Tag: Horror

Fantastical Horror Rooted in Real History: We Don’t Swim Here by Vincent Tirado

~ Alex Brown ~ Leave a comment

Release Date: May 30, 2023
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Genre: Horror, Young Adult

Description

Bronwyn is only supposed to be in rural Hillwoods for a year. Her grandmother is in hospice, and her father needs to get her affairs in order. And they’re all meant to make some final memories together.

Except Bronwyn is miserable. Her grandmother is dying, everyone is standoffish, and she can’t even go swimming. All she hears are warnings about going in the water, despite a gorgeous lake. And a pool at the abandoned rec center. And another in the high school basement.

Anais tries her hardest to protect Bronwyn from the shadows of Hillwoods. She follows her own rituals to avoid any unnecessary attention–and if she can just get Bronwyn to stop asking questions, she can protect her too. The less Bronwyn pays attention to Hillwoods, the less Hillwoods will pay attention to Bronwyn. She doesn’t get that the lore is, well, truth. History. Pain. The living aren’t the only ones who seek retribution when they’re wronged. But when Bronwyn does more exploring than she should, they are both in for danger they couldn’t expect.

Continue reading “Fantastical Horror Rooted in Real History: We Don’t Swim Here by Vincent Tirado” →

Review of She Is a Haunting by Trang Thanh Tran

~ Alex Brown ~ Leave a comment

Release Date: February 28, 2023
Publisher: Bloomsbury YA
Genre: Young Adult, Horror

Description

When Jade Nguyen arrives in Vietnam for a visit with her estranged father, she has one goal: survive five weeks pretending to be a happy family in the French colonial house Ba is restoring. She’s always lied to fit in, so if she’s straight enough, Vietnamese enough, American enough, she can get out with the college money he promised.

But the house has other plans. Night after night, Jade wakes up paralyzed. The walls exude a thrumming sound while bugs leave their legs and feelers in places they don’t belong. She finds curious traces of her ancestors in the gardens they once tended. And at night Jade can’t ignore the ghost of the beautiful bride who leaves cryptic warnings: Don’t eat.Neither Ba nor her sweet sister Lily believe that there is anything strange happening. With help from a delinquent girl, Jade will prove this house–the home they have always wanted–will not rest until it destroys them. Maybe, this time, she can keep her family together. As she roots out the house’s rot, she must also face the truth of who she is and who she must become to save them all.

Continue reading “Review of She Is a Haunting by Trang Thanh Tran” →

Must Read Short Speculative Fiction: March 2023

~ Alex Brown ~ Leave a comment

Look, we’ve had thirty-one (31!) atmospheric rivers in California since the start of winter. Every time the sun starts shining, a storm cloud steamrolls right over it. I’m stressed, I’m exhausted, and I’m very moody. So don’t be surprised by the dark tone of most of the stories in my March spotlight of my ten favorite short science fiction, fantasy, and horror stories.

Read the rest of this spotlight at Tor.com.

Alex Brown Reviews Direwood by Catherine Yu

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Release Date: September 20, 2022
Publisher: Page Street Kids
Genre: Horror, Young Adult

Description

In this velvet-clad 1990s gothic horror, Aja encounters a charming vampire who wants to lure her into the woods–just like her missing sister.

No one ever pays attention to sixteen-year-old Aja until her perfect older sister Fiona goes missing. In the days leading up to Fiona’s disappearance, Aja notices some extraordinary things: a strange fog rolling through their idyllic suburban town, a brief moment when the sky seems to rain blood, and a host of parasitic caterpillars burrowing their way through the trees. Aja’s father, the neighbors, and even her ex-friend Mary all play down this strange string of occurrences, claiming there must be some natural explanation. It seems everyone is willing to keep living in denial until other teens start to go missing too.Aja is horrified when she meets Padraic, the vampire responsible for all the strange occurrences. His hypnotic voice lures her to the window and tells her everything she’s longed to hear–she’s beautiful and special, and he wants nothing more than for Aja to come with him. Aja knows she shouldn’t trust him, but she’s barely able to resist his enthrallment. And following him into the woods may be the only way to find Fiona, so she agrees on one condition: He must let her leave alive if she is not wooed after one week. Though Aja plans to kill him before the week is out, Padraic has his own secrets as well.In the misty woods, Aja finds that Padraic has made his nest with another vampire in a dilapidated church infested by blood-sucking butterflies. Within its walls, the vampires are waited on and entertained by other children they’ve enthralled, but there is no sign of Fiona. Before her bargain is up, Aja must find a way to turn her classmates against their captors, find her sister, and save them all–or be forced to join the very monsters she wants to destroy.

Continue reading “Alex Brown Reviews Direwood by Catherine Yu” →

Must-Read Speculative Short Fiction: 12 Works You May Have Missed in 2022

~ Alex Brown ~ Leave a comment

Every month I read a couple dozen or so short speculative fiction stories from 60+ publications in order to put together my monthly short SFF/H column. That’s a lot of reading! It’s always impossibly hard to narrow down to just my ten favorite pieces; if I had the time and energy, I’d do a massive list every month. So this year, instead of doing a best of list, I thought I’d put together a little collection of my alternates, one story from each month that I loved but that didn’t make my original spotlight. Let’s take a walk back through last year and some absolutely epic short fiction.

Read the rest of this spotlight at Tor.com.

Must-Read Speculative Short Fiction for December 2022

~ Alex Brown ~ Leave a comment

December is a bittersweet month for me. With decorations lighting up the streets yet the days getting shorter and colder, with the avalanche of romantic movies yet family and friends hundreds to thousands of miles away, I always end up feeling a strange mix of both melancholy and cozy. And so, not surprisingly, those were the short speculative fiction stories I was drawn to the most.

Read the rest of this spotlight at Tor.com.