The Dead Pennies by Robert Ford

 

After leaving an abusive relationship, Abby visits an old friend on her way to her mother’s in Florida.

Hayden’s Uncle Jack is renovating a building into high-end apartments in town, and with the lure of living rent-free in a beautiful loft, Abby becomes the caretaker with the entire building all to herself.
Abby hears strange sounds in the building. Shadows move as if they’re alive. Led to believe the structure
was previously a school, Abby is told by the last living employee of Harper’s Grove that the building
used to be a home for the infirm and unwanted children, the Dead Pennies of society, unfit for circulation.
Abby and Hayden search for the cause of the strange events at Harper’s Grove, and find out why the
spirits of the dead children won’t sleep until they get vengeance.

Abby has finally called it quits on an abusive relationship with a drug addicted creep. She packs what will fit in her car and heads to her mother's house although she really doesn't want to stay with her. On the way, she speaks to an old friend and decides to stop at his loft instead. He offers up what sounds like a great alternative to her mother's house. She can stay rent-free in a gorgeous apartment in a huge empty building while his uncle sorts through some red tape before renovations can continue to turn the rest into apartments.

It seems like the answer to all her problems. What she doesn't know, is that this building used to be an institution for physically and mentally disabled children, some of whom never moved on after death.

This was a chilling, multifaceted, ghost story. The spine tingling suspense comes from both the living and the dead. There is an unnerving encounter with a strange man before Abby even moves in, but the intricately woven back story of the building's days as a home to unwanted children was both heart-breaking and enraging due to its realistic portrayal of life for the residents of that kind of institution in those days. 

I felt for Abby and her circumstances, but it was the backstory of the building's dark past that really twisted my guts and kept me awake nights. 

Robert Ford is now on my short list of must read authors.

My thanks to Cemetery Dance Publications.

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Feeders by Caleb Stephens

 

It’s just an average night at the Ink Tank, the tattoo shop in Austin, Texas, where Brynn works as a tattoo artist. After a long shift, all she wants to do is head home, pop a few pills from the fresh bottle of Roxicodone in her jacket pocket, and slip into a nice buzz. Her plans crumble when she’s abducted by her convict father, Alan, and forced into the road trip from a cross-country trek to the Rocky Mountains and the shelter he built years ago to protect his family from the monsters living in his head, the monsters he says will erupt from the earth at any minute—the Feeders. With each mile he unravels further, thrusting Brynn back into the childhood nightmare she thought she’d escaped forever. Alan is paranoid, and he’s definitely dangerous—but is he crazy? In this novel, we find that truth is not always what it seems and that some secrets are better left buried.

Feeders is a road trip with a small group of people that you wouldn't think you'd like to be stuck with. There are strange and deadly bug like creatures bringing death and destruction in their wake. One man has what he hopes will be a safe refuge from these monsters if only he can get everyone there alive, even if it's against their will.

It's a strange experience to be made to like an unlikable cast of characters but somehow the author has pulled off this feat.

Brynn is a drug-addicted tattoo artist suffering from withdrawal.

Her father Alan is a murderer who has abducted her. Brynn's aunt has been cold and distant and resentful of taking care of Brynn and her brother Mac after their mother's death.

Somehow I ended up caring about all of them.

Feeders is an action-packed, creature-feature, survival horror. But before I knew it, it also turned into a story with heart and soul. It's also a cautionary tale that serves to remind us all that there is only so much we can take from the earth before we are made to regret it.

4 out of 5 stars

My thanks to Timber Ghost Press.

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Long Past Midnight by Jonathan Maberry

 SOME STORIES CAN ONLY BE TOLD . . . LONG PAST MIDNIGHT

 
Five-time Bram Stoker Award-winner Jonathan Maberry weaves a chilling web of small-town terrors, local legends, and hair-raising tales set in the eerie world of Pine Deep, Pennsylvania. . . .

Four children explore an abandoned house that’s supposed to be haunted—and discover something far more terrifying than any ghost. A rash of fatal accidents in the town of Pine Deep keeps a cemetery worker busier than ever—because the dead won’t stay buried. Ex-cop Joe Ledger searches for a missing witness in “the spookiest town in America”—but finds there is no protection program against the forces of evil. . . .

There is a character in this book who equates a trip back to Pine Deep as being as pleasant as a case of genital warts. So although I laughed, I feel the opposite.  I loved the Pine Deep trilogy and I will travel back there as many times as Jonathan Maberry is willing to take us.

These stories all stand-alone and you do not need to have read Ghost Road Blues or the rest of the trilogy to enjoy them, however, you are truly missing out on something special if you have skipped them. 

The tales take place before, during, and after the trilogy. There is a brief description of what some of the characters had experienced in the trilogy so that you are not totally out of the loop when reading this book but I still feel it is best that you not skip them. I loved this book to pieces.

Pine Deep is and has been home to ghosts, werewolves, and vampires. It's the spookiest town in America and it was a joy for me to revisit it.

4 out of 5 stars

My thanks to Kensington Books

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Bad Moon Rising, by Luisa Colón

 In Gravesend, Brooklyn, sixteen-year-old Elodia is an outcast at school, at odds with her father, and longing for her mysteriously absent mother. Lonely and isolated, Elodia knows that something unspeakably terrible has happened to her—she just can't remember what.

Miles away in upstate New York, a young man named Gabriel occupies his time by killing sparrows and searching for his birth parents. Gabriel wants to show them what a good son he can be, well-behaved and helpful and no trouble at all—until a savage betrayal plants an ever-growing seed of revenge within him.

Desperate for the promise of their past lives and future dreams, both Elodia and Gabriel are broken and scarred, their lives shattered. Their wounds run deep—and that kind of damage is irrevocable. Unchangeable. Irreversible.

Elodia is a high school girl who has suffered a terrible trauma that we are not privy to at the start of this story. We know that she used to have friends though her father didn't want her to and now she seems to have nobody. She doesn't speak; her life is school, home,  memories, and bad dreams. Until one day a new teacher takes an interest in her.

Gabriel is a troubled boy who enjoys killing birds for some unknown reason and is desperate to find his birth parents and belong to a real family. These two storylines seem to have nothing to do with each other at first glance but hints are dropped like tiny breadcrumbs until suddenly they converge.

I didn't always understand why Elodia's father treated her the way he did. He was a strange combination of over protective yet emotionally and verbally abusive. When the two storylines came together, parts of it made more sense but others raised even more questions. I can't tell you why, without a spoiler but I am honestly not clear on whether the ending was meant to be a happy one. The supernatural or magical powers given to some characters seemed almost to be an afterthought. There was no rhyme or reason or explanation for them. It seemed like they were just included as a way to force the ending.

2 out of 5 stars

I received a complimentary copy