Literary Lollapalooza - Nov 2025
14 books ・30 views 👀
The Hollow Places: A Novel
T. Kingfisher
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There are thin places between worlds. Sometimes you can punch right through. But what awaits on the other side? And what might follow you back if you did? This tale of inter-dimensional cosmic horror is smart, surprisingly funny, and scary as hell. T. Kingfisher is one of my favorite voices in modern horror and dark fantasy. With imagery that will be in the shadows of my vision for a very long time. This one will haunt my nightmares. Audiobook read with delightful sarcasm and unbelieving terror by Hilary Huber.
The God of the Woods: A Novel
Liz Moore
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Camp, Summer 1975. A girl, the daughter of the wealthy camp owners, goes missing. 14 years earlier her brother disappeared from the same camp never to be seen again. Through chapters that alternate between multiple characters and timelines, the mystery unfolds as another girl goes missing and the Van Laar family’s secrets come slowly to light. Creepy, twisty, human thriller that kept me baffled yet intrigued to the end.
The Mad Wife: A Novel
Meagan Church
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💙📚
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💙📚
The story of a woman who is buckling under the enormous pressure expected of a 1950’s housewife: I.e. keeping a spotless house, raising bright attractive children, cooking and cleaning and looking after kids, and making last minute business dinners; at a whim she must dutifully obey her husband, arrange a dinner party with no time to shop, and be gracious and charming, and no one ever even says thank you. She’s anxious and depressed and soon she’s pregnant again. She’s starting to unravel. She becomes obsessed with the new neighbors and believes there’s something nefarious going on and oh my god what if she’s right? A feminist historical novel of the day-to-day horrors of giving everything you’ve got and not saving any for oneself, nor of ever receiving appreciation or any thought in return. Emotionally palpable; a story of mental health and motherhood and womanhood that will stay with you long after the last page.
“Get your shit together. Because you’re the only one who can save yourself.”
Triggers: Post-pardem depression; misogyny, sexual abuse, adultery, mental health
#Obstinate #TheMadWife #MeaganChurch
Read by Susan Bennett
The October Film Haunt
Michael Wehunt
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💙📚 💙🩸
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💙📚 💙🩸
I had heard much praise about Michael Wehunt’s The October Film Haunt long before I got around to reading it. But it instantly wormed its way into my subconscious and started gnawing on me. The book is about a haunted or possibly possessed classic horror film called “Proof of Demons” by a mysterious and enigmatic director named Ellen Enriquez. The film, a black and white surrealistic series of slow, glitchy still shots of differing lengths and patterns, reveals horrific images of a tall black smudgy creature, figures cloaked in pale sheets with sharp jagged wooden crowns underneath and poking through the sheet, and a large rolling eye in the sky. It’s a cult film and has gained quite the cult following over the years. The titular “October Film Haunt” actually denotes a podcast and blog ran by three friends and horror fanatics. The three visit actual filming locations of classic horror movies, and so decide to take on “Proof of Demons”. The result is deadly and leads to the end of the Haunt, the dissolution of their friendship, and soon the most dangerous yet: someone seems to be intent on making a sequel to “Demons” and have decided to include the real October Film Haunt-ers, whether they like it or not.
Like Ringu and Ju-On meet The Blair Witch Project; this exploration of modern Urban Legends and Creepypasta, like Slenderman and others, online culture,Social media and online bullying, doxxing, etc had my heart pounding and my brain twisting it over and over again in mind until I just “had” to get back to it. Highly, highly recommend if you like thoughtful, occult, cosmic horror with a double degree in film/media studies.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Read It!
#PineArchCreature
#PineArchDemon
#YouBelong #FuneralWatching
#OctoberFilmHaunt
#MichaelWehunt
#WillYouBelieveInWhatYouMade
#TheCorpseOfTwitter
Read by Zura Johnson, Tim Lounibos
Warning: Spoiler alert!
King Sorrow: A Novel
Joe Hill
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King Sorrow is Joe Hill’s Magnum Opus, a dark fantasy of Faustian bargains that is a sprawling yet propulsive 800+ pages. A tale of friendship and betrayal, the book centers on a group of college friends who accidentally summon a dragon from an ancient book, the titular King Sorrow. But deals with dragons are the same as deals with the devil: they come with a price, and often that price is higher than at first expected. King Sorrow demands a yearly sacrifice or he’ll start taking them instead. This is a masterpiece of a novel. Joe is at the top of his craft, crafting a taut yet expansive sense of dread, while never letting readers forget the human heart beating at its core. He’s also decided to place the events in a shared universe with dad Stephen King by using fictional location Castle Rock, ME and making reference to characters and events from his father’s past works The Dead Zone (Greg Stillson, Johnny Smith) and Firestarter (The Shop). Hill is also clearly having a blast slipping in sly Easter eggs in tribute to some of King’s works throughout. I caught these, but I’m sure there are more I missed:
“You high-toned bitch!” - (The Dark Half)
“The Dark Man passed and Arthur followed” (The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger)
“I don’t shut up, I grow up. And when I look at you I throw up.” (Stand By Me, The Body)
“I Bet They’ve Got a Heck of a Band” (I Bet They’ve Got a Hell of a Band)
And then finally, I was reading this on my 50th birthday and had a good chuckle over this line, a Joe Hill original, “At 50 you have the face you finally deserve.”
