Grant's Book Reviews on Goodreads.com

Witch-Cult Abbey
Mark Samuels  

 ·   ★★★★☆  4/5   ·   read Sep 20, 2026

We get another piece of the Thool Valley puzzle in this wild ride of a gothic novel! Witch-Cult Abbey relates to Mark Samuels's body of work as The Croning relates to Laird Barron's body of work, in that, through a wonderfully weird and horrifying novel, it reveals crucial history and background that informs the mythos behind so many of his short stories. Expect necromancy, cursed books, cults, labyrinthine prisons, weirdness, and the dreaming dead.

Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West

Cormac McCarthy  

 ·   ★★★★★  5/5   ·   read Aug 29, 2026

This book dismantles the Old West myth of America as a land of self-reliant, hardworking pioneers. The hearty individualism so proudly touted as the forebear of the so-called self-reliant modern American man is just a cover story for gang violence, scalp bounties, and state-backed land grabs. This is who we really are, but we keep pretending otherwise.

It is obvious: there is no all-powerful, all-knowing, benevolent intelligence behind the massacre, the ugliness, and the permitted suffering we inflict on the world. The character of “The Judge” is the closest thing to God in the book, and he is just a silver-tongued, lying, thieving, murdering pedophile. This latter characterization of a creator aligns better with the facts on the ground.

The Butcher of Nazareth

David Scott Hay  

 ·   ★★★★☆  4/5   ·   read Aug 8, 2026

Such an imaginative, dark book that takes seriously the fallout from Herod's slaughter of the innocents. Horrifying and violent, Hay fills in the psychological and sociological consequences of not only "The Culling," but also the nativity itself and the unique/difficult familial position that Mary, Joseph, and Jesus find themselves in.

I Hear a New World (The Long London Quintet, #2)

Alan Moore  

 ·   ★★★★☆  4/5   ·   read Jul 28, 2026

It was nice to reacquaint with Dennis Knuckleyard and Grace Shilling. Charming Peter is back along with a new major threat in the form of Button Dainty (the character's names are marvelous). Moore's prose, turn of phrase, and humor are outstanding in this second installment of the Long London series. With plot ties to Arthur Machen's "The Green Round" and explicit thematic ties to Mervyn Peake's Ghormenghast, fans of either author will find something to like.

Charnel Glamour

Mark Samuels  

 ·   ★★★★☆  4/5   ·   read Jul 26, 2026

Full of necromancy, decadence, and the supernatural power of weird fiction itself, this collection adds more weirdness to The Cult of Lilith and the Thool Valley mythos. Samuels will be very missed in the weird fiction community.

Uncertain Sons and Other Stories

Thomas Ha  

 ·   ★★★★★  5/5   ·   read May 29, 2026

Thomas Ha's short fiction is of the best. His characters inhabit fascinating, terrifying, and weird settings, and, despite the downright bizarrerie, it is chilling that Ha's worlds look familiar, like a peek into a believable future.

The Monk

Matthew Gregory Lewis  

 ·   ★★★★★  5/5   ·   read May 21, 2026

This novel is gothic through and through. Lewis turns the volume up to 11 with his terrible villains, the melodrama, secret identities, lovesick romantics, dungeons, catacombs, abbeys and convents. Plenty of secret passages and hidden doors. He offers up curses, demonic pacts, ghosts, and superstitious peasants. He throws in a stormy night or two, some passages of poetry and song (including a window serenade), and a set of converging plots that keep the reader turning those pages. And the horror. . . Lewis doesn't shy away from stomach-turning descriptions of decay and vicious acts of cruelty, violence, and blasphemy

It is a fascinating study in the spiral of moral corruption. The contrast between the villainy of the monk and the cruelty of the abbess paints alternative paths to human viciousness. The different kinds of power inherent in the characters of Antonia's mother Elvira, the Abbess St. Agatha, and the cunning Matilda set up distinct models of control that end up pulling and expanding the plot in rich directions.

Come Closer

Sara Gran  

 ·   ★★★☆☆  3/5   ·   read May 13, 2026

I liked the claustrophobic form that the story takes. It is short, and there is not a lot of breathing room for development. This works because it mirrors what the protagonist is going through. The reader gets to experience her blackouts, the patterns of her mental ruminations, and being locked into her mind and epistemic position, like she is locked in.

