Short Fiction Friday: Seize the Night edited by Christopher Golden

Vampires have had a tough time of it lately. Burnout, I mean. They were the HOT topic for quite some time and then the reading public seemed to lose their taste for them. It happens. A glut of books all on one subject generally does mean readers are going to sour to it eventually.

But even if you're in this boat, the new Seize the Night anthology is so worth your time!

The premise of the anthology is simply to make vampires scary once again. The authors (a FANTASTIC lineup) take their bloodsuckers from mythology and folklore all around the world, creating a collection of truly frightening tales that is a serious genre standout!

And did I mention they're scary vampires? Yeah, I'm not kidding. These authors took their job seriously in bringing vampires back to their terrifying (and deserving) roots!

Scott Smith (SCOTT SMITH!!!) kicks off the collection with what has to be hands down one of my favorite stories of late: a young woman takes a job as a caretaker for an elderly couple and things don't go very well for her. Seanan McGuire's outing is equally excellent and will make you reconsider the wonder of fireflies. Kelley Armstrong tackles the viral apocalypse and the decline of humanity in her tale. And John Ajvide Lindqvist offers up a tale that may possibly be set in the same universe as his wildly popular Let the Right One In and follow up short "Let the Old Dreams Die." These are just a few of my favorites - it really is overall a fabulous collection and each of the stories is brand spanking new for the collection.

Here's the full TOC for you:

"Up in Old Vermont" by Scott Smith
"Something Lost, Something Gained" by Seanan McGuire
"On the Dark Side of Sunlight Basin" by Michael Koryta
"The Neighbors" by Sherrilyn Kenyon
"Paper Cuts" by Gary A. Braunbeck
"Miss Fondevant" by Charlaine Harris
"In a Cavern, in a Canyon" by Laird barron
"Whiskey and Light" by Dana Cameron
"We Are All Monsters Here" by Kelley Armstrong
"May the End be Good" by Tim Lebbon
"Mrs. Popkin" by Dan Choan and Lynda Barry
"Direct Report" by Leigh Perry
"Shadow and Thirst" by John Langan
"Mother" by Joe McKinney
"Blood" by Robert Shearman
"The Yellow Death" by Lucy A. Snyder
"The Last Supper" by Brian Keene
"Separator" by Rio Youers
"What Kept You So Long?" by John Ajvide Lindqvist
"Blue Hell" by David Wellington

This is - as with Slasher Girls & Monster Boys from last week - a seriously fantastic collection of tales. It's one to savor, too. Rather than zoom through it, as I was tempted to, I saved it, reading a tale or two a day and in between other reads. It stretched out the scary and tempered the terror a bit.

Trust me, readers, this is a collection you want, need, and have to get your hands on!

Rating: 5/5

Daughters Unto Devils by Amy Lukavics

Amanda is pregnant and afraid. She'd planned to run away rather than face her parents and tell them the truth. After all, to lay with a man out of wedlock is a sin. There's at least some chance her father may well turn her out after learning what she's done. 

But before she's forced to face it, Amanda's father decides it's time for the family to move. The coming winter is to be a hard one and he doesn't think they can weather another like the last in their current settlement. He's heard there's a place in the valley with free land and abandoned cabins that can be claimed and has decided this is where they'll go.

When they arrive, the indeed find a cabin that suits their needs perfectly. But before they can move in they discover something awful has left its stain - literally. Amanda's father is determined, though, and believes all the cabin needs is a good cleaning and a new floor. 

Amanda knows different. Because Amanda knows all about evil and sin. 

Cat Winters blurbed this by one saying, "Imagine Stephen King writing Little House on the Prairie." It's a pretty astute comparison, readers. Daughters Unto Devils is creepy! And considering it's set during pioneer times, by default it fits my own rural/folk horror obsession of late (it's a thing, it should be a BIGGER thing).

The difficulties faced by early pioneers are known. Heck, the beginning of the book reads a bit like playing The Oregon Trail, with the reader just waiting for someone to come down with dysentery or something! The hardships Amanda and her family have already suffered are bad enough, which is why her father brings them off the mountain in the first place.

Unfortunately there is no solace to be found on the prairie.

As if Amanda didn't have enough to be worried about, she hints at an incident that occurred the previous winter that's left everyone on edge around her. Without knowing what it is, the reader is left to wonder if maybe she's gone off the deep end or is communing with evil spirits - or anything in between for that matter.

And yeah, a cabin drenched in blood! Holy freaking crap! I would not be sleeping there.

I thought Daughters Unto Devils was brilliant and awesome. It does have a slower pace and a more gradual build, but by the time you get to the end it's like a great big slap in the face full of scary!

