The Dust Lounge

Tag: horror books

On reading: Nothing but Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw

Title: Nothing but Blackened Teeth

Author: Cassandra Khaw

From the back: A Heian-era mansion stands abandoned, its foundations resting on the bones of a bride and its walls packed with the remains of the girls sacrificed to keep her company.

It’s the perfect venue for a group of thrill-seeking friends, brought back together to celebrate a wedding.

A night of food, drinks, and games quickly spirals into a nightmare as secrets get dragged out and relationships are tested.

But the house has secrets too. Lurking in the shadows is the ghost bride with a black smile and a hungry heart.

And she gets lonely down there in the dirt.

The gist: There’s been a lot of authors compared to Shirley Jackson, but Khaw’s Nothing but Blackened Teeth is one of the few where I’ve really felt that ringing true—Khaw writes a beautifully horrific ghost story that takes Jackson vibes and pulls them into a modern, gruesome tale.

It’s the perfect reading for this time of year.

Khaw quickly builds tension—introduces you to the cast, hints at muddied histories, makes the house as much a character as the people in it. I’m not usually a fan of overly ‘flowery’ writing, but for me the intricate descriptions here help to build the atmosphere, help to give the whole story a surreal tinge that builds inside you to create a sense of ghostly chaos. It’s beautiful yet ghastly. As you read it, you lose yourself in the vivid picture-scapes, the lush scenes absorb you in an almost detached sort of way, contrasting perfectly with the panic and, at times, gore, that unfolds.

And the core of the story being set in Japanese folklore is both fascinating and refreshing for me, as someone not well versed in this area—I’ll certainly be seeking out more from both the author and the genre.

It’s a short read, the sort you can devour in an evening. A brilliant, chilling haunted house story that’s straight up there as a classic horror story. And what better time to read it than now?

Favourite line: apologies didn’t exonerate the sinner, only compelled graciousness from its recipient.

Read if: You want a perfectly chilling and original haunted house story to keep you company as we head into spooky season.

Read with: No thoughts of looking to this for your wedding venue inspiration.

Get it: Nothing but Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw

October 13, 2021
On reading: The Book of Accidents by Chuck Wendig

Title: The Book of Accidents

Author: Chuck Wendig

From the back: When Nate’s father dies, he leaves behind a final gift for his son: his childhood home. Married now, Nate decides to move in with his wife, Maddie, and their son, Oliver, seeking peace from the chaos of the city.

But it doesn’t take long before things get strange in the night and even stranger by day.

Because Nate was a child being abused by his father, and has never told his family. Because Maddie was a little girl who saw something she shouldn’t have. Because something sinister, something hungry, walks in the tunnels and the mountains and the coal mines of this town in rural Pennsylvania…

And now, what happened all those years ago is happening again, and this time, it is happening to Oliver. When he meets a strange boy with secrets of his own and a taste for dark magic, he has no idea that what comes next will put his family at the heart of a battle of good versus evil.

The gist: Wendig does not disappoint in this creepy, twisty, ghost story. It’s a book that might defy definition – some are going to swing towards elements of science fiction, others to serial killer thriller, but it’s a haunting ghost story to me. And one that kicks some veritable ass.

It’s a chunky book, and the story takes its time, giving you a chance to get to know each of the characters in their own right, all the better to understand their fears. It initially feels like a fairly straight forward haunted house tale, before spreading into something more expansive that transcends reality and time. Wendig sets many stories rolling, each character having their own arc to journey through and grapple with, and he ties them all together in a way that is neat but not predictable.

If you’re familiar with Wendig’s other writing, you’ll be familiar with the way he writes characters so well – flawed, sweary, unapologetically spunky. And just because he’s treading into spooky horror doesn’t make his characters any less cool. They bring humour to the darkness, act as a foil against the traumas presented, and keep you hooked until the end.

Another brilliant outing for Wendig, and well worth picking up and diving into as we approach spooky season.*

*Spooky season is all year, if you want it to be, just fyi.

Favourite line: Books were usually a way for her to power her own brain down and borrow someone else’s for a while.

Read if: You want a hunk of a book, a ghost story you can spend some time with, and characters with Wendig’s trademark sass.

Read with: The lights down low, and no trips to parks, mines or other dimensions planned for the near future.

Get it: The Book of Accidents by Chuck Wendig

September 29, 2021
On reading: My Heart Is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones

Title: My Heart Is a Chainsaw

Author: Stephen Graham Jones

From the back: The Jordan Peele of horror fiction turns his eye to classic slasher films: Jade is one class away from graduating high-school, but that’s one class she keeps failing local history. Dragged down by her past, her father and being an outsider, she’s composing her epic essay series to save her high-school diploma.

