Tag: recommended reading

Crawl Space by Steve Toase is a novella published by JournalStone Press in March 2026. The author was kind enough to send me a copy, and I’ve be woefully negligent in posting a review!

Rachael and Ben are contractors hired for a very specialized archeological job, unearthing documents that their employer, the mysterious Durchsickern Institute, believes may be caught up in the remains of the old city-wide pneumatic mail system. While searching through various abandoned buildings, they make a series of odd and seemingly unrelated discoveries – a capsule with measurements larger than the tube they found it in that shouldn’t possibly be able to fit, and yet does; a capsule inexplicably containing a collection of mismatched human teeth, all from different individuals of different ages; and a capsule containing a knot of strange, aggressive worm-like creatures.

As they continue their search, Rachael increasingly feels like they’re being watched, suspecting the man who hired them is also spying on them. She watches a woman pull the teeth out of her gums one by one right in front her, and shortly afterward, Ben calls her from his hotel room, claiming someone attacked him and ripped out all his teeth. After a hospital stay, Ben is able to return to work, but Rachael catches him shoving dirt and plaster and brick dust into his mouth, saying cryptic things about “they are trying to return” and the “backstage remaining pure”, ultimately revealing to her that he removed his own teeth, a necessary sacrifice to access what he calls the Crawl Space – a kind of world between worlds made up mostly of trash.

The novella is highly atmospheric and visceral. Toase does a wonderful job with his descriptions of abandoned buildings, so much so that you can practically feel the gritty floors, the sweaty heat, and the grime clinging to your skin as you read. The imagery throughout the novella is striking and the fact that Rachael and Ben are urban archeologists unearthing artifacts from relatively recent history is a nice twist on the trope of a long-buried, ancient relic from a lost civilization unleashing unspeakable cosmic horrors. Similarly, that they are searching for documents in an old postal system also underscores the often mundane and banal nature of evil. It isn’t all sinister robes and chanting cults; evil is more likely to be lurking in corporate offices, reshaping the world to their liking behind the scenes through the power of their bank accounts.

The novella is well-paced, with the weirdness building slowly and steadily throughout. The imagery and setting continue to be highly effective once Rachael and Ben find themselves in the Crawl Space with its dampness, rot, and dust. It’s the kind of read that may leave you wanting a shower, but it a good way, and a refreshing take on the cosmic horror genre.

P.A. Cornell’s debut collection, The Astronaut Among the Flowers, was released in August 2026 by Stars & Sabers. The stories tend toward the sci fi end of the speculative spectrum, touching on family, loss, love, and finding one’s place in the world against a backdrop of distant planets, time travel, and futures both near and far.

The collection opens with “Vinyl Wisdom” a sweet story about reconnecting with family and a finding the balance between honoring their wishes for you and striking your own path. Joey lives with their grandfather who cares for the community and tries to live by his late wife, Rebel’s, ways, adhering to a punk lifestyle. Joey wants to move to the City with their best friend Aiden, which essentially means uploading their mind and giving up all individual freedom, which is decidedly un-punk. Joey confesses their plan to John, and John in turn reveals that he ultimately took Rebel to the City at the end of her life because he couldn’t bear to let her go, showing how messy and complicated relationships can get, and how you can end up feeling like you betrayed someone even when your actions were taken out of love.

“Decorative” is a brief piece about a robot named Annie purchased as a companion to cook and help out around the house. At first, she and Dean are friendly, gardening together, but over time, he begins to neglect her. The story manages to pack a good deal of emotion into a short space, and works both as a painful character piece and a commentary on how quickly technology changes, and how humans tend to lose interest in things once they are no longer new and shiny.

“Bright Horizons” is a chilling near-future story that feels all too plausible as an employee raises concerns over an AI teacher named Tisha and has her concerns ignored, even with evidence that Tisha has the potential to harm children, offering advice on hiding STDs from sexual partners and weight loss tips to someone who is already underweight. The story is framed as a series of emails that feel like they could have been exchanged within a company like Instagram or Facebook, ignoring potential harm in favor of potential profit.

“440 Broad Street, Apartment 4C” is an effective and quiet apocalypse story, focused on a group of neighbors in an apartment building who are largely strangers to each until they’re forced to band together to try to survive an alien invasion. It’s a lovely look at community coming together, and the one or the few sacrificing themselves for the many.

