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Book Review: The Festering Ones by S.H. Cooper

The Festering Ones by S. H. Cooper

Independently published

ISBN-13: 978-1693388583

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition

 

The Festering Ones by S. H. Cooper is a horror novella featuring an avenging heroine, straightforward action, and plenty of gore. In this story, parallel realities exist alongside, but mostly separate from ours. One of them, however, is inhabited by hideous monsters that can invade our world by dreams, illusions and possession of our bodies. Human cults strive to open doorways for the monsters, who will destroy all normal life if they gain control.

On a hunting trip in Pennsylvania, a young girl, Faith, sees her father ambushed and killed by a spider-armed, Woken Daughter of the monster Gorrorum, but no one believes her story. Years later, she discovers more disappearances in the mountain town, and uncovers a local cult. On the trail of another cult in Florida, she teams up with Janice, who is seeking her kidnapped boy, and Sasha, who is searching for her missing sister. The women fight factotums of a rival monster. Faith and Sasha return to the mountain to avenge their loved ones, but they meet more than the Woken Daughters in the tunnels and cavern of the mountain.

Cooper’s writing is simple and direct. The plot is straightforward. Although her characters are not complex, the female heroines are determined and strong.

 

Contains: violence, gore

 

Robert D. Yee

Posted on October 29, 2019 by , Reply

Book Review: Ghost Stories: Classic Tales of Horror and Suspense edited by Lisa Morton and Leslie S. Klinger

Ghost Stories: Classic Tales of Horror and Suspense edited by Lisa Morton and Leslie S. Klinger

Pegasus Books, 2019

ISBN-13: 978-1643130200

Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition

 

‘Tis the season for ghost stories, and with so many out there, Lisa Morton and Leslie S. Klinger had some difficult choices about what to include in this anthology. They have chosen eighteen tales of the supernatural with varying tone, from comic to terrifying, by authors well-known for their ability with supernatural fiction, authors from both Europe and America, authors well-known for their other works who also wrote supernatural fiction, and some authors barely known to the reading public at all.  There is a brief introduction, and each story is preceded with a short paragraph about the author and his works. When necessary, the editors included annotations, but the annotations do not impede the flow of the story; rather, they enrich it.

The anthology begins with a ballad, “Sweet William’s Ghost”,  which is followed by a gothic tale by Johann August Apel, whose work may have inspired the beginnings of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Sir Walter Scott’s “The Tapestried Chamber”, which Morton and Klinger identify as the first modern ghost story, is next.  They then cross the ocean to America for the next two stories, “The Gray Champion” by Nathaniel Hawthorne and “Ligieia” by Edgar Allan Poe. Certainly no one can argue with either Poe’s brilliance or madness in his writing, and both are depicted in full force here.

Three lesser-known  women writers of supernatural fiction all write powerfully of ghosts driven by their emotions towards the ones they left behind. “Since I Died” by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps is a compelling vision of what follows death, narrated by a just-deceased woman observing her lover’s grief, and is one of the outstanding stories in the book. “The Shell of Sense” by the little-known Olivia Howard Dunbar, details the vengeance, and eventually forgiveness, of a recently-deceased wife on her husband and sister when she discovers they have fallen in love.  In Georgia Wood Pangborn’s “The Substitute”, a lonely woman is visited by a friend who is desperately in need of her help.

Charles Dickens, M.R. James, Edith Wharton, Henry James, and Charlotte  (Mrs. J.H.) Riddell all tell stories of mysterious and terrifying ghosts.  Ambrose Bierce creats a nightmarish, fantastical world in “An Inhabitant of Carcosa”, and Frank Stockton’s “The Philosophy of Relative Existences” is almost science-fictional in nature, a thoughtful puzzle of a story.  Arthur Machen’s “The Bowmen” , based on actual news reports, described a battle during World War I where one of the British servicemen summoned St. George and his bowmen to defeat the Germans. The brief descriptions of the war, and the detail in which Machen is able to vividly portray the men and their despair in very few words, are very powerful. One of my favorites, a surprise to me, was Mark Twain’s “A Ghost Story”, which had me laughing out loud.

The variety in this collection of ghost stories is impressive, and I really appreciated the inclusion of both lesser-known women writers of supernatural fiction, and supernatural stories by writers better known for other work. Over the past several years I have done a lot of reading on my own on early women writers of supernatural fiction and until very recently it’s been difficult to find any work by some of them at all– and for those who are better known for their other writing, their supernatural tales have often been disregarded or kept under wraps. It would be easy to lean back on just a few authors already known for their ghost stories, but the effort that went into making sure this carefully curated anthology was varied in its authors and contents is something I really appreciate. Ghost Stories: Classic Tales of Horror and Suspense is a perfect read for this Halloween season.

