Hellweg's keep by Justin Holley

 

Thirty-seven miners disappear without a trace within a Titanium mine, Hellweg’s Keep, deep within Zeta One, a moon orbiting the planet, Terra. When FBI agent Kendra Omen arrives via the spaceship Marietta, strange phenomenon begins to manifest…suicides, shadows a shade darker than the shadows they move within, disembodied whispers, and Kendra would swear she catches a glimpse of her own deceased daughter walking the dimly lit halls of Hellweg enterprises. But that’s impossible. Isn’t it? As evidence of occult practices at the mine emerges, Kendra realizes the answers they seek, and hopefully the thirty-seven miners will only be found underground in the claustrophobic labyrinth of shafts and natural caverns within Hellweg’s Keep.

I have never been much of a sci-fi fan but if you throw in some ghostly apparitions and a mystery you'll grab my attention. That and the fact that I enjoyed a previous book by this author is why I was willing to follow Justin Holley to Hellweg's Keep on his demons in outer space adventure.

While on her journey to investigate the mysterious disappearance of 37 miners an FBI agent is warned by a dying psychic medium not to go to Hellweg's Keep. She is told there is nothing but never-ending pain and suffering there with no hope of escape even in death. Of course, she does not let that dissuade her from her mission.

Strange happenings are already going on in Hellweg's before they even begin their descent deep underground in search of those who went missing. People are seeing spirits of the dead who fill them with despair and try to tempt them to suicide. Things get increasingly more dangerous for the search team the deeper they go.

I loved the first three-quarters of the book more than the ending. It was an action packed read but the ending bothered me. I would recommend this book for fans of the Alien franchise and The Thing movies.

3.75 stars rounded up to 4 out of 5

My thanks to Flame Tree Press.

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No Child of Mine by Nichelle Giraldes

 

There's something in the dark. And it's starting to whisper...
Essie Kaur has defined herself by her ambitions, a fiercely independent woman whose only soft spot is her husband, Sanjay. She never imagined herself as a mother. It was never a part of the plan. But then she finds out she's pregnant. As her difficult pregnancy transforms her body and life into something she barely recognizes, her husband spends the nights pacing in the attic, slowly becoming a stranger, and the house begins to whisper.

As Essie's pregnancy progresses, both her and Sanjay's lives are warped by a curse that has haunted her family for generations, leaving a string of fatherless daughters in its wake. When she's put on bedrest, Essie trades the last aspects of her carefully planned life for isolation in what should be a welcoming home, but she isn't alone. There's something here that means to take everything from her…

No Child Of Mine is told on two timelines. In the current day, we have Essie and her husband Sanjay, and several generations earlier we have Ana and Isabelle, two women who were profoundly in love in the days when it was just impossible for women to be together.

From the book's description I was expecting a scary read but mostly what I got was a love story interspersed with bouts of morning sickness. Or morning noon and night sickness since poor Essie seemed to be plagued with vomiting at all hours of the day and night, and although I remember what that feels like from my own experience, it did get a bit repetitive to read about crackers and nausea and bile for so many pages.

I enjoyed the characters from the past more than the present day and learning how the curse came to be. An awful curse born of both love and selfishness has taken fathers from their daughters for generations in Essie's family.

 I had hoped there would be some spookiness in Essie's new house but other than some whispering and an object occasionally being displaced nothing much happened. Even when the curse began to take hold there wasn't any suspense. The ending seemed too simplistic after so many generations had suffered this curse.

You may enjoy this one more than I did, but it just wasn't for me.

My thanks to Poisoned Pen Press.

Under the Moon in Illinois Stories from a haunted land by Kipling Knox

 Welcome to the fictional town of Middling, Illinois, where ghosts conspire to redeem a troubled community. Combining social satire with humor and tragedy, these interconnected stories explore the challenges we face in an anxious time. We follow a cast of midwestern characters, dead and alive: a farmer widow, an earnest criminal, a corrupt pastor, teen-agers on a date, a phantom hitchhiker, time-traveling professors, the spirit of a guilty ad man—and one brave woman journalist, in particular. At times dark, these tales are inherently hopeful.

Stories from this collection have been published or recognized in the Madison Review, Narrative Magazine, the TulipTree Review, the Bellingham Review, and the Whitefish Review.

It's a good thing that Middling is not a real town because it's a very unnerving place to find yourself.

Here I met a woman who lives in a school house with her children. It had a feel of being back in the 1800s except they had cell phones. I also tagged along on a date with a couple of teenagers and honestly could not tell whether this boy wanted to date this girl or kill her, and whether this girl wanted to date this boy, or was just using him. I met more than one ghost in and out of more than one cemetery, including a road trip with Resurrection Mary.