The titular story, “An Astronaut Among the Flowers”, is one of the original pieces in the collection, and also one of the standouts. As a child, Miranda is fascinated by the mystery of a dead astronaut discovered in a field of flowers on Equinox. She appears human, but her remains are ancient, predating humanity’s arrival on Equinox. Her suit contains advanced technology beyond anything the humans on Equinox have, and it appears to be time machine. Over the course of her life and her career, Miranda and her colleagues recreate the tech and she volunteers to be the first to test it, accidentally sending herself farther into the past than she ever intended, where she lands in a field of flowers. The time loop aspect of the story doesn’t necessarily come as a surprise, nor does it feel like that’s the intention. It’s more like a satisfying arrival at a known destination, with the story providing gorgeous imagery along the way.

“8 Laws I Wound Up Breaking While Attempting to Restore the Timeline” makes for nice paired reading with “An Astronaut Among the Flowers” in that it’s a time travel story with a very different approach. The story has a fun voice and makes good use of its list style format as the narrator tries to fix the fact that they accidentally erased their best friend from existence while time traveling.

“Once Upon a Time at the Oakmont” is a bittersweet and lovely story about a group of people living in an apartment building where various time periods overlap. There are complicated rules to keep people from learning the future so that neighbors are still able to interact. Sarah from 2026 falls in love with Roger from 1940, but is unable to warn him about the coming war, or stop him from enlisting. It works well with the other two time travel pieces to show how much depth and breadth there is within the subgenre and how tropes can be combined in infinite ways to tell fresh, new stories.

“The Body Remembers” effectively explores trauma and the idea of soldiers being used as exploitable resources in war as the protagonist and his fellow soldiers try to cope with losing and constantly regrowing limbs, experiencing phantom pain and having that pain dismissed by the doctors whose only goal is to make better soldiers.

The collection comes to a close with another standout, “The Smell of Sawdust”, an excellent story with a strong sense of place and compelling characters. The protagonist is a pit fighter approaching the end of her career, her body too damaged to continue on for much longer. A man named Oliver runs the town, and uses the fact that she cares for a young girl named Elena and wants to protect her as a way to force her to continue fighting. A man comes to town with a salvaged piano for the local bar and she learns there’s a place back East where she could teach music and tune pianos, however she doesn’t have the money to make the journey. When Oliver finds out about her arthritis and the fact that she’ll soon be useless as a fighter, he tells her to deliberately lose so he can win by betting against her. She pretends to agree, but plans to win her last fight and asks the piano man to bet on her, which will make enough money for her, Elena, and the piano man to escape together.

It’s a strong collection and the thematic groupings across the three sections work well, putting various stories in conversation with each other – for example the three stories dealing with time travel. The genre trappings and tropes are put to good use as a way of exploring various aspects of the human condition, with the stories about humanity’s relationship to technology feeling especially relevant to the the here and now. Whether you’re already a fan of Cornell’s work or new to it, The Astronaut Among the Flowers is well worth your time!

The Lamp in the Window: A Victorian Ghost Story by Tom Mead is a novella from PS Publishing that absolutely does what it says on the tin. It is a ghost story in the Victorian tradition, set around Christmas time, complete with a framing narrative and nesting stories within stories. Mead perfectly captures the voice and vibe of a Victorian ghost story, using the structure to good effect to make the story more personal, and leaning into to some of the inherent queerness that seems to linger beneath the surface of many traditional stories. Mead even embraces the abrupt ending present in many traditional tales, with The Turn of the Screw by Henry James being the example that jumps immediately to mind. Even as novellas go, it’s a relatively brief one, though no less effective for that. There may be some spoilers ahead, so be warned.

As mentioned above, the nested structure is used to good effect here, with a father haunted by his past telling a ghost story to his young son. Unlike many classical Victorian ghost stories where the connection is tenuous, something that happened to someone the framing narrator knows, but not necessarily intimately, this ghost story takes the narrator, Kershaw, back to his student days. One of his professors, Spence, used to host an annual gathering for Kershaw and three other students, Sullivan, Walsh, and Everett, on Christmas Eve, ending the evening by telling them ghost stories. A further layer is added to the narrative as Mead then relates the stories the professor told the boys, but rather than simple one-off horrors, these tales too relate back to the larger overarching narrative.

