Marion and Art go to Niagara Falls for their 30th anniversary. They have behind them 2 kids, 2 affairs, a looming bankruptcy and a possible divorce. They‘re at casino to bet it all. Maybe even on each other. O‘nan is this expert pathologist showing all the wounds on the heart of Marion and Art‘s marriage through inner dialogue and their intimate interactions. I had this constant tug on my heart wishing the best for them. A pick!

I loved this. This author introduces you to all these miserable people aboard The Baltic Charisma. A booze cruise. There‘s vampires but you don‘t meet them until he‘s woven you into these peoples‘ unlucky lives, hoping the best for them. That way the author can break your heart as not all of them survive. This was just good solid horror on a boat with vampires. Pick!

Sooooooo it‘s page 83 and I‘m waiting for the vampires to show up. And I hope it‘s soon because I need a reprieve from all the miserableness of the people on this boat. Not a happy story amongst them. Dad‘s a drunk, grandma committed suicide, mom is in a wheelchair and deserves better, I just lost my job, I came because after my husband died the rest of my family forgot about me and to hear another sad tick tock from the clock in my kitchen 👇🏼

We follow the 3 offspring of the uber wealthy Berisha family. A family whose enemies somehow always end up dying. When they go to church, people look away talking of a curse. This was good and I liked it. However, having read Katsu‘s The Hunger and Wehr Wolf, I felt like this was Diet Katsu. There‘s a density missing from this book. Like I wanted chicken fried steak and mashed potatoes slathered in white gravy but she gave me grilled chicken 👇🏼

In a future America, necrophilia becomes legal. There are necrotels, hotels that provide necrophiliac experiences. We follow Ellis, a husband going undercover as a customer, to look for the body of his dead wife at Motel Styx. Nothing is as it seems. It was really good. There are some themes and lessons here. Is it as depraved and disgusting as you think it is? Yes. If you‘ve read Tender is the Flesh, you can do this. A, just cremate me, Pick!

I don‘t know how you take a story with an ever expanding basement, a door in said basement that appears out of nowhere, with a doppelgänger that comes through that doorway, set against a sinking city supposed to be taken care of by a dark multibillion dollar company with a mysterious lesbian as their enforcer and make it so damn boring. What a snooze fest. And I blame myself Litsy, I got in my reader car and got on the book road. Saw all the ??

This is gonna be on my best of the year list. I just kept smiling while reading this horror manga about a coastal town that is cursed by spirals. Yes, spirals. It just kept surprising me over and over again in its creepiness. Ito is a master at drawing these captivating panels. One of my favorite moments is when these two girls, their hair gets cursed by the spirals and they have this hair off. One of the girls, her hair almost chokes the 👇🏼

I‘ve had this for a couple years. Super happy I‘m reading it for this week.

I liked this very much. One of the most Cormac McCarthian books I‘ve read. Told in 2nd person we follow Constable Jacob, a veteran of the Civil War in Friendship, Wisconsin. If I didn‘t know this was published in 1999 I would have said this was his pandemic novel. Diphtheria sets upon Friendship and we see Jacob‘s struggle with his faith as more and more of the town falls ill. The writing was superb and the story just kept building. Super pick!

This is an anthology where all the stories are based on found footage. I will say that I don‘t think the writing is strong in most of these but their narratives left an ick on me and for that reason it‘s a pick. My favorite one has to do with a young closeted lesbian who is surviving the best way she knows how-with murder. lol it‘s an awesome story. Others include an alien landing off the coast of Africa and an Outback boogeyman slaughter. Pick!

I liked this even though I wish it was smoother. We follow Henry Hotard in 2 timelines. One is him as part of a ghost hunting team on the up and up, with his girlfriend Jade, and best friend, Toad. The other is him a year later dealing with his new reality after a crash where he is confined to a wheelchair. Before the crash there was new ghost hunting case involving whistling, and now when he‘s alone he hears the same whistling months later. Pick.

So female rage with cannibalism is the new thing. We meet Ronny Nguyen, teenage daughter of Vietnamese parents. Her family is reeling from the sudden loss of her older brother, Tommy. She goes to a high school party where something horrific happens while something horrific is discovered. I enjoyed following Ronny and her frustrating coming of age. In a world dangerous to young women I rooted for her rage. Pick!

Look alive, Litsy, it‘s finally happened. I got the senior discount without even asking for it. Lololol To celebrate the occasion, I just wanted to post some of my favorite horror books featuring older main characters. Does the aarp newsletter just start appearing too? Or do they actually wait until I‘m older?