Under The Moon In Illinois is a collection of loosely connected stories, even though at first I failed to see how they were related other than the setting. Some of the tales that I enjoyed the most also irked me when they ended and I felt that they were over too abruptly, but fear not, the final story ties the book together and resolves some of the loose ends.

These are not horror stories per se but there are enough ghosts and mysterious happenstance throughout, told with enough suspense and humor to keep me engaged. 

I know that a lot of you will pick up an anthology or a collection and read a story or two in between reading novels. I often do that as well, but I would not recommend it here. For maximum enjoyment, you should read this book all the way through as if it were a novel. Otherwise, you may just feel like you walked into a movie that was halfway over and the film broke before you made it to the end.

3.75 rounded up to 4 out of 5 stars

My thanks to the author and Prairie State Press.

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About the Author

Kipling Knox is an author, publisher, and conservationist with roots in Washington State and Illinois. After two decades as a software engineering manager in Seattle, he returned home to create books in print and audio, with original illustrations. He also works to promote biodiversity, even on a backyard scale, with a special interest in prairie lands.

In the past year, Kipling’s short stories have been published or recognized in the Madison Review, Narrative Magazine, the TulipTree Review, the Bellingham Review, and the Whitefish Review.

Bad Movie Night by Patrick Lacey

 

Welcome to So Bad, So Good, YouTube’s most successful channel dedicated to trash cinema. This week, we’ll be watching and discussing the elusive horror flick Creepies. Some say the film is cursed, that its cast members died in unusual ways. Others claim the writers, producers, and directors have gone into hiding because of the movie’s macabre reputation. Countless viewers have experienced flashbacks to scenes within the film, as if they themselves were characters. But surely those are just rumors, right? Let’s fire up the VCR and find out. Grab some popcorn, crack open a cold one, and ignore the scratching in the walls.

Who doesn't love a bad movie night? Count me in.

A small group of friends have turned their love of horror movies into a semi-famous YouTube channel. When a bootleg copy of an obscure film mysteriously appears in the studio it's like a dream come true. They can't wait to watch, and film an episode about it. So what if it's rumored to be cursed? It's only a movie right?

I'll be honest with you, I had a moment of doubt when I opened this book and found it written in second person. I can count on one hand the number of books I've enjoyed from that point of view. However, Patrick Lacey has really pulled it off and it works well here. From this perspective, you are the star of the book and you will take the risk of bringing the curse upon yourself.

The movie scenes played out in vivid detail, to the point that I feel like I actually saw it. I wanted to tell them not to watch but they could not look away and neither could I, even when the curse began to take hold. The main character's depression over a traumatic incident in the past seems to make him (You) more susceptible to the curse but that doesn't mean it's safe for anyone else to watch this movie.

I read this book in one sitting and I never do that. If I never post again you'll know the curse took me.

My thanks to Patrick Lacey.

 

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Stinetinglers 2 by R.L.Stine

 From R.L. Stine, the master of horror for young readers, comes ten new stories that are sure to send a shiver down your spine. Two kids embark on a field trip to the zoo...and stumble upon a creature they never expected to meet. A boy makes a machine that puts kids in charge...but at what cost? A child is sure his new house is haunted...but is it just in his head? And each story comes with a personal introduction from Stine himself.

Laced with Stine’s signature humor and a hefty dose of nightmarish fun, Stinetinglers 2 is perfect for fans of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and Stine’s own Goosebumps books who want even more scares. These chilling tales prove that Stine’s epic legacy in the horror genre is justly earned. Dive in, and beware: you might be sleeping with the lights on tonight!

Stinetinglers 2 is a collection of ten scary stories for young readers or for the young at heart. You don't have to be a kid to get a giggle or a shiver from these tales. The fast pace and relatable themes should engage even the most reluctant readers. 

This is a collection intended for early to middle grades but you could read it to a younger child or have them read it to you.

I found it more enjoyable than the first volume of Stinetinglers.

Each story is prefaced with an anecdote that tells where the inspiration to write it came from.

The stories themselves are a lot of fun and show the consequences of borrowing things without permission, not being careful what you wish for, bullying, and more.

Whether you have a child who loves to read or you are hoping to instill a love of reading in them you can't go wrong with Stinetinglers 2.

4 out of 5 stars

My thanks to Feiwel & Friends

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Snarl by John Boden

 

Marlin Stains is a lonely man who is filled with words. Words that he longs to share with the world but so far only shares with himself. He has over 300 notebooks brimming with them in his trailer room. A wood-paneled tomb of prose and syllable. Marlin Stains killed his brother in the womb, buried his father when he was a young man and now, a bit older, he watches the same monster devour his mother. While grappling with this, he experiences a combination of exchanges and events that point him on a new trajectory with an outcome that is both expected and anything but. Marlin Stains has learned plenty in his thirty-two Love never dies, it just hides for a while and gets punchy. Death is never afraid and never gives a damn. Life is a thing that stretches, sometimes so far that you forget about it until it snaps back and hurts you. A snarl is an angry sound or a tangled trap, Marlin is familiar with both.