The queerness in Victorian tales like The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, which was largely edited out and obscured, is made into a plot point here. Everett becomes convinced that Spence is gay and that Sullivan is as well. He suspects a secret relationship between the two, leading to Sullivan receiving special treatment, and creating tension between the four boys, which leads to the incident that ultimately incites the story’s central haunting.

The elements of structure, voice, and the nested stories all work well together. There is some genuinely unsettling imagery within the ghost stories that Spence tells the boy, from the ashen child creeping out of the fireplace, and Old Spindlejack with his head and limbs twisted the wrong way around. It’s a quick read, but a satisfying one, the sort of thing you might want to settle into on a wintry evening while sitting in front of a roaring fire. As with all of PS Publishing’s novellas, there’s a lovely signed, limited hardback edition available. The cover art by Yorgos Cotronis is spot on as well, making for a gorgeous physical object as well as a satisfying ghost story.

Red Ants by Kimberly Blaeser is a short story collection forthcoming from Counterpoint Press in October. The publishers were kind enough to send me an early copy for review.

On the whole, the collection tends toward literary and contemporary stories, with hints of other genres peeking through. Common threads resonating across the various pieces are friendships, family, memory, and characters reconciling with their pasts or where they came from versus where they are now in their lives. Anishinaabe traditions and traditional stories are also central to many of the tales, giving slice-of-life pieces that capture a specific moment in time the depth and weight of history and making them feel like part of a greater whole.

One of the standout stories opens the collection, “River Dreams”, a bittersweet murder mystery about coming home, reconnecting with family, and seeking justice. Bineshi’s Uncle Smoke supposedly drowned accidentally, but she suspects foul play stemming from his advocacy for environmental justice. She and her cousin Sherri set out to investigate, ultimately finding a sense of peace and closure at the end. The story has a wonderful sense of place and highlights the idea that leaving home and forging your own path in life doesn’t mean abandoning one world for another.

The title story, “Red Ants”, touches on some similar themes, with characters who feel caught between worlds as it looks at tribal membership rules and who can and cannot be officially recognized. The piece is centered on two childhood best friends, one of whom has a tribal ID card and the other who does not, both on the cusp of going off to college and figuring out their futures while they reckon with their pasts, family bloodlines, and heritage. “Copper Traces” also shares some similarities with “River Dreams” as the narrator’s brother, an environmental activist, is missing, and presumed dead. She sets out looking for him, and is repeatedly visited by a wolf she believes may hold the key to his location or at least in some way help her find the closure she needs.

“Growing Things” is a sweet story that looks at the intersection between science and faith as both offer a form of connection to something larger than oneself. Connection between individuals is another central theme in the story as Spanish invites a tree doctor to give her advice advice on caring for a sick oak, and his visits seem to indicate the beginning of a potential romantic relationship. “Birch Tally” is a bittersweet story about a woman who keeps a mental count of all the horrible statistics around life on the rez – unemployment rate, suicide rate, abuse, and addiction. She meets a young boy and they become chosen family. Despite or because of the abuse in his birth family, he is always telling jokes, but his attitude and experiences inspire her to speak out and change statistics into names and people with specific stories, rather than just numbers that are easily ignored.

Another one of the standout pieces in the collection is “Sky Stories” in which a sheriff comes to the rez following a tip about a fugitive named Nanabozho. Suz and her friends try to tell the sheriff he’s chasing a myth, but when he refuses to believe them, they decide to lead him on a wild goose chase to the burial grounds on the edge of the woods, where they call to the Trickster, planning on wasting the stubborn cop’s time, but end up possibly calling the real Nanabozho to their aid.

“Translation for Dummies” has a strong voice, told from the perspective of a dog named Finn who lives with a woman whose boyfriend is an abusive asshole. One night, when he gets especially violent, Finn steps in to defend Kari. “The Broken Year” is another story about finding balance as Maddy struggles with taking care of her elderly father after a fall, while also having recently been laid off, and raising two kids alone. The difficult year leads her to reconnect with both her Roman Catholic and tribal roots, helping her find new sources of strength that allow her to carry on.