Thanks Joe. We’ll see you on the next one.
Herculine
Grace Byron
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“Trannies are not supposed to make jokes about killing ourselves. But we all know, even good trannies go to hell.”
What a wonderful surprise of a little horror novel! Grace Byron is a hell of a writer. Herculine follows a trans woman who decides to join her ex-girlfriend’s transgender lesbian cult in the woods, and the crazy spooky demonic shit that goes down when she does. Told first-person by our narrator, full of sarcasm and wit and wisdom, I enjoyed every minute. Horny trans lesbian horror fiction touching on identity, sexuality, gender, growing up queer in the church, conversion therapy, the occult, and demonology.
“Now, yet again, I’m less convinced sexuality is fixed. Why does it need to be? I can have my pussy and eat it, too.”
By coincidence, finished on the first day of Trans Awareness Week 2025. Recommended!
The Troop
Nick Cutter
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“Nobody likes me
Everybody hates me
I’m going to the garden to eat some worms”
Lord of the Flies meets 28 Days Later but in a Bio-engineered weight loss Tapeworm pill. Add in early teenage psychopathy and you’ve got a powderkeg of bad shit going down.
This terrifying novel takes place on Falstaff Island, Prince Edward Island, as Scoutmaster Tim takes his troop on their annual summer trip to this remote, wooded island, for camping and hiking and wilderness survival. Things turn bad when a ragged, hungry stranger happens upon their camp. His every thought: feed the hunger inside him.
I was pre-warned. I was told this was a disgusting gorefest and would induce waves of gut-tightening nausea. I did not believe. I poo pooed, thinking, “sure for those other people. Not this hardened horror maniac!” I was wrong. This is without a doubt one of the most disturbing things I’ve ever read. It is, and I can’t stress this enough, not for animal lovers. Or maybe it is, if you have a broken black soul like me. It is the most disgusting; the most times my stomach turned reading a book and some passages were just plain hard to get through. I’d have to put it down, take breaks. But I also couldn’t stay away from it, pulled inexorably back so I could know what happens next (even if I can’t bear to know)! Highly recommended for anyone who thinks they can take it. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
“The past had a perfection that the future could never hold.”
We Used to Live Here
Marcus Kliewer
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“‘Those people in your house… that’s not what they look like,’ he said, talking more to the trees than to her.”
“Once they’re in, they never leave.”
We Used To Live Here is the debut novel by Marcus Kliewer, a story first serialized on Reddit, and then adapted to novel form.
It is the story of Eve and Charlie, a young lesbian couple, who buy a beautiful old Victorian at a killer deal, and plan to flip it and resell it. “Yet, like all totally not haunted houses in the middle of nowhere, it was listed at a killer deal.” One night while Charlie is still at work, Eve is surprised by a knock on the door. Standing at the door is a family of five, Dad, mom, two boys, and a girl. The man tells Eve that he used to live here as a boy, and does she mind if he can show his family around? She’s uncomfortable, nervous, but she’s a people-pleaser. Sure, go ahead, but only 15 minutes, right? What follows is a creepfest of epic proportions. Kliewer manages to take the classic haunted house tropes and make them wholly new, believable, and blood-chillingly frightening. Owing much to House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski (clearly, with a hat tip by Kliewer in this document where the user is named Navidson, the same as HOL: (REPLY 4:
User: Navidson_27)
but it is absolutely a terrifying tale in its own right. It manages to draw together elements of folk horror, cosmic horror, and supernatural hauntings, while speaking to the current moment of anxiety, and fear, and depression. “Yet, like all childhood monsters, it was only replaced by the mundane, and arguably worse, terrors of adulthood: credit card debt, car accidents, funerals. Things that sometimes made Eve think back to imaginary ghouls with rosy nostalgia.” Using internet folklore, online discussion groups, and Mandela Effect subreddits as additional arrows in his literary quiver, it is perhaps one of the creepiest things I’ve read; it simply oozes dread from every page, yet I could not put it down.
“Just try to—
Try to what? Escape? Stay calm? Prevent Cthulu’s resurrection?”
Highly recommended! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Everlasting
Alix E. Harrow
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“Who is free who loves another?”
“They were to one another as fixed stars were to sailors: the only way through the dark.”
A truly lovely book, a sort of ouroboros of a novel exploring mythology and legends and the power of words and stories to create our reality. A rousing, uplifting tale of Love and Devotion, of Knights and Dragons. A beautiful love story told over (and over and over) thousands of years, that dispels notions of gender norms while positing that bravery can be fragile and soft, and fear can be the catalyst we need to change our stories.
