Published  June 25, 2024 by Del Rey

A chilling horror novel about a haunting told from the perspective of a young girl whose troubled family is targeted by an entity she calls “Other Mommy,” from the New York Times bestselling author of Bird Box

 

To eight-year-old Bela, her family is her world. There’s Mommy, Daddo, and Grandma Ruth. But there is also Other Mommy, a malevolent entity who asks her every day: “Can I go inside your heart?”  

 

When horrifying incidents around the house signal that Other Mommy is growing tired of asking Bela the same question, over and over . . . Bela understands that unless she says yes, soon her family must pay. 

 

Other Mommy is getting restless, stronger, bolder. Only the bonds of family can keep Bela safe but other incidents show cracks in her parents' marriage. The safety Bela relies on is on the brink of unraveling.  

 

But Other Mommy needs an answer. 

 

Incidents Around the House is a chilling, wholly unique tale of true horror told by the child Bela. A story about a family as haunted as their home.

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Josh Malerman’s Incidents Around the House is a haunting, tightly-wound domestic horror story told entirely through the lens of a child’s eyes. With its eerie tone, it’s a novel that creeps under your skin slowly, but steadily.

The story centers on Bela, an eight-year-old girl who begins seeing an invisible presence she calls “Other Mommy.” At first, it’s easy for her parents to chalk this up to normal childhood fantasy. After all, many children have imaginary friends, until “Other Mommy” becomes more persistent—and more terrifying.  Every day, the entity asks Bela the same chilling question: “Can I go inside your heart?” The tension builds from that single line, as we begin to understand that what’s happening to Bela may be far more than imaginary.

What makes this novel so unsettling is its perspective. Malerman’s choice to stick closely to eight-year-old Bela’s point of view gives the book a disorienting quality. It’s a bold narrative style that won’t work for everyone, but for Malerman, it serves the story’s creeping dread incredibly well. I picked this one up in audiobook as well, and let me tell you, Delanie Nicole Gill gives life to Bela in the creepiest way.

This is less of a jump-scare horror novel and more of a slow horrific boil. The horror grows not from gore or violence, but from emotional unease and the erosion of safety in the home. You know it's only a matter of time until it spills over, but you can't look away. 

Some readers may find the repetition or ambiguity frustrating—particularly if they prefer clean answers or fast-paced horror—but for those who appreciate character-driven, atmospheric terror, Incidents Around the House delivers. Malerman crafts a tale that is both terrifying and poignant, leaving readers to ponder the true nature of the horrors that lurk within our homes and hearts.

Published July 9, 2024 by Tor Nightfire

Misha is a jaded scriptwriter who has been working in Hollywood for years, and has just been nominated for his first Oscar. But when he's pressured by his producers to kill off a gay character in the upcoming season finale―"for the algorithm"―Misha discovers that it's not that simple.

As he is haunted by his past, and past mistakes, Misha must risk everything to find a way to do what's right―before it's too late.

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Chuck Tingle has delivered a horror novel that’s weird and surprisingly heartfelt. Bury Your Gays is a wild ride through Hollywood, queer trauma, and the horror of being told your story isn’t marketable unless it ends in tragedy. This book is part surreal nightmare, part heartfelt unpacking of queer trauma, and part roast of an industry that loves queer suffering as long as it’s profitable. It’s weird, raw, and a little chaotic—but it knows it’s chaotic, which makes it work.

The story follows Misha Byrne, a queer screenwriter finally getting his big break, nominated for an Oscar. But just as things are looking up, the studio demands he kill off his queer characters “for the algorithm.” Misha refuses—and suddenly, reality starts to bend. Literal monsters show up, old traumas resurface, and Hollywood’s shiny surface reveals some very real rot underneath.

Misha is a fully fleshed-out protagonist: vulnerable, angry, exhausted, and desperately clinging to his sense of self while the industry chews him up. Misha’s emotional journey, especially flashbacks to his rough childhood and complicated present, is heavy, honest, and really well done. His relationship with boyfriend Zeke is sweet, offering warmth and grounding that somehow doesn’t come off cheesy (okay, maybe a little cheesy, but we’re rooting for them anyway).