Given that Amy Lukavics has the same reading background I do, I definitely hoped her debut would be good - that she'd be a writer after my own dark reading heart. She far, far exceeded my expectations, y'all! I can't wait to see what she'll do for her second book.

Rating: 5/5

Fear Street Relaunch - Don't Stay Up Late and The Lost Girl by R.L. Stine

Oh, Fear Street. I remember coming across these at my elementary school book fair in third grade. Haunted was my first of the series and, I think, my first official horror purchase! In my first few reading years, I devoured as many of these as I could, switching off between R. L. Stine and Christopher Pike and any other interesting horror covers I could find in our bookstore's one bay of young adult selections. It's a memory I share with a LOT of other readers my age, I know.

It's fun to see that Fear Street is getting a comeback. Stine and St. Martins have relaunched the series with three titles so far - Party Games, Don't Stay Up Late, and the very recently released The Lost Girl  - bringing the horrors of Fear Street alive for a new set of readers. And offering a bit of nostalgia for those of us who grew up with it in the first place. 

I had the pleasure of settling in with two of them this week - Don't Stay Up Late and The Lost Girl and wanted to do a little post in these days leading up to Halloween. 

In Don't Stay Up Late, Lisa and her mother barely survive a tragic accident that claims Lisa's father. After such a trauma, it's no wonder Lisa would be shaken up. So when Lisa starts having frightening nightmares, it's immediately chalked up as a side effect from the accident. 

Lisa's doctor suggests she find something to occupy her time and her mind as she heals, referring Lisa to a woman she knows is in need of a babysitter. And though the woman's house is on Fear Street, Lisa doesn't believe the rumors. But when her nightmares start to come alive, she has to wonder - are the stories about Fear Street true or is she losing her mind?

So Lisa is seeing monsters and no one believes her. As the reader, we're not even sure if WE can believe her either. After all, the monster only shows up when she's basically alone and no one else has ever seen it. Seems pretty coincidental, right? 

And if we know anything from reading Fear Street, anything is possible. Lisa may very well be as crazy as she thinks she is. 

I won't tell, though. 

Rating: 3/5

In The Lost Girl, Michael is drawn to new girl Lizzy for reasons even he can't explain. Sure, she's hot. But so is his girlfriend, Pepper. But Lizzy seems to show up, all the time and it's started to get on Pepper's nerves. 

Then Lizzy invites herself along on an afternoon of snowboarding and things take a dark turn. What happened that afternoon was only an accident, but now it seems someone wants Michael and his friends to pay. With their lives!

The Lost Girl is actually split between 1950, where we begin in the tale, and today. In 1950 we meet Beth, a girl whose father has just opened a brand new stable in Shadyside. Beth has a secret, an ability she hasn't shared with anyone else. But Beth's story doesn't end well at all. 

We cut to present day where Michael witnesses Lizzy (he doesn't know her name yet) shoplifting. And then he runs into her again at school. Of course we - and Pepper - can clearly see how Lizzy is manipulating Michael, basically stalking him. But it isn't until the end that we really find out why. 

Rating: 3/5

I had a lot of fun diving into these this week. Again, a lot of that is nostalgia. The new books fit the same format as the old ones, leading readers astray with false leads and twists galore. I probably enjoyed Don't Stay Up Late a bit more than The Lost Girl if only because The Lost Girl seemed cut short; I felt like there should have been more to the story.

I love the fact that they've brought the books back but I'm not sure they'd hold the same charm for me if I didn't have such fond memories of reading the series all those years ago. Either way, I'm glad they're getting a comeback. Fear Street is one weird place and I'm sure there are a ton more stories Stine can tell about it!

The House of Small Shadows by Adam Nevil + a Giveaway

The British Fantasy Awards were handed out over the weekend and Adam Nevill's recently released No One Gets Out Alive won for best horror! Readers, this book scared the ever living crap out of me so of course, with this being the week leading up to Halloween, I wanted more. Boy did I get what I asked for.

When Catherine is brought in to value M. H. Mason's estate, it's a dream come true. Her first taste of this treasure trove is a peek at a pristine collection of antique dolls Catherine knows will fetch a small fortune at auction. But it's when she learns that some of Mason's rare and much sought after taxidermy is up for grabs that she realizes just how much of a boon this will be to her career. 

But first she has to get past Mason's eccentric niece. The woman seems determined to lead Catherine on, forcing her to play out some strange waiting game before she'll even sign Catherine's contract. At first, it's just a small annoyance - a rude old woman set in her ways. But when she insists Catherine stay at the house during the process, things take a much more sinister turn. Now it's all Catherine can do to escape with her sanity still intact!

