John Hornor Jacobs has long been a favorite author of mine, ever since first being exposed to his work in the form of the bestseller Southern Gods, and since then, he has been a horror go-to for me when I am in the mood for the truly spooky.
I am typically not a big fan of anthologies, as I am more of a novel reader, though when Murder Ballads was released and I discovered that the titular short story was a sequel to Southern Gods, I snapped the book right up.
I was pleased to discover that when the anthology is the same author, I am very much into them. John takes us through a disturbing and vivid journey through these pages, and the whole is most certainly greater than the sum of the parts, as everything meshes to create a vast and terrible world that the reader is doomed to enjoy.
"It's time to declare John Hornor Jacobs as a major author: every sentence he writes feels drawn from a pit of fire and hammered into a sword." --Daniel Kraus, New York Times bestselling co-author of
A terrifying collection of horror and crime noir from the author of Southern Gods and A Lush and Seething Hell.
Featuring ten tales, two never before in print, Murder Ballads and Other Horrific Tales is an exciting glimpse into the dark territories of the human heart.
These are coming-of-age stories. Stories of love and loss, grief and revenge. Survival and redemption. From old gods to…
I discovered Gayne C. Young through the Severed Press catalog, taking notice of him as a fellow writer in the genre world. However, it wasn't until I began reading his essays and articles in various publications that I realized how much I enjoyed his work.
He is a writer with a love of good scotch and fine cigars, an outdoorsman, travel writer, and journalist, on top of being a novelist. All of that shines through in this book especially.
He captures the Vietnam era very well, from the characters to the setting, and blends that with the Bigfoot creature feature-type story in a way that doesn't feel at all typical. If Ernest Hemingway wrote a Bigfoot novel, it would besomething like this.
This was a title that came out of nowhere. I was at a going-out-of-business sale at a bookstore and picked up the hardcover for this book.
I'll admit that it was based on cover art alone, though the synopsis ensnared me quickly.
I would call this a "folk horror coming of age novel," though it also has strong elements of military PTSD, family strife, grief, friendship, and contemporary world vs ancient world. This is marketed as a book for teens and reads that way, so while the prose is perhaps less complex, the subject matter is engaging and the story well told.
A haunting story of magic and myth, of one boy caught between worlds, and of the lengths he will travel to save those he loves.
"Dark, magical, and mysterious, Bone Jack captured me and carried me away." —Rebecca Stead, Newbery Medal-winning author of When You Reach Me and Goodbye Stranger
Times have been tough for Ash lately, and all he wants is for everything to go back to the way it used to be. Back before drought ruined the land and disease killed off the livestock. Before Ash’s father went off to war and returned carrying psychological scars. Before his…
In the heart of Wyoming, amidst the rugged wilderness of the 1860s, a bounty hunter known to some as Wendigo Joe roams the land. He hunts monsters, both supernatural and human, in a land where the only law is the one enforced with a six-gun and a bowie knife.
Joe is no ordinary gunslinger, for he is possessed by a wendigo spirit that gives him extraordinary strength and speed but also plagues him with an insatiable hunger for human flesh.
On the hunt for a showdown with Jack the Ripper, an English serial killer who seeks refuge in the American frontier, Joe crosses paths with Hannah, a fierce barmaid on the brink of a lynching by vengeful miners.
