Review: ‘The Haunting of Hill House’ Shirley Jackson

Alone in the world, Eleanor is delighted to take up Dr Montague's invitation to spend a summer in the mysterious Hill House. Joining them are Theodora, an artistic 'sensitive', and Luke, heir to the house. But what begins as a light-hearted experiment is swiftly proven to be a trip into their darkest nightmares, and an …

Review: ‘Monster, She Wrote’ Lisa Kröger and Melanie R. Anderson

Meet the women writers who defied convention to craft some of literature’s strangest tales, from Frankenstein to The Haunting of Hill House and beyond.Frankenstein was just the beginning: horror stories and other weird fiction wouldn’t exist without the women who created it. From Gothic ghost stories to psychological horror to science fiction, women have been primary architects of speculative literature of …

A horror book club, anyone?

I've been debating for a couple of months whether or not to start up a horror book club. With everything going on right now, it would obviously be a virtual club, with online meet ups happening once a month (or even once every two months, depending on people's schedules and availability). A virtual club would …

Troublesome Tropes #2 – Horror

Ah, horror. The Marmite of literature. You either love it or you hate it, right? Some people live and breathe this genre, while others won't even read the blurb of a horror novel lest it keep them awake all night. I'm a massive horror fan, but like any genre, it does have its fair share …

Review: ‘Paperbacks from Hell’ Grady Hendrix

Take a tour through the horror paperback novels of the 1970s and 80s . . . if you dare. Page through dozens and dozens of amazing book covers featuring well-dressed skeletons, evil dolls, and knife-wielding killer crabs! Read shocking plot summaries that invoke devil worship, satanic children, and haunted real estate! Horror author and vintage …

DNF: ‘Let’s Go Play at the Adams’ Mendal W. Johnson

"They're just kids ... It's only a game."  That's what Barbara, a lovely twenty-year-old babysitter told herself when she awoke bound and gagged. But the knots were tight and painful and the children would not let her go. "They're just kids ... It's only a game," she told herself again. But the terror was real ... …

Review: ‘The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires’ Grady Hendrix

Patricia Campbell's life has never felt smaller. Her ambitious husband is too busy to give her a good-bye kiss in the morning, her kids have their own lives, her senile mother-in-law needs constant care, and she's always a step behind on thank-you notes and her endless list of chores. The one thing she has to …

The Science behind the Scare

After a ten hour shift at work the other day, I rose from my chair, grabbed a book and a G&T and padded out onto my balcony to soak up the last of the day's sunshine. It was an idyllic scene. Birds were tweeting in the tree in front of our building, the air was …

‘The Nest’ Gregory A. Douglas

It was just an ordinary garbage dump on peaceful Cape Cod. No one ever imagined that conditions were perfect for breeding, that it was a warm womb, fetid, moist, and with food so plentiful that everything creeping, crawling, and slithering could gorge to satiation. Then a change in poison control was made, resulting in an …

Jazz’s Halloween Reads

Here's my selection of creepy reads in the run up to All Hallows' Eve. I bought The Silence based on the recommendation of Amazon after it noted that I'd reviewed Josh Malerman's Bird Box. I've heard mixed thoughts on it, but I'm a hundred pages in and enjoying it so far. As for Disappearance at Devil's Rock and The Cabin at the …