The Red House is probably now on my list of creepiest old mansions just behind Crimson Peak and Bliss House! (We can throw the Overlook in there too even though it's a hotel.) Located just outside of a seemingly abandoned village in the middle of nowhere, Red House has no phone, no internet, and very little in the way of outside contact. And at first Catherine thinks this likely the cause of her hostess' odd behavior.

Catherine has her own demons to battle. She's regularly fighting off overwhelming anxiety and paranoia that she's been working for years with a therapist to deal with. Most of that stems, though, from a childhood of being bullied and the disappearance of her best friend. Coincidentally, the Red House is located in the vicinity of the town where Catherine spent her first six years - the very same town where said friend and a handful of other children vanished without a trace.

All of that is to say that Catherine's got enough wits about her to realize that she may to be prone to overreacting. Which, unfortunately, is how she manages to get drawn deeper and deeper into a mystery she's afraid she can't escape.

What I love about Nevill's work is the overall sense of dread that he infuses his tales with. No One Gets Out Alive jumps into very dark territory pretty quickly, but that overwhelming unsettling feeling is there even in the few pages before that really dark stuff begins. Here, though, that atmosphere and underlying chill builds a bit more slowly, almost lulling the reader into a sort of complacency. That doesn't mean that it's not creepy - it is, intensely so - but I was two thirds of the way through the book thinking that The House of Small Shadows was surprisingly less brutal than No One Gets Out Alive. It seemed though that the moment I voiced this opinion to my husband, the book took a seriously twisted turn!

This is a warning to you, if you are the least bit squeamish this is not the book for you. If the cover makes you want to run and hide, this is definitely not the book for you! If, however, you really do delight in - as I said above - having the ever living crap scared out of you, this is a good one to choose. So, yeah it fit the bill for me :)

Rating: 4/5

If you want to spend some time in the Red House, then you're in luck! I've got a copy to give away to one of you today. To enter simply fill out the Rafflecopter below before Monday, November 9. It'll be a post-season treat to stretch the Halloween spirit a little longer. Open US only.

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Short Fiction Friday Wicked Reads for Halloween Edition: Slasher Girls & Monster Boys edited by April Genevieve Tucholke

If you're looking for a really great collection of creepy tales, Slasher Girls & Monster Boys is the perfect pick. Edited by April Genevieve Tucholke, the collection features a line up of spectacular YA authors, each of whom has used books, movies, tv, and other media as inspiration for their tales. It's a seriously fabulous concept, y'all!

For adult readers, you're likely to catch on to most of the references. Some are more obvious than others and some are actually fairly obscure-ish and harder to tease out, but they've apparently all prompted these authors to come up with some really terrifying stories. And if you don't figured out all of the inspiring threads by the end, the authors have included a note on those (you know, in case you want to extend your experience by seeking them out).

I'm actually hesitant to mention any of the actual inspiring works here just so you can be surprised when you read! Cat Winters and Leigh Bardugo in particular surprised me with their list of inspirations (I had to look up Bardugo's - I guess I might lose my 90s cred). I'm a bit in awe of how they - and all of the authors - put together their stories and I could not have been more pleased to see what inspired Marie Lu's tale in particular. (I'd be willing to bet - at least I hope - that both teen and adult readers will have at least a little bit of interest in seeking out the source materials.)

Basically, the collection is an absolute dream for pop culture obsessed horror fans! Any horror fans, for that matter. I am totally serious when I say that some of these stories were nightmare inducing. Carrie Ryan's in particular was creeptastically wonderful, but I don't know if I'm glad or a bit remorseful that I didn't read it in the middle of the night.

Here's a full table of contents for you:

"The Birds of Azalea Street" by Nova Ren Suma
"In the Forest Dark and Deep" by Carrie Ryan
"Emmeline" by Cat Winters
"Verse Chorus Verse" by Leigh Bardugo
"Hide-and-Seek" by Megan Shepherd
"The Dark, Scary Parts and All" by Danielle Paige
"The Flicker, The Fingers, The Beat, The Sigh" by April Genevieve Tucholke
"Fat Girl With a Knife" by Jonathan Maberry
"Sleepless" by Jay Kristoff
"M" by Stefan Bachmann
"The Girl Without a Face" by Marie Lu
"The Girl Who Dreamed of Snow" by McCormick Templeman
"Stitches" by A. G. Howard
"On the I-5" by Kendare Blake 

I do read a lot of collections but it's been a while since I read one that proved to be so fabulous from start to beginning. I shouldn't be surprised considering the authors here! It's pretty typical in reading anthologies to find that at least one or two tales don't quite hit the mark for me. It's not a reflection on the collection or the authors, it's like (dare I say it?!) a box of chocolates. Let's face it, not everyone loves every piece but there's something for everyone. Slasher Girls & Monster Boys, though, was one of the exceptions. Each and every story was awesome!

