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Book List: Horror Novellas You Don’t Have To Put Down

I’m a pretty fast reader, but sometimes a full length novel is just too long. It’s so hard for me to stop once I start, even if I know I need to! I’ve had to swear off certain authors or series because the books were so long, and compelling, that they consumed entire days of my life (I will never forgive George R.R. Martin for the loss of two weeks of my life to a series where he still hasn’t written the conclusion SIX YEARS LATER) If you aren’t a fast reader, then long novels can be intimidating. That’s what makes novellas great. If you’re a fast reader, you can speed right through them and go back to truly enjoy them again at your leisure. They’re just about perfect for travel– small enough to pack away and long enough to keep you engaged on your flight or train, without taking over your entire vacation. The novella length is perfect for a certain kind of horror story, too– it has to move fast and the words have to be carefully chosen in order to have maximum impact in a compact size. I asked for some recommendations from the people following Monster Librarian’s Facebook page,and checked with a few other horror lovers, and a number of them mentioned the same titles.  Here’s a short list of 14 novellas recommended by horror lovers, that will be perfect for your summer reading, if you haven’t picked them up already. And if any of them pique your interest, feel free to click on the book’s image. It will take you straight to Amazon, and since we are an Amazon affiliate, you’ll be helping us out, too. As always, not every book is appropriate for every reader, and while we’ve reviewed some of these, you read at your own risk.

If you feel that the list could use some additions, feel free to contribute your suggestions below!

 Cabal by Clive Barker

  The Hellbound Heart by Clive Barker

 A Boy and His Dog by Harlan Ellison
The Grownup by Gillian Flynn (reviewed here)

 Final Girls by Mira Grant

  Kingdom of Needle and Bone by Mira Grant

 Strange Weather by Joe Hill (technically this is a collection of four novellas) reviewed here

Mapping the Interior by Stephen Graham Jones

 Agents of Dreamland by Caitlin R. Kiernan

  The Mist by Stephen King

 The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor Lavalle

 The Case of Charles Dexter Ward by H.P. Lovecraft

 I Am Legend by Richard Matheson  (reviewed here– you’ll have to scroll down)

 The Murders of Molly Southborne by Tade Thompson (a sequel, The Survival of Molly Southborne, comes out in July)

Posted on May 20, 2019 by , Reply

Book Review: The Horror Collection, Black Edition by Kevin Kennedy


The Horror Collection: Black Edition edited by Becky Narron and Kevin J. Kennedy

KJK Publishing, 2019

ISBN-13: 978-1798000991

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition

 

The Horror Collection: Black Edition is an anthology of horror short stories.

“The Lake is Life”, by Richard Chizmar describes a troubled, teenage girl whose parents are facing divorce. She seeks emotional refuge visiting her grandmother at a tranquil lake.  There is a bloody massacre, and the keys to who and why are in the girl’s past. Unfortunately, the author never clearly explains her past.

“Pie Bingo: Last Man Standing”, by Veronica Smith describes a dystopian future with overcrowded jails.  The authorities need to winnow the jail population. Prisoners can opt to play bingo for pies, conjugal visits and freedom. However, if they don’t win, they won’t like the consolation prizes. The story is memorable because of the gruesome, sadistic details of the contest.

“Goblin Financial”, by Lee McGeorge is a lesson about the consequences of bad debts. A woman reneges on a loan she should have used for her education, causing her creditors emotional pain. She runs, but they have a hideous debt collector, and a horrific way of making themselves whole.

Readers familiar with the concept of informed consent in human experiments will cringe at “The Switch”, by Mark Lukens.  A financially desperate man agrees to be locked alone in a room for pay and told he must not flip a switch on the wall. The purpose, benefits, alternative choices and risks are not explained to him. Readers can guess what happens; it’s not really an experiment, because the researchers know the outcome.