Jade’s topic? The unifying theory of slasher films. In her rapidly gentrifying rural lake town, Jade sees the pattern in recent events that only her encyclopedic knowledge of horror cinema could have prepared her for. And with the arrival of the Final Girl, Letha Mondragon, she’s convinced an irreversible sequence of events has been set into motion.

As tourists start to go missing, and the tension grows between her community and the celebrity newcomers building their mansions the other side of the Indian Lake, Jade prepares for the killer to rise. She dives deep into the town’s history, the tragic deaths than occurred at camp years ago, the missing tourists no one is even sure exist, and the murders starting to happen, searching for the answer. As the small and peaceful town heads towards catastrophe, it all must come to a head on 4th July, when the town all gathers on the water, where luxury yachts compete with canoes and inflatables, and the final showdown between rich and poor, past and present, townsfolk and celebrities slasher and Final Girl.

The gist: There’s no two ways about it, My Heart is as Chainsaw is a masterclass in slasher history and execution. Jones has woven slasher lore through a slasher tale that still punches you in the gut with a fist full of heart.

It’s a real deconstruction of slasher history, with sections dedicated to Jade’s papers on slasher films that genuinely made me want to watch and re-watch some of the classics of the genre. But the core of the story is about real lives and real trauma, and a character who escapes into the horror of film as a recourse from the horrors of life.

For me, the best horrors are those that play with the idea of horror, that toy with the focus of fear, our understanding of monsters. And Jones does that so expertly he’s absolutely one of my ‘go-to’ horror authors. I hugely enjoyed The Only Good Indians, and although My Heart is a Chainsaw is in some ways a different beast, it still has heart pulsing through the horror. Oh, and some elk, but it’s probably better you find out about them for yourself…

Favourite line: it’s all deadly in the wrong hands, with the right intent.

Read if: You want an education in slasher history, and a slasher story that will do it’s best to break your heart.

Read with: An archive of slasher films ready to watch with new eyes. And by new eyes, I mean, a fresh look, don’t be going and getting yourself anybody else’s, that’s the start to another story…

Get it: My Heart Is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones (release date 7th September 2021)

ARC gratefully received from Gallery Books, Gallery/Saga Press, and Netgalley

September 1, 2021
On reading: The Deep by Alma Katsu

Title: The Deep

Author: Alma Katsu

From the back: Someone – or something – is haunting the Titanic.

Deaths and disappearances have plagued the vast liner from the moment she began her maiden voyage on 10 April 1912. Four days later, caught in what feels like an eerie, unsettling twilight zone, some passengers – including millionaire Madeleine Astor and maid Annie Hebbley – are convinced that something sinister is afoot. And then disaster strikes.

Four years later and the world is at war. Having survived that fateful night, Annie is now a nurse on board the Titanic’s sister ship, the Britannic, refitted as a hospital ship. And she is about to realise that those demons from her past and the terrors of that doomed voyage have not finished with her yet . . .

Bringing together Faustian pacts, the occult, tales of sirens and selkies, guilt and revenge, desire and destiny, The Deep offers a thrilling, tantalizing twist on one of the world’s most famous tragedies.

The gist: If you’re familiar with Katsu’s The Hunger, an historical horror novel following the Donner Party’s stark trek across America, then you’ll be expecting good things from her novel The Deep, and you’ll surely not be disappointed.

I’m not much of a reader of historical fiction. I’m not into period drama, and there feels to me to be a fine, delicate line to tread when dealing with the blurring of fiction and fact, of the stories of real people’s lives entwined with the ghosts of a writer’s mind.

But Katsu writes so beautifully and treats the history with such care, that the results are hauntingly good. She weaves supernatural and horror elements into the story deftly, and the real people and settings are rendered with the depth and character that is borne of research and respect. On reading both The Hunger and The Deep, Katsu made me want to find out more about the events and the history of the events she’d incorporated in the books. Katsu made me want to know more.

The Deep captures a sense of horror not just from the supernatural elements, but from the isolation and sheer sense of scale of boats in icy seas. When something that feels so huge in human terms is dwarfed to the point of a pin-prick by nature’s own flex of size and power, it taps into a primal fear. You have no power in this land, and this land will do what it will with you.

One of my primal fears, anyway – I can count the number of times I’ve been on a boat on one hand. And that’s counting the time I capsized out of a kayak when I was younger, screaming for help without realising I likely could have just stood on the bottom in the muddy water rather than flail and shout and panic that maybe the life jacket is broken and do you get sharks in ponds in England and oh-my-God-have-they-heard-me-yet? Better safe than sorry though, right?