Tingle throws every flavor of horror into the mix as Misha's own scripts come to life—cosmic dread, slasher gore, eldritch horrors, and some wild body horror—and somehow it all holds together. Is it weird? Absolutely. Is it fun? Most definitely. The result is chaotic, but deliberately so. It’s a mess with meaning. Underneath all the madness is some genuinely powerful insights about identity and how queer people are treated by the media machine. 

“I call on all of you to usher in a new era of stories where the gay, or bi, or lesbian, or asexual, or pansexual, or trans character lives happily ever after. Buy those stories. Make those stories profitable.”

Published May 14, 2024 by Berkley

A single mother working in the gothic mansion of a reclusive horror director stumbles upon terrifying secrets.

Harry Adams loves horror movies, so it’s no coincidence that she accepted a job cleaning house for horror-movie director Javier Castillo. His forbidding gray-stone Chicago mansion, Bright Horses, is filled from top to bottom with terrifying props and costumes as well as glittering awards from his career making movies that thrilled audiences—until family tragedy and scandal forced him to vanish from the industry.

Javier values discretion, and Harry always tries to keep the house immaculate, her head down, and her job safe. Then she hears noises from behind a locked door, noises that sound remarkably like a human voice calling for help. Harry knows not asking questions is a vital part of keeping her job, but she soon discovers that the house may be home to secrets she can’t ignore.

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The House That Horror Built follows Harry Adams, a single mom and horror movie fan, who takes a cleaning job at the creepy mansion of the reclusive director Javier Castillo. His home, packed with eerie props and trophies, has an unsettling vibe right from the start. As Harry explores the mansion, filled with reminders of Castillo’s violent film legacy, strange things begin happening—mysterious noises, costumes that seem almost alive, and other unsettling moments.

The mansion itself almost steals the show. Filled with film set props, costumes, and puppets, the mansion is claustrophobic, richly detailed, and dripping with tension. Harry, meanwhile, comes off as vulnerable and also pretty passive. She mostly reacts to what’s happening instead of driving the story forward, which can be a bit frustrating. Plus, she has this habit of spiraling into worst-case scenarios—her son even jokes she imagines “every possible permutation of doom.” You’d think with all that anxiety, she’d be a little more suspicious of the things that are happening.

Christina Henry’s real talent shines in building a spooky mood. The creepy house, the mysterious director, the whispered voices, and ghostly hints—they’re all here. But the tension unfolds way too slowly, and the pacing drags. Even when the story finally picks up, it’s more melancholy than thrilling. The House That Horror Built might appeal to fans who enjoy slow-burning thrillers, but if you’re after chills, jump scares, or fast-paced action, this one’s more like wandering down a dim hallway that never quite leads to a real fright.

October is always a fun month for horror! 

This month I picked up The Thirteenth Child by Erin Craig. After reading House of Salt and Sorrow, Craig has become a must read for me. Her style of dark fantasy with fairytale roots is *chefs kiss*. This one is based on Grimm Brothers' "Godfather Death". I also listened to the audiobook of  So Thirsty by Rachel Harrison. I'm deeming Harrison's stories "Hallmark Horror". With plenty of laughs, character growth, and the teensiest bit of romance, her cozy horror is super approachable for all levels of  readers. You can read my review of  previous books Such Sharp Teeth, her take of werewolves and the devil, Black Sheep over at Ginger Nuts of Horror. Another audiobook listen was I'll Be Waiting by Kelley Armstrong, a supernatural horror with a seances and vengeful spirits. I also read some short stories (

The Doll's House by Lisa Unger, Through Flickering Lights, a Silhouette by Gage Greenwood, and Ushers by Joe Hill) and indigenous horror Black Fox by Jack Moffet.

Here are a few of my favorite of October's don't-miss horror releases. 

See the whole list of 2024 releases here. 

