Have You Read This? Kill Creek by Scott Thomas

 

While some might have a TBR pile, I have a TBR tower. As a librarian, I am surrounded by so much great stuff to read, I feel like a kid locked in a Toys R Us. Sadly, it takes me longer to read books than it does to play with toys, so my TBR tower can become either an architectural marvel or a disaster waiting to happen. To prevent such a collapse, I decided to finally read a book that I have wanted to read for a long time: Scott Thomas’s Kill Creek. While the cover seems to promise a by-the-numbers haunted house story, Thomas adds enough dramatic flair and compelling characters to help it stand out from the other haunted houses on the block. 

Somewhere in the Kansas countryside, situated by the titular Kill Creek is the Finch House, an abandoned home with its share of ghosts. It is here where four of the most famous writers of horror have agreed to be interviewed. There’s introspective Sam McGarver, reeling from a recent split from his wife; Daniel Slaughter, a writer of Fear Street-like books who is a devout Christian; Sebastian Cole, the esteemed elder statesman of horror, and T.C. Moore, an acerbic female Splatterpunk author. All are intrigued by the Finch House and the house is more than happy to let them in. In fact, a little bit of what haunts the Finch House might follow each of these authors home. 

Moving past the standard groans and rattling chains, Thomas takes his time building up the discomfort, which steadily grows into dread. What really sells the book is the ensemble cast, who all have their own approaches to horror but all bring assorted traumas that the house will gleefully exploit. As with all the great haunted house stories, it’s the mix of those haunted with the things that are haunting that create the book’s combustible elements, showing them that any horror these writers can devise pales in comparison to what Finch House shows them. 

One book down, several more books to go. 

Have You Read This? Your Body Is Not Your Body edited by Alex Woodroe and Matt Blairstone

 

As a genre relying on generating a particular emotion within its audience, horror can be both universal and very personal. Horror can often touch on universal fears, such as the fear of death, but it can also be used to discuss the personal fears of the author, including fears of being attacked simply for being who they are. Often, these kinds of stories aren’t so much a whimper of submission as they are a cry of rage. Such stories are included in Your Body is Not Your Body, an anthology of weird fiction featuring authors from the Trans/Gender Nonconforming community. 

Editors Alex Woodroe and Matt Blairstone have compiled stories that definitely put the weird in weird fiction. Take, for example, a medieval monk whose body is transformed by a different kind of possession. And if such a tale is too tame, there are stories featuring living weapons, transcendental massages, haunted telephones, and a story from rising star like Hailey Piper about women exploding. Many of the stories in this collection focus on all the ways that a human body can become twisted into something unimaginable, both beautiful and horrifying. The weird in this fiction anthology is definitely the gloriously great kind of weird. 

Anthologies such as this serve not only as an introduction to the various authors who are presented in this book, but books like this one also introduce readers to weird fiction. There are no gothic castles or classic monsters here; the horrors presented in this book are from not only one’s body becoming unrecognizable, but the world they live in becoming hostile, which is what many transgender and gender-nonconforming people are experiencing with the rash of anti-LGBTQ laws being ratified by various states. Horror is supposed to create a fear response, but horror, of all kinds and especially the stories in this book, rely on creating feelings of empathy for the protagonists in these stories. 

Graphic Content: Shook: A Black Horror Anthology by Bradley Golden, John Jennings, and Marcus Roberts

 

When people think of graphic novels, they tend to think of them as . . . well, novels, or at least one overall story. But there are other creators who are using the comic book format to tell smaller stories. Not only does this demonstrate experimentation with the form but it also introduces readers to comic creators they might never have discovered otherwise. There are many different creators that aren’t as famous as, for example, Jim Lee or Geoff Johns who are telling their own stories, including black creators utilizing the monsters within the horror genre to reveal their own unique perspectives on what is scary. The book Shook: A Black Horror Anthology features a collection of graphic novel horror stories from today’s most-well known black comic artists and authors.  

The stories in this anthology reflect many different tropes and subgenres residing under horror’s umbrella, and readers who want to explore black stories, and the subsequent hardships within them, will savor these sinister tales. Fans of dystopian fiction will like Tasty! Itchy! by Bradley Golden (“Mississippi Zombies”), but they might want to stay away if they are terrified of bugs. Writer John Jennings (“Box of Bones”) gives readers“The Breaks,” a 90’s spin that could have been part of “Tales from the Hood.” Rodney Barnes, creator of “Killadelphia,” offers up a ghostly serving of Southern Gothic justice in his story “The Last March.” 

The artwork presented within this anthology is as varied as its stories. For “The Breaks,” artist Charlie Goubile evokes the most talented graffiti artist in how he draws the characters. Allesio Nocerino, the artist for “Evil Lives,” gives the story the feel of an EC comic book with his choices of color and composition. Artist Roberto Castro goes black and white but fills his artwork full of superhero-looking action sequences in “Ezra the Hunter.” Even if readers find some stories in this anthology lacking, there are others that could put a delicious shiver of fear in their spine.