Here’s a small selection of the horror and genre news that caught our eye during the last week …
Available now from author Tananarive Due and Gallery / Saga Press, The Reformatory
Twelve-year-old Robbie Stephens, Jr., is sentenced to six months at the Gracetown School for Boys, a reformatory, for kicking the son of the largest landowner in town in defense of his older sister, Gloria. So begins Robbie’s journey further into the terrors of the Jim Crow South and the very real horror of the school they call The Reformatory.
Robbie has a talent for seeing ghosts, or haints. But what was once a comfort to him after the loss of his mother has become a window to the truth of what happens at the reformatory. Boys forced to work to remediate their so-called crimes have gone missing, but the haints Robbie sees hint at worse things. Through his friends Redbone and Blue, Robbie is learning not just the rules but how to survive. Meanwhile, Gloria is rallying every family member and connection in Florida to find a way to get Robbie out before it’s too late.
The Reformatory is a haunting work of historical fiction written as only American Book Award–winning author Tananarive Due could, by piecing together the life of the relative her family never spoke of and bringing his tragedy and those of so many others at the infamous Dozier School for Boys to the light in this riveting novel. Available now in eBook, paperback, hardcover and audiobook editions, you can grab your copy here.
Arriving 7 December from writer Tyler Jones and Dark Lit Press, Heavy Oceans
From Tyler Jones, author of Midas and Burn the Plans, one of Esquire’s Best Horror Books of 2022, comes a story of deep sea terror and cosmic horror.
Struggling with the pressures of being a new father and the weight of regrets, Jamie Fletcher travels to Hawaii in hopes of connecting with his estranged brother, Eric.
After a shocking act of violence, the brothers end up on a fishing boat–along with the captain and his son–in the middle of the ocean, where they encounter an uncanny and terrifying phenomenon that will signal a shift in the evolution of the world. Available to pre-order now in eBook, with phyiscal editions to follow soon, you can guarantee your copy here.
Out now from authors D. Matthew Urban and Holly Lyn Walrath, and Tenebrous Press, Split Scream Volume 4
Split Scream has a new home at Tenebrous Press! Editor Alex Ebenstein brings his acclaimed split-novelette series back for a fourth round featuring:
Nonsense Words by D. Matthew Urban: An aging professor of ancient history strikes up a friendship with her new colleague, Dr. Paul Duncan, a scholar of undecipherable inscriptions. As she finds herself drawn into Dr. Duncan’s life—his brilliant wife and mystical daughters, frightened students and uncanny associates—darker forces behind his research emerge, plunging her into a nightmare of mythical absurdity and ritualistic death. Dark academia meets cosmic horror in Nonsense Words, where the incomprehensible is granted a conjured form—but too much imagination can be a dangerous thing. If the cosmos is nonsense, merely a divine or demonic joke, will she live to have the last laugh, or will she die a punchline?
Bone Light by Holly Lyn Walrath: An icy surf batters Bone Light as its beacon calls to weary souls at sea. This edifice built of bone and wretchedness sits atop a cursed rock, surrounded by death, watched over by the ghosts of light-keepers past. Their records tell of the inhospitable environment, but it is Mary Long’s writings that show the heart. Misfortune necessitates the arrival of her dear Ida, laying bear to the obstacles that shaped their history—a husband and taboo among them. These log entries illuminate Mary’s world—the banality, the heartbreak, the magic. In Bone Light, a beacon of death might finally be the thing to give life to a long-denied romance. Available now in eBook and paperback editions, you can grab your copy here.
Coming 28 November from writer Lisa Wakely and The Book Guild, Hexed
After sixteen-year-old Harriet Flynn trips over an ancient gravestone etched with strange markings in a seventeenth-century holiday village and reads the inscription, she and her friends are alarmed to wake up with supernatural powers.
Having magical abilities is fun at first, but when a series of accidents cause the group to become frightened, Harriet becomes determined to find out what’s going on. While investigating the history of the gravestone they came across that night, Harriet realises she has unwittingly awakened a centuries-old, deadly curse and she is the only one who can put an end to it – and she has less than a day.
With time running out, Harriet must find the true magic key, to save herself and the ones she loves. Available for pre-order now in paperback, with other editions to follow, you can guarantee your copy here.
KEV HARRISON
