What the body remembers: Naben Ruthnum examines corporeality and identity in his novella Helpmeet
Ruthnum’s brief work of fin-de-siècle body horror reads like a mash-up of David Cronenberg and Henry James.
31 Days of Stories 2022, Day 13: “Dread” by Clive Barker
Barker’s psychologically tense story examines the price we pay for confronting our darkest fears.
31 Days of Stories 2022, Day 7: “Lost in a Pyramid, or The Mummy’s Curse” by Louisa May Alcott
The author of Little Women was also an aficionado of “blood and thunder,” a mode represented in this story about grave robbing and its attendant consequences.
Sympathy for the devils: John Darnielle’s latest novel examines the ethical quagmire of true crime in the context of a taut thriller
Focusing on a writer investigating a double murder with Satanic overtones, the novel asks uncomfortable questions about how and why we consume such gruesome material.
Vampires, mad scientists, and American psychos: David J. Skal examines some cultural underpinnings of the horror genre
In its examination of the roots of American horror cinema, this single-volume survey is valuable, though it lacks follow-through in its second half.
Home is where the hellfire is: Chuck Wendig and Adam L.G. Nevill provide two stories of new homes that prove anything but homey
Neither of the houses in these two books is haunted in the traditional sense; the evil comes from the people and environs that surround them.
Nic Brewer’s debut novel uses body horror as a means of interrogating the artistic process
The book uses Grand Guignol techniques to literalize the process of tearing oneself open in the act of artistic creation.
A.C. Wise channels unease and melancholy in her story collection The Ghost Sequences
In this suite of sixteen uncanny tales, memory and loss are manifest in the spectres that haunt various characters.
Elvira, Mistress of the Dark returns in a new book that also recalls an earlier contender for dark queen of late-night horror
A volume of cultural criticism about Vampira and a new memoir by the creator of Elvira: Mistress of the Dark show how much, and how little, the two have in common.
Adam Pottle on how the CanLit establishment’s preference for literary realism downplays the value of horror writing
Horror doesn’t gel with those who’ve propped up CanLit respectability – that is, chiefly cishet, nondisabled white people, Pottle writes.