included on the Goodreads lists “Beauty Parlor of Horror”, and “Weird Lit”.

This post may contain affiliate links for books we recommend.  Read the full disclosure here.

Book: “Crafting for Sinners” by Jenny Kiefer

Publication Info: Quirk Books, October 2025

Where Did I Get This Book: I own it

Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | Indiebound

Book Description: A queer woman must fight her way out of a big-box craft store run by a diabolical religious cult in this gripping survival horror novel by Jenny Kiefer, author of This Wretched Valley

Ruth is trapped. She’s stuck in her small, religious hometown of Kill Devil, Kentucky, stuck in the closet, and stuck living paycheck to paycheck. After her manager finds out that she lives with her girlfriend, Ruth is fired from her job as a cashier at New Creations—a craft store owned by the church that dominates life in the town. 

In an act of revenge, Ruth attempts to shoplift some yarn but is caught red-handed by a New Creations cashier. Instead of calling the police, the employees lock her in the store—and attack her. When Ruth is forced to stab out one of their eyes with a knitting needle, she realizes she’s facing far bigger trouble than a simple shoplifting charge. As Ruth fights for her life, she plunges deeper into the tangled web of the New Creationists, who are hiding a terrible secret that threatens not only her, but the entire town.

This relentless horror novel will have you on the edge of your seat as it hurtles towards a breathtaking conclusion. Will Ruth escape? Or will the shocking secret at the heart of the cult die with her?

Review: One of my dearest friends David is an archaeologist and archaeology professor in California. Every summer he goes to Greece to work on excavations, and has also participated in excavations in Egypt in the past. He is also a gay man who is very out and proud about who he is. And with these two things in mind it is probably no shock that he has a HUGE (understandable and justified) chip on his shoulder about Hobby Lobby, a craft store that is not only deeply zealous in its Christian religiosity/anti-LGBTQIA+ stances, but whose president has also stolen MANY ancient artifacts from the Middle East because he feels that he is entitled to them because RELIGION! In fact, all of my crafting friends (and I have numerous!) despise Hobby Lobby because of these nasty facts, and I steer incredibly clear when I find myself in need of crafting supplies. Which is not so often, but I have an artsy kid and I used to do cosplay! I can sort of craft!

With all of this in mind I snatched up a copy of “Crafting for Sinners” by Jenny Kiefer while on a mutual aid donation at a local book store, because the idea of a Hobby Lobby-esque crafting empire melded with a far right and cult-y church doing cult religious horror things was REALLY enticing. The satire alone was rich with opportunity! So you can probably guess that I was kind of disappointed when it didn’t hit the way I had hoped it would.

First, the things that I liked. The Hobby Lobby commentary is stellar. The way that the New Creationist Church runs the small town of Kill Devil is creepy and believable, with the only two out lesbians in town, Ruth, and Abigail, constantly under surveillance and constantly being pushed to become ‘saved’ to the point of targeted harassment. While the idea of a big box religious crafting empire trying to do cult rituals and blood sacrifice is certainly over the top, the bare bones ideas of a religious group/community harassing and harming those who are outside their ideas of acceptable and hiding their bigotry behind Godliness isn’t at all farfetched (hey, we have zealous military leaders saying that we are in a Holy War right now, after all, God I hate this timeline so much). We get snippets about the New Creationist beliefs through Ruth’s perspective, but also through hints of articles and transcripts throughout the narrative, with references to mysterious disappearances of queer people, stories of religious artifacts that have disappeared from the Middle East over the years, and through the way that Ruth is starting to be hunted down for sacrifice whilst in the walls of her old employer, sending her on a survival mission in the walls of a crafting store and the depths that it hides. All of this worked very well for me.

But there were some stumbles. I do think that the pacing was a bit off, as this book felt REALLY long, longer than it should have felt for a cultist horror tale. Ruth spends a lot of time hiding and ducking her tormentors, but it felt fairly repetitive and a bit like a slog. The suspense would wane, then build, then lose steam again, and it felt a bit like it could have been tightened up to keep the tension taut and consistent. On top of that, I didn’t really feel like I got to know Ruth or Abigail very well as the story went on. I liked them enough, and I was definitely rooting for them to escape the bigoted small town, before AND after the whole doomsday Christian cultist angle came through, but I never felt like I wanted more depth and exploration of their characters and their relationship so I could be more invested. I was rooting for them more on principle than I was for them as characters, and I would have loved to be able to rooting for them because of both of those things.