The Hill of Dreams

Arthur Machen  

 ·   ★★★★☆  4/5   ·   read Apr 24, 2026

A moving work of Machen's that gave me a better sense of Romanticism and Decadence in practice. A weird and difficult novel that is, sadly, too relatable.

Borne (Borne, #1)

Jeff Vandermeer  

 ·   ★★★☆☆  3/5   ·   read Apr 1, 2026

The novel takes up some interesting questions about personhood: what makes something a person rather than a monster, or a weapon, or a ghost, or just salvage? The narrative suggests different possibilities. Perhaps the thing in question needs to behave in a certain way. If it exhibits that required set of behaviors, then it is a person. Or that might not be it at all; instead, maybe persons must be motivated by certain considerations that simply don’t move monsters, weapons, ghosts, or salvage. Maybe that doesn’t work as a criterion either. Perhaps to be a person is just to be treated as a person; to be brought into the social practice of praising, criticizing, forgiving and holding one another responsible for their behavior.

In addition to questions about personhood, the novel takes up the further issue of personal identity. Once you settle that the thing is a person, what is it about a person that makes them who they are. In the story, identity comes unhinged from memory in an interesting way that perhaps suggests other features that might ground personal identity.

If these kind of issues get your juices flowing, then this book might be for you!

This'll Make Things a Little Easier

Attila Veres  

 ·   ★★★★☆  4/5   ·   read Feb 21, 2026

These stories are just as weird as Veres' stories in The Black Maybe, but these new ones hit harder. There is tragedy here that imbues the weird with the terrifying. Another great collection!

Hellions: Stories

Julia   Elliott  

 ·   ★★★★☆  4/5   ·   read Feb 11, 2026

The stories in this collection speak from a strong voice; that is, the narration feel profoundly real. Elliott's command of description and metaphor not only fuels the imagination for the worlds created but also causes one to pause to consider something quite ordinary in a completely new light.

The monster stories make perfect use of the extraordinary; the coming-of-age stories capture the weirdness and poignancy of the experience; and the witchy earthiness of the horror speaks to something archetypal.

Solaris

Stanisław Lem  

 ·   ★★★★★  5/5   ·   read Feb 10, 2026

Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris remains an astounding work. It is a deeply profound reflection on human psychology, moral obligation to non-human persons, and our naivete concerning the search for alien intelligence. The novel also challenges the very possibility of contact with any alien intelligence that engages the world with a vastly different non-human conceptual scheme and paradigm. An all-time favorite book.

The Best Weird Fiction of the Year, Vol. 1

Michael Kelly  

 ·   ★★★★☆  4/5   ·   read Jan 24, 2026

I'm pleased that Michael Kelly is once again curating a best-of-the-year collection. 2024 was a great year for short weird fiction and collected here are 25 of the best! My own favorites include:

"Our Best Selves" by Hiron Ennes "Five Views of the Planet Tartarus" by Racheal K. Jones  "Alabama Circus Punk" by Thomas Ha "A Woman's Place is in the Haunted Home" by Charlotte Tierney "In the Palace of Science" by Chris Campbell "Ruminants" by Kay Chronister "The Ruins with a Spectator" by Kaaron Warren "He Dances Alone" by Joanne Anderton

Remina

Junji Ito  

 ·   ★★★★☆  4/5   ·   read Jan 19, 2026

Ito’s work surgically draws a sharp contrast between human-caused horror and cosmic horror. The cosmic horror of this story hits on a grand scale, highlighting our insignificance in terms of time, speed, size, and causal impact. As Remina nears Earth, it remains totally indifferent, utterly destructive, but morally neutral and uncriticizable. But, despite our insignificance, humans cause an immense amount of suffering. Even our loving connections turn poisonous and lead to disaster. This book is horror through and through. It manages to show how vulnerable and insignificant we are and, at the same time, how much terror and pain we have the power to cause. We are immensely horrible, pathetic and feeble.

The White Hands and Other Weird Tales

Mark Samuels  

 ·   ★★★★★  5/5   ·   read Nov 25, 2025

An exceptional set of stories and now a favorite book of mine! The strangeness reminds me of Aickman and the loneliness reminds me of Ligotti. Samuels knows what he is doing!

