Cottonmouth By Kealan Patrick Burke

Available for the first time in paperback and digital.

A thrilling prequel to Kealan Patrick Burke's southern gothic horror novel Kin.

 Cottonmouth is set in the aftermath of the Great Depression in Tennessee, a time of religious fervor and charlatanism, of thieves, murderers, and moonshiners.

Here you'll meet Horseshoe Collins, a traveler on a vengeful search for the father who abandoned him; Billy Wray, a snake-handling Pentecostal preacher bringing the promise of salvation to rural communities paralyzed by fear of the Devil; and Jonah Merrill, a child grieving the loss of his beloved father and tormented by his mother's wrath.

With the threat of a second World War looming on the horizon, destiny will bring these three people together and set innocent young Jonah on the path to his eventual fate and a new name: Papa-In-Gray, the patriarch of the dreaded Merrill family whose horrific exploits were first introduced to the world in KIN.

 Cottonmouth is the prequel to Burke's horror masterpiece, Kin.

This can be read as a stand-alone, but if you have not read Kin, don't deprive yourself; read them both! Long before we meet Papa-in-Gray, the murderous religious zealot in Kin, he was just Jonah, an ordinary boy, growing up poor and neglected after his father passed away and his mother couldn't be bothered to care for him.

I'm not going to say much else about the plot except that it's a strong case for nurture vs nature in creating monsters because Jonah was not born evil. He was not a bad seed. Who knows what kind of man he would have grown up to be if he had not suffered so much abuse? I read Kin close to a decade ago, and I never thought I would feel sympathy for Papa-in-Gray, yet here I am wishing I could go back in time and offer the boy he used to be a shred of comfort. I can count on one hand the times I have gone back to reread a book, but Cottonmouth has made me crave a reread of Kin with an intensity that I can not ignore.

The writing is flawless, and the story is brutal and mesmerizing. 

5 out of 5 stars

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All Triggers, No Warnings by John Everson

 DANGER: The Unknown Lies Ahead.

In this collection of 18 tales of horror and the macabre, expect the unexpected. Inside you’ll find tales of gorgeous ghouls and seductive sirens, of hideous creatures that wear another’s face and tentworms that spin death into dessert. You’ll tour a factory of the living dead and walk through the blood rains of hell. From sexual encounters beyond the grave to a secret pinball club where the silver ball is deadly, Bram Stoker Award-winning author John Everson will take you to places you never imagined.

Inside, you’ll find the kind of fictional ride that is always most effective when you have no idea what is lurking around the next curve. The kind of horror that is always served best with plenty of toe-curling triggers and …

No Warnings.

This will be long. Sorry. As the expression goes, opinions are like kittens and I'm giving them away. I have to say something before I talk about these stories. From the title, I didn't expect trigger warnings and that is fine since I don't need them. I don't even read the trigger warnings in a book until after I have read the book. I only read them to mention their existence for those who want to know.  I did not expect a lecture on them. I was surprised at the author's loud, proud, and frankly tone deaf stance against them while showing a lack of understanding of what they are or what they are for. He states at the beginning of the book that he has seen an "increasing flurry of hand wringing about preparing readers with warnings to protect their delicate psyches from stumbling on something unpleasant and preemptively sanitizing fiction in case something in it appears to be insensitive to one group or another and thus might (gasp) offend someone." The description also says this book contains "plenty of toe curling triggers."

Well holy shit. Triggers are not toe-curling as if it is some sort of orgasmic experience. What a long winded way to tell me that you don't know what a trigger warning is, and that you think its purpose is to force you to sanitize your writing so as not to offend someone. Trigger warnings are not censorship, They are not to stop you from writing anything as "offensive" or insensitive or downright gory, vulgar, nauseating, and disgusting as you please. They do not take away your freedom of speech. No topic is off limits. I would think that would be obvious from the most popular horror books by indie authors, you are limited only by your own imagination. 

As a horror reader, I expect a multitude of unpleasant scenarios in books. I want to laugh, and cry and be disgusted or terrified. That doesn't mean I am ignorant of the fact that trauma survivors may prefer to avoid topics that cause them to relive their trauma or at least have the option to steel themselves for its approach rather than be ambushed by it. It's ok not to need trigger warnings and it is even ok not to include them. It is not OK  to belittle readers who do need them in order to protect their own mental well being. 

Anyway!

As far as the stories in this collection, most have been previously published and I have read and enjoyed a few of them in the anthologies where they originally appeared. 

I have previously read and loved the first story Driving Her Home, which is the author's take on a classic ghost story/urban legend that nearly everyone will have heard someone swear that a version of this has actually happened to a friend of a friend. Maybe even on a wooded stretch of road you have traveled.

I also remember The Cemetery Man, which appeared in one of my all-time favorite anthologies, Midnight In The Graveyard. This is a darkly comedic story about a man who is willing to put up with a lot of creepy situations just to have some sexy time with a woman who is turned on by graveyards.