Marlin Stains spends his lonely life caring for his sick mother, blaming himself for his twin brother's death before he was ever born, and writing out his thoughts in hundreds of notebooks.

 

"My thoughts, they're always like minnows. Dozens of them. All of them small but swimming fast, gasping when I catch 'em."

He never shares his writing. Maybe things would be different for him if he had. Maybe he knows this and feels he's not worthy of happiness or attention.

When a woman he has loved from afar ever since they were in the eighth grade tells him that her husband has been abusing her, he starts to consider the possibility of a different kind of life.

Snarl is a sorrowful tale of an unfortunate man and the disturbing path he found his life on. The grief and loneliness are palpable. I literally need a hug right now.

My emotions ran the gamut and ran me ragged while reading. This is my second time reading a John Boden novella, and I'll definitely be back for more.

5 out of 5 stars

My thanks to the author and Dead Sky Publishing.

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Riding the Nightmare by Lisa Tuttle

 

Over a fifty-year career, Lisa Tuttle has earned a reputation as one of the greatest modern authors of horror and weird fiction. Her most recent collection, The Dead Hours of Night, was a finalist for the Stoker Award, and now she is back with a new collection of twelve unsettling tales, several of them never previously collected, including the long out-of-print and hard-to-find tale 'The Dragon's Bride'.

This volume contains the following stories: Riding the Nightmare, Bits and Pieces, ‘The Mezzotint’, After the End, The Third Person, The Wound, The Man in the Ditch, The Last Dare, A Home in the Sky, Voices in the Night, The Hungry Hotel, The Dragon’s Bride. Also included is a new introduction by Neil Gaiman.

Riding The Nightmare had me galloping through the pages, It is loaded from cover to cover with delightfully dark and disturbing tales from one of the best storytellers in horror, Lisa Tuttle.

A secret weekend tryst will haunt a happily engaged woman in The Hungry Hotel.

A picture is worth a thousand words in The Mezzotint, but only if the warning is heeded in time. Home ownership is part of the American dream especially if you are an adult stuck returning to your childhood bedroom but a room in your parents' house may be safer than A Home In The Sky.

The Man In The Ditch is another story of a warning that went ignored when a woman who should have trusted her own instinct lets her husband convince her that there is nothing to fear.

Two old friends reconnect on Halloween in The Last Dare and forgotten memories return too late.

The title story Riding The Nightmare is a chilling play on words when the actual mare shows up at the window for a night ride.

These were my favorites in the collection but all of the stories are wonderfully weird and unsettling. It was also a refreshing change of pace to have so many stories from a female main character's point of view.

5 out of 5 stars

My thanks to Valancourt Books

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About the author

Spin a Black Yarn by Josh Malerman

 

Five harrowing novellas of horror and speculative fiction from the singular mind of the New York Times bestselling author of Bird Box

Josh Malerman is a master weaver of stories--and in this spine-chilling collection he spins five twisted tales from the shadows of the human soul:

A sister insists to her little brother that "Half the House Is Haunted" by a strange presence. But is it the house that's haunted--or their childhoods?

In "Argyle," a dying man confesses to homicides he never committed, and he reveals long-kept secrets far more sinister than murder.

A tourist takes the ultimate trip to outer space in "The Jupiter Drop," but the real journey is into his own dark past.

In "Doug and Judy Buy the House Washer(TM)," a trendy married couple buys the latest home gadget only to find themselves trapped by their possessions, their history . . . and each other.

And in "Egorov," a wealthy old cretin murders a young man, not knowing the victim was a triplet. The two surviving brothers stage a savage faux-haunting--playing the ghost of their slain brother--with the aim of driving the old murderer mad.

Do you like weird fiction? Strange Tales? These novellas are not necessarily horror, but they do bite when you least expect it.

I loved three out of the five stories. 

In my three favorites, a little girl terrifies her baby brother with frightening pranks and her insistence that half the house is haunted. Is she just evil or can she see what others can't?

A loathsome married couple's incessant need to brag and show off their status will be their undoing when their past can not be washed away.

A family man on his deathbed shares a jarring secret that blindsides his loved ones as they gather to say goodbye.

There is some supernatural horror in the mix but the majority of these stories rely on psychological scares and surprising twists. 

My thanks to Random House/Ballantine/ Del Rey Publishing.

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