The Three Imposters

Arthur Machen  

 ·   ★★★★★  5/5   ·   read Nov 17, 2025

The manner in which the threads of this story come together is haunting. Its mysteries intrigue me in a similar way as Chambers' The King in Yellow unsettles.

The Imago Sequence and Other Stories

Laird Barron  

 ·   ★★★★☆  4/5   ·   read Nov 2, 2025

Such a strong collection both in terms of the quality of the stories and how hard they punch.

Favorites include:

Shiva, Open Your Eye Proboscis Hallucigenia Parallax

But for me, it is the novella "The Imago Sequence" that is the highlight of the book. There, Barron takes Lovecraft's "Pickman's Model," ups the stakes, and then turns the weirdness dial to 11.

The Charwoman's Shadow

Lord Dunsany  

 ·   ★★★★★  5/5   ·   read Oct 25, 2025

A wonderful, charming story of magic, romance, and the end of the Golden Age. Dunsany writes with a strong sense of place, giving each location a richness not soon forgotten. The novel is peopled with unique characters each of which the reader takes a strong interest. Dunsany's creativity and thoughtfulness is brought to bear on the notion of shadows. The book is chocked full of insights, clever observations, and metaphysical musings about shadows and their importance.

Lost in the Dark and Other Excursions

John  Langan  

 ·   ★★★★☆  4/5   ·   read Oct 17, 2025

Favorites from this collection include: Lost in the Dark Haak Natalya, Queen of the Hungry Dogs Oscar Returns from the Dead, Prophesizing

The Black Maybe: Liminal Tales

Attila Veres  

 ·   ★★★★★  5/5   ·   read Aug 12, 2025

These are amazing stories. Veres' approach to the weird feels different; I almost want to call it weird-realism. In an otherwise ordinary world, the narrative will suddenly shine light onto something very, very strange happening without much notice or concern by the mundane world.

All of the stories are great and I look forward to re-reading them, but my favorites include: Return to the Midnight School The Amber Complex Sky Filled with Crows, then Nothing at All Walks Among You The Black Maybe

The Hollow Places

T. Kingfisher  

 ·   ★★★☆☆  3/5   ·   read Aug 7, 2025

A fun book. I love the Wonder Museum and Uncle Earl!

The Works of Vermin

Hiron Ennes  

 ·   ★★★★☆  4/5   ·   read Aug 1, 2025

Ennes creates wonderfully weird worlds, always described at just the right level of detail. They know what to explain in depth and what to leave for the reader to fill in. The Works of Vermin is a story of a world, its people, and its vermin shaped by art, war, and decadence. Set in a weird Gormenghast-like city of impossible architecture, built on and within a tree over a poisonous river, it is a novel about revolution, remaking the self, and constructing reality.

Saturated with heavy ideas dripping like ecdytoxin from teratopods, this novel respects the intelligence of the reader and leaves space for reflection. Reminiscent of China Miéville’s The Last Days of New Paris, art itself takes on physical powers of destruction and construction. The city’s opera, statuary, and embroidery not only record history but they make historical facts true. Open alchemical street warfare between pest extermination companies frames an exploration of the relationship between beauty and violence, fact and fiction, disease and power, all within a battle for the control of aesthetics within a vicious cycle of oppression.

Conquer (John Conquer #1)

Edward M. Erdelac  

 ·   ★★★★☆  4/5   ·   read Jul 14, 2025

This book is a lot of fun--a great blend of grit and pulp. The episodic nature of the stories works well for introducing John Conquer's background, and the monsters are fantastic. Erdelac takes on something that could have gone very wrong, but he does it right in almost all respects. I'll be reading more Edward Erdelac.

The Ghost Pirates

William Hope Hodgson  

 ·   ★★★★☆  4/5   ·   read Jul 2, 2025

The Ghost Pirates is packed full of technical sailing vessel technique and terminology. I recommend familiarizing oneself with 3 masted square-rigged ships in order to appreciate the full force of this novel. One really gets a sense of how these vessels were managed and what crews sounded like when they talked to each other. As the book progresses, it starts brushing up against Algernon Blackwood-like themes--that is when it really gets good. The camaraderie among the men, the manner in which the chain of command works, and then, when the weird starts happening, the realistic portrayal of the psychology aboard the vessel are all great stuff! The action and suspense is perfectly balanced against the eerie and the growing dread.

