Best Books Published in 2019 with Horror Fantasy and Sci-fi - More2Read
 

Best Books Published in 2019 with Horror Fantasy and Sci-fi

 

The Best Books Published in 2019

with Horror Fantasy & Sci-fi

 

 

The Migration by Helen Marshall

Purchase at Amazon U.S or U.K      

Review

Author Interview

 

“Intelligent, dark, wildly inventive, The Migration does more than put a new twist on the apocalyptic outbreak novel. It dares to be full of heart and full of difficult, defiant hope.”
—Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts and The Cabin at the End of the World

“Helen Marshall is a writer who creates real people in real situations, then uses the fantastic to pry her way inside her readers’ ribcages and break us wide open.”
—Neil Gaiman, international bestselling author of The Ocean at the End of the Lane

“Majestic, mysterious, and haunting story, hypnotically taking you under it wings and unraveling though the voice of seventeen year old Sophie.
The metamorphosis, the becoming, all immersive reading having you refuse to close the wings of the book or descend the tale into darkness by powering off.”
—More2Read

 

Ormeshadow by Priya Sharma

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Review

Author Interview

 

“I love the structure of Ormeshadow- each chapter a kind of story unto itself and yet all flowing smoothly together. If you like graceful writing in your fantasy fiction, depth of character, and a connection to real life issues, this is a perfect read.”
-Jeffrey Ford

“This is exactly the kind of book that I enjoy. The skillful creation of atmosphere, the touching and painful interaction of characters, the sense of creeping dread, and the sheer beauty and skillfulness of Sharma’s prose prove what I thought when I read her short stories: that she is one of the most powerful writers of fantastical fiction working today. The complexity of Ormeshadow’s narrative is underscored by Sharma’s use of THE telling detail, but not much else. This is a fully-realised world populated with living, breathing characters whose emotions positively seethe.”
-Tade Thompson

“Withholding the right amount of information keeping reader intrigued and then enchanted with mystery, the mythical, and the expectations of what will become of Gideon in this vibrant retelling of a coming of age tale.”
-More2Read

 

Pan’s Labyrinth: The Labyrinth of the Faun
by Guillermo del Toro, Cornelia Funke

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Review

 

“Charged with the monumental task of adapting an intricate film to the page, del Toro (The Shape of Water, 2018, etc.) and Funke (The Griffin’s Feather, 2018, etc.) have avoided merely describing the film and instead have elegantly recrafted the narrative…. Dark and mesmerizing.”
-Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Fans of the film will enjoy this in-depth exploration and reimagining of the source material, while newcomers will have no trouble getting into the story, though its dark themes and occasional gruesome scenes aren’t for the faint-hearted.”
-Publishers Weekly

“Perfectly unsettling and deeply felt, this reminded me of the best kind of fairytales wherein each chapter is a jewel that, when held up to the light, reframes how we see the world around us.”
-Roshani Chokshi, New York Times bestselling author of The Star-Touched Queen & Aru Shah and the End of Time

“Growing evil and growing courage, death and birth at the centre of this tale, young girl post loss of father, new father gained, with a new brother to be born a birth of importance and key to a cycle of things in motion up against a force of inherited evil.”
-More2Read

 

The Forgotten Girl by Rio Youers

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Review

(Published U.K 2019 in U.S.A 2018)

 

“Sometimes it’s the story that thrills us. Sometimes it’s the writer. Whether we know it or not, we always want both. The Forgotten Girl gives us both….halfway through…you think, ‘I’d be glued to absolutely anything Youers is spinning.'”
–Josh Malerman, author of Bird Box and Black Mad Wheel

“An absolute rocket–The Forgotten Girl is a supernatural thriller that thunders along at Mach 5 from the first page to the last. Written with a brutal lyricism, a savage wit, and a killer instinct for suspense, it’s a work that marks out Rio Youers as a big star.”
–Joe Hill, New York Times Bestselling Author of The Fireman and Heart-Shaped Box

“Rio Youers writes with a magic all his own. The Forgotten Girl is a unique and twisted thriller, loaded with suspense but also laced with beautiful heartbreak. Youers is a rare and original voice, and I can’t wait to see what he does next!”
–Christopher Golden, New York Times bestselling author of Snowblind and Dead Ringers