I really liked this grief horror, tragic horror romance? London has been saved, having all of its zombies eradicated. We meet Kesta, a virologist who keeps her husband turned zombie, Tim, chained in her flat until she can figure out a vaccine. This was not the zombie story you expect but it was fascinating. It‘s very zombie CSI. The writing, character exploration of grief, what governments do, it sounds like a lot but it was done very well. Pick!

This was a low pick for me. All stories take place in the universe of Stephen King‘s The Stand. There were more “meh, this is just ok” stories in here than I thought would be. There are so many stories with animals in here. Most were really successful. At the end of The Stand, Stu asks Franny if humans ever learn their lesson, and she just stays quiet. This leads me to my favorite section of these stories. The Wheel, where all the stories 👇🏼

The person on the bot right is Albhora, a contestant on Dragula which is like Drag Race but for the goths. Dragula is judged by the two on the left, The Boulet brothers. In one challenge, one brother said Albhora was the best, amazing. The other brother said she was the worst. When it came to the results one of the brothers said-at the beginning of the season we said we have the final say on who wins and who goes and we stand by that and for 👇🏼

Kids from a neighborhood play a game of Hide and Seek and break the rules therefore allowing this malevolent god of Hide and Seek to take them to this shadowy upside down version of their world where it tortures them with with their deepest fears. Some of these kids had fears that were so sad. It‘s reminiscent of those kids on bikes novels from the 90s and 80s with the power of friendship. It‘s middle grade and a pick!

The girl was thickkk at 1154 pages and I did it! It‘s so good. It‘s funny there were some illustrations in this book because they weren‘t needed even though they were cool. King paints a picture of all of his characters so perfectly. Even without the horror of a viral apocalypse I would have read books about Frannie, Stu, Larry, and Nick all on their own. King is so good at the psychology of his characters. Pick!

I liked this. It made me think of a stack of pancakes. We follow different timelines. There‘s a plague, exiled 1800s Englishmen, 2100s moon colonies, and some clever time play, and confusing names for a gender. I read a certain person as a woman for a whole chunk of the book until someone called them son. All this because there‘s a woman named Vincent in here. It just threw me off. Great book. Pick!

It‘s hard to see but on the left you have The Stand by Stephen King and on the right, Sea of Tranquility by Emily St.John Mendel. The Stand uses what I call Bible type. It‘s so small. Today I took a break from it to read Sea of Tranquility for bookclub tomorrow and boy what difference. It was powderpuff. Like the 2 hours it takes to read 70ish pages of The Stand I almost finished The Sea of Tranquility, lol. Back to The Stand.

While reading The Stand last night I put on The Ruins in the background to run. I forgot how decent it was. The book is exquisite. Talk about an exercise in characterization AND alien killer plants. Which reminds of this episode of The Drabblecast where the story is about an alien plant and its symbiotic relationship with an elephant. Try it. https://www.google.com/search?q=trunk+to+trunk+the+drabblecast&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8...

Omg The Stand is a thiiick book. But it reminds me of this short story I heard on the drabblecast podcast. The Stand has a virus and Jimmy‘s Roadside Diner by Ramsey Shedaheh takes place after an apocalypse due to a virus. It reminds me of The Road also. It has heart and gore and hope. Give it a shot. https://www.drabblecast.org/2012/07/12/drabblecast-249-jimmys-roadside-cafe/

1. Our Share of Night by Marianna Enriquez. A sweeping multigenerational story of a medium who serves a cult in Argentina trying to ensure his son‘s safety. Adela!!!!!!!!!!!

2. Off Season by Jack Ketchum. Horrific cannibalistic fun.

3. The Conqueror Worms by Brian Keene. Septuagenarians at the end of the world. Satanists, mutants, worms, and rain, sooooo much rain.

I just read the little prologue where Charlie wakes up Sally so they could get off base after he saw all those government employees dead of the virus. I turned the page to this and I just smiled. So excited to reread this.

I love Cosby‘s writing. It‘s cinematic and it moves. “Bug” Beauregard thought he had left his life of crime behind but his financial circumstances have made him a part of that “one last job” trope. The one that is messy, the one that just pulls you in further into the life you thought you escaped, the one that has a lot of collateral. Ooof, sooo good. Side note: I love that on one of Ryan Kennedy‘s recent romance books, he blurbs her! Love it.

Sometimes you go into horror thinking you‘re getting the Evil Dead 2013 experience and then sometimes you go see Malignant where these bubbles of laughter come out and you had no idea those were in there. This was hilarious to me. This takes place in 1980s Hollywood. We follow a horror director make his ultimate horror movie using a cursed camera. This harpoons the movie business and actors. So crazy. The end fizzled a bit for me. Still a pick!