Cathedral of the Drowned (The Lunar Gothic Trilogy, #2)

Nathan Ballingrud  

 ·   ★★★★☆  4/5   ·   read Jun 10, 2025

You might not expect poignant sub-text and strong theme from a novella that includes a washed-up mad scientist, gangsters in the spider silk trade, a giant centipede, and Catholic missions that involve launching cathedrals into space. But Ballingrud delivers on all of this in his pulpy and intelligent sequel to Crypt of the Moon Spider. Not only do we learn more about the moon spider silk introduced in Crypt, but this is a story about people struggling with their identity when they recognize that the different sides of their personalities and psychologies stand in deep tension with one another. The novella manages to breathe fresh life into the old sci-fi fixture of a collective mind by taking it on in the context of individuals trying to integrate their own fragmented personalities into a cohesive whole. Enjoyable on so many levels!

Titus Groan (Gormenghast, #1)

Mervyn Peake  

 ·   ★★★★☆  4/5   ·   read May 30, 2025

A beautiful study in descriptive language. Peake's mastery of literary devices is astounding. Titus Groan introduces us to characters that will not soon be forgotten.

Swamp Thing: The Bronze Age Vol. 1 (Swamp Thing (1972-1976))

Len Wein  

 ·   ★★★★☆  4/5   ·   read May 24, 2025

I didn't expect the first 13 issues of Swamp Thing to be this good! Everyone always raves about Alan Moore's run, which I also absolutely love too, but the Wein/Wrightson start to this character is incredibly fun. If you want to know more about Matt Cable, Abbie, and Arcane, these are some great issues to get all of that background.

Saga of the Swamp Thing: Book Three

Alan Moore  

 ·   ★★★★☆  4/5   ·   read May 17, 2025

Among the highlights in the run collected in this book are John Constantine's first appearance, baby Swamp Thing, and the budding romance (pun intended) between Abbie and Swampy. The underwater vampires in "Still Waters" and "Fish Story" are a hit! And in fact, Moore subverts expectations with his fresh take on the werewolf and the zombie in issues #40 - 42.

Ripples from Carcosa: H. P. Lovecraft, Haunted Landscapes, and True Detective

Heather Miller  

 ·   ★★★★☆  4/5   ·   read Apr 26, 2025

Miller's discussion of haunted landscapes is wonderful, and she leverages that work nicely in the service of her take on Carcosa--all fascinating stuff! Her work tying detective fiction to Lovecraft's cosmic horror is brilliant and brings out insightful patterns often overlooked. I also found her views about the role that the Southern Gothic plays in understanding not only True Detective but also the work of Lovecraft to be both surprising and incredibly perceptive.

The Mysteries of Udolpho

Ann Radcliffe  

 ·   ★★★★☆  4/5   ·   read Apr 6, 2025

You are in for a long one, but Udolpho's mysteries intrigue and their resolutions delight. The four volumes are packed with melancholy, romance, drama, banditti, the sublimity of nature, castle ruins, secret passages, watchtowers, Venice, polished society, rustic charm, gambling, stormy weather, fraud, dark chambers, blood, ill-fated love, a dog, sword play, music, clandestine meetings, betrayal, superstition, lots of tears, formal dinners, war, madness, poetry, villains, monasteries, servants, catacombs, friendly nuns, crazy nuns, crime, virtue, eerie forests, France, strange sounds, labyrinthine estates, vice, dangerous countryside travels, apparitions, prison, Italy, charming peasants, frivolous gentry, death bed promises, murder, drunken parties, boats, lutes, chateaus, kidnapping, bats, and a dog.

A Sunny Place for Shady People

Mariana Enriquez  

 ·   ★★★★☆  4/5   ·   read Mar 21, 2025

As these weird stories attest, the history of a place can impinge to linger and haunt. This is a wonderful book of short stories, each with a voice and a strong sense of place.

Providence Compendium by Alan Moore and Jacen Burrows Hardcover

Alan Moore  

 ·   ★★★★☆  4/5   ·   read Mar 6, 2025

It is amazing how Moore has brought all of this together. On top of that, it gives a crazy-good interpretation of the Mythos and pulls the real world in nicely. Love this book!

