Synopsis:

From V. E. Schwab, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue: a new genre-defying novel about immortality and hunger.

This is a story about hunger.
1532. Santo Domingo de la Calzada.
A young girl grows up wild and wily—her beauty is only outmatched by her dreams of escape. But María knows she can only ever be a prize, or a pawn, in the games played by men. When an alluring stranger offers an alternate path, María makes a desperate choice. She vows to have no regrets.

This is a story about love.
1827. London.
A young woman lives an idyllic but cloistered life on her family’s estate, until a moment of forbidden intimacy sees her shipped off to London. Charlotte’s tender heart and seemingly impossible wishes are swept away by an invitation from a beautiful widow—but the price of freedom is higher than she could have imagined.

This is a story about rage.
2019. Boston.
College was supposed to be her chance to be someone new. That’s why Alice moved halfway across the world, leaving her old life behind. But after an out-of-character one-night stand leaves her questioning her past, her present, and her future, Alice throws herself into the hunt for answers . . . and revenge.

This is a story about life—
how it ends, and how it starts.

Review:

A few years back I discovered V.E. Schwab by reading The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue. I, like many others, fell in love with Schwab’s beautiful prose. She wove an intricate story told over hundreds of years, pulling in elements of romance, historical novels, supernatural fare, and fantasy. While I read it, I certainly enjoyed it, but there was…maybe a little subdued…a little depressed  — which makes sense given the nature of Addie’s story. A woman who became invisible for generations, cursed to travel through life, but never fully participate in it. 

Here though, in Schwab’s latest, Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil, the gloves are truly off. Reading it felt visceral. Primal. Almost like Schwab was tapping into something deep within herself to tell this story. 

In some ways there are a lot of similarities with Addie LaRue. In both books, we have female lead characters who traverse centuries. Time is a central character in this book, as the reader sees the ways that women have been allowed to navigate society from the 16th century to modern-day. The hurt that happens in the 1500s is central to the plot of the book, but also comes from a key part of the women’s experience at a time when they weren’t considered citizens, had little in terms of individual rights and were better known for their relationship to the men in their lives. 

OK…we’re far enough into the review, that I’ll mention what this book is all about. In fact…I went in virtually blind. I hadn’t read any reviews and as you can see above, the synopsis is pretty bare bones as well. As I was reading, I found myself wondering a bit when the fantasy elements would come into play, but then they show up and stick around for good about twenty percent into the novel. I do hesitate to say what the core of the book is, because Schwab herself only uses the word 4 TIMES in the course of the book. What’s the word?

(SPOILERS — TURN BACK IF YOU WANT TO GO IN BLIND…)

….

…

..

.

Vampires. 

Or, more specifically, lesbian vampires. 

Or, more more specifically, traumatized lesbian vampires. 

Fine — Toxic Lesbian Vampires. 

There are definitely comparisons to be made here between this and Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire, in particular Lestat (played by Tom Cruise in the movie of the same name). Lestat carries with him the trauma of his past and inflicts that on those he chooses to harm and those that he tries not to. In Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil, the Lestat comparison goes to the character of Sabine. She is our throughline in the book from early 16th century Spain to Victorian England and modern day America. 

And Schwab really paints a picture of how the trauma just keeps compiling from one century to the next and the terror that comes at the end of the book is really more due to unresolved issues than the actual fangs in her mouth. 

I really enjoyed Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil. As always I’ll be thrilled to pick up her next book, whether she’s writing for adults or teens. Her voice is a needed one even more than ever in this world and I’m glad girls like my daughter have an author like her writing necessary and needed books.

Thank you to Tor for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

Synopsis

Combat Monsters brings together twenty award-winning and bestselling speculative fiction authors who each bring their own spin on an alternate history of World War II.

New research has uncovered deeply buried military secrets—both the Allied and Axis special operations during World War II included monsters. Did the Soviets use a dragon to win the Battle of Kursk? Did a vampire fight for the Canadians in Holland? Did the US drop the second atomic bomb on a kaiju?

This collection takes real events from World War II and injects them with fantastical creatures that mirror the “unreality” of war itself. Each story—and two poems—feature mythical, mystical, and otherwise unexplainable beings that change the course of history. Dragons rise and fall, witches cast deadly spells, mermaids reroute torpedoes, and all manner of “monsters” intervene for better or worse in the global turmoil of World War II.