Goodreads

Nicola Laughton never expected to see adulthood, being diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis as a child. Then medical advances let her live into her thirties and she met Anton, who taught her to dream of a future… together. Months after they married, Anton died in a horrible car, but lived long enough to utter five words to her, “I’ll be waiting for you.”

That final private moment became public when someone from the crash scene took it to the press—the terminally ill woman holding her dying husband as he promised to wait for her on the other side. Worse, that person claimed it wasn’t Anton who said the words but his ghost, hovering over his body.

Since their story went public, Nicola has been hounded by spiritualists promising closure. In the hopes of stopping her downward spiral, friends and family find a reputable medium—a professor of parapsychology. For the séance, they rent the Lake Erie beach house that Anton’s family once owned.

The medium barely has time to begin his work before things start happening. Locked doors mysteriously open. Clouds of insects engulf the house. Nicola hears footsteps and voices and the creak of an old dumbwaiter…in an empty shaft. Throughout it all she’s haunted by nightmares of her past. Because, unbeknownst to the others, this isn’t her first time contacting the dead. And Nicola isn’t her real name.

That’s when she finds the first body....

In this atmospheric, thrilling new ghost story, Kelley Armstrong's full talents are on display to thrill, chill and leave the reader guessing how Nicola escapes with her life--if she can.

Goodreads

A grieving mother and son hope to survive Christmas in a remote mountain cabin, in this chilling novella of dread, isolation and demons lurking in the frozen woods. Perfect for fans of The Only Good Indians, The Shining and The Babadook.

Two weeks ago, Christine Sinclaire's husband slipped off the roof while hanging Christmas lights and fell to his death on the front lawn. Desperate to escape her guilt and her grief, Christine packs up her fifteen-year-old son and the family cat and flees to the cabin they'd reserved deep in the remote Pennsylvania Wilds to wait out the holidays.

It isn't long before Christine begins to hear strange noises coming from the forest. When she spots a horned figure watching from between frozen branches, Christine assumes it's just a forest animal—a moose, maybe, since the property manager warned her about them, said they'd stomp a body so deep into the snow nobody'd find it 'til spring. But moose don't walk upright like the shadowy figure does. They don't call Christine's name with her dead husband's voice.

A haunting examination of the horrors of grief and the hunger of guilt, perfect for readers of Stephen King, Christina Henry, and Chuck Wendig.

Goodreads

Faolan Kelly’s grandfather is dead. She’s alone in the world and suddenly homeless, all because the local powers that be don’t think a young man of sixteen is mature enough to take over his grandfather’s homestead…and that’s with them thinking Faolan is a young man. If she revealed that her grandfather had been disguising her for years, they would marry her off at the first opportunity.

The mayor finds a solution that serves everyone but Faolan. He hires a gunslinger to ship her off to the Settlement, a remote fort where social outcasts live under the leadership of His Benevolence Gideon Dillard. It's a place rife with mystery, kept afloat by suspicious wealth. Dillard's absolute command over his staff just doesn't seem right. And neither do the strange noises that keep Faolan up at night.

When Faolan finds the body of a Settlement boarder, mangled by something that can’t possibly be human, it’s clear something vicious is stalking the palisades. And as Settlement boarders continue to drop like flies, Faolan knows she must escape to evade the creature’s wrath.

 

Goodreads

Once upon a time, Andrew had cut out his heart and given it to this boy, and he was very sure Thomas had no idea that Andrew would do anything for him.

Protect him. Lie for him. Kill for him.

High school senior Andrew Perrault finds refuge in the twisted fairytales that he writes for the only person who can ground him to reality—Thomas Rye, the boy with perpetually ink-stained hands and hair like autumn leaves. And with his twin sister, Dove, inexplicably keeping him at a cold distance upon their return to Wickwood Academy, Andrew finds himself leaning on his friend even more.

But something strange is going on with Thomas. His abusive parents have mysteriously vanished, and he arrives at school with blood on his sleeve. Thomas won’t say a word about it, and shuts down whenever Andrew tries to ask him questions. Stranger still, Thomas is haunted by something, and he seems to have lost interest in his artwork—whimsically macabre sketches of the monsters from Andrew’s wicked stories.