Where the Silent Ones Watch

James Chambers  

 ·   ★★★★☆  4/5   ·   read Feb 21, 2025

This collection shows just how imaginatively inspirational the work of William Hope Hodgson proves to be.

The Swarm

Andy Marino  

 ·   ★★☆☆☆  2/5   ·   read Feb 19, 2025

I might read this book again in 17 years.

Beowulf

Seamus Heaney  

 ·   ★★★★☆  4/5   ·   read Jan 11, 2025

Beowulf is great and this Heaney translation is a lot of fun! I recommend this translation.

The Stay-Awake Men & Other Unstable Entities

Matthew M. Bartlett  

 ·   ★★★★☆  4/5   ·   read Jan 8, 2025

This book puts the Weird back into Weird Fiction. These stories unsettle, challenge, and scare (maybe even scar). They twist the familiar and mundane into something unpredictable, horrifying and deeply strange. Every story delivers!

Christmas and Other Horrors: A Winter Solstice Anthology

Ellen Datlow  

 ·   ★★★☆☆  3/5   ·   read Dec 24, 2024

The highlights for me: After Words, Langan Loyly Sow-na, Malerman Dry and Ready, Hirshberg The Mawkin Field, Dowling

Other ones that I really liked: Our Recent Unpleasantness, Jones Grave of Small Birds, Warren

Vathek

William Beckford  

 ·   ★★★★☆  4/5   ·   read Dec 9, 2024

An over-the-top early orientalist gothic novel that is a lot of fun to read. The melodrama, the comedy, the violence, the adventure-- enjoyed it all. Beckford's unique depiction of hell makes for an incredible ending, but everything before is great too (including an intelligent camel that is rather mean and an explanation of why fish don't like to talk).

The Time Machine

H.G. Wells  

 ·   ★★★★☆  4/5   ·   read Nov 11, 2024

On this re-reading I was taken by the cosmic horror of scale that is highlighted toward the end of the book. As our narrator takes the machine into the far future (post-Eloi/Morlock), Wells' description and vision reminded me of parts of William Hope Hodson's House on the Borderland.

A Night in the Lonesome October

Roger Zelazny  

 ·   ★★★★☆  4/5   ·   read Oct 4, 2024

A wonderful story told from the perspective of the animal familiars that belong to competing sorcerers who are attempting to influence a magical event in opposing ways. The book builds to a tense climax and a spectacular ending. There are a lot of great surprises along the way! I was glad that I knew nothing about the story before reading it. All I will say, so as not to spoil, is that a fan of both pulp weird fiction and gothic horror is sure to enjoy this novel. I did!

Mr. Suicide

Nicole Cushing  

 ·   ★★★★☆  4/5   ·   read Aug 17, 2024

Cushing always manages to expose reality for the sham that it is and typically advances Logotti-esque pessimism in new directions. This novel does just that, brilliantly!

The Mouth seems to offer a better deal than Mr. Suicide—annihilation without hurting the ones that love you. In the end, surprisingly, this option is exposed as conceptually impossible. Even if you have the privilege of your existence devoured and all of your causal footprints erased, Cressida still loses something.

The Island of Dr. Moreau

H.G. Wells  

 ·   ★★★★☆  4/5   ·   read Aug 4, 2024

First time reading this. It is so much more than a story about science going unchecked. In fact, there is a much deeper Ligotti-esque horror here. We get to see, in part, what an evolutionary dead-end self-awareness/consciousness turns out to be. It is not beasts at one end of a spectrum and humans at the other end with the hybrids in between; rather, we humans *are* the hybrid abominations that have broken away. Good stuff!

The King in the Golden Mask

Marcel Schwob  

 ·   ★★★☆☆  3/5   ·   read Jul 4, 2024

Favorites from Schwob's The King in the Golden Mask (in no particular order): The King in the Golden Mask The Embalming Women The Faulx-Visaiges The Milesian Virgins The Sabbat at Mofflaines The Talking Machine The Sleeping City  The Return to the Fold Bargette

Leech

Hiron Ennes  

 ·   ★★★★☆  4/5   ·   read Jun 26, 2024

This book is about how messy personal identity really is--it is naïve to think that our old-fashioned concept, that we are identical to some solitary, internally isolated mind, corresponds to reality. Our identity (in a deep way) is defined by family, the social institutions we engage with, histories, roles we play, our bodies, tools, libraries, etc. We are so scattered, in fact, that the notion of a “me” is, at best, a muddled mess and, at worse, totally incoherent.