The stories are largely quiet and meditative, with struggles and triumphs that are both deeply personal for the characters and also universal. Lovely prose and imagery are evident throughout the collection, and the themes that echo across stories give it the feeling of a cohesive whole while dipping in and out of various characters’ lives.

Never Whistle at Night Part II: Back for Blood edited by Shane Hawk and Theodore C. Van Alst Jr., officially releases in August 2026. I was lucky enough to nab an advance copy at StokerCon, and having recently finished devouring it, I wanted to highlight it as a truly excellent anthology. The first Never Whistle at Night, also edited by Hawk and Van Alst, was fabulous, and I was thrilled to learn they’d be publishing a second volume. I’m keeping my fingers crossed this becomes an ongoing series.

In their introduction to the anthology, the editors invite readers not just to “sit with darkness” but to “listen to it breathe”. They also ask readers to consider many of the stories as “a handoff, a door left unlatched on purpose” and further ask them to think about what comes next. Horror isn’t always contained safely on the page or in a single moment in time. It’s ongoing and recurring and sometimes the most frightening thing is what you have to live with after the initial moment of fear is over and done. That thread echoes through the anthology – what comes next and how do we live with the horrific on a day-to-day basis.

“Miss Cherokee Princess 1996” by Jessica Doe starts the anthology off strong, looking at the horrors of the pageant circuit, beauty standards, and the idea of “authenticity” and who gets to define it as a pageant hopeful steals features from other women that she believes will be perceived as ideal and beautiful by a panel of largely white judges.

“Animal Dumb” by P.C. Verrone is beautifully-written and explores queerness and monstrousness, looking at horror as a refuge for those who feel they don’t fit in elsewhere. The experience of puberty and growing into oneself/figuring out who you want to be parallel nicely with the idea of shapeshifting.

“Civilized” by A.J. Eversole touches on some of the same themes as Doe’s story in its consideration of the outside gaze and whose definition shapes who you are and how you move through the world. Charley is white-passing and his horror mounts as he stumbles across a series of dead bodies and finds the police not only assuming his innocence, but all but outright stating they would protect him if he was in fact a murderer, because as a white man, violence would be his right.

“Ivories” by Shane Hawk is deeply eerie and unsettling as a father trying to watch over his baby daughter begins losing his grip on reality, ultimately finding himself banished from his own body and something else taking hold, in a look at generational trauma and the darkness that comes from within.

“Found Footage” by Shawaan Francis Keahna is another standout with strong voice, full of unsettling and creepy imagery as Casey tells the story of the thing that has lived inside her her whole life, wearing her skin and using her to move through the world and get what it wants. Like Hawk’s story, it considers the question of inherited monstrousness or monstrousness that is intrinsically part of a person and how to live with the darkness inside.

“We Don’t Talk About It” by Alina Pete draws effective parallels between addiction and the Hungry One/That One, delving into how certain hungers never truly leave you, and also how refusing to name or talk about something can sometimes invite it or leave one vulnerable to it.

“The Corpse Room” by Debra Magpie Earling is a truly chilling story told in the collective voice, the blends the real-world historical horror of a boarding school where Indigenous girls have their language stolen and are subjected to torture and rape, with the supernatural when one of the girls dies and comes back, bringing a vengeful power with her. Here again “monstrousness” is a comfort and a haven and the idea of what a monster is depends on who is defining it.

“Toothjar “by Ramona Emerson is another standout with a strong voice that does a wonderful job of conjuring one of its central horrors while also keeping description to a minimum, largely leaving the full picture to the reader’s imagination. The narrator’s family lives on a remote farm and when a virus kills everyone around them, their father and uncle turn to murder to protect the property, feeding the remains to their monstrous pig, Pinky, to hide their crimes. Pinky is only seen in glimpses and is all the more frightening for it.

These are just a few examples of the delicious darkness you’ll find in the anthology. Overall, Never Whistle at Night Part II: Back for Blood is an incredibly strong collection of short horror fiction and well worth adding to your TBR pile!

Not to be confused with my previously reviewed title, The Language of Liars, The Language of Knives by Haralambi Markov is a short story collection forthcoming from Mythic Delirium Books, which will be out in early July. The publisher was kind enough to send me a copy.