Slasher Girls & Monster Boys is a dark collection. If you're not into really scary and gory this may not be the collection for you. If you're a fan of any of the contributors, though, I'd bet you're adequately prepared for what's inside and will love it!

Rating: 5/5

And now, just a little reminder of all the fun Wicked Reads stuff going on right now. Remember there's the #TwitterGhostStory event starting on Monday and the next Twitter Chat is today at 4pm (EST I believe). The authors participating are:

10/23:
Peter Kujawinski author of Nightfall
Jake Halpern author of Nightfall
Kim Liggett author of Blood and Salt
April Genevieve Tucholke author of Slasher Girls & Monster Boys

10/30:
Danielle Vega author of The Merciless and Survive the Night
Peter Kujawinski author of Nightfall
Kim Liggett author of Blood and Salt
April Genevieve Tucholke author of Slasher Girls & Monster Boys
Carol Goodman author of Blythewood series
Sally Green author of the Half Bad series

(The links above will take you to each authors' twitter profiles.)

Wicked Reads for Halloween: The Accident Season by Moïra Fowley-Doyle

As I said yesterday I'm going all out with the creepy reads through the end of the month, and though I've got plenty on hand I'm always looking for new suggestions. So when the good folks over at Penguin Teen and Playbuzz started promoting the latest batch of Wicked Reads with posts like this one, I was all over the list!

To be honest, though, most of the titles were already on my must have/read list anyway, Slasher Girls & Monster Boys, Nightfall, Blood and Salt, and today's read, Moïra Fowley-Doyle's debut, The Accident Season!

Every October Cara's family becomes more prone to injuries and accidents. They call it the accident season, the month when they need to be extra cautious about their actions. The month when all the sharp objects need to be locked up, the furniture and floors need to be padded, and the kids need to wear extra layers as added protection. 

Cara and Alice have always lived like this. After all, they lost their grandfather and father to the accident season. Even when Sam and his father became part of the family, the accidents continued. Just four years ago, one of the worst, Cara's uncle died after hitting his head on some rocks while swimming. 

When Cara's best friend, Bea, predicts that this accident season will be one of the worst, Cara isn't so sure. How could anything be worse than when they lost her father or Uncle Seth? But the disappearance of one of her classmates prompts Cara to begin searching for answers. Why is the girl in all of Cara's photos? Why does no one seem to remember her? And as the accidents begin to get worse, Cara wonders most of all if she and her family will come through it all ok.  

The Accident Season is a curious read. Part creepy atmosphere, part fairy tale, and possibly even part ghost story. Again, it's curious but I did so love the overall feel of it!

Elsie, the girl who disappears, we learn has been popping up in ALL of Cara's pictures. Some of them are understandable, they were friends once upon a time. But others defy explanation - how, for example, could Elsie be in Cara's family vacation pictures? But when Cara tries to ask Elsie, she discovers the girl has vanished seemingly into thin air. No one - students, teachers, faculty - remembers the girl! Driven by the need for answers, Cara finds at least some distraction from the current accident season. And the month is almost over without any major catastrophes aside from Alice's concussion. But the month isn't up yet.

While all of this is going on, Cara has also begun to have strange dreams about a group of kids that bear a remarkable resemblance to Alice, Sam, Bea, and herself.

The creepy undertones, the dark sort of fairy tale atmosphere, and the mystery about Elsie and the accident season all combine to make this a somewhat genre defying read. It's not really horror, fantasy, or mystery but it does contain elements of each, creating a mashup cross genre read that's wholly intriguing. And there's really no other word for it. It's intriguing. From the start, Fowley-Doyle snags you in the web of her tale. It's a bit like falling down Alice's rabbit hole (appropriate since Cara's sister is named for Alice), drawing you in with one piece and then another until you're completely immersed and determined to learn Cara's family's secrets.

If you're in the mood for a read that's creepy but not overly scary, The Accident Season is perfect. It's got the atmosphere I mentioned above and again all of those questions about what's really going on, but definitely doesn't hit the truly terrifying mark. I think you'll be quite surprised and pleased by this debut and how it all wraps up in the end.