Desperate to figure out what’s wrong with his friend, Andrew follows Thomas into the off-limits forest one night and catches him fighting a nightmarish monster—Thomas’s drawings have come to life and are killing anyone close to him. To make sure no one else dies, the boys battle the monsters every night. But as their obsession with each other grows stronger, so do the monsters, and Andrew begins to fear that the only way to stop the creatures might be to destroy their creator…

Goodreads

A young musician finds himself locked inside a gas station bathroom in the middle of the night by an unseen assailant, caught between the horrors on the other side of the door and the horrors rapidly skittering down the walls inside.

Published October 22, 2024 by Maverick Ranch 

Respected Navajo, Sheriff Tanaka Chee, must investigate a pile of gruesome murders near the forests of Flagstaff Arizona. The signs tell the Sheriff that it isn’t a man. Soon the case begins to remind him of stories his grandfather told. Dark stories about the Yee Naaldlooshii. An evil that turns someone into a beast on the nights of the full moon. When Sheriff Chee finally learns the stories are true it is too late. Tanaka then sets out to track the beast across the country turning it into a vicious game of cat and mouse.

From the author who brought you the horror story collection, Free Candy, comes the novel Wolf’s Hyde. From the trenches of Nazi Germany to the streets of Detroit. Follow one man's crusade fueled by guilt and driven by wrath.

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Dylan Collins Dunbar is a professional touring musician from Detroit, Michigan who has shared the stage with, or directly supported artists like Chris Stapleton, Patti Smith, Elle King, and many more. Since 2015, he has toured the United States with his wife, Jennifer, performing their original music in close to all 50 states. Through recovery from alcoholism, he discovered he had a passion for writing. In 2023, he figured it was time to embark on a new creative endeavor. As a result of sobriety, he now gets to explore the dark places of his mind in a positive way. 

  

Published May 14th 2024 by Berkley 

A single mother working in the gothic mansion of a reclusive horror director stumbles upon terrifying secrets in the captivating new novel from the national bestselling author of Good Girls Don't Die and Horseman.

Harry Adams has always loved horror movies, so it’s not a total coincidence that she took the job cleaning house for movie director Javier Castillo. His forbidding graystone Chicago mansion, Bright Horses, is filled from top to bottom with terrifying props and costumes, as well as glittering awards from his career making films that thrilled audiences—until family tragedy and scandal forced him to vanish from the industry.

 

Javier values discretion, and Harry has always tried to clean the house immaculately, keep her head down, and keep her job safe—she needs the money to support her son. But then she starts hearing noises from behind a locked door. Noises that sound remarkably like a human voice calling for help, even though Javier lives alone and never has visitors. Harry knows that not asking questions is a vital part of working for Javier, but she soon finds that the sinister house may be home to secrets she can’t ignore.

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Javier Castillo had brown hair going gray, brown eyes behind steel-rimmed spectacles, was on the shorter side (though not as short as Harry, who had reached five feet at age thirteen and never grown again) and overall had the completely nondescript appearance of any random person on the block. He was the sort who would never attract attention unless you knew who he was, would never be whispered about if he went to the grocery store-which he never did. He never went anywhere if he could help it.

Because of this, very few people in his neighborhood realized one of the world's greatest living horror directors lived among them: Javier Castillo, director and writer of fifteen films, most of them visually groundbreaking, genre-defying masterpieces. His film The Monster had won the Oscar for Best Picture five years earlier and swept most of the other major categories along the way, including Director and Original Screenplay. The world had waited breathlessly for the announcement of his next project.

Then a shocking, unthinkable incident happened, and Castillo withdrew into his California home, and there was no mention of potential new movies while the paparazzi stood outside his house with their cameras ready for any sign of life within.

After one too many wildfires came too close to his residence he decided to move, somewhat incongruously, to Chicago. He packed up his legendary and possibly priceless collection of movie props and memorabilia and brought them to a cold Midwestern city where the last major urban burning was decidedly in the distant past.

