What if Edgar Allan Poe time-travelled and wrote an episode of GIRLS, from one of the male character‘s POV addressing one of the female characters indirectly in the narrative? You might then have Caroline Kepnes‘ YOU. This is a blow-off-work-or-sleep-to read-just-one-more-chapter book. Kepnes creates a compelling unreliable narrator in Joe Goldberg. Fantastic summer read!

AMERICAN WOLF is one of the best books I have read lately. The Yellowstone National Park wolves and the story of their their post-90s re-introduction are compelling, and the politics surrounding their story are unbelievable. I bought this book in Silver Gate and read it while at Yellow Stone National Park. Beautiful.

What a gorgeous blood-soaked noir! Truly moving plights of these six characters as they struggle against horrors on both sides of the border. A must read!

Can‘t just read a few pages; Caroline Kepnes‘ You has got me behind on post-holiday morning work! You got me, Joe.

Female-centric cosmic-body-horror novel that gets effectively gross real quick but *still* manages a slow-burn of what-the-hell-is-happening-here? I just had to keep reading. Bonus that this little book is gorgeous w/ Betty Rocksteady's own Max Fleischer-eque orignal art--on the cover and on the INSIDE! Kudos to Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing for their production of this beautiful little book. A must read for those who love the weird.

‪ Cats love horror. Ole, Winifred, & I are digging #LostFilms from @pmmpublishing - wow! #amreading #horror #horrormovies #horrorreads #horrorbooks #halloween #halloweeniscoming

What a happy-sad moment, browsing and finding a book I love but have already read. Wish I could discover this again! This book is the DEFINITIVE zombie book: scary, suspenseful, beautiful, and profound. Highly recommend this book!

Book 3 of THE SOUTHERN REACH TRILOGY beautifully brings together multiple timelines and character points-of-view, drawing the series to a satisfying conclusion, yet leaving the door open to this world and for the reader to see connections to our own possible futures. This series is a masterpiece of speculative fiction.

Current read for over-the-pond journey. So. Good. #amreading #SouthernReachTrilogy

What if William S. Burroughs wrote for THE X-FILES and TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN, and that may come close to describing AUTHORITY. Not the typical spy thriller. What a delight that the beauty and weird of ANNIHILATION are still there in AUTHORITY—only in intriguing differences. The writing still has moments of poetry and the downward spiral of what‘s happening kept me reading furiously. Looking forward to Book 3: ACCEPTANCE.

Speculative fiction? Weird fiction? Science fiction? Horror? This poetic & original book has all these elements, but its sum is bigger than the parts. A compelling premise: an expedition of women sent into the mysterious Area X by a government organization, it‘s told from the POV of the expedition biologist. Jeff VanderMeer creates an intimate narrative where the reader is right by the biologist‘s side as the mysteries of Area X unfold. Loved it!

Lucas isn‘t sure about Merricat Blackwood. “Check the sugar bowls!”

“Desolation tries to colonize you,” ANNIHILATION.
This book has grabbed me. Can‘t get any work done. I keep picking it up and reading Jeff VanderMeer‘s beautiful book.

Often touted as a challenger to Professor Tolkien‘s LOTR books, this is a challenging read. Rightly classified as a Gothic rather than a fantasy, the book has moments of sheer gobsmacking descriptions and character names & other moments of frustrating minutiae. Steerpike is not a likable or noble protagonist. And yet. After reading some other books since, this book stays with me. While my initial review was not as positive, but book stays w/ me.

First day of vacation & reading great stuff. Why have I waited to read this!?!

Today‘s reading, a Gothic-fantasy delight. #LazySunday

Joe Hill, post-HEART SHAPED BOX & 20th CENTURY GHOSTS, before he was the brand-name he is now, wrote this graphic novel, first in the series that introduces the Locke family, and their return to Key House after SOMETHING HAPPENS. I am forcing myself not to burn through this series, but this haunted house full of doors and secrets has me hooked!

5/5: Can we ever escape our past? How much of our parents are in us? Part horror, part coming-of-age/family story, this “haunted house” tale is a wholly original Gothic ghost story, set in a modular home in the west. I love the Native American protagonist and the relationships in the family. The narrative is sometimes wry, and often unnerving and ultimately scary and poignant. Looking for something unique? This is a must-read!

RayCat contemplates the divided human heart in the short fiction of Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Winner of the Bram Stoker Horror Novel of 2017, this is a relevant thriller that veers quickly into horror! Gripping read!

As an American Renaissance nerd, I love this book! Great characterizations and style, and so fun to find the actual historical references interwoven deftly with the author's invention. It's the book I wish i had written!

I dare you to read this and not pass it to friends! You have to talk about it once you have read it! A must-read Gothic thriller that will keep you guessing!

Mrs. Mia Wallace loves a literary thriller. And so do I! I'M THINKING OF ENDING THINGS by Iain Reid is a fantastic Gothic thriller that I am passing around to friends! #amreading

Been savoring this book & just finished it. Been a long time since I have read a book like this that kept surprising me, continuing to turn with characters doing the unexpected yet never out of character. Passages of sheer poetry. And Luz is a female protagonist that I adore! Wow!

Justin Evans creates an old Gothic ghost tale in a contemporary setting. The White Devil has the psychological aspects of The Turn of the Screw, the fish-out-of-water American protagonist has shades of Holden Caulfield, and the setting of the Harrow School gives Anglophiles a tad Brideshead Revisited (sans the nostalgia). The mystery surrounds Lord Byron's dangerous & scandalous past as a student at the school--a past that haunts the protagonist.

What Anne Rice did for vampires with INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE, Glen Duncan does for werewolves in this book. Like Rice, Duncan writes an often-lyrical book that transcends genre fiction and asks those "big questions" that I contend are often done better through genre conventions. By examining the monster, we examine our humanity. Duncan, carefully driving the internal (compelling and funny) narrative with an external pot-boiler plot.

In the tradition of Nathaniel Hawthorne, HORNS explores the secrets and hypocrisies of the human heart, and in the tradition of Edgar Allan Poe, we have a helluva first-person narrator. This is Joe Hill at his most wicked-funny and truly moving.

I found this book both tedious & brilliant. But as I read, I began to dog-ear pages & when I finished, I returned to them, re-reading & underlining passages. POSSESSION deals with a wide range of themes: plot & story, literary criticism & academia, sex, love, money & class, through multiple points-of-view & clever acts of literary ventriloquism: Byatt invents 2 Victorian poets, with complete poems, no less! An English nerd's book!

Christopher Buehlman's protagonist, Andrew Blankenship, is a recovering alcoholic magus, surrounded by a delightful group of friends, & some terrifying enemies. Most outstanding is Buehlman's imaginative takes on magic use & magic items: the most original depictions I have read. If you want to take your wizards out of Hogwarts and give them adult problems and high magical stakes, this is your read! I love this funny & scary book. Read it.

A fantastic collection of weird tales. For fans of Joe Hill's Twentieth Century Ghosts, like Hill, Kelly Link grounds many of her stories in the real world or one close to ours. But don't get too comfortable. She either subtly or immediately swerves into strange territory. Wholly original premises, engaging protagonists, and often funny or poignant resolutions. Link, where have you been all my life? The short story lives!