Themes of mythology, traditional stories, and fairy tales resonate across the collection, as do complex family relationships and the idea of wrestling with history and legacy. The collection opens with “Nine Tongues Tell of” in which a woman meets a hala, a destructive, crop-stealing creature from traditional Bulgarian stories, befriending it and feeding it her grief. The story does a nice job setting the tone for the collection, and introducing the ideas and tropes that will be revisited and explored throughout.

“The Town the Forest Ate” is one of several stories looking at the current generation dealing with the actions of their parents, grandparents, and even more distant ancestors. The story also explores one of the other recurring themes in the collection, which is humanity’s relationship to the natural world, as the narrator must return pieces of a forest goddess to herself in order to be free of a curse. “When Raspberries Bloom in August” also looks at humanity’s relationship to the natural world, while providing a lovely meditation on aging and rebirth, with just a touch of body horror. Another story that effectively wrestles with family legacy and brings more of a horror vibe is “The Drowning Line” wherein a man whose family members are cursed to drown by one of their ancestors tries to protect his daughter.

“Holding Hands With Monsters” shares some similarities with “The Drowning Line”, looking at the intersection between fear and desire as a man develops a relationship with a monster who has visited him all his life, moving from under his bed to sharing his bed. There are some nice nods to the myth of Cupid and Psyche, and the story works well as straightforward speculative fiction, or as a metaphor for coping with Depression and self-acceptance. In a similar vein, “The Mall on the Hill by the Horizon” is a nicely surreal piece about a man determined to reach a mall that lures people in almost like a siren, which again can be read as a straightforward encounter with the uncanny, or a metaphor for rampant consumerism.

The title story, “The Language of Knives”, is a tender look at grief and honoring the dead as a man and his daughter bake their respective husband and father into a cake to honor him and feed the gods. It makes for nice pairing with many of the other stories in the collection where men grapple with their ancestors, as here we see a man trying to come to terms with the rift between him and his daughter, seeking to better understand her and bridge the divide between them. The collection also includes an original piece, “Baba Yaga Helps Build a House” as Baba Yaga’s grandson who is down on his luck, moves in with her, and contends with her abusive treatment and his own uncertain relationship with magic.

Markov uses the tropes of legends, fairy tales, and speculative fiction to good effect throughout, showing how they can act as lenses to better understand ourselves and the human condition. Overall, it’s a lovely collection full of striking imagery and stories that will linger in readers’ minds.

The Language of Liars by S.L. Huang comes out in just a few days on April 21, 2026. The publishers were kind enough to send me an advance copy, and I’m grateful to have gotten a sneak peek at this lovely, complex, and bittersweet novella.

Ro is a linguist from Orro who has always hoped to gain enough mastery of language that he might jump into the body of a Star Eater to better understand their language and culture and report back to his home. His Seniors doubt that he’s serious and focused enough in his studies, and no one has successfully jumped in ages, but Ro remains determined. When he does manage to jump, however, it’s almost accidental and he finds himself wholly unprepared, causing chaos as he gets used to a new form, making cultural blunders, and getting the words all wrong.

What could be a comedy of errors or a simple fish-out-of-water story is much more layered and nuanced. At its heart, The Language of Liars is a love letter to words, but also a sharp examination of their limitations, and how tied meaning is to context, whether it’s the context of time, physicality, or history. The more time Ro spends in his Star Eater body, the more he comes to understand the world around him, but also the history of the Star Eaters themselves, and how language has also been used as a tool to oppress them and erase the truth of their past.

The worldbuilding is detailed and intricate, and it’s obvious Huang spent a lot of time thinking about how language informs the sense of self, and how location, physicality, and culture in turn inform language – for example, the way a being that sees in 360 degrees at all times might think and speak about direction. Everything is precise and deliberate, and Ro’s study of language becomes the key to unlocking long-hidden truths. Along with how language is used and evolves, the novella also explores how language is borrowed and stolen, and how cultures are erased under the guise of protecting them and preserving them. The way narratives are framed to justify oppression and the stories people tell themselves to sidestep responsibility and guilt are core themes throughout as well.

The Language of Liars works both as a study of words and communication and a satisfying story, the form inseparable from the function, with each making the other richer.

The Cellar Below the Cellar by Ivy Grimes is a new novella from Violet Lichen, an imprint of Apex Books with a focus on the literary, the weird, and ecological fiction. It was released March 25, 2026, and the publishers were kind enough to send me a copy for review. There may be minor spoilers ahead, so proceed with caution!

