Palmetto Boy by D.A. Jobe

She thought she’d escaped the monster that tormented her family decades ago…

Alane is determined to give her 12-year-old son, Ray the stable childhood she didn’t have. After moving into a new apartment, Alane works two jobs to make ends meet, leaving Ray alone in the evenings. Ray loves his new independence, but soon that love turns to fear as he begins to hear strange sounds from the attic crawl space. Doors slam where there aren’t any. Something is chewing a hole in his bedroom ceiling.

Long-buried memories of an old family tale surface, a monster Alane and her little brother called Palmetto Boy. Alane must confront the creature that has haunted her for years and destroy it for good—before it rips away her son and the future she’s fighting to build.

Palmetto Boy is a novel about the inescapable legacy of family folklore and the risks we take to keep those we love safe.

 

Alane has separated from her husband and moved with her 12-year-old son, Ray, into a small but cozy apartment owned by the parents of a friend. Alane doesn't take much with her, but she does bring the burden of childhood trauma. It is part of the reason for her separation, and the entirety of the reason that she takes the doors off the hinges in her new home. 

She works days as a substitute teacher and some nights serving food for a caterer, which leaves Ray alone more often than she would like and still leaves her struggling to make ends meet. Ray doesn't mind being alone at first, until the scratching noises start and something chews a hole in his bedroom ceiling.

I'm sure you've heard the proverb that time heals all wounds. You probably know that's a useless and dismissive expression. Sometimes things happen that we can never get over. Alane's unresolved trauma contributed to the breakdown of her marriage, and now it is coming for her son. Time has not healed Alane; it has allowed her trauma to fester and grow into something monstrous.

I loved this book! I cared about these characters, and as the creepy happenings escalate, and a storm begins to brew, I never knew which danger had me more worried. The eerie atmosphere and the mystery of what really happened in Alane's childhood home had me barreling through the pages at all hours of the night to get to the end.

5 out of 5 stars

My thanks to Timber Ghost Press for the e-ARC

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About the author

Crossroads, Inc by Andrew Adams

 When Crossroads, Inc—a life insurance company offering cash advances on policies—arrives in town, it brings something Glanton hasn’t seen in hope.

Young Hannah Cassady and her seven siblings visit Crossroads to collect on their life insurance advancements for the family’s mounting bills, discovering the company intends to collect big returns on its investments—with severed body parts for the money.

How much is too much for free money? What’s the true cost of a better quality of life?

Thirteen-year-old Hannah Cassady has known poverty all of her short life. Living with her seven older siblings and her mother, their squalid little home in the town of Glanton is crowded even without the father, who left one day and never came home. When she begins seeing commercials on TV for Crossroads Inc, a company that purports to give cash advances to make life easier, her siblings think it's worth checking out. 

Hannah and her mother both know it's too good to be true. When her brother decides to check it out for himself, Hannah follows to make sure he is safe. What she witnesses at Crossroads confirms her suspicions, and it's worse than she thought. When kids start showing up to school with missing fingers, Hannah knows true evil has come to her town.

Crossroads, Inc is a dystopian novel about desperation, addiction, poverty, and how the rich get richer off the backs of the poor. Only the gore separates it from much of what is happening in the world today. The people of Glanton are much like the people in any poverty-stricken town. They live in run-down homes, subsist on hand-me-downs and meager meals, lack access to clean water, breathe polluted air, and want better for their children. To me, that is the scariest part of this book, characters that feel so genuine make the plot seem that much less far-fetched.

5 out of 5 stars

My thanks to Cemetery Dance Publications.

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Hags and Witches by KJK Publishing

 With Hags and Witches, the fifth entry in his acclaimed Classic Monsters series, Kevin J. Kennedy restores the witch to her rightful throne.

Too long confined to fairy tales and fantasy, witches are reclaimed here in their darkest, most dangerous form. This anthology drags them back to their rightful home, horror.