Josephine, who as young girl lost her parents due to political violence, will meet up with her older brother and his girlfriend at a huge house on an island in the middle of nowhere. The house where their childhood friend Hiraya lives. The one whose family was rumored to be witches, aswang, cursed. There they will play a game that to the winner, they‘ll get a wish. A wish that could fix everything. This is set against the people‘s revolution👇🏼

I loved this a lot. Becky Spratford has collected 18 essays from some of today‘s best horror authors on why they love horror. My favorites came from Brian Keene, David Demchuck, Paul Tremblay, and Grady Hendrix. Really wtf, Grady? His was soooooo good. He starts his essay talking about the time he found the severed arm of a small child in his father‘s refrigerator. It is wild. And sad. Most of these are how made up horror allows them to👇🏼

Read this for bookclub this past Friday. We had a good time. Would you want to know how and when you will die? This book starts off with this woman on a plane from Hobarth to Sydney. She just goes down the rows pointing and predicting how and when people will die. Bless this author for all the details she gives her characters as we follow their lives to see if the predictions will come true. A book about death that has so much life. Pick!

#ozlittens @CarolynM @Rissreadswithcats have ya‘ll been? Do ya‘ll have a favorite? I went up and looked up the big things. The pineapple was my favorite. And the prawn and lobster would scare me. The kookaburra was cool. lol

Jack Jr. awakens from a 2yr coma in which Covid has happened, his bf/fiancé has left him, and he is taken back home by the family he hasn‘t really talked to in years. Back to work at the Korean-Japanese restaurant he was raised in but escaped. This was slice of life, lots of sushi, forgiveness, family, parents. What do you do when one day your whole life has changed? I chuckled, just read along, chuckled again and would tear up so often. Pick!

This is a real low pick for me. I liked the premise a lot. Which was Mr.Litt during the pandemic gets depressed and to stop from losing himself in doomscrolling decides to pick up surfing. Instead of dwelling and drowning in despair he picks himself up. And then he goes surfing with his brother in law who is opposite of him in a lot of ways. There‘s just something about trying something new but bringing your same neuroticism to the new thing.👇🏼

Kenny and Han are roommates who have been best friends since forever. Han is undocumented and as a solution Kenny suggests they get married so he can stay. The good ol‘fake relationship trope. There were some scenes I absolutely loved but it reads really YA with New Adult characters. There are 2 sex scenes in here that are really ill timed. One that I just skipped over cause I kept wondering why the hell is this even in here. It was just ok.

This book did a great job talking about what fear does and can turn into. We follow Cora, a young Asian woman, living in NYC during the pandemic, trying to survive all that someone saying “China virus” has brought to her. It‘s a lot. Violence, gore. The feeling of being suffocated by fear. The constant feeling of not being safe. You‘d think the horror in here would be the hungry ghosts of Chinese culture but it‘s not. Not even close. Pick!

Litsy, I read horror, so I don‘t know why I felt like I spent most of my time clutching my pearls while reading this. Like I was brand new to this. lol. We follow Ellen, a deeply closeted person who works at a company that restores films. A newly found exploitation film believed to be destroyed by the Nazis has arrived. It‘s haunted and soon, Ellen finds her reality being blurred while also wondering if the choice to be closeted was the right👇🏼

I finished this book this morning and have thought about the MC Margaret all day. Imagine being a kid and having a parent who makes you wonder if they dislike you/hate you. You look around for allies in the family and realize no one wants to upset the apple cart. That later in life you have enough distance where you start realizing you have made decisions to keep that parent comfortable. That maybe those same decisions were a betrayal of 👇🏼

This was read for bookclub this Friday. I guess this is the year of reading books that contain actors, actors who are duplicitous, LIARS! Self CENTERED! CHEATERS! Audition had an actress, Tilt had an actor. Good Company has a couple of actors. I‘m just gobsmacked that this whole book hinges on a decision of an actor not acting or making up a story at a very critical point in his marriage. Instead he tries on the truth. What the eff. Sex advice👇🏼

This was a little all over the place and I loved it. Hendrix is killing it. She has a great list of clients, she‘s trying to get her first television credit by executive producing, she‘s part of Aspire, a group of women who recruits investors for Black Women businesses. She‘s happy being the aunty to her friend‘s children because she KNOWS she doesn‘t want any. She has a mother with dementia she‘s trying to take care of. Enter Maverick, a man👇🏼

Soledad and her 3 daughters are blindsided when her husband gets arrested by the FBI for embezzlement. She has to figure out how to save herself and her girls from financial ruin. There is a lot in here about sisterhood, great friendships. Her love interest, a great coparent with his ex wife, has twin sons with varying degrees of autism. To call this romance seems unfair because it feels like it‘s much more than that. A strong pick.