Posted on October 26, 2019 by , Reply

Book Review: The Readers’ Advisory Guide to Horror, Second Edition by Becky Siegel Spratford

Since Monster Librarian has been around for quite some time, we actually reviewed reader’s advisory reference books in horror before there were many reader’s advisory books on the horror genre and even before social media became all-consuming. Most of these are on a page on our original website titled “Librarian Resources”. It’s pretty sparse, because anything published after 2014 will be found on this blog instead of the original site, and there really wasn’t much in existence then. What was once a fairly restricted community of readers and writers has grown like crazy, and the past few years have really boomed in terms of providing all kinds of helpful resources.

So it was a very big deal when Becky Siegel Spratford wrote a second edition to The Readers’ Advisory Guide to Horror, which was published in 2012. This month I saw her announce that the third edition will be coming out next year (wow!) so I’m republishing our review of the second edition now. She has kept it updated through her blog  RA for All: Horror.  If you visit now, Becky is counting down the days until the announcement of the titles for the HWA’s summer reading program, Summer Scares, for 2020.

With the horror genre having expanded its reach and audience considerably I will be curious to see the changes in the third edition!

 

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The Reader’s Advisory Guide to Horror, Second Edition by Becky Siegel Spratford

American Library Association, 2012

ISBN-13: 978-0838911129

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition

 

The Reader’s Advisory Guide to Horror, Second Edition, is the updated version of The Reader’s Advisory Guide to Horror, part of the American Library Association’s Reader’s Advisory series on genre fiction,. That is, the major professional organization for librarians endorses this as the authoritative text on reader’s advisory in the horror genre. The author, Becky Siegel Spratford, is a reader’s advisory librarian with a particular interest in the horror genre, and in promoting horror in the library– and is someone I admire very much. Updates for this edition can be found at her blog, RA for All: Horror. 

        The Readers’ Advisory Guide to Horror, Second Edition is an important book for a couple of reasons. First, because it’s published by the American Library Association, it is likely to reach a wide audience of librarians, and because it’s part of an established series on readers’ advisory, it has credibility as a resource for librarians who may not know much about(or like) the horror genre that other resources may not have. That opens a door for connecting a lot of people to books they may like. Spratford does a nice job of providing a concise history of horror, introducing some prominent authors, and addressing the classics. Spratford also mentions that many horror readers prefer to read only within one subgenre (such as werewolf books), and has set up the book to provide annotated lists for recommended titles in popular subgenres,. She also includes a chapter on horror resources and marketing, which does a very nice job of offering tools and strategies for growing and promoting library horror collections, not just during October but throughout the year. This is a topic that really needed (and needs) to be addressed– horror readers don’t just read horror as Halloween rolls around, and if your horror novels are shelved with the rest of the fiction they may not even know what the library has. I’m glad that Spratford specifically addressed this in her book.

        However, there are aspects to the book of which librarians should be aware. Spratford chose to define horror as “a story in which… unexplainable phenomena and unearthly creatures threaten the protagonist and provoke terror in the reader”.  That’s a very narrow definition. I recognize that for purposes of writing a reader’s advisory guide it’s necessary to set limits of what qualifies as belonging to a genre, but reader’s advisory librarians attempting to serve horror readers should be aware that many horror readers don’t require there to be a supernatural or unexplainable element in their reading. Because of the way she defines horror, Spratford’s breakdown of subgenres is sometimes problematic. For instance, in her chapter on “shape-shifters”, she included not only werewolf titles but killer animal books, and these two types of books appeal to different audiences. Many killer animal books have no supernatural aspect at all, such as Cujo, Stephen King’s novel about a rabid dog terrorizing his neighborhood (Spratford writes that Cujo “comes under the spell of demonic forces”, but that is not the case). Her chapter “Monsters and Ancient Evil” also combines in one list books that will appeal to different audiences- Lovecraftian fiction and more modern monster novels. In addition, Spratford leaves out the notable category of human horror. Books in this category aren’t literary novels of psychological suspense- they display the worst of human nature, without needing to employ the supernatural. Usually they have graphic gore, violence, and sexual situations (such as in the work of Wrath James White). This category doesn’t fall under Spratford’s definition of horror, and so it isn’t addressed in the book. Spratford  is covering a huge amount of territory in a limited number of pages, but it would really have benefited users, and readers, to have these particular issues dealt with, and hopefully we will see that in the next print edition. In addition to covering a wide variety of authors and subgenres, Spratford addresses whole collection reader’s advisory and mentions several categories of books outside the genre that horror readers might also enjoy, I especially appreciated her mention of nonfiction, as there are a lot of appealing nonfiction titles that horror fiction readers will probably never find on their own.

        Horror is a very difficult genre for both collection development and reader’s advisory. It doesn’t get much respect, or even recognition. The Reader’s Advisory Guide to Horror, Second Edition, although not a perfect tool, does a great job providing resources to librarians serving horror readers. Highly recommended for purchase by public and academic libraries.

Review by Kirsten Kowalewski

 

Posted on October 25, 2019 by , Reply
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