Reader's Place: October 3, 2022
HORROR FICTION
Monsters, witches and haunted houses feature in this month’s suitably scary titles.
No gods, no monsters, by Cadwell Turnbull, 2021. (Catalog)
One October morning, Laina gets the news that her brother was shot and killed by Boston cops. But what looks like a case of police brutality soon reveals something much stranger. Monsters are real. And they want everyone to know it. As creatures from myth and legend come out of the shadows, seeking safety through visibility, their emergence sets off a chain of seemingly unrelated events.
Such a pretty smile, by Kristi DeMeester, 2022. (Catalog)
There's something out there that's killing. Known only as The Cur, he leaves no traces, save for the torn bodies of girls, on the verge of becoming women, who are known as trouble-makers; those who refuse to conform, to know their place. Girls who don't know when to shut up. 2019: Thirteen-year-old Lila Sawyer has secrets she can't share with anyone. Brilliantly paced, unsettling to the bone, and unapologetically fierce, Such a Pretty Smile is a powerful allegory for what it can mean to be a woman, and an untamed rallying cry for anyone ever told to sit down, shut up, and smile pretty.
The Witches of Moonshyne Manor, by Bianca Marais, 2022. (Catalog)
To save their home from demolition, five octogenarian witches, having only nine days to save their home, make a bargain with an evil far more powerful than anything they've ever faced, fracturing their sisterhood and leading to a fiery confrontation with their enemies.
The death of Jane Lawrence, by Caitlin Starling, 2021. (Catalog)
Practical, unassuming Jane Shoringfield has done the calculations, and decided that the most secure path forward is this: a husband, in a marriage of convenience, who will allow her to remain independent and occupied with meaningful work. Her first choice, the dashing but reclusive doctor Augustine Lawrence, agrees to her proposal with only one condition: that she must never visit Lindridge Hall, his crumbling family manor outside of town. Yet on their wedding night, an accident strands her at his door in a pitch-black rainstorm, and she finds him changed.
And then I woke up, by Malcolm Devlin, 2022. (Catalog)
In a world reeling from an unusual plague, monsters lurk in the streets while terrified survivors arm themselves and roam the countryside in packs. Or perhaps something very different is happening. When a disease affects how reality is perceived, it's hard to be certain of anything. Spence is one of the "cured" living at the Ironside rehabilitation facility. Haunted by guilt, he refuses to face the changed world until a new inmate challenges him to help her find her old crew.
Beneath the stairs: a novel, by Jennifer Fawcett, 2022. (Catalog)
A woman returns to her hometown after her childhood friend attempts suicide at a local haunted house-the same place where a traumatic incident shattered their lives twenty years ago. One summer night, an emboldened fourteen-year-old Clare and her best friend, Abby, ventured into the Octagon House. Clare came out, but a piece of Abby never did. Beneath the Stairs is about the trauma that follows us from childhood to adulthood and returning to the beginning to reach the end.
Witches: a novel by Brenda Lozano; translated from the Spanish by Heather Cleary, 2022. (Catalog)
Journalist Zoé comes to the town of San Felipe to learn about the famous healer Feliciana, who has the ability to heal the soul as well as the body, and about the murder of Feliciana's teacher, Paloma.
Compiled by Ina Rimpau