February brought a host of new short science fiction, fantasy, and horror from big names I’ve followed for a long time. But there’s always room for new discoveries, and a handful of emerging and new-to-me writers also cracked my ten favorite short stories. The theme this month: finding hope in the face of disaster.
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Release Date: September 20, 2022
Publisher: Page Street Kids
Genre: Horror, Young Adult
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.
The first month of the new year is done and dusted, so let’s go back and look at my ten favorite short speculative fiction stories from January. We’ve got cannibalism, the apocalypse, and dangerous technology to tempt you.
Read the rest of this spotlight at Tor.com.
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.
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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.
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Ryan La Sala’s brilliant young adult horror novel details the difficulties of being queer and genderfluid in a world that demands conformity…
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I love a good, old-fashioned haunted house story, and this one is chilling and very unsettling…
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We have entered a new golden age of young adult horror, and I am one hundred percent here for it. While there has long been plenty of horror-adjacent fiction, real horror has been hard to come by. That is until the last year or so. I keep a spreadsheet of all the traditionally published young adult speculative fiction for each year, and in 2022 we had 17 (!!!) books come out that were specifically marketed as horror, plus many others that were delightfully bloody and bite-y. I’ve put together a short list of some great YA horror for fans new and old to check out.
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Queer horror books! By queer authors! YA horror has obviously been around forever, but it’s only really been the last couple years that queer horror has finally gotten its due. We may only have a few to choose from, but the quality level is very high. Not a bad one in the bunch.
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Hundreds of young adult science fiction, fantasy, and horror novels make their way through the traditional publishing industry every year. Fantasy, of course, takes the biggest chunk of the market, but we’ve seen an upswing in horror recently. No matter your favorite speculative genre, we’re in an age where choices abound. And I’m here to help you make some decisions.
Here is my list of the 30 most notable YA SFF/H of 2022. Define “notable” as you see fit, but for me I’m thinking in terms of books that stood out, books that made me think, books that played with genre conventions in new or interesting ways, and books that I can’t stop recommending.
Read the rest of this spotlight at Tor.com.
Punk-Ass Book Jockey 