“That’s not history. That’s a story. A story designed to tell you who to hate, what god to worship, and what flag to fight for, and what color eyes are the most beautiful. It’s a story that made a continent that made an empire.”
“A nation is a story we tell about ourselves, and stories change, if you let them.”
“Wait for me beneath the yew tree…”
Enthusiastically Recommended! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Why I Love Horror
Becky Siegel Spratford
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A love letter (or actually a collection of love letters) to the horror genre compiled and edited by horror librarian extraordinaire Becky Siegel Spratford. With essays from modern horror writers like Stephen Graham Jones, Paul Tremblay, Tananarive Due, Alma Katsu, Grady Hendrix, Clay McLeod Chapman, and Rachel Harrison and many more, this book explores the many reasons why we like to be scared, why we love the monsters, and how horror helps us cope in a strange and frightening world. If you consider yourself a fan of horror, you will love this book. A fast read, and a refreshing literary palate cleanser that celebrates the spooky community. Recommended!
Full Throttle
Joe Hill
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Very much a mixed bag of stories; some much better than others, but overall I felt these stories (and novellas) could have all been vastly improved by an editor with a strong hand (much like his verbose father’s work). Conceptually, the stories reflect Hill’s many writerly influences, most notably Ray Bradbury, Tom Savini, Richard Matheson, and his own pop, Stephen King. The audio production, however, is top notch! A great cast of readers including Kate Mulgrew and Wil Wheaton. Recommended for Hill fans or completists, otherwise 20th Century Ghosts is a much better collection if you want to sample Joe Hill’s brand of horror.
Mine is a Long, Lonesome Grave
Justin Jordan
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Eisner and Harvey Award-nominated writer Justin Jordan and #1 bestselling artist Chris Shehan, and Ringo Award-nominated artist Maan House present a tale of southern violence, folk magic, and brutal retribution. A visceral, gorgeously crafted horror comic; a gutshot of blood and gore, with images to haunt dreams. Issues 1-4 collected into one volume, in sleek full color from Oni Press, December 15, 2025.
Recommended!
The Buffalo Hunter Hunter
Stephen Graham Jones
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“Good Stab fell to his knees, pressed his forehead to the floor and he screamed, too. And I dare say our screams harmonized. At least in how much they pained us. This, I believe, is the story of America, told in a forgotten church in the hinterlands, with a choir of the dead mutely witnessing.”
The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones is a new masterpiece of historical horror fiction. Set against the true historical backdrop of the Marias Massacre in Montana territory in 1870, whereupon US Army soldiers slaughtered 200 or more Piegan Blackfeet Indians, many of whom were women, children, and older men.
“We were already a nation,” he said up to me. “We didn’t ask you to come.”
Graham marries the story of this terrible war crime against the Piegani people and an epistolary vampire novel, in the tradition of Bram Stoker’s Dracula to create a singular work of fiction that both recounts the pain and anguish of loss and the all-consuming desire for revenge.
The story is told through back and forth recorded confessions between a Lutheran minister, Arthur Beaucarne, and a mysterious Blackfeet named Good Stab. In alternating chapters, Beaucarne and Good Stab tell their respective stories, leading to a cataclysmic meeting centuries in the making. Like the best historical fiction it allows to view the distant stories of our past and help us make sense of what these stories mean to us, of how they inform our present, and how we carry them forward. A deeply moving meditation on the darkness that lives in man’s soul, this was a Thanksgiving Day read for me, and Good Stab’s tale seemed the perfect antidote to corporate greed and governmental malfeasance. Highly highly highly recommended! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Tender Is the Flesh
Agustina Bazterrica
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A darkly dystopic tale of a not-so-future Argentina (and world) where disease and human fear have made animal livestock impossible to eat and subsist on. The governments and the corporations however, have made the necessary sacrifices and have switched all animal processing plants to “special meat” processing plants. Special meat is human meat specifically grown as livestock. They are raised separately, are not taught, have their vocal cords removed so they can’t scream, and are considered as property, being branded clearly on their shaved foreheads. To consider them human is to apply false empathy. They are meat and should be treated as such. However, Marcos, a supervisor at the Special Meat Processing Center, is deeply depressed; he hates his job, has secretly gone vegetarian, and is grieving the death of his newborn child and his marriage to Cecelia, unable to continue with deep empty holes inside each of them. He’s lost, going through the motions, and then he’s gifted a head of human livestock. A girl of about twenty, feral and lovely, she’s been raised to be the finest, softest cuts of meat, worth a veritable fortune. The girl sickens him. He doesn’t know what to do with her. He doesn’t want to deal with her. He just wants to have his life with Cecelia return to normal, but what is normal? In this world of blood and cruelty, where only the almighty dollar rules supreme, there might not be a way out.
Another deeply disturbing and disgusting book of unparalleled wisdom and power. An excoriating view of the worldwide meat industry and of capitalism in general, this was another Thanksgiving Day read that hit this “former-meat eater” right in my solar plexus. Oooof. Read it if you dare. Highly recommended. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️