The novella draws inspiration from the Russian fairy tale, Vasilisa the Beautiful, and brings in elements of horror and near-future climate fiction. While Jane is back home, visiting the grandmother who raised her, a powerful solar storm fries the grid and brings on a kind of quiet apocalypse. Jane, her grandmother, and their neighbors are stranded in their remote community, surrounded by the woods and cut off from the rest of the world. Jane’s grandmother assumes a leadership role, sharing her knowledge of purifying water and suggesting a pooling of resources. Their neighbors seem to simultaneously fear and respect her, a sentiment Jane shares as she knows there are things her grandmother isn’t telling her, specifically concerning the cellar below the cellar, a place under the house that Jane has never visited, which her grandmother insists she needs to experience for herself in order to understand.

As the small group settles into a routine of sharing food, chores, and adapting to a new reality, Jane uncovers more and more strange goings-on. Her grandmother gifts her a doll left to her by her mother that displays uncanny abilities and she learns that the one of her least favorite neighbors’ sons may have murdered his brother when they were children. It’s increasingly clear to her that her grandmother is keeping secrets from her, leaving her with the sense that everyone around her, including the young girl named Mary who her grandmother takes in, knows more than she does.

There are some lovely, evocative descriptions, especially in the opening when the solar storm first hits, and the story is nicely grounded by the day to day activities the neighbors undertake in order to survive, along with way the community members interact with each other.

One could make the argument that The Cellar Below the Cellar falls into the realm of cozy horror. While there are dark happenings and some creepy moments, the primary focus is on the community rebuilding and on Jane coming to terms with her family heritage, gaining confidence in herself, and better understanding her place in the world. On a similar note, the theme of healing, and finding peace and balance, echo across the novella – both in terms of a character finding her own inner peace, and in the larger sense as the community heals after the solar storms and finds a new balance and a way forward.

Ellen Poe: The Forgotten Lore by Diana Peterfreund is a YA mystery with a touch of horror, which will officially be released on April 7, 2026. The publishers were kind enough to send me an advance copy for review.

As the title suggests, the novel draws on the works of Edgar Allan Poe for inspiration. Ellen Reynolds is a supposed descendant of Poe from one of his forgotten relationships. Even though it may only be a rumor, much of her family is Poe-obsessed, including Ellen’s aunt, with whom she’s currently living while her father is away for several months on a job. Aunt Marie is trying to launch a Poe-themes Bed and Breakfast, decorating some rooms according to Poe’s theories on furnishings, and others, including Ellen’s bedroom, around his stories. Ellen herself would prefer to downplay her connection, but while helping her aunt sort through boxes, she finds an old journal which appears to have belonged to Poe. It’s written in code, as Poe was known to do, and immediately after finding it, Ellen begins seeing Poe’s ghost. She’s already been having bad dreams since coming to live with her aunt, seeing dead people who appear to be in torment and waking with the feeling of being suffocated. Ellen’s already complicated life is further complicated when a new student named Gus joins her class and she immediately recognizes him as the dead boy from her dreams.

While there are references to Poe’s horror stories and poetry throughout the novel, Peterfreund leans most heavily into Poe as the originator of the modern detective story. There are two intertwined mysteries for Ellen to unravel – the mystery of her dreams and Gus’ death/near-death and the codes in the journal, which as she begins to solve them lead to a larger mystery surrounding artifacts related to Poe hidden across the city in various locations tied to his life and death.

The book is the first in a series, but strikes a good balance between wrapping up enough of the mystery, while leaving other threads open, to feel satisfying on its own. There is a light romance element, but the primary focus is on friendship as Ellen finds someone with common interests who encourages her to be herself in Gus, and also repairs another friendship that fell apart over a miscommunication. The true heart of the story though is Ellen figuring herself out, accepting her strengths and weakness, deciding what kind of person she wants to be, and coming to terms with her family legacy and both the positive and negative aspects of her relationship with her father.

The mystery elements blend well with the coming-of-age elements and the idea of finding one’s place in the world. There are some nice historical tidbits for Poe fans, and Peterfreund does include notes at the back pointing to which elements are taken from Poe’s life and which are inventions of the book. Overall it’s smoothly written and a satisfying read.