Rating: 4/5

If you're looking for more Wicked Reads this season, I definitely suggest checking out all of titles:

Blood & Salt by Kim Liggett
Nightfall by Jake Halpern and Peter Kujawinski
The Appearance of Annie Van Sinderen by Katherine Howe
Survive the Night by Danielle Vega
Slasher Girls & Monster Boys edited by April Genevieve Tucholke

I've already covered Blood & Salt here and will be following up tomorrow with my review of Slasher Girls & Monster Boys. I also plan to cover Nightfall and possibly even one more from the list before the month is out as well.

(you can use the Playbuzz link above to find the perfect read based on your Halloween costume. You can also join in on the Wicked Reads fun with two upcoming twitter chats (I'll list the dates and participating authors below) and the weeklong #TwitterGhostStory event starting October 26. To take part, all you have to do is write a creepy ghost story using 140 characters or less - be sure to use the #TwitterGhostStory hashtag - between October 26 and October 31 to enter for a chance to win a prize pack that includes the featured Wicked Reads titles!

And here's that Twitter Chat info for you from the publisher:

We have two more Twitter chats taking place this Friday and next Friday at 4pm that are being hosted by @YAbookscentral and @mashreads, respectively. The authors participating are:

10/23:
Peter Kujawinski author of Nightfall
Jake Halpern author of Nightfall
Kim Liggett author of Blood and Salt
April Genevieve Tucholke author of Slasher Girls & Monster Boys

10/30:
Danielle Vega author of The Merciless and Survive the Night
Peter Kujawinski author of Nightfall
Kim Liggett author of Blood and Salt
April Genevieve Tucholke author of Slasher Girls & Monster Boys
Carol Goodman author of Blythewood series
Sally Green author of the Half Bad series

(The links above will take you to each authors' twitter profiles.)

Charlotte's Story by Laura Benedict + a Giveaway

Guys, by the time October rolls around I want to read pretty much nothing but horror. I know, I probably sound like a broken record. In truth, I want to read it all the time but in October it becomes kind impossible to tamp down. And nothing pleases me more than a great haunted house story. So Laura Benedict's latest Bliss House book hits two perfect marks for me right away - October release (yay!) and it's a guaranteed uber creepy haunted house story.

Charlotte Bliss has everything: a loving husband, two perfect children, and a generations-old house filled with light and space. But everything comes crashing down around Charlotte on the day her daughter dies. 

Charlotte had been alone in the house with the children, sleeping off an afternoon of champagne, when Eva drowned in the bathtub. She knows it was her fault. She knows if she hadn't indulged that afternoon Eva would still be alive. Her husband, Press, says he doesn't blame her but in the days and weeks following Eva's death he begins to change. And as Press changes, Bliss House does as well. 

It begins with Charlotte's glimpse of Olivia on the day of Eva's funeral. Impossible as it seems, her mother-in-law has reached out to her from beyond the grave and now Charlotte believes Eva could be waiting in Bliss House as well. But her dreams of seeing her daughter again soon turn to nightmares as Bliss House begins to reveal its darker secrets. 

Charlotte's Story begins almost innocently. Benedict tricks you into entertaining the idea that Charlotte might just be so distraught over the loss of her daughter that she's slowly spiraling into madness. Almost. If you haven't read any of the Bliss House books you're probably more likely to start out believing this than I was - I have read both Bliss House and Cold Alone, so I know this is one house that's up to no good. But again, things do begin innocently enough.

Poor Charlotte. Her life was pretty idyllic, at least until her mother-in-law passed away. I believe it's not the death of Eva but the death of Olivia that sets things in motion in spite of the fact that Charlotte herself doesn't notice anything truly odd until Eva's funeral. It's like a switch is flipped at that moment, though. Press becomes less loving and more out of tune with Charlotte (Understatement. Of. The. Year.) and the house's ghosts begin to reveal themselves.

Bliss House is the stuff of nightmares. Literally. If you've read the previous installments you know that the house tends to show people exactly what they're most afraid of - the things that will set them right over the edge into crazy land! It would almost have to considering how much pain and suffering it's witnessed and absorbed throughout the years. Like I said, that house is up to no good.

If you're looking for something scary that will sneak up on you, I highly recommend this series. You do not have to read them in any particular order - the order of release is moving in a backwards chronology with Bliss House set present day, Cold Alone set in the 80s, and Charlotte's Story set in 1957. Meeting the various personalities of Bliss House in this manner is, for me, pretty spectacular but that's just my opinion. You can approach the series in any order you like.

Rating: 5/5

Thanks to Laura I'm able to offer up a signed copy of the first Bliss House title - appropriately titled Bliss House - for a giveaway today. To enter simply fill out the Rafflecopter below before Monday, October 26. Open US only.

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Photo credit: Emily Ellsworth