Together, Combat Monsters challenge the very definition of monstrous, with the brutality of war as a sobering backdrop.

Review

Thanks to NetGalley and Blackstone Publishing for this audio arc. 

A concise set of stories meshing monsters with the atrocities of WWII. Vampires, witches, werewolves, dragons, krakens, genetically modified humans and animals, and DNA-altered bears, oh my. I particularly appreciated the generous take on “monster” as well as the shaping of war being the true evil. I don’t tend to enjoy war stuff that alters historical events in any big way as I feel it takes away from the people that paid for the outcome with their lives, and I’m glad to say this one skirted that exceptionally. The editor asked each contributor to ground their story in fact, within real events, but the outcomes were the same and the supernatural elements were simply helping or layered within. 

I enjoyed how each story took readers to a new place, a new perspective, a new country even. Including countries I wasn’t even aware took part in the war. We traveled the world and learned of the supernatural just under the surface. We read stories from the beginning of the war, and we read stories from the very bombing that ended the war. The variety within is really what makes this collection so special. 

Particular stand outs included a story that acted as almost an unauthorized sequel to Dracula and the Demeter, a werewolf that’s helped by something else, a crazy croctopus taking out strike teams, and the farming bears. I apologize because as I did the audio, which I typically do while driving, I didn’t think to note the names/authors!

Synopsis

A chilling historical horror set in the American west in 1912 following a Lutheran priest who transcribes the life of a vampire who haunts the fields of the Blackfeet reservation looking for justice.

Etsy Beaucarne is an academic who needs to get published. So when a journal written in 1912 by Arthur Beaucarne, a Lutheran pastor and her grandfather, is discovered within a wall during renovations, she sees her chance. She can uncover the lost secrets of her family, and get tenure.

As she researches, she comes to learn of her grandfather, and a Blackfeet called Good Stab, who came to Arthur to share the story of his extraordinary life. The journals detail a slow massacre, a chain of events charting the history of Montana state as it formed. A cycle of violence that leads all the way back to 217 Blackfeet murdered in the snow.

A blood-soaked and unflinching saga of the violence of colonial America, a revenge story like no other, and the chilling reinvention of vampire lore from the master of horror.

Review

Imagine, just for a moment, that whilst renovating a building, you discover an old journal. Not just any old journal, but a journal from your very own great-grandfather. And contained within this journal, isn’t the thoughts of a turn-of-the-century gentleman, but a story within a story, a Russian dolls nest of horror and unimaginable events. A story of bloodshed, wanton and destructive. A tale both lucid and yet seemingly ethereal, charting the events of one man’s life across the plains of Montana, a man who has no place, rejected by both the white man and his own people. But this man’s story is more than just a tall tale; it’s one of revenge. And when seeking revenge, a vampire has all the time in the world to wait.

And so Stephen Graham Jones, author of the award-winning novels The Only Good Indians & The Indian Lake trilogy, is back with another masterpiece, this time tackling the vampire mythos and turning it into something wholly original and new. SGJ harkens back to the great vampire novels that came before it – Interview With A Vampire, Dracula, Carmilla – but using an epistolary narrative form to tell this tale spanning multiple generations, and over 2 centuries of violence. Etsy Beaucarne, one of our three storytellers and chroniclers, is of the present day, having found her great-grandfathers journal in the walls of a building that is being renovated. Desperate for academic success, she begins to transcribe this book. From here, and for the biggest portion of this novel, we then read the journal enters of her descendant, Arthur Beaucarne, a Lutheran priest, as in the spring of 1912, he is visited numerous times by a Blackfeet Native American, a man by the name of Good Stab. Good Stab’s story is then told through first person narration, as he “confesses” his frankly wild life to Arthur.