I think this theme is particularly queer when understood as a reaction to the conservative idea that there are just rigid mind-independent facts-of-the-matter about who/what a person is—the naïve view that nature defines a person and it is immutable.

The Ballad of Black Tom

Victor LaValle  

 ·   ★★★☆☆  3/5   ·   read May 12, 2024

In part, the book sub-textually explores why we’ve, up until now, only heard the skewed and misleading account of the Red Hook horror through the legacy of Lovecraft’s story. It is interesting to see the original “The Horror at Red Hook” itself become a kind of cover up story—that is something Lovecraft does all the time with the news reports of mythos occurrences, and here, it is turned against his own tale.

Among other things, there are some neat ideas about our subconscious perceptions of others being like cast spells. In addition, Black Tom’s motivation for throwing-in with such an awful entity is thought-provoking; this goes some way toward giving one answer to that age old question: why would there ever be mythos cultists?

The Hospice

Robert Aickman  

 ·   ★★★★★  5/5   ·   read May 2, 2024

THE HOSPICE GOOD FARE SOME ACCOMMODATION

Under a Black Rainbow

Adam Rodenberger  

 ·   ★★★★☆  4/5   ·   read Apr 5, 2024

Rodenberger brings a reflective mind to stories that are fresh, weird, and inspired. I enjoyed this book immensely! It feels different and hauntingly weird. The stories simultaneously manage to be authentic to experience and yet strangely foreign/alien. They tap into a surreal truth in a way I haven't experienced in fiction before. I strongly recommend it to those looking for the new direction of weird surrealism.

Winter Tide (The Innsmouth Legacy, #1)

Ruthanna Emrys  

 ·   ★★★★☆  4/5   ·   read Mar 21, 2024

Come for the Deep Ones; stay for the Yithians.

Psycho (Psycho, #1)

Robert Bloch  

 ·   ★★★☆☆  3/5   ·   read Jan 30, 2024

Nothing ever goes quite as planned.

The Plastic Priest

Nicole Cushing  

 ·   ★★★★☆  4/5   ·   read Dec 11, 2023

I find myself craving the weirdness that will come next from Nicole Cushing, and The Plastic Priest was wonderfully satisfying. Being human is a thoroughgoing sham, and this story is pessimism in action with an eye toward the contradictions in our natures reflected back into our communities. This is the stuff that keeps me going!

The King of Elfland's Daughter

Lord Dunsany  

 ·   ★★★★★  5/5   ·   read Aug 13, 2023

Captivating and beautifully written, the magic in the story actually feels magical and the fantasy actually feels fantastical. This is not a fantasy novel of heart-pounding adventure with efforts to develop well-rounded, psychologically real characters; rather, the characters reflect particular threads that we recognize in our own psyche. The character's quests aren't so much heroic as they are about creating meaning in life. The novel contains thought-provoking themes, including madness, denial, desire, and the nature of time and change. It is a story of lineage and what constitutes home—the simultaneous lure of the mysterious and foreign and our fear of it.

This Place Is Best Shunned

David Erik Nelson  

 ·   ★★★★☆  4/5   ·   read Jul 13, 2023

"Here's the church, here's the steeple . . ." You'll never think of that nursery rhyme along with its associated hand motions in quite the same way! This is a great bit of cosmic horror set in Appalachia. With a mind bending use of scale and the notion of the inside being out and the outside being in, David Erik Nelson's descriptive detail of the impossible and unreal gives your imagination a warping jolt. The story's exploration of the concept of the shunned place brings attention to several cool things from the difficulties marking places of danger to the possibility that the shunned place may be MUCH bigger than we think.

The Maker of Moons

Robert W. Chambers  

 ·   ★★★★☆  4/5   ·   read Jun 11, 2023

This is a strong collection of strange stories from Chambers. I like how the first three ("The Maker of Moons," "The Silent Land," and "The Dark Water") hang together in subtle and weird ways reminiscent of the stories from The King in Yellow. (Speaking of which, I was surprised to see two references to Carcosa in "The Silent Land"). "The Crime" is a fun and comedic story with several turns that had me laughing out loud. It includes many of the things Chambers writes a lot about trout, butterflies, and romance. "A Pleasant Evening" is a chilling little tale that reminded me of an M.R. James tale--I liked it quite a bit! "The Man at the Next Table" is the most bizarre story of the collection, with the "The Maker of Moons" being a close second, just in terms of weirdness.

