Happy (very belated) New Year! I had hoped to have this post up much earlier, but I got a bad cold starting on Christmas Eve and it just would not go away. I don’t think I started to feel normal again until about halfway through January. But late as it is, I could not pass up the opportunity to discuss my favorites of 2023 since I read some wonderful books and found something else fantasy-related that I absolutely love (which […]

Today’s Women in SF&F Month guest is Tori Bovalino! Her YA debut novel, The Devil Makes Three, is a gothic horror/mystery thriller story in which a summer job at the school library leads to unintentionally freeing a demon from an ancient grimoire. The Devil Makes Three will be out on August 10, and her next novel, a retelling of Christina Rosetti’s “Goblin Market” titled Not Good for Maidens, is scheduled for release next year. On the Amorphous Nature of Horror […]

Today’s guest is speculative fiction writer Alexis Henderson! Her first published novel, The Year of the Witching, combines the horrors of mysterious witches in a spooky forest with the atrocities occurring in a puritanical society—and kept me riveted, even when I was having difficulty focusing in 2020! The Year of the Witching was also a Goodreads Choice Awards finalist in both the Best Horror and Best Debut Novel categories last year. Writing Dark Fiction: An Exercise In Self-Acceptance I often […]

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Note: You may want to read this review on the website (instead of by email or feed reader). There are spoiler tags toward the end that should be hidden on the website but may be visible elsewhere. Terror is twofold in The Year of the Witching, Alexis Henderson’s dark fantasy/Gothic horror debut novel, with its story involving mysterious witch spirits as well as the everyday atrocities that occur in a patriarchal […]

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Silvia Moreno-Garcia weaves Mexican history and supernatural elements into an increasingly unnerving tale of Gothic horror in her latest novel, Mexican Gothic. Set in the 1950s, the spookiness unfolds in a creepy mansion owned by a creepy family in a mountain town inspired by Real del Monte, a place with architecture influenced by the British who arrived in the nineteenth century. Like the British who left their mark on Real del Monte, the fictional […]

Falling in Love with Hominids contains eighteen short stories by acclaimed author Nalo Hopkinson, whose accolades include a World Fantasy Award, a John W. Campbell Award for Best First Novel, a Locus Award for Best First Novel, a Philip K. Dick Award nomination, a New York Times Notable Book, two Sunburst Awards, a Gaylactic Spectrum Award, and a Prix Aurora Award. This collection also contains a foreword explaining the title’s origins and a brief introduction for each story, also written by the […]