“A need for safety and protecting the masses from control and take over with an Orwell quote Harvey ponders, “Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing,” fates intertwined into an immersive thriller amalgamating concepts of supernatural, science fiction, and fantasy.”
–More2Read

 

The Sky Done Ripped: A Ned the Seal Adventure
by Joe R. Lansdale & Timothy Truman (Illustrator)

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Review

Author Interview

 

“Lansdale puts his gift for pulp to great use in the rollicking third installment of the adventures of Ned the Seal (after 2010’s Flaming Zeppelins)… Lansdale combines elements from classic sci-fi adventure stories and mythology into a high-energy steampunk romp. Readers will revel in the humorously purple prose and spot-on illustrations by Timothy Truman.”
–Publishers Weekly

“The Sky Done Ripped features Ned and H. G. Wells on their way home from dimension-hopping exploits with two shipwreck survivors in tow, on a lost world populated with dinosaurs, intelligent apes, an ape-man, human-eating birds, cannibals, and a Golden Fleece with curative powers. If any of that sounds intriguing, you’re primed and ready for Lansdale in full-blown pulp fiction mode.”
–Kirkus

“Planet of the Apes and Mad Max converging and into a tale that could convert to an adult rated animated film with its rip-roaring darkly humorous fully loaded fun ride escapade with the unforgettable Ned The Seal and She Who Must Be Obeyed and Eats Lunch Early.”
–More2Read

 

The Grand Dark by Richard Kadrey

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Review

 

“Kadrey has written for us a beautiful nightmare — one that’s often eerily familiar — showing a theatrical world set on the edge of war, and losing itself in the shadows of brutality and oppression.”
-Chuck Wendig, New York Times bestselling author of Wanderers

“The Grand Dark is a miracle of the old and the new: a tale of weimar decadence that is also a parable for our New Gilded Age […] It’s a fun and terrifying ride, gritty and relentless, burning with true love and revolutionary fervor.”
-Cory Doctorow, author of Radicalized and Walkaway

“Interesting characters intertwined within an ingenious concept and worldbuilding with this new world creation.
The author successfully invests interest between the reader and key player Largo, he is on a journey through fears and complexities, finding ones fate amongst the chaos before him with the seditions and the conspiratorial movements in the cause of civilized absurdities, caught in a web, a good man in his time of chaos in this tale.”
-More2Read

 

Unamerica by Cody Goodfellow

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Review

Author Interview

 

“Unamerica is madness. Timely, familiar, brilliant—but most of all, terrifying—madness.”
—Rob Hart, author of The Warehouse

“A vertiginous, conspiratorial rabbit-hole set at the end of the American century. . . Unamerica fuses the acid paranoia of Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 with the low-life and high-tech exile of John Carpenter’s Escape From New York. Goodfellow leads us down a path to salvation that’s populated with depraved conglomerates, violent criminals, bizarre shamans, cruel angels, and strangest of all. . . hope.”
—Ross E. Lockhart, editor of Cthulhu Fhtagn! and Eternal Frankenstein

“It doesn’t matter if he’s doing crime, Lovecraftian short stories, strange literary fiction disguised as madman narratives, horror, or something in between, you always get an explosive mixture of ideas and superb use of language when reading Cody Goodfellow.”
—Gabino Iglesias, author of Coyote Songs and Zero Saints

“Cody Goodfellow knows how to chill your blood. . .”
—Stephen King, author of It and The Dark Half

“An original tale with a cautionary and dispossessed version of America the reader would hope to remain forever in fiction.
A work delivered with polarised potent prose taking you by the hand into the mind of Cody Goodfellow and it is one hell of a creation factory of characters and realms.”
-More2Read

 

Rule of Capture by Christopher Brown

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Review

Author Interview

 

“This one is fresh, intelligent, and emotional, with a plot that envisions an alternate reality hard to dismiss as unreal. It’s a legal thriller, with a big twist, stirring and imaginative, brimming with skullduggery, that will have you asking: is this possible?”
-New York Times bestselling author Steve Berry

“A kind of madcap Texas Gothic dark comedy, as the Houston good ole boy network is displayed like a courtroom scene in an unpublished Hunter S Thompson novel […] It moves rocketing along at a ferocious pace–and then it lingers, haunting you.”
-Cory Doctorow, for BoingBoing

