A bold collection of horror stories that flies in the face of both gender and genre conventions.
In this haunting new collection, edited by Oates, 15 women writers explore the manifold horrors of living (and dying) in a patriarchal society.
Divided into three parts—“You’ve Created a Monster,” “Morbid Anatomy," and “Out of Body, Out of Time”—this collection may initially appeal to readers eager for tales filled with vampires and werewolves, influences from beyond the grave, and gore, guts, and ooze. They will not be disappointed. However, the stories not only bleed across the categorical boundaries they have been assigned, but also expand the scope of what is terrifying about the body—living or dead, human or nonhuman—in the first place. Some stories lean into the visceral imagery typical of the body horror genre. In “Muzzle,” Cassandra Khaw explores the terrors of transforming from a human into a werewolf: feeling muscle, bone, teeth, and primal urges realigning inside oneself. Similarly, Aimee LaBrie’s “Gross Anatomy” and Valerie Martin’s “Nemesis” attend to the body's bumps, scabs, and pus (though both stories dip into ableist territory by presenting illness as a moral punishment). Other stories, however, like Margaret Atwood’s “Metempsychosis, or The Journey of the Soul,” focus more on existential terrors. Through the point of view of a snail whose soul has been ripped from its body and transplanted into that of a human woman, Atwood taps into the fears surrounding not only mortality, but also bodily misalignment, confinement, existential dread, and not being recognized for who you really are. “To be female,” Oates writes in her introduction, “is to inhabit a body that is by nature vulnerable to forcible invasion, susceptible to impregnation.” In the pages that follow, not only men and offspring, but also the desires of the dead, the societal expectations of the living, powerful weapons, self-doubts, and new souls creep into the bodies of women characters, taking up space. Yet the women are not entirely powerless. In “Breathing Exercise,” Raven Leilani’s protagonist, Myriam, works to tease apart the criticism she faces for her performance art, the violence with which men threaten her, and her own relationship to her body and work as a Black woman artist. For Myriam, power, pain, fear, and vulnerability do not exist in static relationships to one another—nor do they in many of the stories in this collection.
A bold collection of horror stories that flies in the face of both gender and genre conventions.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9781636141374
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Akashic
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2023
With captivating dialogue, angst-y characters, and a couple of steamy sex scenes, Hoover has done it again.
After being released from prison, a young woman tries to reconnect with her 5-year-old daughter despite having killed the girl’s father.
Kenna didn’t even know she was pregnant until after she was sent to prison for murdering her boyfriend, Scotty. When her baby girl, Diem, was born, she was forced to give custody to Scotty’s parents. Now that she’s been released, Kenna is intent on getting to know her daughter, but Scotty’s parents won’t give her a chance to tell them what really happened the night their son died. Instead, they file a restraining order preventing Kenna from so much as introducing herself to Diem. Handsome, self-assured Ledger, who was Scotty’s best friend, is another key adult in Diem’s life. He’s helping her grandparents raise her, and he too blames Kenna for Scotty’s death. Even so, there’s something about her that haunts him. Kenna feels the pull, too, and seems to be seeking Ledger out despite his judgmental behavior. As Ledger gets to know Kenna and acknowledges his attraction to her, he begins to wonder if maybe he and Scotty’s parents have judged her unfairly. Even so, Ledger is afraid that if he surrenders to his feelings, Scotty’s parents will kick him out of Diem’s life. As Kenna and Ledger continue to mourn for Scotty, they also grieve the future they cannot have with each other. Told alternatively from Kenna’s and Ledger’s perspectives, the story explores the myriad ways in which snap judgments based on partial information can derail people’s lives. Built on a foundation of death and grief, this story has an undercurrent of sadness. As usual, however, the author has created compelling characters who are magnetic and sympathetic enough to pull readers in. In addition to grief, the novel also deftly explores complex issues such as guilt, self-doubt, redemption, and forgiveness.
With captivating dialogue, angst-y characters, and a couple of steamy sex scenes, Hoover has done it again.Pub Date: Jan. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5420-2560-7
Page Count: 335
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
A boarding-school fantasia, with Hilderbrand’s signature upgrades to the cuisine and decor. Sign us up for next term.
A year in the life of the No. 2 boarding school in America—up from No. 19 last year!
Rumors of Hilderbrand’s retirement were greatly exaggerated, it turns out, since not only has she not gone out to pasture, she’s started over in high school, with her daughter Shelby Cunningham as co-author. As their delicious new book opens, it’s Move-In Day at Tiffin Academy, and Head of School Audre Robinson is warmly welcoming the returning and new students to the New England campus, the latter group including a rare midstream addition to the junior class. Brainiac Charley Hicks is transferring from public school in Maryland to a spot that opened up when one of the school’s most beloved students died by suicide the preceding year. She will be joining a large, diverse cast of adult and teenage characters—queen bees, jealous second-stringers, boozehounds young and old, secret lesbians, people chasing the wrong people chasing other wrong people—all of them royally screwed when an app called Zip Zap appears and starts blasting everyone’s secrets all over campus. How the heck…? Meanwhile, it seems so unlikely that Tiffin has jumped up to the No. 2 spot in the boarding-school rankings that a high-profile magazine launches an investigation, and even the head is worried that there may have been payola involved. The school has a reputation for being more social than academic, and this quality gets an exciting new exclamation point when the resident millionaire bad boy opens a high-style secret speakeasy for select juniors in a forgotten basement. It’s called Priorities. Exactly. One problem: Cinnamon Peters’ mysterious suicide hangs over the book in an odd way, especially since the note she left for her closest male friend is not to be opened for another year—and isn’t. This is surely a setup for a sequel, but it’s a bit frustrating here, and bobs sort of shallowly along amid the general high spirits.
A boarding-school fantasia, with Hilderbrand’s signature upgrades to the cuisine and decor. Sign us up for next term.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9780316567855
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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