Regardless of my own fears of vast expanses of water, Katsu deftly captures a sense of place, time, and horror, weaving in a narrative of ghosts and love and tragedy. I can highly recommend you pick this up to satisfy your supernatural, historical horror needs.

Favourite line: But there is something in her that is hospitable to madness.

Read if: You want your supernatural horror delicately woven with the scale and horror of a real life tragedy.

Read with: The security of knowing you have no sea-faring trips planned any time soon. Hopefully.

Get it: The Deep by Alma Katsu

August 21, 2021
On reading: The Five Turns of the Wheel by Stephanie Ellis

Title: The Five Turns of the Wheel

Author: Stephanie Ellis

From the back: Stalking the landscape of rural England are the sons of Hweol, Lord of Umbra. Creatures with a taste for blood and death, they lead the Dance—five nights of ritual, the Five Turns of the Wheel. Proclaiming these events as a celebration of Mother Nature, the grotesque mummers troupe of Tommy, Betty and Fiddler, visit five villages on successive nights to lead the rites as they have done for centuries. In this blend of folk horror and dark fantasy, two women decide it is time to put a stop to the horrors committed in the name of the Mother. Liza and Megan, mother and daughter, fight back to protect the unborn and to weaken the power of Hweol. But will it be enough to destroy it forever?

The gist: If you’ve come across Ellis’s writing before, perhaps Bottled or Asylum of Shadows, then you’ll know that you’re in some wonderfully capable, creepily good hands. Not saying her hands are creepy, that would be weird. I have not seen her hands, and even if I had it would be odd to be commenting on them. But you get my drift, which is that Ellis is adept at ensnaring you in her tales of horror.

And The Five Turns of the Wheel certainly does not disappoint.

Folk horror laced (maybe at times drenched) with fire and blood, Ellis sweeps you into the deceptively quiet countryside and then threatens to never let you go. The pacing is brilliantly done, as you’re drawn inexorably through each turn of the wheel, genuinely fearful of what will happen the next time it turns. Maybe it’s the structure of the five turns, maybe it’s the undercurrent of music flowing throughout the book, but it pulses with dread in a way that feels almost hypnotic—once started, it demands to be finished.

It’s a book to read on the long cold nights of winter, to read warmed by a blanket and an open fire. But perhaps not one to read if you’ve just rocked up at a local village pub and the patrons are giving you the side eye while someone suggests a dance.

Favourite line: Old memories had a bad habit of demanding to be revisited, and they came back to her, vociferous, irksome.

Read if: You want your folk horror laced with fire and blood.

Read with: The lights turned low, the fire crackling, the fiddler put strictly on mute.

Get it: The Five Turns of the Wheel by Stephanie Ellis

December 2, 2020
On reading: Tender Is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica

Title: Tender Is the Flesh

Author: Agustina Bazterrica, translated by Sarah Moses

From the back: It all happened so quickly. First, animals became infected with the virus and their meat became poisonous. Then, governments initiated the Transition. Now, ‘special meat’ – human meat – is legal.

Marcos is in the business of slaughtering humans only no one calls them that. He works with numbers, consignments, processing. One day, he’s given a gift to seal a deal: a specimen of the finest quality. He leaves her in his barn, tied up, a problem to be disposed of later.

But the specimen haunts Marcos. Her trembling body, her eyes that watch him, that seem to understand. And soon, he becomes tortured by what has been lost – and what might still be saved…

The gist: This book is possibly one of the most horrific books I’ve ever read. There’s not many books where I’m scared to turn the page to see what happens next, but Tender is the Flesh had me reading through my fingers and gave me chills to the core.

This book is graphic yet clinical. It’s the horror of the business of animal slaughter made so clear you can’t turn away. What is particularly effective, beyond the clinical way that Bazterrica presents the slaughter of humans, the production line of death, is the focus on how language can humanize or dehumanize. How words are an important tool to shape attitudes and to sanitise actions. How words present people with a frame for humanity, for consciousness, and how those words are used to excuse and justify acts that would go way beyond most moral lines.

As someone who currently eats meat but has periodically been vegetarian, this book took a knife to the clash between my feelings about eating meat and my actions of eating meat and twisted it. It played on a certain cognitive dissonance inside me and made me feel uncomfortable, made me mentally and physically squirm. That sort of discomfort is a good thing, and one that I may well need to address again going forwards. I’m not sure a book has ever made me feel something quite as physical as Bazterrica’s Tender is the Flesh did. I highly recommend it—brutal, clinical, and horrific.

