A glorious bundle of horror stories that readers will find entertaining and unnerving.
Parent offers tales of terrifying and potentially deadly happenings, set around the October 31st holiday.
In the opening story, “Russian Dollhouse,” high school freshman Kit reluctantly takes her younger brother trick-or-treating. Her mood brightens when she runs into Jordan, a sophomore she has a crush on. She’ll happily go anywhere with him, even if it means venturing inside an abandoned house, where other kids reputedly went missing decades ago. Unexpectedly, that house has new decorations for the holiday—almost as if it’s trying to draw in unsuspecting youth. All 10 of this book’s tales unfold on or near Halloween; some include trick-or-treaters, although not all of them are harmless kids. For example, Carlos in “Keeping Up Appearances” runs an armed crew that goes door-to-door and demands much more than candy. However, when they knock on the door of one especially odd family, they get a very unwelcome surprise. These somber tales cover other October happenings, as well, including Mischief Night (traditionally the night before Halloween) and a haunted hayride. The cast, too, ranges from naïve children and a candy-swiping eighth-grade bully to a spouse who’s starting to regret his illicit affair. The longest story, “Dia De Los Muertos,” is also the best, featuring a U.S. Army gunner Russell Thompkins who’s AWOL in Mexico. As locals celebrate the Day of the Dead, his post-traumatic stress disorder dredges up memories of a Taliban assault during his second tour in Afghanistan. What happened to him back then, and what’s been affecting him ever since, is truly unspeakable.
Over the course of these tales, Parent hits on several reliable horror tropes: Creepy houses stir up anxiety, the telling of scary stories begets more frightening realities, and trick-or-treat bags and pillowcases hold hidden terrors. The collection features several unlikable characters who arguably deserve their grisly fates, but there are just as many that will elicit reader sympathy. Eleven-year-old Danielle, for one, has an understandable fear of alligators in “A Not-So-Scary Halloween,” and a holiday in Orlando, Florida, with her relatives puts her on high alert. Most of the stories trek into grim territory and contain violent, often grotesque imagery with lots of chunky bits, spurting blood, and biting teeth. There’s humor in these tales, as well, but it’s of a dark variety that complements the horrific goings-on, as in “Pulp,” which follows a film club’s Halloween party that—for one teenager, at least—becomes a real-life horror movie. Overall, the book is a fun read, and horror fans will appreciate its numerous nods to classic genre films (some of the players even share names with famous directors, actors, and cinematic characters). Parent also skillfully generates suspense with deft descriptive passages, as in the story “Rain”: “Lightning flashed through the house, casting Dad’s shadow long and thin up the wall and over the ceiling. Thunder followed quickly, crashing so violently that it rattled the picture frames hanging on the wall, knocking one askew.”
A glorious bundle of horror stories that readers will find entertaining and unnerving.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2024
ISBN: 9798336822137
Page Count: 244
Publisher: Corpus Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A grim yet gleefully gratifying tale of lost innocence and found family.
A woman fears she made a fatal mistake by taking in a blood-soaked tween during a storm.
High winds and torrential rain are forecast for “The Middle of Nowhere, New Hampshire,” making Casey question the structural integrity of her ramshackle rental cabin. Still, she’s loath to seek shelter with her lecherous landlord or her paternalistic neighbor, so instead she just crosses her fingers, gathers some candles, and hopes for the best. Casey is cooking dinner when she notices a light in her shed. She grabs her gun and investigates, only to find a rail-thin girl hiding in the corner under a blanket. She’s clutching a knife with “Eleanor” written on the handle in black marker, and though her clothes are bloody, she appears uninjured. The weather is rapidly worsening, so before she can second-guess herself, former Boston-area teacher Casey invites the girl—whom she judges to be 12 or 13—inside to eat and get warm. A wary but starving Eleanor accepts in exchange for Casey promising not to call the police—a deal Casey comes to regret after the phones go down, the power goes out, and her hostile, sullen guest drops something that’s a big surprise. Meanwhile, in interspersed chapters labeled “Before,” middle-schooler Ella befriends fellow outcast Anton, who helps her endure life in Medford, Massachusetts, with her abusive, neglectful hoarder of a mother. As per her usual, McFadden lulls readers using a seemingly straightforward thriller setup before launching headlong into a series of progressively seismic (and increasingly bonkers) plot twists. The visceral first-person, present-tense narrative alternates perspectives, fostering tension and immediacy while establishing character and engendering empathy. Ella and Anton’s relationship particularly shines, its heartrending authenticity counterbalancing some of the story’s soapier turns.
A grim yet gleefully gratifying tale of lost innocence and found family.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781464260919
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
At turns spooky and funny, with bits of inside baseball and a swimming pool’s worth of blood.
Hill, son of the master, turns in a near-perfect homage to Stephen King.
Arthur Oakes has problems. One is that his mom, a social justice warrior, has landed in the slammer for unintentional manslaughter. And he’s one of just three Black kids at an expensive college (in Maine, of course), an easy target. A local townie drug dealer extorts him into stealing rare books from the school’s library, including one bound in human skin. The unwilling donor of said skin turns up, and so do various sinister people, one reminiscent of Tolkien’s Gollum, another a hick who lives—well, sort of—to kill. Then there’s Colin Wren, whose grandfather collects things occult. As will happen, an excursion into that arcana conjures up the title character, a very evil dragon, who strikes an agreement with fine print requiring Arthur and his circle to provide him with a sacrifice every Easter. “It’s a bad idea to make a deal with them,” says Arthur, belatedly. “Language is one of their weapons…as much as the fire they breathe or the tail that can knock down a house.” King Sorrow roasts his first victims, and the years roll by, with Arthur becoming a medieval scholar (fittingly enough, with a critical scene set at King Arthur’s fortress at Tintagel), Colin a tech billionaire with Muskian undertones (“King Sorrow was a dragon, but Colin was some sort of dark sorcerer”), and others of their circle suffering from either messing with dragons or living in an America of despair. There’s never a dull moment, and though Hill’s yarn is very long, it’s full of twists and turns and, beg pardon, Easter eggs pointing to Kingly takes on politics, literature, and internet trolls (a meta MAGA remark comes from an online review of Arthur’s book on dragons: “i was up for a good book about finding magical sords and stabbing dragons and rescuing hot babes in chainmail panties but instead i got a lot of WOKE nonsense.…and UGH it just goes on and on, couldve been hundreds of pages shorter”).
At turns spooky and funny, with bits of inside baseball and a swimming pool’s worth of blood.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9780062200600
Page Count: 896
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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