Tag: horror
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The Discomfort of Evening by Lucas Rijneveld
A family’s unravelling after a tragedy as told through the eyes of a 10 year old girl — it’s one of the grimmest and darkest things I’ve ever read.
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What Draws Us Near edited by Keith Cadieux and Adam Petrash
The first anthology from Little Ghosts Books — an independent, queer-owned horror bookstore and publisher based in Toronto. It’s good.
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Black Paradox by Junji Ito
This ranks with his best. The grim and gory story of four friends who make a suicide pact that goes way, way wrong. Ito and Stephen King have the same pattern: scary and simple premise, excellent atmosphere and tension building, and a complete whiff on the ending. This is that. Some of the art in…
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Mimi’s Tales of Terror by Junji Ito
Junji Ito didn’t develop these ideas – they are adapted from a book of short stories based on urban legends. The result is very well-illustrated campfire stories that you’ve heard a version of before. The stories in the back half are better than the first few, but this is a book for Ito completists only.…
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Windeye by Brian Evenson
This short story was linked to in Lincoln Michel’s substack and it’s a fast, great read: a pair of siblings realize there’s one more window on the outside of their house than on the inside.
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Rouge by Mona Awad
I’m obviously not the target audience for this, but I really loved Bunny. This is sharp satire and truly original writing. The dreamlike storytelling and ever-increasing weirdness were absolute catnip to me. It was funny and clever. I absolutely devoured it. Until the spell broke at around the 2/3 mark. Suddenly the book felt tedious, and…
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Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Süskind
This was wild. It read like a fairy tale, and also like a waking nightmare. Each sentence was perfect, but as a whole the thing will scar you for life. It goes a lot deeper than it first appears to, chasing ideas of how scent works on a subconscious level. But also it is just…
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Another 2001 by Yukito Ayatsuji
I’m not the target audience for this — my kid told me to read it so I did. It’s a good story, kind of a Final Destination-style curse with a whole bunch of extra supernatural stuff. It’s a strangely complicated setup, and probably 100 pages longer than it needed to be. The writing is where I…
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Gyo by Junji Ito
This one goes from kind of hilarious to utterly bizarre and horrifying, in a way that’s strange even by Ito’s standards. I loved it. Also loved this:
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Boys in the Valley by Philip Fracassi
An orphanage in the early 1900’s in Pennsylvania. It’s a pretty good twist on the standard demonic possession story. I couldn’t put it down. It’s fun and fast. Will I remember it in a month? Probably not well, but that’s not the point. It was moody, effective, and full of dread. Fracassi does a great…