Favourite line: The words are there, encapsulated. They’re rotting behind the madness.

Read if: You want a book that pulls no punches, that drags you mercilessly and clinically through a dystopia that will chill you to the bone.

Read with: A vegetarian meal-plan to hand.

Get it: Tender Is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica

September 17, 2020
On reading: My Best Friend’s Exorcism by Grady Hendrix

Title: My Best Friend’s Exorcism

Author: Grady Hendrix

From the back: An unholy hybrid of Beaches and The Exorcist that blends teen angst, adolescent drama, unspeakable horrors, and a mix of ’80s pop songs into a pulse-pounding supernatural thriller

The year is 1988. High school sophomores Abby and Gretchen have been best friends since fourth grade. But after an evening of skinny-dipping goes disastrously wrong, Gretchen begins to act…different. She’s moody. She’s irritable. And bizarre incidents keep happening whenever she’s nearby. Abby’s investigation leads her to some startling discoveries—and by the time their story reaches its terrifying conclusion, the fate of Abby and Gretchen will be determined by a single question: Is their friendship powerful enough to beat the devil?

The gist: Would you like your horror laced with a dose of ’80s nostalgia so strong it will make you break out in a perm and leg warmers? WELL I DO, and I didn’t even know it until I got eaten up by this book.

Hendrix completely immerses you in the world of best friends growing up in the ’80s—music, vibes, language, outdated attitudes, it’s all there. Hendrix has a way of completely immersing you in the world of his books—Horrorstör with its flatpack-furniture-catalogue aesthetic, now My Best Friend’s Exorcism with its year book look and accompanying ’80s playlist. Reading it is like living there, being there, walking through moving images.

And it’s not just the setting that Hendrix nails, but the relationship between the girls. Inwardly I shuddered as Hendrix recounted how the friendships built, developed, broke up. So many times I found myself smiling and nodding as Hendrix struck chords that pulled at childhood memories. Memories from when I was young, the passing of time making them almost feel like they belong to someone else. Sometimes they were good memories, sometimes bad, that’s the nature of growing up. For clarification purposes, please note that I do not recall ever experiencing an exorcism, or being exorcised. Thankfully.

And not only is the book a brilliant, smart ode to the ’80s, a tender coming-of-age story drenched in horror, but it’s also got brilliant moments of comedy that will make you laugh out loud.

My Best Friend’s Exorcism absolutely cemented Hendrix up there for me as one of my favourite authors, and his latest book The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires is one I just can’t wait to get my hands on.

Favourite line: “Corn dogs,” the exorcist said, “are all the proof I need that there is a God.”

Read if: You’ve a hankering for thoughtful, coming-of-age horror with that authentic ’80s vibe.

Read with: The classic ’80s playlist blasting out loud, whilst wearing your neon leg warmers. Obviously just like any other day then.

Get it: My Best Friend’s Exorcism by Grady Hendrix

June 5, 2020
On reading: Coyote Songs by Gabino Iglesias

Title: Coyote Songs

Author: Gabino Iglesias

From the back: In Gabino Iglesias’ second novel, ghosts and old gods guide the hands of those caught up in a violent struggle to save the soul of the American southwest. A man tasked with shuttling children over the border believes the Virgin Mary is guiding him towards final justice. A woman offers colonizer blood to the Mother of Chaos. A boy joins corpse destroyers to seek vengeance for the death of his father. These stories intertwine with those of a vengeful spirit and a hungry creature to paint a timely, compelling, pulpy portrait of revenge, family, and hope.

The gist: This powerful, emotional book grabs you by your (eye)balls, rips into your heart and takes absolutely no prisoners. It’s a raw book, angry, sad, brutal, but cut through with heart. The images feel like folklore, the stories like violent fables, carrying you along and transporting you into a place where land and borders are as much characters as the people that walk across them.

Iglesias weaves Spanish into the words, and my limited vocabulary didn’t stop me from being pulled along, the rhythm giving it meaning regardless of the words themselves.

And this book also seems important, culturally and politically. It feels like the sort of stories that need to be told in the strange world we live in at the moment.

It’s a book that needs to be read, that screams at you from the bookshelf. It demands to be devoured, digested and understood. It’s violent and beautiful, and all the things in between, and it will demand your attention long after you finish turning the pages.

Favourite line: “Yeah, when nothing makes sense, I close my eyes and listen to my blood.”