If it wasn't for those California wildfires Harry would still be collecting unemployment, frantically responding to job ads with a horde of other desperate people, never hearing back, wondering how long Gabe would believe her tight smile followed by, "Everything's going to be fine."

But instead there was this miracle, this miracle of a strange and reclusive director who needed someone to help him clean his collection of weird stuff three days a week, and so Harry climbed up the stairs and listened to Javier Castillo huff and puff.

The second floor was essentially one big room divided by a load-bearing archway. The stairs curved up to the southwest corner of this room and stopped there. The stair to the third floor was on the northeast corner, which always made Harry think of a Clue board, with its seemingly random staircases scattered all around. There was a black railing running along from the southeast corner of the room to the top of the stairs to keep people from falling straight down the first-floor stairwell.

The bucket of cleaning supplies was ready at the top of the stairs. Harry and Mr. Castillo each took a long-handled duster. Mr. Castillo went to the far end of the room while Harry started on the closest figure.

The blue room wasn't entirely blue. The carpet was blue-and Harry really thought he ought to get rid of the carpet; it collected dust and it was such a difficult room to vacuum. The wallpaper had blue flowers patterned on it, blue flowers that made Harry think of Agatha Christie's story "The Blue Geranium."

Except that's not quite right, Harry thought. In "The Blue Geranium" the color of the flower on the wall changed to blue because of a chemical in the air-proof of poison.

Nobody was in danger of poisoning in Bright Horses. Nobody lived there except Mr. Castillo-and his props, of course, and some of those were so lifelike that Harry sometimes thought they really were watching her, just out of the corner of her eye. When she'd turn, the figures would be still and glassy-eyed, the artificial pupils staring off into the middle distance, never having focused on her or anything else at all.

Excerpted from The House That Horror Built by Christina Henry Copyright © 2024 by Christina Henry. Excerpted by permission of Berkley. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Christina Henry is a horror and dark fantasy author whose works include Horseman, Near the Bone, The Ghost Tree, Looking Glass, The Girl in Red, The Mermaid, Lost Boy, Alice, Red Queen, and the seven-book urban fantasy Black Wings series. Learn more online at www.christinahenry.net.  

  

March was an amazing month for horror!

I started off the month with Cassandra Khaw and Richard Kadrey's The Dead Take The A Train, which was gruesomely fast-paced. I read the second book in the Sworn Soldier series, What Feasts at Night by T. Kingfisher and took a chance on KU for Whispers of Blackwell House by Amelia Cognet. The Butcher of the Forest by Premee Mohamed with its gothic fairytale feel was a favorite. Its fantasy/horror mashup was delightful. Keeping the forest theme going, C.G. Drews' Don't Let the Forest In won't publish until October but you want to put this YA book on your TBR now. 

You'll have to wait on another couple of my favorites from this month: Christina Henry's new release The House That Horror Built is coming out in May and Chuck Tingle's newest Bury Your Gays will be published in July. When I say so many good books, I mean it! 

My absolute favorite though was Nick Roberts' Mean Spirited. I haven't read something this creepy in a long time. Highly recommend!

What's next for April? Space horror, haunted houses, psychological horrors, it's all here! 

Here are just a few of April's don't-miss horror releases. 

See the whole list of 2024 releases here. 

Goodreads

Rise and shine. The Evans women have some undead to kill.

It’s 1999 in Southeast Texas and the Evans women, owners of the only funeral parlor in town, are keeping steady with…normal business. The dead die, you bury them. End of story. That’s how Ducey Evans has done it for the last eighty years, and her progeny―Lenore the experimenter and Grace, Lenore’s soft-hearted daughter, have run Evans Funeral Parlor for the last fifteen years without drama. Ever since That Godawful Mess that left two bodies in the ground and Grace raising her infant daughter Luna, alone.

But when town gossip Mina Jean Murphy’s body is brought in for a regular burial and she rises from the dead instead, it’s clear that the Strigoi―the original vampire―are back. And the Evans women are the ones who need to fight back to protect their town.