“RULE OF CAPTURE is a taut, smart legal thriller set five minutes into the future in a dystopian post-war America that looks scarily plausible from the vantage point of 2019, and marks Brown as one of our most tuned-in science fiction writers.”
-Adrian McKinty, Edgar and Ned Kelly Award-winning author of THE CHAIN and RAIN DOGS

“A needed tale with at its the core zealous advocacy, fiction writing with speculative realism in a dystopian America needing saving.”
-More2Read

 

Radicalized by Cory Doctorow

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Review

 

“Doctorow’s combination of cutting edge speculation and deep interest in the social and political possibilities of the future make this collection a must-read.”
–Booklist (starred review)

“Doctorow captures the mix of hope, fear, and uncertainty felt by those in precarious situations, set against the backdrop of intriguing futuristic landscapes.”
–Publishers Weekly

“4 Moral tales, tragedies and injustices, things that occur at conflict with the human heart all laid down with many truths in fiction.”
-More2Read

 

The Light Brigade by Kameron Hurley

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Review

 

“Hurley is one of the most important voices in the field, and Light Brigade is some of her best work. This is the real thing.”
—James SA Corey,, author of the bestselling Expanse series

“Starship Troopers meets Edge of Tomorrow. A call for us all to be the light in dark times.”
—Rebecca Roanhorse, Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author of Trail of Lightning

“[A] brutal futuristic exploration into the meaninglessness of war and the legacies of corporate greed.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“A smart, brutal, and structurally sophisticated military science fiction tale with a time travel twist.”
—Publishers Weekly

“..the complexities being part of the light brigade, the truth of the war, and the corrupt, who are the real enemies, all dealt with with careful crated prose that leaves you wanting more, to expand more, and continue with another episode of this pensive military sci-fi tale with the light brigade.”
—More2Read

 

Recursion by Blake Crouch

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Review

 

“A fantastic read. It’s not often I plow through a book in two days. But Blake Crouch’s action-packed, brilliantly unique Recursion had me up late and shirking responsibilities until I had devoured the last page.”
—Andy Weir
 
“Blake Crouch has invented his own brand of page-turner–fearlessly genre-bending, consistently surprising, and determined to explode the boundaries of what a thriller can be.”
–Karin Slaughter

“Great concept used in this tale with careful crafted storytelling techniques in a deep provoking tale, also maybe trigger stress too, one that would have you thinking of the past and what could be rewritten, prepare yourself for the fates of the chair in this mesmerizing mind storm of redoings and fates.”
-More2Read

 

The Devil Aspect by Craig Russell

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Review

Author Interview

 

“A tour de force: a clever and visceral thriller with a one-two-three knockout of an ending that left me dazed. The brooding backdrop of a Czechoslovakia on the brink of World War II just adds another layer of atmosphere to an already nightmarish read.”
–Lincoln Child, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Deep Storm

“Deep, dark, and twisty, The Devil Aspect will keep you up all night reading . . . With all the lights on. Russell has created a gripping masterpiece of a thriller!”
—Alex Grecian, New York Times bestselling author of The Yard

“Steeped in the chilling folklore of Eastern Europe and echoing the dread of a barbaric war to come, The Devil Aspect snatches the reader by the lapels for a thrilling, twisting trip through the darkest corridors of the human mind.”
—Daniel H. Wilson, New York Times bestselling author of Robopocalypse

“A slow burning insidious malevolent tale, successfully Impregnating the subconscious of the readers mind with the devils aspects and ensuing rumination on perceptions.”
-More2Read

 

A Cosmology of Monsters by Shaun Hamill

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Review

Author Interview

 

“Shaun Hamill’s A Cosmology of Monsters brilliantly combines the mythos of H.P. Lovecraft with a contemporary story of a family under threat of destruction from supernatural forces. It succeeds because these are good, likeable people that we root for; they could be our neighbors. Horror only works when we care for the people involved, and because we care for the Turners, their nightmare becomes ours. Hamill’s prose is simple, and simply beautiful. If John Irving ever wrote a horror novel, it would be something like this. I loved it, and think you will, too.”
—Stephen King