The interactions between Arthur & Good Stab, which are always seen from Arthur’s POV/writings, are tense from the beginning. I never knew which direction this was going to go, and to be honest, for the first 200+ pages of this story, I wasn’t sure what exactly was going on or why. This isn’t a bad thing; normally I wouldn’t like what feels so meandering, but SGJ’s writing is so immersive, and all three narrative throughlines are so unique from each other, it becomes so incredibly readable because you are fully encompassed in the journey. And as each layer of both Arthur’s & Good Stab’s stories unfold – when both characters pipes are full – you are pulled along for more. Etsy’s POV is very familiar and modern; Arthur has this almost romantic idea of Victorian style language, and he writes with a long-winded hand. Good Stab is wholly unique from anything I’ve experienced before, and his tale can be confusing (for me at least it was) to comprehend at first. This is book you cannot read fast. SGJ does not hold your hand. Instead, he wants you to dive deep straight in and work things out, puzzle them out until you have your own grip on the events being told between these pages.

Because this is a very deeply thematic novel. It demands to be read slowly, and each section becomes its own learning curve. It’s almost best to read one POV until it switches to another, then break there and think about what has just been said. This story explores the bloody takeover of Native peoples lands, of the violence found in colonial America, how this was built on the wholesale destruction of the lands, peoples, and nature held within. It’s a blood-drenched story of vengeance, of being an outcast, of metamorphosis. It’s also a story that you have to trust in the process. The writing is of a quality that will keep you reading anyway, but as you move through this book, each of these themes and more are hit upon in symbolism, in allegory, and come the final 150 pages of this story, SGJ smashes it into another gear. The final confrontation and closing moments of Arthur’s & Good Stab’s respective stories are up there with some of the best one-on-one face offs I’ve ever read.

Arthur & Good Stab are these two opposites, yet so incredibly alike, and their juxtaposition to one another only becomes more interesting as the book carries on. Good Stab, being a vampire (more on the vampire stuff shortly), dressed in his own set of priest blacks, has an insatiable thirst for blood, a curse that causes him afflictions to the suns light, all of which he cannot control. Arthur, however, has his own gluttony, but it’s entirely something within his control. Yet he always chooses not eat, and eat of the food given to him by his parish he will. I see them as two sides of the same coin.

Now, the vampire shit; I will keep it short as I want you to experience this yourself. This shit is so original and so cool! Vampirism here is truly a curse. There is no romanticism here; Good Stab suffers physically and emotionally. For him, there is no lust, no castle with thralls and a gorgeous lover. There is only rejection, from his own people, from the people who took his land, from everything. And what he must do to survive is pure horror. SGJ said that he wanted this to not feel like other vampires, and the vampire lore we have come to expect. Instead, it had to feel like Good Stab was just scraping by at all times, and that this curse was always there to cause pain. It’s heartbreaking, seeing what he goes through, despite the fact that some of the things he does are monstrous – justifiably or not, that is for you to decide.

Please note: this is not the story for those faint of heart. It is very gory, very bloody, and there’s lots of animal stuff in this one. It’s never gratuitous nor is it done for shock value. It is always in service to the themes, to the characters, to the story at large.  

In short, The Buffalo Hunter Hunter is a masterwork of revenge fiction, coated with one of the most original spins on the vampire I’ve ever experienced. Stephen Graham Jones writes with such confidence and immersion, never holding your hand in this book that is supposed to challenge you. It was my first SGJ novel, and it definitely is not going to be the last. The Buffalo Hunter Hunter is out now, and it’s going to be remembered as a classic.

Good Stab has a story to tell. So you had better listen.

With thanks to Titan Books for sending me an ARC and a finished copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. I am very grateful to have received such a wonderful book!

Synopsis:

Fear – arguably humanity’s strongest emotion – is both a blessing and a curse.

It hinders some, while it fuels others, but without it, our species would not have survived hundreds of thousands of years. However it might affect you, you’ve felt fear. We all have. Within this book, you’ll come face to face with new fears as you open your imagination and experience the incredible lives of original characters in eight vast different short stories that span many unique and gripping genres, including thriller, tragic romance, crime, science fiction, retelling, and more.

Each story is a different face of fear.

Review:

Fear by Jose Trevino is a short story collection featuring nine horror tales. Trevino works across horror genres to bring us tales ranging from psychological, supernatural, paranormal, and science fiction.

Trevino’s ability to move seamlessly between past and present tense, along with point of view shifts, is impressive. One story may be written in the third person past tense, then the next in first person present tense.