As more folks in town turn up dead and Deputy Roger Taylor begins asking way too many questions, Ducey, Lenore, Grace, and now Luna, must take up their blades and figure out who is behind the Strigoi’s return. As the saying goes, what rises up, must go back down. But as unspoken secrets and revelations spill from the past into the present, the Evans family must face that sometimes, the dead aren’t the only things you want to keep buried.

A crackling mystery-horror novel with big-hearted characters and Southern charm with a bite, Bless Your Heart is a gasp-worthy delight from start to finish.

Goodreads

Bram Stoker Award-winning author Hailey Piper joins Bad Hand Books with a supernatural crime novella.

What’s been happening at Cranberry Cove? It’s unspeakable. It’s unspoken.

Emberly Hale is about to take a dark journey inside the derelict hotel—and inside her own past—to find out the horrible truth.

Goodreads

Discover this creepy, charming monster-slaying fantasy romance—from the perspective of the monster—by Nebula Award-winning debut author John Wiswell

Shesheshen has made a mistake fatal to all monsters: she's fallen in love.

Shesheshen is a shapeshifter, who happily resides as an amorphous lump at the bottom of a ruined manor. When her rest is interrupted by hunters intent on murdering her, she constructs a body from the remains of past meals: a metal chain for a backbone, borrowed bones for limbs, and a bear trap as an extra mouth.

However, the hunters chase Shesheshen out of her home and off a cliff. Badly hurt, she’s found and nursed back to health by Homily, a warm-hearted human, who has mistaken Shesheshen as a fellow human. Homily is kind and nurturing and would make an excellent co-parent: an ideal place to lay Shesheshen’s eggs so their young could devour Homily from the inside out. But as they grow close, she realizes humans don’t think about love that way.

Shesheshen hates keeping her identity secret from Homily, but just as she’s about to confess, Homily reveals why she’s in the area: she’s hunting a shapeshifting monster that supposedly cursed her family. Has Shesheshen seen it anywhere?

Eating her girlfriend isn’t an option. Shesheshen didn’t curse anyone, but to give herself and Homily a chance at happiness, she has to figure out why Homily’s twisted family thinks she did. As the hunt for the monster becomes increasingly deadly, Shesheshen must unearth the truth quickly, or soon both of their lives will be at risk.

And the bigger challenge remains: surviving her toxic in-laws long enough to learn to build a life with, rather than in, the love of her life.

 

Goodreads

A queer paranormal psychological horror novel, in the style of showrunner Mike Flannagan, showing the complex real-life terror inherent in grief and mental illness After the tragic death of their father and surviving a life-threatening eating disorder, 18-year-old Ellis moves with their mother to the small town of Black Stone, seeking a simpler life and some space to recover. But Black Stone feels off; it’s a disquieting place, one that’s surrounded by towns with some of the highest death rates in the country. It doesn’t help that everyone says Ellis’s new house is haunted. And Ellis has started to believe they see pulsing veins in the walls of their bedroom and specters in dark corners of the cellar. They soon discover Black Stone, and their house in particular, is the battleground in a decades-long spectral war, one that will claim their family ― and the town ― if it’s allowed to continue. Withered is queer psychological horror, a compelling tale that tackles important issues of mental health in the way that only horror by delving deep into them, cracking them open, and exposing their gruesome entrails.

Published March 12, 2024 by Orbit

Set in a world of perilous magic and moonlit forests, this seductive romantic fantasy tells the story of a defiant changeling, her cursed sister, and the dangerous fae lord she must defeat to save her family.

In a kingdom where magic has been lost, Fia is a rare changeling, left behind by the wicked Fair Folk when they stole the high queen's daughter, Eala, and retreated behind the locked gates of the Folk realm. Rather than leave Fia an outcast, the queen takes her in and trains her to be a spy.

When a hidden gate to the realm is discovered, Fia is tasked by the queen to retrieve the princess and break her curse. Accompanying Fia is Prince Rogan, her dearest childhood friend—and Eala’s betrothed. As they journey through the forests of the Folk, Fia’s mission is complicated by her feelings for Rogan…and an unexpected attraction to the fae lord holding Eala captive. 