Other stories I enjoyed were The Most Dangerous Game, about pinball aficionados and a collection of rare pinball machines that you will never have seen in your local arcade.

Friends discover that their deceased pal's resting place has been disturbed in another dark horror comedy, Arnie's Ashes.

A henpecked husband and his wife spend an unforgettable night at a country inn that sells a mysterious concoction known as Forest Butter.

Ghoul Friend In A Coma finds high schoolers plagued by a curfew because there may be a serial killer picking them off one by one.

Normally, for story collections, I will just touch briefly on the stories that I loved the most, but since the only brand new story here is one I did not care for, I will have to mention Triggered. This is a story of revenge against a book reviewer by someone who conflates trigger warnings with reviewers who mistakenly assume that authors who write about horrible happenings are horrible people and therefore attempt to get these writers "cancelled." If my eyes had rolled any harder reading this story, my ocular muscles would bulge like a champion weight lifter.

I'm getting sick of the sound of myself typing and I am sure to be over the character limit for social media so I will end here by saying I enjoyed most of the stories. Many are like the old 80s fun and freaky campy horror with gore, bouncing boobs and dark humor. 

My thanks to Cemetery Dance Publications for the e-ARC.

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Tantrum by Rachel Eve Moulton

 In this electric horror novel from the author of The Insatiable Volt Sisters, an exhausted mother thinks her newborn might be a monster. She’s right.

Thea’s third pregnancy was her easiest. She wasn’t consumed with anxiety about the baby. She wasn’t convinced it was going to be born green, or have a third eye, or have tentacles sprouting from its torso. Thea was fine. Her baby would be fine. 

But when the nurses handed Lucia to her, Thea just knew. Her baby girl was a monster. Not only was Lucia born with a full set of teeth and a devilish glint in her eye, but she’s always hungry. Indiscriminately so. One day Lucia pointed at her baby brother, looked Thea dead in the eye and said, “I eat.”

Thea doesn’t know whether to be terrified or proud of her rapacious baby girl. And as Lucia starts growing faster and talking more, dark memories bubble to the surface--flashes from Thea’s childhood that won’t release their hooks from her heart. Lucia wants to eat the world. Thea might just let her. Crackling with originality and dark humor, Rachel Eve Moulton’s Tantrum is a provocative exploration of familial debt, duty, and the darker side of motherhood.

Thea never wanted children until she met and married Dillon, but once she did she was determined to be a better mother than the one she had. She worried herself sick over her first two pregnancies, but her beautiful, healthy boys are the light of her life. The third time, however, was not the charm. She didn't worry at all. Everything was fine until they put her baby girl in her arms. That was when she knew she had birthed a monster.

Exhausted and struggling to cope with a baby who is developing a mean streak and a miraculous growth spurt, Thea begins to uncover blocked out memories from her traumatic childhood and the disturbing details of her forgotten past with her own mother.

Motherhood is probably the only experience that millions of women can share while still having nothing in common. Each experience is as unique as every child. Tantrum is a supernatural story about trauma and abuse and the darker side of motherhood—those uncomfortable thoughts we may punish ourselves for when one child is harder to cope with than the others.

5 out of 5 stars

My thanks to G.P. Putnam's Sons for the advance e-ARC

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Eerie Exhibits - Five Macabre Museum Tales by Victoria Williamson

Five unnerving tales of the weird and uncanny from award-winning author Victoria Williamson.

A room full of screaming butterflies.

An unsettling smile on the face of a carved sarcophagus.

A painting that draws its viewer into the disturbing past.

A stuffed bear that growls in the dead of night.

And a shell that whispers more sinister sounds than the sigh of the sea…

Dare you cross the threshold of the old Museum and view its eerie exhibits?

Eerie Exibits contains five spooky stories that are heavy on atmosphere without relying on gore.

Each story shares a museum theme, where either visitors or workers can fall victim to the exhibits.

In the first story, a man who is grieving the loss of his mother has a startling experience with a butterfly display.

Next up, much like an episode of Night Gallery, an unusual painting sparks a memory and takes a museum worker into his past.

The last three stories were my favorites.  A little girl who wishes her cold and selfish father would be a more loving dad like all the other kids have, is fascinated by the smile on a sarcophagus. I felt awful for this child who would have been so appreciative of the least bit of attention from her self-absorbed father. Maybe things will get better for her once he meets The Grinning Man.

Thelma is a bitter, envious woman who believes she is owed a better lot in life. She sets out to achieve what she feels she deserves, in The Shape Of The Beast with some help from one of the museum exhibits where she works as a cleaner. Her life and the lives of those she feels have wronged her are about to change.

Children who have suffered a loss are targeted by The Whispering Shell while on a class trip to the museum. This was the most chilling of all the tales and succeeds in giving a ghostly scare without the need for gore.

If you like supernatural tales that don't have buckets of blood you will enjoy Eerie Exhibits.

My thanks to Silver Thistle Press for the gifted paperback.

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