Within these pages, you’ll find tales of vengeance, betrayal, jealousy, and unrelenting rage. Entire towns bound by secret covens. Worlds where magic collides with science in terrifying ways. Stories of war, power struggles, and the devastating cost of crossing the wrong witch.

These are not nursery-rhyme villains or whimsical spellcasters.

These witches are cruel. Calculating. Powerful. The fire has been relit. The cauldron is boiling. And horror is ready to reclaim its queen.

I know I say it a lot, but folk horror is my favorite subgenre, and to me, witches are its backbone, its heart, and its core. I devoured these pages like a hungry child who discovered a house with a roof made of cake and windows of pure sugar. Toss me in the oven, I'm done.

No, there is no Hansel in this anthology, but one of my favorites in here is a Baba Yaga story by C S Jones in which soldiers who are too sure they have caught her force their way into a dilapidated home. 

In one of my other favorites, Peg by Mark Towse, we learn that it's best to buy whatever the gypsy knocking at your door is selling, especially if you have sins from the past that you thought would never catch up to you.

Devil's Bargains by William F. Gray is a story of grief and guilt when a man who survived the accident that killed his brother's young son attempts to make things right.

Everything Has Its Price by James Yates will show that not all witches are evil, but you still would not want to mess with the granddaughter of one who loves fiercely and will give anything to protect her.

Bon Appétit by Viggy Par Hampton will make you lose your own appetite in a hurry.

The Devil Already Licked It by Paul Avery Tindle takes place a few years after Texas became part of the United States. A boy went fishing and crossed paths with a witch. His kindness got the best of him when he was tricked into thinking she was only a woman in need of help.

The Salt Mother by Ryan Colley is a tale of an unscrupulous man working for a real estate developer who manipulates a woman out of her home and owns the consequences. I almost felt sorry for him.

There's Always A Catch by S.E. Howard finds Hannah and her younger half-sister, Grace, arriving at their last chance of a foster home. They've been moved around a lot, but this house seems too good to be true.

All of the stories are spooktacular, but these were the ones that cast a spell on me.

5 out of 5 stars

My thanks to KJK Publishing.

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Movie Review - Mamochka

 

An heirloom doll made in a Nazi factory terrorizes a suburban family.

When Mark Gajewski inherits his mother-in-law’s antique doll, his curiosity develops into a hobby and ultimately an obsession. A chance encounter with a Mysterious Stranger introduces Mark to a radical new philosophy that explains the ugliness of history, one that strips away guilt and forces him to confront a haunting question: what happens when conscience is no longer a burden?

I was invited to watch a screener of Mamochka. 

Mamochka opened the Horror-on-Sea Film Festival in the UK on the 16th and had a limited VOD release on January 27, 2026. 

It is available on Amazon Prime in the US and UK. The distributor plans a larger release following the exclusive rental period. 

The film begins shortly after a funeral.

Mark and Jane, a seemingly happy couple, are returning home with the sole item bequeathed to Jane after her mother's death. Jane is not thrilled with inheriting nothing but the antique doll that she had been frightened of as a child. She wants to be rid of it, but Mark wants to find out about the doll's history first and whether it could be worth money.

Mamochka is a psychological horror/thriller about obsession. What is real and what is the product of a troubled mind?  As Mark goes from curiosity to fixation, the consequences begin to take a toll on every aspect of his life. 

Nightmares and darkly lit stairways added a creepy vibe. The soundtrack was oddly cheery-sounding, which made the spooky happenings even more jarring. Stanley Trub, who played Mark and Jane's young son Brian, is almost too adorable for horror movies, and yet he played his part well enough to give me a chill. A somewhat ambiguous ending leaves it open to the viewer's interpretation, but to me that's fine because I get to decide for myself what I want it to mean. Honestly, this is a weird one, but so am I because I enjoyed it.

I gave this 8 out of 10 stars at IMDB

View the trailer here

DIRECTED BY: Vilan Trub

WRITTEN BY: Vilan Trub

STARRING: Dino Castelli, Maya Murphy, Joshua Danskin