“Those Who Watch from on High”, by Eric Guignard is an interesting account of emotional and psychological stresses on a drone pilot. Bored, isolated and suffering from disrupted sleep/wake cycles, an Air Force lieutenant in the Nevada desert struggles with reality. Is he looking down at a terrorist’s young son in the Afghan desert with a drone, or is he watching the terrorist’s hut from the desert floor? When he gets the order to fire on the hut, will he obey? If he does, what will he do the next day?

“The Ghost of Agnes Gallow”, by James Byers is an impressive poem about a witch whose curse stalks a family over generations on Halloween Eve.  Reciting his poem of ten stanzas of rhyming couplets out loud adds to the enjoyment.

Kevin Kennedy warns that  “A Tarantino Oz”contains strong doses of sex, violence and profanity. Readers who dislike Quentin Tarantino’s movies and misogyny should skip this story. Kennedy says all fairy tales were originally horror stories. In this tale, characters of L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz meet for an orgy and murderous rampage.

In “Smolder”, Michael Arnzen uses the well-known difficulty of stopping smoking and the Surgeon General’s health warning to draw readers into his story. Who knew that there is something magical about each word of  “SURGEON GENERAL’S WARNING: Smoklng Causes Lung Cancer, Heart Disease, Emphysema, And May Complicate Pregnancy”?  A concerned husband tries to help his pregnant wife kick the habit. He finds a hidden pack of cigarettes, but has no idea that calamity strikes smokers when words of the warning are destroyed.

 

Contains: Gore, graphic sex and profanity

 

Reviewed by Robert D. Yee

Posted on May 16, 2019 by , Reply

Long Fiction Review: Dead Lovers on Each Blade, Hung by Usman Malik (Nightmare Magazine, Issue 74)

“Dead Lovers on Each Blade, Hung” by Usman Malik

Nightmare Magazine, Issue 74, November 2018

ASIN: B07K386T2B

Available: Kindle edition

 

“Dead Lovers on Each Blade, Hung” is an #ownvoices novelette that takes place in Pakistan. The narrator is a cleaned-up heroin addict who has been accused of killing a doctor in Uch, a site of pilgrimage, at various times, for Sufis, Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims. The tale is his confession to the police, who he is certain will turn him over to some very angry heroin dealers who think he swindled them.

The narrator tells the story of being rescued and sobered up by a doctor studying snake venoms for their healing uses,  who has been asking addicts in the park if they have seen a girl in a photo he carries. The girl turns out to be his wife, Maliha, purchased by him when she was eight years old, who became a herpetologist. Maliha ran away to seek the Serpent Pearl, a mythological stone given by the Serpent King of the underworld to his wife, which gave her the power to command animals and birds, immunity to venom, open a gateway to other worlds, and immortality, that she believed could be found in Uch. The doctor decides to follow her to Uch, accompanied by the narrator, who is now on the run from heroin dealers.

In Uch, they approach a shrine during a musical festival. The narrator follows the doctor past the crowd and into the shrine, and witnesses the doctor’s apparent, and fatal, reunion with his wife, who may be a cobra, or an apparition, or may be something else entirely, driving him to poison the water supply of Uch with snake venom as he loses touch with reality.

The setting and much of the language are way outside of my realm of experience, and I don’t feel that I can truly do this story justice, but I can say that the summary above in no way can express the feeling of this tale. It is a fever dream that creates a world that envelops the reader in a combination of the grim life of a heroin addict, with a dark mythology grounded in both Pakistani folklore and cosmic horror.  At the same time, it is grounded in a terrible real-life story: the doctor who purchases a wife when she is eight, and chases her down when she runs away as a young woman. In “Dead Lovers on Each Blade, Hung” Usman Malik steps the reader into an unreal, fantastic, and horrifying world that he makes very, very real.

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

 

Editor’s note: “Dead Lovers on Each Blade, Hung” is a nominee on the final ballot of the 2018 Bram Stoker Awards in the category of Superior Achievement in Long Fiction. 

Posted on May 14, 2019 by , Reply
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