So “Crafting for Sinners” was a bit of a mixed bag. Great premise, middle of the road execution. I will definitely recommend it to my crafting friends though, as I know they will enjoy the quirks that come with it.

Rating 6: Loved the commentary and the bare bones of the cult/religious horror elements, but I wish that Ruth and Abigail were more interesting as characters.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Crafting for Sinners” is included on the Goodreads lists “Sapphic Horror”, and “Queer Books Set in Kentucky”.

This post may contain affiliate links for books we recommend.  Read the full disclosure here.

Book: “Nowhere Burning” by Catriona Ward

Publishing Info: Tor Nightfire, February 2026

Where Did I Get This Book: I received an eARC from NetGalley

Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | Indiebound

Book Description: Set in the unforgiving maw of the Rocky Mountains, Nowhere Burning is the latest harrowing novel from bestselling author Catriona Ward, perfect for fans of Riley Sager and the hit series Yellowjackets.

A refuge for lost children may also be their prison.

In the middle of the night, Riley pulls her younger brother Oliver out of bed, and the two run away from home. Riley is intent on joining a group of teenagers squatting in the abandoned ruins of an infamous movie star’s ranch, Nowhere. For actor Leaf Winham, Nowhere was a place to hide from his fame, and to hide his crimes―until a fire ravaged his home and exposed him as a murderer.

It is rumored that the ranch nestled in the peaks of the Rocky Mountains is now home to group of feral children, a place where adults cannot enter, and Riley hopes to find a new family there. But the Nowhere Kids are fierce in defending their turf and their clan, and Riley quickly realizes that while she and Oliver may have left the devil they knew, this group is a new type of diabolical.

For something dark lives in the burned shell of Nowhere, something which asks a terrible price for sanctuary…

Review: Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an eARC of this novel!

I haven’t every been super into “Peter Pan”. I watched the Disney movie as a kid (though I’m not sure I’d show it to my own kid these days), and enjoyed the Mary Martin version that we had on video cassette and has apparently been kind of forgotten by post-Millennial generations (when I saw a random video about how NOVEL and UNKNOWN this movie was I felt my bones turn to dust), but it was never a favorite of mine. But I do like the idea of reimagining classic tales as horror stories. “Nowhere Burning” by Catriona Ward is a horror story that takes some “Peter Pan” themes and changes it into something weird, unique, and unnerving.

I always love the vibes of a cult themed horror novel, and this one feels like it mixes some Branch Davidian lore with a “Children of the Corn” feel to it to make something weird and creepy as hell. I also enjoyed the “Peter Pan” allusions, with children fending for themselves feeling like they will never grow up after following vague ‘second star to the right’ directions into the Rockies. We follow a few different threads and narratives, which are unclear in how they line up at first. The most prominent one is Riley, a desperate teenage girl who escapes with her younger brother from an abusive situation, looking for solitude and thinking she’s found it with the kids at Nowhere. We also have a documentarian who is hoping to get some answers about Nowhere and the history and notoriety, as well as an architect who was hired on by Leaf Winham, the original owner of Nowhere who went on to commit the unspeakable, and who falls into a complex and obsessive web. Riley’s was, for me, the most interesting, seeing her slowly realize that perhaps she and Oliver aren’t super safe with the Nowhere Kids as things become weirder and weirder and more and more danger becomes apparent, though I will say that once we do figure out where the timeline falls for all the narratives it made them all pretty interesting.

And the “Peter Pan” references were pretty enjoyable. It’s not like The Rockies are what I imagine when I think of ‘Neverland’, but the way that Ward creates a symbol of freedom and feralness within the mountains that is very in line with the idea of The Lost Boys wasn’t lost on me. From alligators named Tinkerbell to many exits out of windows to ‘flying’ thanks to ziplines in the wilderness. There are even more meta references to Peter Pan adjacent mythos, specifically how much notorious filmmaker Leaf Williams mirrors Michael Jackson, with his eccentricities, his isolated and sprawling ranch, and some of the details within the ranch (such as a ferris wheel) clearly making reference to the now deceased and controversial King of Pop. I love a reference, and seeing the details sprinkled throughout the narratives was very, very fun for me.

“Nowhere Burning” is a solid horror novel that will surely satisfy horror fans who like a “Peter Pan” homage.

Rating 7: A strange and unnerving homage to “Peter Pan” that brings Neverland to an unforgiving Rockies, “Nowhere” is a weird and entertaining cult horror tale.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Nowhere Burning” is included on the Goodreads list “2026 Women in Horror”.