Trevino displays a variety of characters, all of which were natural and full of depth, even in the short time we get to know them. From a grieving son to a misled youth who has joined a cult, each character is unique and enjoyable.

In some of the stories, the horror builds alongside the plot, revealing unsettling details slowly to help understand each event. In others, Trevino wastes no time. He pulls you in, terrifies you, and leaves enough to the imagination that there is no choice but to continue flipping the pages.

Trevino writes with authority. Though he often drops the reader into an unknown setting, he continues on, delivering just enough knowledge to understand what is happening but leaving the questions unanswered until the right moments.

The stories themselves were unique: twisted retellings of familiar legends, and distinct perspectives on common subgenres. In particular, Dinner For Two and the Hunger took me by surprise in such a delightful way. Both were dark, unprecedented takes on the familiar vampire and zombie stories.

The stories within Fear provided a great balance between dreadful and hopeful. There were terrible endings (my personal favorite), happy endings, and some stories ended with ambiguity, leaving the reader to make their own decisions as to what occurred thereafter.

Fear is a must-have for any horror reader’s shelf—perfect for those who appreciate thought-provoking narratives, fear rooted in everyday life, and genre-spanning, morbid tales.

SYNOPSIS

What do you see…?

When the mutilated body of a young woman is discovered in the desert on the outskirts of Los Angeles, the detective assigned to the case can’t deny the similarities between this murder and one that occurred a year prior. Media outlets are quick to surmise this is the work of a budding serial killer, but Detective Bill Renney is struggling with an altogether different scenario: a secret that keeps him tethered to the husband of the first victim.

What do you hear…?

Maureen Park, newly engaged to Hollywood producer Greg Dawson, finds her engagement party crashed by the arrival of Landon, Greg’s son. A darkly unsettling young man, Landon invades Maureen’s new existence, and the longer he stays, the more convinced she becomes that he may have something to do with the recent murder in the high desert.

What do you feel…?

Toby Kampen, the self-proclaimed Human Fly, begins an obsession over a woman who is unlike anyone he has ever met. A woman with rattlesnake teeth and a penchant for biting. A woman who has trapped him in her spell. A woman who may or may not be completely human.

In Ronald Malfi’s brand-new thriller, these three storylines converge to create a tapestry of deceit, distrust, and unapologetic horror. A brand-new novel of dark suspense set in the City of Angels, as only “horror’s Faulkner” can tell it.

REVIEW

Thank you Titan Books for sending me an ARC of Senseless to read and review. All opinions are honest and my own.

If there’s a theme tying all of Ronald Malfi’s book together, it is secrets, and Senseless is his magnum opus of secrets. Every character in this novel is brimming with them and they will keep you guessing until the final page, and for a few, long after.

Talking about this novel without spoilers is near impossible, the synopsis really gives you all you need to know. With echoes of the Black Dahlia murder, Malfi takes us on a journey into all corners of Los Angeles. From the sweltering desert and the McMansions to the secret clubs and seediest corners, we meet characters from all walks of life who have no business crossing paths, but somehow Malfi masterfully weaves all these stories together into a beautiful horror-noir (noirror?) tapestry.

Ronald Malfi has been quickly climbing my list of favorite authors and Senseless is my favorite so far. I say “so far” and not “by far” because everything I’ve read by him is incredible and he keeps getting better and better. But as a true crime junkie who’s gateway in was The Black Dahlia Murder, this is the book I’ve been waiting for. Every character’s story is gripping and the way it all ties together is just…brilliant.

Beautifully written, ingeniously structured and paced, and filled with characters you won’t soon forget, Senseless is my favorite Ronald Malfi book yet and will surely remain one of my favorite books of the year. Filled with tension, twists and secrets, Malfi takes us into the deepest, darkest corners of humanity and emerges with a masterpiece that will knock you senseless.

Synopsis:

It’s the winter of 1975, and Duane Minor, back home in Portland, Oregon, after a tour in Vietnam, is struggling to quell his anger and keep his drinking in check, keep his young marriage intact, and keep the nightmares away. Things get even more complicated when his thirteen-year-old niece, Julia, is sent across the country to live with Duane and his wife, Heidi, after a tragedy. But slowly, carefully, guided by Heidi’s love and patience, the three of them are building a family.