Read if: You want a brutal yet folkloresque insight into life on the border

Read with: Some ice for your bruises because this book don’t pull no punches

Get it: Coyote Songs by Gabino Iglesias

May 14, 2020
On reading: The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones

Title: The Only Good Indians

Author: Stephen Graham Jones

From the back: The creeping horror of Paul Tremblay meets Tommy Orange’s There There in a dark novel of revenge, cultural identity, and the cost of breaking from tradition in this latest novel from the Jordan Peele of horror literature, Stephen Graham Jones.

Seamlessly blending classic horror and a dramatic narrative with sharp social commentary, The Only Good Indians follows four American Indian men after a disturbing event from their youth puts them in a desperate struggle for their lives. Tracked by an entity bent on revenge, these childhood friends are helpless as the culture and traditions they left behind catch up to them in a violent, vengeful way.

The gist: This is a book of multiple horrors; spiritual, folklore-esque horrors, as well as real-world horrors of discrimination and racism. It’s a deep hearted book, at times genuinely heart-warming, at others shocking and brutal. Set against the backdrop of growing up as an American Indian, Jones explores life on and off the reservations. He introduces us to the four main characters in turn, and you come to know them like old friends. He shows us a small piece of their lives – a tragic coming of age tale, one that ultimately leads to a vengeful darkness pursuing them into their adult lives. He expertly balances the sense of community, tragedy, friendship and horror.

It’s the sort of book that etches images into your mind, leaves pictures sure to revisit you in your dreams. The power and character Jones portrays for the elk is genuinely impressive, the sense of place is brilliantly done, and the pacing draws you in – the book creeps up on you and refuses to let you go.

The Only Good Indians, with its blend of horrors but tinged with hope, proves to be the sort of read that stays with you long after the last page has turned. Hauntingly good stuff.

Favourite line: “Like they’re kids again, learning to break-dance.”

Read if: You want a horror that sends chills down your spine but has a strong, beating heart to it that cuts tenderness through the horrors.

Read with: Definitely no plans to go hunting any time soon.

Get it: The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones – out in July 2020

ARC copy gratefully received from Netgalley and Gallery Books

May 1, 2020
Fear in February: Women in horror month, the writers – Part Two

February is nearly up which means we’re coming to the end of Women in Horror month.

But not before I’ve had chance to share the second part of my fierce, female horror authors list with you. After all, everyone needs a little horror looming sinisterly on their bookshelves, wending it’s way to your eyeballs in the dead of night, crawling under your eyelids while you sleep to nest behind your brain.

*Ahem*

Catch up on the first instalment of the list here if you missed it. And fair warning horror fiends, these ladies will keep you up at night.

Alma Katsu: Making the list for The Hunger

Katsu brings us a bit of historical horror with her tale based on the Donner Party wagon train. It’s a tense, eerie trip across the Midwest. Katsu cleverly combines the historical tale with fictional elements, with a range of characters to draw you in and invest you in the story. Although you might know where it’s going, you don’t know how it gets there. And it gets there with an added dose of horror. Katsu’s take on the Titanic comes out later this year, and The Deep is totally heading straight onto my to-be-read pile.

Visit Alma Katsu’s website

Mira Grant: Making the list for The Newsflesh Trilogy

The Newsflesh Trilogy is perhaps some of the most fun I’ve had between the pages of a book(s). Grant (aka Seanan McGuire) writes a snappy, zombie infested adventure, with sassy characters and enough action to burn some calories. Zombies, journalism, political intrigue, what more could you possibly want?

Visit Mira Grant’s website

Margaret Atwood: Making the list for The Handmaid’s Tale

Y’all are probably pretty familiar with The Handmaid’s Tale – book version or television version or both. I’m going ahead and calling this horror because gee-boy-have-you-read-it? If it ain’t horror then I’m not sure what is. It’s the sort of horror that is only ever a step away from us, from what we know. Atwood’s novel is pure dystopian nightmare, and somehow, disappointingly, still relevant in today’s world.

Visit Margaret Atwood’s website

Stephanie Ellis: Making the list for Bottled

Ellis’s novella brings you a tasty morsel of modern day gothic horror. Claustrophic and atmospheric, she builds up the image of a house until it becomes a character in its own right. Spookiness reigns, with plenty of skin crawling frights along the way.

Find out more about why this book is such a spookfest on my review earlier this month.

Visit Stephanie Ellis’s website

More, more, feed me more horror. Who’s your favourite female horror author? Which female writers give you nightmares? Which ladies give you your go-to scares and shots of bookish adrenaline?

Tamara writes mainly dark, surreal tales with a touch of science fiction. Her novel Grind Spark was longlisted for the Bath Novel Award 2014.

“an exhilarating Ultra HD ride into a near, pre-apocalyptic future”

Amazon reviewer

Buy Grind Spark on Amazon

February 27, 2020