“A monster stalks a family across generations; a hidden city beckons from beyond perception; trauma and human frailty and loss bear their terrible fangs. . . . A Cosmology of Monsters is as weird and compelling and ambitious a horror novel as you could possibly want.”
—Carmen Maria Machado, author of Her Body and Other Parties

“This world he has created in a debut novel is not an easy task, he has done a great job of creating this world for the reader to escape into, expounding on many complexities and fragilities of the Turner family their tragedies with common and uncommon creatures.”
—More2Read

 

A Hawk in the Woods by Carrie Laben

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Review

 

“At once sly and grim, soberingly real and darkly fantastical, the story of the Waite sisters will haunt readers like an eerie old folk song.”
-Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“In this uncanny world, the darkest moments don’t come from the supernatural horror but from the realization that the Waites’ underlying dysfunction is a near and dear part of our own.”
-Foreword Reviews (starred review)

“A Hawk in the Woods is wonderfully dark and spellbinding, mixing the road novel, family drama, time travel, cosmic horror, and maybe even a little Heathers. Carrie Laben is an original, compelling new voice. Consider me a fan for life.”
-Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts

“Writing about death, crimes past, kin and sisterhood, with nature and the birds in the framework of cosmic horror.”
-More2Read

 

Cricket Hunters by Jeremy Hepler

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Review

 

“The Cricket Hunters, a crew of young once, they started off five, did everything together, righting wrongs, or at least tried to one could say, then they aged, married, and then they were less, and not a band of young hunters, this is their story along with all of being young to adulthood with love, spells, marriage, death, betrayal, disappearances and missing.”
-More2Read

 

Everything Is Beautiful and Nothing Bad Can Ever Happen Here

by Michael Wehunt

Buy From Publisher @ http://www.nightscapepress.pub

Review

 

Forty percent of all sales of this eBook will go to support the Southern Poverty Law Center! The Southern Poverty Law Center is dedicated to fighting hate and bigotry and to seeking justice for the most vulnerable members of our society.

This is a ghost story. It has those that scratch at bedroom doors and tap at windows, wanting to be let in. It has those that haunt all of us, long after the others tire of the scratching. For some, doors are not enough.

“That old fierce hate and rage shows itself in the narrative of one short lucid nightmare with letters, nouns, verbs, and characters, death is calling and one small heroism.”
-More2Read

 

The Half-Freaks by Nicole Cushing

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Review

 

“The Half-Freaks is definitely a flagpole in the tent of the strange. It shines as a beacon to those of us that dig the weird and also as an open door for someone that might be new to this type of horror.”
-Matt Brandenburg, High Fever Press

“THE HALF-FREAKS is guaranteed to be like nothing you’ve ever read before. Take that as a dare, if you will. I did! Highly recommended!”
-Char’s Horror Corner

“There are plenty of places to go to find good horror, and even fewer to find great horror. If you are looking to go beyond that and find horror that is pushing the boundaries of not only what horror is but what it can do, the venues become even slimmer still. It likely won’t be coming from one of the big 5 publishing houses. You won’t find it at the book store next to your departure gate and it probably won’t be written by a guy that has a mansion in Maine. To find it, I had to go to a press owned by a former ventriloquist and an author who lives in post-industrial Indiana. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
-Mike D, Signal Horizon

“A fabrication of Harry before you.
Immortalized with stark complexities of one unique Harry…Enter at your peril this divine dark comedy of Nicole Cushing conjuring.”
-More2Read

 

Song for the Unraveling of the World by Brian Evenson

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Review

Author Interview

 

“Evenson walks the literary vs genre tightrope, uses minimalist prose to great effect, and has a sharp eye for application of conventions.”
—Signal Horizon

“To read Evenson is to be privy to a precise, vivid, brilliant unpicking of the everyday—and its others.”
—China Miéville

“Brian Evenson’s bold and unique short fictions—equal parts surrealism, ontology, and dread—consistently lead the reader to truly shocking discoveries that are as disturbing as they are oddly beautiful. Song for the Unraveling of the World is a map of our paranoia- and anxiety-riddled, existentially challenged, pre-apocalyptic times.”
—Paul Tremblay

“Complexities, oddities, and fates, taken to different realms and worlds, a myriad of characters created with various themes including the wonderfully weird involved, visionary works, enter The Brian Evenson Zone!”
—More2Read