Then Minor crosses the wrong man: John Varley, a criminal with a bloody history and a trail of bodies behind him. Varley, who sleeps during the day beneath loose drifts of earth and grows teeth in the light of the moon. In an act of brutal retaliation, Varley kills Heidi, leaving Minor broken with guilt and Julia filled with rage. The two of them are left united by only one thing: the desire for vengeance.

Review:

Not knowing what to expect from a Keith Rosson vampire novel, I ended up getting exactly what I would expect from a Keith Rosson vampire novel. Much like his brilliant duology of Fever House and Devil by Name, Coffin Moon injects a brutal, gritty magic into an otherwise realistic world, allows all hell to break loose, and offers us real, human characters, all facing the worst days of their lives.

I loved every second of it.

When we meet Duane Minor, it’s 1975, and the Vietnam vet is back home, working at his in-laws’ bar, clean and sober, parenting Julia, his thirteen-year-old niece. There’s a lot of anger in Duane, and that’s led to some bad decisions on his part, but at this moment, things are about as good as they can get. He’s madly in love with his wife, and Julia (who shares some of Duane’s anger issues) is starting to open up, starting to act like a regular kid.

Obviously, there’s nowhere to go but downhill.

Minor tries to do the right thing, kicking some drug-dealing bikers out of the bar, but that puts him up against John Varley, a spooky kind of criminal with his own anger issues. Trouble is, when Varley gets angry, people tend to die.

In a brutal act of revenge, Varley kills Minor’s wife and in-laws, leaving him and Julia alone and bereft. Minor’s pretty sure he’s hit the nadir, rock-bottom, but Rosson has other ideas.

As the unlikely pair set out to hunt John Varley and enact their own revenge, it becomes clear that Varley is more than just a dangerous man. He’s a powerful vampire with a long history of violent massacres.

More bad decisions are made, and soon we’re on a supernatural revenge roadtrip across the nation’s northern edges: two broken people with only one idea to keep them moving forward.

As you might have inferred from the above, Coffin Moon‘s universe is an angry one, where hurt people hurt people, taking place in a long series of dingy motel rooms and even dingier bars. Rage, and its capacity to destroy what is beautiful, is a bright red thread strung through this tale, but as in Rosson’s earlier work, so is love. Family bonds, even when tenuous to begin with, are central. Varley, who in many ways plays Minor’s foil, is different in just this way. He doesn’t understand love, so he can’t understand loss. It might be this fact that makes him truly monstrous.

There’s a little Salem’s Lot in Coffin Moon, with a dash of Let the Right One In, but Rosson creates a unique take, and his nocturnal Portland is a haunted place filled with nightmare children, labyrinthine houses, dark magic, and a whole lot of people just trying to get by. And in the end, it’s the relationship between Minor and Julia that carries Coffin Moon to its inevitably bloody conclusion.

Review:

When I first discovered C.S. Humble’s The Massacre at Yellow Hill, I was giddy. That book mixes a gritty western mythos with vampires, secret societies, and cosmic horror, but more importantly, it does what I come to story for: it gave me new people to love.

Gilbert Ptolemy and his adopted son, Carson; Tabitha Miller and her family; these characters appear fully formed on the page, and they assert their reality with every action, every scrap of dialogue, every sacrifice.

It doesn’t hurt that Humble’s prose alternates between razor sharp observation and passages of lyrical beauty not often found in your average horror novel.

As I read on through the trilogy (A Red Winter in the West and The Light of Black Star), it became clear that there was much more at work there. Through this ever-expanding story, Humble wasn’t just spinning a great yarn. He was building worlds.

The 19th century of Humble’s books may sometimes resemble that historical era, but it is most certainly an alternative history with complex, competing occult organizations, all variety of supernatural entities, a highly regimented Gunfighters Guild, a young hero struggling with his troubling destiny, and a deep system of magic that ties all of these disparate parts together, leading up to a final battle.

I’d been hoodwinked. This wasn’t a horror-western series at all. I was reading an epic fantasy.

