This Thing is Starving is a deeply impressive debut, and a remarkably powerful and well-constructed narrative about the hardships visited upon women. Told through the eyes of a house full of ghosts and a threadbare family, Aislin does an excellent job of connecting the reader with the characters, and a major strength of the novel is how real it makes their pain and discomfort visible without being indulgent or exploitative.

The core elements of reality TV make great grounds for horror. Questionable motives, real-life situations, narrative arcs, as well and and the winner-take-all nature of the format, really make it an ideal backdrop to get creepy and/or murder-y. In this case, the show is one where a bunch of pretty women compete to marry a very basic Midwestern white dude, though some of contestants may have ambitions beyond making the handsome farmer-pilot from Iowa as happy as a Texas Roadhouse gift card.

Echo is a very solid novel that carries many moments of genuine creepiness. While the story meanders a little bit in the middle, with Sam chasing down a few too many dead-ends and red herrings for my taste, but the ambitious central narrative and excellently-written characters make this something to overlook.

The Croning features one of the most memorable opening chapters I’ve encountered in recent memory: a grimly whimsical (and slightly horny) retelling of Rumpelstiltskin, in which a royal spy tracks the fabled bargainer to a hinterland and finds that his quarry serves an esoteric deity called Old Leech. The strange god is a primordial cosmic entity who exists in some unknowable outer darkness but regularly makes their presence felt on Earth. The spy returns to his queen with the dwarf’s name, but when the fated day comes round, the hard-won knowledge has no effect, and the imp takes the queen’s child and then brings her and the spy to a bloody end.

Slewfoot is a wonderful tale that lives to subvert expectations, feeling more like a darkly whimsical fable than a horror novel, and tinged with elements of legal drama and romance which round out a remarkably original novel. Brom's vision, patiently revealed, is one of depth, promise, and refreshing originality among the wider fiction about this historical period. Though ready for a popular audience, this novel touches literary elements, wisely and thoughtfully engaging the topics of belief, faith, trauma, and belonging. 

‘The overwhelming feeling with this novel is that the author wants to write a spooky story about a group of childhood friends while also penning a modern morality tale about the dangers of purity culture and casual racism. Keeping a foot in each lane, White struggles to drive either narrative at more than a surface level, and the novel feels far short of what it could have been.’

‘Like a growing number of popular horror novels, it’s not enough to just be traditionally scary, to conjure ghouls and monsters that crawl out from the dark places and threaten mortal lives. No, now it seems that what readers fear most must be rooted in reality, as evil as any esoteric demon or creepy clown, but also a tangible, crudely familiar terror that many experience at some point in their lives–poverty, discrimination, so on. Quite simply, with each passing generation, we in the Western world fear the evils of the unknown less and less, instead turning weary eyes to the darkness which spills forth from the cracks in our own society, a corruption which has always been there but from which we are collectively, in unbroken legacy with those who came before us, seeking some exit.’

‘Episode Thirteen is the story of a cable network ghost hunting show that lifts its plot outline and setpieces from found footage horror films, then presents the result of this as a distinctly engaging and surprisingly original horror novel. It’s quite a feat, taking two widely derided horror property staples and reimagining them as something that mutes the most common criticisms of its components. Frankly, I’m surprised to find that more writers haven’t made a tilt at this particular windmill, as it now feels like a very promising course after seeing what DiLouie has done here.’

After a drawn-out divorce that ends with a whimper, Jonah Talbot leaves San Francisco to return to his hometown of Albuquerque. It’s a humbling situation that many will experience at some point: the recognition that a thing you’ve invested in, gave yourself to, trusted and loved, is no longer going to give back to you or be part of your life.

‘This is the moment I knew we were going into a story more about the injustices of time’s passage rather than antediluvian horror. Dan Simmons has taken his pure, elemental child characters from Summer of Night and put them in the microwave.’

‘I thoroughly enjoyed Summer of Night as a reader. It’s a solid, well-worked novel with a lot of heartblood in its pages. Clearly a passion project and ode to Simmons’s roots, it should be read by all of his fans, even if it’s not his finest work.’

The passages are vibrant and forward-pressing, blessed with the energy that wells from a cast of mid-twenties characters with mid-twenties concerns, and I find myself struggling to put the book down

The nameless indigenous peoples of Siberia we envision are pure in the mind of the Western writer, a canvas equally mystical and remote which doesn’t conjure up all the shadows we have to invite into the room when writing about the Apache, Blackfeet, or Navajo.