Goodbye July. This is the first time since Covid that I read 10 books in a month. Being on vacation had a lot to do with it. I coulda probably snuck another one in but I read 50 pages of 2 books and said nah. And the bingo was the bingo I won at Drag bingo. Which I went to with @Bookzombie in Indianapolis. I had so much fun with Margie. We went to a museum, Culver‘s, Insomnia cookies, Drag Bingo. Funny enough, we didn‘t go to a bookstore. Lol

Right away we‘re in the midst of watching midwife, Martha Ballard, help deliver a baby in the late 1700s and then told she is needed to see to the dead body just pulled from the river. She declares it was murder. Its slice of life, lotsa midwifing, community. There is also a sexual assault and gender inequality that still reads in a “yeah, that‘s what would happen today” 200 years later. Depressing. I really liked Martha and her wit. Pick!

Thanks for #trees #tagyoureit @kspenmoll I love this book. It made me more aware of nature. Of trees and the conditions that have to be right for some of them to live, the interdependent ecosystem of it all. The creatures who live in them, the insects who make their home. Their root system. How they talk to each other. These are pics are from different walks/hikes I took on vacation and just like reading a good Kingsolver or Patchett, being👇🏼

It‘s been 2yrs since Ali‘s mom has passed away. It‘s been 1yr since Pete, the father of her 3 kids, has asked for a divorce. This summer, Ethan will enter her orbit and she‘ll wake up from the life fog she‘s been lost in. This was a little snoozy to me but ask me if I didn‘t read it in a day. Also, it feels pretty light until some deep truths about parenting come up. And of course I cried tears of happiness in the end so it‘s a pick! 👇🏼

Loved this queer romance. Adam, a writer whose fame is waning after his gay exMormon Memoir came out 12 years ago gets summoned to ghostwrite the memoir of super mega popular star of the Crash movies, Roland Rogers. When he gets to Roland‘s house he finds Roland‘s ghost and his body is somewhere under an avalanche. So he‘s ghostwriting for a ghost. It sounds wacky but the strength of Allen‘s writing to take something bizarro and make it work👇🏼

Belardes is all about the eco horror. I really enjoyed this book. Greta has dropped out of college, lives on side jobs, and her gf Hannah has ghosted her. She takes a job herding cattle in Wyoming. Into a canyon. The thing is, this land has a long history of violence it has never forgotten. Interspersed with Greta chapters, are chapters told from povs of different animals. It gets intense. The end falls a little for me but it‘s a pick!

I read this book before Xmas this past year. It has a 2.6 rating in GRs and I don‘t care cause I loved it. I get why it has it. There‘s the waste from oyster farms being dumped into the ocean. The blooms in the oceans that awaken something ancient. Maybe an alien who crashed millenia ago. A quarantine, a death cult, and a community group of bird watchers. And sometimes it feels like none of this intersects. I ate it up. He had really strong👇🏼

This was a pick for the back half more than the front half. Asher gets dumped by longtime bf, Clint, at the airport right before they were supposed to go compete on the reality show, Epic Trek. Enter Theo, a pilot who‘s been grounded because of too many flight hours and a bet on some marinara sticks, Theo agrees to be fake bfs with Asher to compete. The writing, some of it read awkward first book. Idk. It eventually made me cry so it gets a pick!

I loved this translated book from South Korea about an alien whose planet exploded and they crash landed here on Earth. They go on the dating apps and shapeshift to become desirable to whoever they‘re talking to. This alien has a lot to say about human relationships, how lonely we can be, and how utterly impossible life feels sometimes. This was so funny at times because this alien is so OVER IT. Big time and stairs are their nemesis. I wanna 👇🏼

I loved this book. Chuck Tingle is so good at writing horror that deals with an issue impacting the queer community. And the evils of capitalism. Hollywood out but closeted back home, screenwriter Misha is trying to write a real queer season finale to one of his shows but comes up against the powers that be. Like all his previous monsters from his queer coded movies. This was at times creepy and funny. It talks about the importance of rep. Pick!

Ughhhh. This had so much potential. Talitha Velkwood still reeling from a tragic event 20 yrs ago gets an offer to go back to her haunted street she left. That piece of haunted street that exists in its own reality separate from our own. One only Talitha and 2 other girls can enter. It could have used more characterization, I‘m not a fan of going back and forth between places where nothing really happens or gets moved forward. I did like her 👇🏼