 

Wounds: Six Stories from the Border of Hell
by Nathan Ballingrud

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Review

Author Interview

 

“Nathan Ballingrud is one of my favorite short fiction writers.”
—Jeff VanderMeer, New York Times bestselling author of Annihilation and Borne

“Ballingrud’s work isn’t like any other.”
—Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing

“Nathan Ballingrud is one of my favorite contemporary authors and any time he’s got a new book out I run to the front of the line. His work is elegant and troublingly, wonderfully disturbing.”
– Victor LaValle, award-winning author of THE CHANGELING 

“Nathan Ballingrud’s brilliant fiction brims with imagination, integrity (I do not use that term lightly), and an authentic world-weary dread that bores directly into your heart. With Wounds you’ll gladly follow Nathan to Hell and (maybe) back.”
– Paul Tremblay, award-winning author of THE CABIN AT THE END OF THE WORLD and A HEAD FULL OF GHOSTS

“A literary gothic grotesque extravaganza extraordinary horror inferno walking living breathing ballads of hell in the narrative.
Consuming stories vividly evoked and careful crafted with arcaneness taken the reader the precipice of malevolence with aspects of an inferno conjured and envisioned by the author.”
-More2Read

 

The Growing Things and Other Stories
by Paul Tremblay

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Review

Author Interview

 

“One of the best collections of the 21st century.”
—Stephen King

“It is a terrible thing to read a Paul Tremblay story. . . Terrible because you know, going in, that it’s probably going to mess you up. That his stories and his words have this way of getting under your skin. Of crawling inside you like bugs and just . . . living there. They become indistinguishable from memory. . . It’s terrible to read these stories, but you do it anyway. . . They’re fun because they’re dangerous. Because, word by word and title by title, I can feel the damage accruing. The scars.”
—NPR

“These frighteningly imaginative slices of horror are often far more chilling than their relatively mundane inspirations. . . . . From high fantasy to monsters to (literally) Hellboy, [Growing Things has] something for everyone who digs things that go bump in the night.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Paul Tremblay has mastered creepy, interstitial spaces with his own brand of supernatural-adjacent horror. This collection proves again that in any form, at any length, Tremblay is a must-read.”
—Chuck Wendig, New York Times bestselling author of Wanderers and Invasive

“A myriad of bat s**t craziness presented before the reader, hypnotically evoking within the reader all kinds of things, growing things, ones of fears and longings, and with that maybe some courage with all the terrification before you with nicely crafted voices and stories.”
—More2Read

 

Sing Your Sadness Deep by Laura Mauro

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Review

 

“Laura Mauro’s Sing Your Sadness Deep is a beautiful foray into the strange and uncanny. She digs deep into the psyche of her characters, revelling in the mysteries that propel them through their confrontations with the liminal and the bizarre. A sublime and haunting debut.”
—Simon Strantzas, author of Nothing is Everything

“Laura Mauro does indeed sing her sadness deep, with assured melodies, strange resonances and beautiful harmonies. This is just her first collection—I can’t wait to see what she will do next.”
—Priya Sharma, author of All The Fabulous Beasts

“Laura Mauro’s work exists in the hard space where the mythic collides with the everyday, where fairy tales transform into stories that feel modern and urgent. These are horror stories, yes—but it’s horror born from a cry for compassion and understanding. Disturbing and heartfelt, beautiful yet grotesque, they reveal strange new worlds whilst shining a light on the world we think we know.”
—Robert Shearman, author of Tiny Deaths

“Immersive tales, concise and eloquent, weird and wonderful creations.”
-More2Read

 

This House of Wounds by Georgina Bruce

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Review

 

“An astonishing, totally absorbing debut collection. Edgy, disturbing and delicious in equal parts. Georgina Bruce plays with myth and horror beautifully.”
– Kerry Hadley-Pryce, Author of Gamble, and The Black Country

“The stories in This House of Wounds strike me as both an emotional and intellectual examination of pain, from how it spreads and is passed on to others to how it can easily turn us into different, crueller creatures. Each act formed in pain leads to another, then another, and this makes for twisted, beautiful reading. Georgina Bruce is a courageous and compelling writer.”
– Aliya Whiteley, Author of The Loosening Skin, and The Beauty