Ever since, I’ve been an evangelist for these books, the voice of one crying in the wilderness: Hey, you want to have your heart ripped out? Have I got the books for you.

So, when I heard that Humble was releasing more books in the series, I was understandably excited, and when I learned that they were prequels, I was doubly excited. Why? Because in Humble’s world, there is no safety for anyone, especially those characters we love most. So these prequels offer us the opportunity to spend time with those we’ve loved and lost.

More importantly, they allow Humble to deepen his world building, slow down to investigate the mythology of The Peregrine Estate, the occult organization fighting for the fate of the world. We also get a deeper look at the mechanics and politics of the famed Gunfighters Guild. All of this while we see the pieces shifting slowly into place to bring us to the plot events of the original trilogy. It’s deeply imagined, fascinating stuff.

But none of that is what matters.

These books are pure character work.

The opening volume, To Carry a Body to its Resting Place, follows the early career of the lovable rogue, Ashley Sutliff. In the original trilogy, Sutliff is a kind of Han Solo figure, drawn into the occult drama against his will. He’d much rather be playing cards, though, naturally, under his brash exterior is a loyal heart.

To Carry a Body to its Resting Place rounds out Sutliff’s character to great effect, humanizing him to an almost unbearable degree.

Ashley is drawn home by the news of his father’s impending death, and while there he uncovers family secrets and eventually rides off on what will become his first action for the Peregrine Estate, but these latter details are almost incidental. The heart of this book is a meditation of fathers and sons, what is owed, and how we say goodbye that more to Larry McMurtry than any horror or fantasy writer. It’s an emotionally wrenching read that suddenly hurtles into action.

San Antonio Mission is a much more plot-driven entry, with my favorite character, Gilbert Ptolemy dispatched by the Peregrine Estate to recruit newly freed slaves to join the cause. Ptolemy, a former slave himself, is partnered with the wisecracking Sarah Lockhart and a member of the Gunfighter’s Guild because there’s no guarantee that the former owner of these people will allow them to leave, even in this post-Juneteenth era.

These suspicions turn out to be correct, but nothing could prepare our team for the depth of the horrors that await them at the mission.

San Antonio Mission focuses more on human horrors, while placing them quite explicitly within their historical contexts, allowing Humble to investigate the horrors of U.S. history itself, and its legacy of racist violence. It also offers a cathartic response to those who set themselves up as tyrants. Add in some romance and the delightful new gunslinger, Oliver Maine, and this second volume feels like a much more complete and self-contained entry into the saga.

The final book in the trilogy, The Baroness of the Eastern Seaboard, does a lot to segue into the original storyline, presenting some of the future Big Bads, while also allowing the reader to access the interior world of the Gunfighters Guild. As with the other volumes, these are mostly details. The center of The Baroness of the Eastern Seaboard is the relationship between Sven and Larry, devoted husbands who also happen to be inching perilously close to each other’s ranks within the Guild. Any day now, they will be forced to compete for rank, meaning one of them must die.

The couples’ attempt to petition the Guild for a way around this impossibility leads to quests for each of the lovers, both of them bloody and harrowing. The most explicitly romantic of the three books, Baroness is a love story wrapped in a Peckinpah movie’s violence and propulsive action.

As a reader, all I wanted to do was protect Sven and Larry, but the facts of Humble’s universe leave no one safe, and things get just about as bad as they can get while still leaving our heroes alive to appear later on in the saga.

All in all, The Peregrine Estate Trilogy is a varied and wondrous treasure trove of stories that situate themselves less as straight prequels than as elaborate midrash, glimpses between the scenes of the larger story, illustrating Humble’s knack for not only storytelling and lush prose, but his near magical penchant for character building. It is a necessary addition to what has become a vast saga. Here’s hoping there’s more to come.

The Peregrine Estate Trilogy will be available in September of 2025.

Synopsis

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Only Good Indians is a chilling historical horror novel tracing the life of a vampire who haunts the fields of the Blackfeet reservation looking for justice.

A diary, written in 1912 by a Lutheran pastor is discovered within a wall. What it unveils is a slow massacre, a chain of events that go back to 217 Blackfeet dead in the snow. Told in transcribed interviews by a Blackfeet named Good Stab, who shares the narrative of his peculiar life over a series of confessional visits. This is an American Indian revenge story written by one of the new masters of horror, Stephen Graham Jones.

