Have You Read This? The Deep by Alma Katsu

The sinking of the Titanic is one of the most notorious disasters in human history. It has permeated our collective consciousness so much that one could easily find several books about the disaster, a few dozen documentaries concerning the doomed ship, or Google the millions of times it has been referenced in popular culture, and that was even before Rose promised Jack that her heart would go on (I admit I never watched the entire Titanic movie). To take the well-known disaster and example of humanity's hubris and try to make it the backdrop of a novel is therefore a brave undertaking. How does the author avoid doing what has already been done before? Alma Katsu, pioneer of the historical horror genre, has managed to create something new and interesting with her latest book The Deep.
One of the things she does differently is add into the narrative Titanic's sister ship the Britannic, which was recommissioned as a sort of floating hospital and met a similar fate to her sister ship. Katsu's narrative not only jumps back and forth between the maiden voyage of the Titanic and the final voyage of the Britannic, there are also many characters that she reveals to the reader, from two boxers/grifters/starcrossed lovers to a woman whose relationship with her much older husband is more like a business merger than one born of love, to the stars of Katsu's drama, mysterious nurse Annie Hebley and Mark Fletcher, a father with a new baby girl and a dark secret.
Katsu's biggest strength as a writer is her ability to research. Stephen King once said that he needed just enough truth to lie convincingly when writing fiction, but Katsu gives plenty of facts, from people to early 20th century nautical trivia, to create a very real historical setting. Readers will come to the book knowing about the Titanic, which already creates a sense of looming disaster/tension from the first page, but Katsu's level of knowledge makes sure that readers can stay immersed in that setting for as long as they wish. Another strength on display in this book is Katsu's knack for character development. The book jumps around to different people and different perspectives but managed not to make them all feel one-dimensional. The two boxers Dai and Les were easily two of my favorites that I was honestly rooting for. Katsu managed to do this character juggling act throughout the whole book, right till the tragic ending of both ships. The perfect book for fans of historical horror who like a little of the fantastic, The Deep is a book into which you'll happily immerse yourself.

Screen to Scream: The Wind and The Hunger

Horror often involves isolation. If not specifically about isolation, then authors and story creators will put their protagonists in situations that cuts them off from their fellow humans, often physically separated by the environment. While the fact of our digitally connected world may stretch the believability of this isolation (how many places are too far away from cell towers?), this isolation is often internal as well. This is the case for two tales of people foolishly following manifest destiny: the movie The Wind: Demons of the Prairie as well as Alma Katsu's novel The Hunger.
Both movie and book take place on the American prairie and both are relatively understated horror (cannibalism and child death notwithstanding). Not exactly buckets of blood, but both have plenty of foreboding atmosphere. The Wind features Lizzy and her husband Isaac, settlers who have learned to survive the desolate landscape. Soon, they make the acquaintance of another couple Emma and Gideon, who have left a life of comfort behind. The four become friends, but Lizzy hears thing in the howling wind. She sees how what lurks out there affects Emma and it soon starts to affect Lizzie as well. She begins to have her own supernatural experiences while her husband is away and soon her trust in Isaac erodes. There are indeed demons on this prairie and those demons have infiltrated Lizzie's mind and work steadily to destroy her faith and the life she has built with her husband. Told in a non-chronological narrative, the story jumps around in places, meaning you'll have to pay attention to get the whole story, but even if you watch diligently, the movie may leave you with more questions than answers, particularly as to the reality of the events that took place.
The Hunger is a book similar in subject and tone to The Wind. Both books take place on the prairie and both books feel free to play with narrative structure. While The Wind jumps around from one part of the story to the next, Katsu's reimagining of the Donner Party pulls in a lot of epistolary examples from letters and journal entries to explore the lives of the party members before they made their fateful journey. Another similarity both book and movie share is the use of approaching tragedy to create tension. Even readers who haven't read about the Donner Party will have an idea what ultimately befell the settlers in The Hunger, and The Wind starts straight away with a blood-soaked Lizzy and a husband desperate to know what happened. Katsu's book also forces the reader to pay attention as she introduces many characters and backstories, many of which based on real people. However, this plethora of characters shouldn't dissuade readers from picking this book up after watching The Wind. Katsu is deft at not only fleshing out these different characters but tying up their tragic stories by the book's end.

New Arrival: The Garden of Bewitchment by Catherine Cavendish

As an undergraduate English major, I was introduced to many books that I otherwise would not have read. Even if I didn't really appreciate reading them at the time, the same way kids don't always appreciate the green vegetables they were forced to consume, I find that I am still a better writer and better librarian for it. This is especially true upon discovering Gothic classics like Wuthering Heights or Wieland, Or, The Transformation, or the expanded universe of Poe's writings beyond "The Tell-Tale Heart." I discovered these stories and still remember them fondly. In reading Catherine Cavendish's The Garden of Bewitchment, it was like a trip back to when I first discovered these stories and what made them special.
The story is set up like many Gothic page-turners: in 1893, two sisters Claire and Evelyn Wainwright have moved to a quiet cottage on the English countryside, but a mysterious game is waiting for them, a magical game called the Garden of Bewitchment. The game allows you to make your own garden, complete with house and with little cardboard people inside, but there are also things waiting for Claire and Evelyn in the house, and in the garden. What is waiting for them wants the sisters to stay awhile, possibly forever.
More fun than downright terrifying, this book often feels like a kitchen sink of Gothic and horror conventions, everything from mysterious but genial stranger Matthew Dixon to Bramwell Bronte, a specter who is also Claire's paramour, but these differing elements, from fantastical board games to serpentine Old World gods, come together in a fun and lively way. Even the sisters' love of Bronte's literature and their own writing endeavors show that Cavendish is well-versed in Gothic horror and doesn't mind addressing it in an almost meta way. Fans of classic stories from Poe, Hawthorne, Lovecraft, and Bronte, whether or not they discovered these writers in a college-level English course, will find something to love in this garden, which Catherine Cavendish has planted with an evident love for Gothic literature.