* = stories I particularly enjoyed.

The Maker of Moons (8 Chapters) * The Silent Land (7 Chapters) * The Dark Water (6 Chapters) * In the Name of the Most High (4 Chapters) The Boy's Sister (4 Chapters) The Crime (3 Chapters) * A Pleasant Evening (4 Chapters) * The Man at the Next Table (4 Chapters) *

Burnt Offerings

Robert Marasco  

 ·   ★★★★☆  4/5   ·   read May 30, 2023

After watching the Dan Curtis film from 1978 and liking it, I wanted to read the book it was based on. I was not disappointed! I strongly recommend the Marasco novel for anyone that enjoys the themes of The Shining. The reader gets wrapped up in the psychological struggles of the characters who are spending the summer in what turns out to be a very strange house. Unlike the sprawling Overlook Hotel, the scale of the house at 17 Shore Rd. better fits with the horrors that the Rolf family faces.

Tooth Worms

Lor Gislason  

 ·   ★★★☆☆  3/5   ·   read May 20, 2023

Oh yeah, that toothache that you have: it could be worse--much, much worse. I liked this story!

Inside Out

Lor Gislason  

 ·   ★★★★☆  4/5   ·   read May 17, 2023

Any book that describes what is left of a human as nothing more than a wad of gum gets my attention. From popping a chin zit with a mechanical pencil to a blowjob that gets sloppy in all the wrong ways, this book delivers!

The Mystery Of Choice

Robert W. Chambers  

 ·   ★★★★☆  4/5   ·   read Apr 26, 2023

I enjoyed this book! It has that Chambers kind of weirdness to it, and he does something quite eerie with the concept of shadows throughout most all of the stories collected here. The title itself is a bit of a mystery. Both the title and the epigraph that kicks off the book suggest that theme of freedom of the will may play an important role; however, the stories seem to be much more about death and the liminal space between the living and the dead rather than anything to do with choice. "The Messenger," "The White Shadow," and "The Key to Grief" were particular highlights.

The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All

Laird Barron  

 ·   ★★★★☆  4/5   ·   read Mar 17, 2023

There are some real standouts here! My favorites include "Blackwood's Baby," "Hand of Glory," "Jaws of Saturn," and "The Men from Porlock."

Frankenstein

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley  

 ·   ★★★☆☆  3/5   ·   read Feb 16, 2023

Brace yourself for handwringing gothic melodrama.

Cold Hand in Mine

Robert Aickman  

 ·   ★★★★★  5/5   ·   read Feb 12, 2023

Unique and strange--there isn't a story in this book that I don't like. Aikman's subtle moves have a way of eating at you, and the craft on display is astounding. The way he plays with voice, as in "Meeting Mr. Millar;" here the protagonist doesn't even seem to be the main character!?, and the real story is happening off the page in the apartment downstairs! The bizarre yet mundane "The Hospice" leaves you with an eerie feeling that has had lasting changes to my psyche. "Swords" might be a coming-of-age story, but who knows??? I know one thing: it's weird! And finally, when Aikman turns to telling ghost stories, he takes all the good stuff of M.R. James and adds a dash of uncanny that haunts--see "The Same Dog."

Castle of Otranto

Horace Walpole  

 ·   ★★★★☆  4/5   ·   read Feb 2, 2023

This is a delightful book; the story is intriguing and its humor surprised me. The Gothic tropes we’ve come to know are on full display: haunted castles, secrets revealed, the past impinging on the present, subterranean passages, internal conflicts externalized, even thunderous lightning strikes. We get ghosts, skeletons, and even giants! More fun than I thought it would be.

The Strange

Nathan Ballingrud  

 ·   ★★★★☆  4/5   ·   read Dec 25, 2022

Weird science fiction that leaves you with a sense of cosmic awe! There is a fascinating take on alien otherness here. It reminds me of the manner in which Adrian Tchaikovsky approaches the other, but then Ballingrud takes it a step further; he picks at a Ligotti-like paradox within our own natures: an alien mind not fathomable by us, but at the same time, a reflection of our own bifurcated and contradictory selves.