Review

Nobody writes like that Stephen Graham Jones. That’s not hyperbole, just simple fact. Jones’s voice and style is unique, and his stories unfold in an intensely conversational way, utilizing stream of consciousness, occasional tangents, and prose and dialogue that can prove circuitous and sometimes confusing until an act or deed provides clarity (or the reader just figures it out on their own). As a Blackfeet Native American writer, Jones brings the oral tradition of Indigenous storytelling to his writing, and in doing so has carved out a distinct and special space within the horror genre, writing books that are unlike anything else out there.

His style makes for a comfortable bedfellow with the epistolary technique, with The Buffalo Hunter Hunter unfolding across a series of journal entries from 1912, many of which concern the life of Blackfeet Indian Good Stab and the events of 1870 and the years following that made him the undead man he is. Good Stab has come to the church of Lutheran pastor Arthur Beaucarne, who records the confessions shared with him over a handful of months. The overarching mystery, of course, is why Good Stab has chosen Beaucarne as his confessor and what unites these two men, especially as skinned corpses are discovered in the snowy banks around Miles City, Montana.

On the surface, The Buffalo Hunter Hunter is a revenge-driven vampire story. The afflicted Good Stab hunts the mountains and prairies for those who have attacked his people and who are hunting buffalo in an effort to eliminate the Native’s dependent on the animals for their survival. There’s plenty of bloody violence, of course, befitting a 21st Century vampire book, but there’s a heck of a lot more going on between the covers here.

What The Buffalo Hunter Hunter really is, is a piece of history being told through the lens of slow-burn historical horror. It’s America’s story, of land stolen, of murders committed, of genocide enacted in the name of white supremacy, as told by the victims of a nation founded on their blood and tears. As one character writes late in the proceedings, “This is an Indian story…and you’re on Indian land whether you admit it or not.” And the vampiric Good Stab, well, he’s “the Indian who can’t die…. the worst dream America ever had.”

Jones’s latest certainly arrives a timely moment with contemporary American politics being what they are. Right-wing school boards and Moms Against Literacy orgs across the country have, for years now, been working to strip history classes of actual historical content and ban books from their libraries in an effort to help make white America even more coddled and unchallenged by facts, the existence of other races and cultures, and the sins of our forefathers. Rather than confront the multifaceted truths of America’s heritage and legacy, the answer of these fascist-loving nutjobs is to sanitize and whitewash the past and silence everyone else. All of which helps make The Buffalo Hunter Hunter a necessary and vital breath of fresh air, as well as a reminder about the power of truth in fiction and the importance of reading diverse voices. It’s awfully crazy that in order to get a better understanding of American history in 2025 and the horrors inflicted upon Indigenous peoples we have to turn to a vampire book, but that’s where we’re at nowadays in post-truth USA where simple facts are decried as woke and evil.

There’s a necessary and righteous undercurrent of anger at the (un)beating and deeply empathetic heart of The Buffalo Hunter Hunter as Jones challenges readers to confront one’s complictness in a violent and ugly past. This may be Jones at his absolute best, too, reminding readers of just how potent a literary powerhouse he can be. By the time he lays all his cards on the table late in the game, it’s one hell of an emotional sucker-punch that has been preceded by a number of incredible moments that eventually give way to startling revelation. The Buffalo Hunter Hunter has long, sharp teeth to sink into readers, but more importantly, it forces you to think and feel. If you disagree, you might want to check your pulse.

What do you see…? When the mutilated body of a young woman is discovered in the desert on the outskirts of Los Angeles, the detective assigned to the case can’t deny the similarities between this murder and one that occurred a year prior. Media outlets are quick to surmise this is the work of a budding serial killer, but Detective Bill Renney is struggling with an altogether different a secret that keeps him tethered to the husband of the first victim.

What do you hear…? Maureen Park, newly engaged to Hollywood producer Greg Dawson, finds her engagement party crashed by the arrival of Landon, Greg’s son. A darkly unsettling young man, Landon invades Maureen’s new existence, and the longer he stays, the more convinced she becomes that he may have something to do with the recent murder in the high desert.

