Category: Thriller

Vampires of El Norte by Isabel Cañas

personby Amy Casey
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Vampires of El Norte by Isabel Cañas

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Wow. Isabel Cañas’ novel VAMPIRES OF EL NORTE is a stunning, searing book. Speculative fiction can reveal truth in ways that realism simply can’t, and Cañas uses that to her full advantage in a book balancing sweeping romance with seething horror in the Rio Grande Valley of the 1840s, as the shifting border between Mexico and America was being redrawn in blood.

While the historical basis of the book is nearly two centuries in the past, it is markedly relevant, vampires and all. As Cañas mentions in her final note, “…I wrote this book for my family. For every one of us has been asked variations of the question ‘when did your family come to this country?’ […]
I have realized that the answer is, in fact, a question itself. A question that became the heart of this book.
‘When did this country come to us?’ “



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The Stars Did Wander Darkling by Colin Meloy

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The Stars Did Wander Darkling by Colin Meloy

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Colin Meloy’s superbly eerie middle adult fiction doesn’t shy away from unanswered questions or grotesque imagery. THE STARS DID WANDER DARKLING is a wonderfully creepy tale inspired by 1980s American small town life and what I can only assume are some of the weirder wells of Meloy’s expansive imagination. Really appreciate how he trusts his readers to spin part of the web. Favorite character: Randy, the horror-movie obsessed video store owner.



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Book Review: Model Home by Rivers Solomon

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Model Home by Rivers Solomon

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Horror is done so incredibly right in MODEL HOME by Rivers Solomon. Uncanny, frighteningly heavy, intimately empathetic, and viscerally terrifying in about fifteen different ways, this novel feels unescapable in a way that only a masterful writer like Solomon could achieve. MODEL HOME is equal parts haunted house hell, seething social commentary, psychological thriller, and warning sign.



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Book Review: Monsters We Have Made by Lindsay Starck

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Monsters We Have Made by Lindsay Starck

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Graceful literary writing pervades Lindsay Starck’s monster story MONSTERS WE HAVE MADE. Part horror, part psychological thriller, this novel layers fact, fiction, and figment together into nuanced character study and a riveting pursuit for the truth.

P.s. Always excited to read a midwest author!



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Book Review: Eye of a Needle by Jessica Lynn

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Eye of a Needle by Jessica Lynn

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


EYE OF A NEEDLE is a searing short form debut from author Jessica Lynn. It’s addictive to the point that you’ll blaze through it in one sitting. Tension on simmer and sumptuous prose explores religious trauma and the merits of gut instinct. Southern gothic meets supernatural in this tale drenched in dread, blood, and sticky summer heat.



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Book Review: A History of Wild Places by Shea Ernshaw

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A History of Wild Places by Shea Ernshaw

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Shea Ernshaw brings a painter’s touch to this twisty-turny plot joyride that takes elements of mystery, fantasy, and horror, puts them in the woods, and sees how they all get along when cut off from the outside world.



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Book Review: Whalefall by Daniel Kraus

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Whalefall by Daniel Kraus

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


The writing in Daniel Kraus’ WHALEFALL is assertively top-tier. A visceral, blood-pumping story with perfect emotional pitch, this novel is a breathless page-turner. I especially enjoyed Kraus’ strong research base which creates a very real-feeling crisis (believe it or not, this is a realistic “swallowed by a whale” tale). Science and poetry take turns shining through interesting action writing that plunges the readers into depths of multiple kinds.



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Book Review: Fish Gather to Listen, edited by Jes McCutchen, Victoria Moore, and H.V. Patterson

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Fish Gather to Listen by Jes McCutchen

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


A memorable collection from a dynamic new press thematically unified around that most primal of fears: deep, murky water occupied by things unknown. The grotesque swims parallel to the lyrical in Fish Gather to Listen. There is much here to disturb and delight, often simultaneously.



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Book review: Hummingbird Salamander by Jeff VanderMeer

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Hummingbird Salamander by Jeff VanderMeer

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I absolutely adore Jeff VanderMeer’s work. This is the eighth book of his that I’ve read, and the first I’ve ever disliked. Still love Jeff, he remains one of my favorite authors, but this was a slog. I wish I had more to say, but that is that.



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