“There is a rhythm in the prose of these tragedy tales, grace and beauty with the darkly poetic, horrifically human tales treading darkly into other realms, nightmarish and dreamlike at times, gothic artistry in twisted minutes, snippets from a myriad of characters, a strange and haunting world of wounds and feelings before the reader with memorable characters from blood spilling queens to princesses, crows and shadows.”
-More2Read

 

Sefira and Other Betrayals by John Langan

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Review

Author Interview

 

“John Langan is a beast of a contemporary horror writer. Sefira and Other Betrayals would be career-defining for some authors. In Langan’s case, this is merely his best work this decade.”
—Laird Barron, author of Black Mountain

“John Langan is a Leviathan of modern weird fiction.”
—Paul St. John Mackintosh, L. A. Review of Books

“John Langan is one of the few great wizards who not only understands but as mastered the magic of the darkly weird. His prose is both beautiful, fantastical dream and terrifying nightmare, subtle in its delivery and staggering in its implication. In Sefira and Other Betrayals, readers stand on the shore of a strange sea full of monsters, with its tide of secrets and emotions tugging the ground out slowly from underneath. Undoubtedly, readers can’t help but be drawn in by its surreal and inexorable undertow.”
—Mary SanGiovanni, author of Behind the Door and host of Cosmic Shenanigans podcast

“With Sefira and Other Betrayals John Langan cements the fact that he is one of the strongest voices in literary horror. His willingness to tell a story that pulls no punches is refreshing. The fact that his prose is so richly textured is beautiful. It’s a divine combination that is resent in all of works and I love and envy the man’s talent.”
—James A. Moore, author of Boomtown and the Seven Forges fantasy series.  

“He knows how to conjure darkness in a tale, with many story ingredients, spiralling and descending into something unfathomable, whipping the words and evoking the obscure.”
—More2Read

 

Nox Pareidolia
edited by Robert S. Wilson

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Review

 

“New artistry from great voices, perceptions old and new, interjecting the reader into new zones, taking you to the precipice of fears, perplexities, and realms colliding, a phenomenon of weirdness and horrification before you with pareidolia.
These tales that follow are the ones that worked from me and reviewed of the many in the collection.”
-More2Read

The best shorts in this collection:

Watch Me Burn with the Light of Ghosts by Paul Jessup

Immolation by Kristi DeMeester

Venom by S.P. Miskowski

Strident Caller by Laird Barron 

When the Nightingale Devours the Stars by Gwendolyn Kiste

The Room Above by Brian Evenson

Hello by Michael Wehunt

Bag and baggage by Greg Sisco

 

Cutting Edge
edited by Joyce Carol Oates

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Review

 

“This collection of feminist crime tales edited by the one and only Joyce Carol Oates is marketed to ‘readers who are sick and tired of the status quo, or who just want to have a little bit of fun at the expense of a crumbling patriarchal society.’ Well, isn’t that everyone?”
–CrimeReads, included in the Most Anticipated Crime Books of 2019

“The 15 stories and six poems in this slim yet weighty all-original noir anthology–contributors include Margaret Atwood and Edwidge Danticat–are razor-sharp and relentless in their portrayal of life, offering snapshots of dysfunction, everyday toil, and brief joy…Each story sears but does not cauterize, leaving protagonists and readers raw. As Oates points out in her introduction, and the stories hauntingly evoke, noir’s strength has very little to do with man-centric plots and everything to do with female ascendance. Fans of contemporary crime fiction won’t want to miss this one.”
–Publishers Weekly

“‘Is there a distinctive female noir?’ asks Oates in her introduction. This collection may not settle that question, but it goes a long way toward supplying candidates for an emerging canon. There are 15 stories here, all but one of them new, and half a dozen new poems…the average [story] is high enough to satisfy readers of all genders.”
–Kirkus Reviews

The best shorts in this collection:

One of These Nights by Livia Llewellyn

Thief By Steph Cha

A History of the World in Five Objects by S.J. Rozan

The Hunger by Lisa Lim

Too Many Lunatics by Lucy Taylor

An Early Specimen By Elizabeth McCracken

Impala by S. A. Solomon

 

 

 

Reviewed by Lou Pendergrast on 31 December 2019