Soon, Fia begins to question the truth of her origins and the reality of her mission, but time is running out to break Eala's curse. And unraveling the secrets of the past might destroy everything Fia has come to love.

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There is a ton of fae-based "romantasy" out there right now since the rise of fiction like ACOTAR. It's difficult given the complete inundation of the current book market to publish something that feels fresh. However, that's just what Lyra Selene did. This fairytale-inspired tale has a uniqueness, while still containing the elements that more mainstream readers will enjoy. 

Even though she was swapped for the princess, Fia hasn't lived a cushy life. The queen has raised her as a weapon and given her love like one would for a dog learning to sit. Affection only when she's done a good job. As anyone would be raised like that, Fia spent a lot of time with her inner dialogue on repeat. You really just want her to wise up and realize that she's worthy already. Fia could get on your nerves quick yet you found yourself cheering her on at other times. 

Fia and Rogan can only access the fae world on the full moon so a lot of the book was character development. I loved the development of Fia's botanical magic and bringing the greenhouse back to life. Fia's relationship with the sprite Corra added a spot of mischief to the story. Despite that, A Feather So Black's ending got dark.  I was surprised at how dark a turn it actually took. 

This is going to be one of those dividing books. You are either going to love it or hate it. I enjoyed the world-building and the mythology. The romance wasn't my favorite thing about the book but if you like enemy-to-lover tropes and insta love, it may just work for you.

Published October 3, 2023 by Tor Nightfire

Bestselling authors Cassandra Khaw and Richard Kadrey have teamed up to deliver a dark new story with magic, monsters, and mayhem, perfect for fans of Neil Gaiman and Joe Hill.

Julie Crews is a coked-up, burnt-out thirty-something who packs a lot of magic into her small body. She’s been trying to establish herself in the NYC magic scene, and she’ll work the most gruesome gigs to claw her way to the top.

Julie is desperate for a quick career boost to break the dead-end grind, but her pleas draw the attention of an eldritch god who is hungry for revenge. Her power grab sets off a deadly chain of events that puts her closest friends – and the entire world – directly in the path of annihilation.

The first explosive adventure in the Carrion City Duology, The Dead Take the A Train fuses Khaw’s cosmic horror and Kadrey’s gritty fantasy into a full-throttle thrill ride straight into New York’s magical underbelly.

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Had I done anything but see Khaw and Kadrey and gone ooo shiny, I may not have picked this one up.  However, to my surprise, this magic and mayhem mash-up was most engrossing. Kadrey had long solidified his place as one of my favorite urban fantasy series with Sandman Slim. Khaw is hit or miss for me due to their wordsmithing. While it can be lovely, it's often overwhelming due to their more obscure vocabulary. Their prose comes in large mouthfuls that have to be chewed methodically but there's no denying that absolutely no one writes like Khaw. I wondered how exactly the two styles could possibly mesh seamlessly but somehow they did. 

Any good read starts with good characters and the protagonist Julie is an absolute fucking delight. I use that word because writing a review about this book without at least one f-bomb would not be doing justice to the chaotic mess that is Julie. She's snarky, hilarious, and totally off the cuff but when I say she's a mess, she is a MESS. Between the moments she spends being a badass, she's loading herself on whatever she can get, whether that's booze or pills. 

Julie's chaos only adds to that of this book. Urban fantasy heavy on gore with a twist of eldritch horror, The Dead Take The A Train is a bizarre mash-up of genres that probably should not work, like the two authors in questions, yet somehow do. Kadrey has always been on the gritty side of UF and with Khaw's influence taking that completely over the top to the dark side of horror, this is an unconventional pairing that I'm excited to see again in the future.

Gruesomely overflowing with both the grotesque and irreverent, this neon nightmare fuel will have the least tryptophobic of us seeing holes (and eyes, lots of freaking eyes) everywhere. I picked this one up as an audiobook and Natalie Naudus was a fantastic narrator.