Mothwoman

Nicole Cushing  

 ·   ★★★☆☆  3/5   ·   read Nov 11, 2022

Empty, ridiculous, and grandiose. I liked it.

Hell Hound

Ken Greenhall  

 ·   ★★★★☆  4/5   ·   read Nov 6, 2022

The emotionally dark characters and the exploration of courage, trust, and strength make this story much more sophisticated than one might expect based on the cover! I’m still trying to formulate what this strange and violent coming-of-age story is all about. The interesting and complicated relationship between the humans and the dog Baxter allows for focus on the differences, if any, between human nature and beastly nature.

The Fisherman

John  Langan  

 ·   ★★★★★  5/5   ·   read Oct 15, 2022

I didn't hesitate to put this book on my favorites-shelf! Langan's prose, his incredible descriptions of the awful, and his deft handling of emotionally complicated themes all in the context of a story of cosmic horror is impressive. I'm always interested in that strand of Mythos stories that explore different psychological reactions to the weird, and I appreciated the contrast between the reactions of Abe, Dan, Rainer, and Jacob to the unbelievable.

SPOILER BELOW: There is an interesting hint of something new here: While Leviathan is awe-inspiring and affects cosmic dread in us, left to its own devices, it is unlikely to harm. The existential threat emerges from the actions of Der Fischer and his attempts to capture. With that said, the existence of the black ocean and a creature of that scale veiled just beyond our experience is horrifying.

The Sadist's Bible

Nicole Cushing  

 ·   ★★★★☆  4/5   ·   read Sep 24, 2022

I love how so many concepts get flipped around, messed with, and turned into something beautifully awful. Is this the moral landscape that Castro was thinking the liberated Old Ones will usher into the world?

Crampton

Thomas Ligotti  

 ·   ★★★★☆  4/5   ·   read Aug 6, 2022

This feels exactly like the script you’d expect if you asked Thomas Ligotti to write an X-Files episode! It includes a strange town, stage magic, clowns, mannikins, a psychic hotline, ventriloquist dummies, and plenty of philosophical pessimism. The script is terrifying, but, at the same time, the humorous banter between Scully and Mulder is spot on. Specific scenes masterfully inform the abstract themes of the episode. Illusion becomes reality when the FBI concocts a fake cover story that spins out of control. The themes of solipsistic idealism—that nothing exists except what is currently conscious—are reiterated when a restaurant eerily shuts its lights off and closes once Scully and Mulder leave the parking lot. At one point a costume is stripped away, revealing no one underneath. There is a telling dialogue where a retired FBI agent, who used to work fraud cases, fondly remembers “[b]eing able to point my finger and say, with all the authority of the Justice Department behind me, ‘Look, this is all a fake, none of this is real, it’s all a con.’” With those words, that agent is more right than perhaps he intends!

The Mirrors

Nicole Cushing  

 ·   ★★★★☆  4/5   ·   read Jul 25, 2022

I enjoyed all of the stories in this collection. The Broken Mirrors section is particularly strong with stories that encapsulate a kind of philosophical pessimism that still manages to paint the characters sympathetically. "The Cat in the Cage," "The Company Town," "Choir of Beasts," and "The Suffering Clown" were highlights for me. I'm looking forward to reading Cushing's novels now!

The King in Yellow

Robert W. Chambers  

 ·   ★★★★★  5/5   ·   read Jul 2, 2022

An all-time favorite, the stories in this book spark my imagination like none other. It is a haunting book that eats at your mind and offers peeks at madness, alternative realities, paranoia, and weird speculation. The King in Yellow raises fascinating questions of interpretation that just keeps giving and giving.

The Elementals

Michael McDowell  

 ·   ★★★★★  5/5   ·   read Jun 28, 2022

This book has an intriguing cast of characters and the horror emerges brilliantly from the interplay between the setting, the family history, and psychology of the characters. I'm looking forward to reading more McDowell.

The Terror

Arthur Machen  

 ·   ★★★☆☆  3/5   ·   read Jun 21, 2022

I did not anticipate the theory that Mr. Lewis settled on!