What do you feel…? Toby Kampen, the self-proclaimed Human Fly, begins an obsession over a woman who is unlike anyone he has ever met. A woman with rattlesnake teeth and a penchant for biting. A woman who has trapped him in her spell. A woman who may or may not be completely human. 

Story-telling with a serrated edge, Ronald Malfi’s “Senseless,” is a supernatural, noir police procedural that is as gripping as it is gritty. A macabre jigsaw, each piece jagged, that the reader futilely tries to assemble, we read from three equally anxiety-inducing perspectives. We’re left to stumble blindly in the dark, holding our breaths, whilst racking our brains and trying our hardest (in vain, of course) to put on a brave face. Compulsive, propulsive, tense and taut, with passages that oscillate between stomach-shrivelling gore and legato, fever-dreamish surrealism, Malfi continues to raise the bar. Thank you to Titan Books for my ARC, this one releases on April 15th. 

Maureen is freshly engaged to Hollywood producer Greg, and what better way to celebrate than with a glamorous party at their stunning LA home? The glittering soirée takes a turn however, when Greg’s almost-estranged son, Landon, joins the festivities. Fresh off a dad-funded tour of Europe, Landon’s arrival is met with polite smiles and palpable unease. Maureen has never met him before, but beyond the inevitable awkwardness there’s something about Landon that feels plain wrong. Toby Kampen meets a vampire at a club, and, enchanted by her hypnotic charm, agrees to act as “The Renfield,” to her Dracula. He buys her drinks, chauffeurs her around, and is determined that he too will be turned. To top it all off, the whole of LA is talking about the murder and mutilation of Gina Fortunado, who was discovered on the outskirts, almost a year after the eerily similar and equally unfortunate death of Melissa Andressen. It seems the city has a serial killer on its hands. Yup! There’s a whole lot going on, and that’s not even the half of it. 

These three strands are meticulously woven into a sticky web, one hell of a tangle, that takes a whole lot of unknotting on our part. Beautifully paced and wickedly engineered for maximum mind-fuckery, I could not put this down, a miracle considering it’s on the thicker side. (432 pages) It’s not something that grabs you- it grips, until its bloodied knuckles turn white. God damn it leaves marks. The prose is gorgeous, something I’m sure I don’t need to tell anyone who has allowed themselves to indulge in a Malfi book and bask in his writing. His words seduce, ensnare and cut, and “Senseless,” is no different in that respect. It’s another one of those books where I’m glad I’m not an annotator, lest I get some kind of repetitive strain injury from highlighting pages at a time.

Thematically, Malfi continues his long-standing, torrid love affair with secrecy. In “Small Town Horror,” and “The Narrows,” he explored how secrecy is allowed to fester in tight-knit, rural settings. LA is of course a whole other beast. This one is more alike to works like “Come With Me,” and “Bone White,” in which things are obscured and hidden within relationships, as well as of course, from us the reader. The lack of transparency, within families, between associates… in general, goes to show that nobody is exactly what they seem, and we can’t make assumptions. In Malfi’s LA, trusting anybody is a fool’s errand.

 I’d be lying if I said I was even mildly surprised that Malfi’s latest is yet another banger, but this was excellent. Each revelation, each cruel gut-punch, had me reeling. He pulled the rug out from under me, only to reveal a trap door. Don’t even get me started on the monkey. Just you wait. A roller coaster through Tinseltown that’ll whip you around corners you didn’t see coming, and leave you breathless and bruised, once you’re on this ride, there’s no getting off. You’ll be glad you climbed aboard though. Don’t miss it.

Synopsis

A woman must learn to take life by the throat after a night out leads to irrevocable changes in this juicy, thrilling novel from the USA Today-bestselling author of Such Sharp Teeth and Black Sheep.

Sloane Parker is dreading her birthday. She doesn’t need a reminder she’s getting older, or that she’s feeling indifferent about her own life. Her husband surprises her with a birthday-weekend getaway―not with him, but with Sloane’s longtime best friend, troublemaker extraordinaire Naomi. Sloane anticipates a weekend of wine tastings and cozy robes and strategic avoidance of issues she’d rather not confront, like her husband’s repeated infidelity.

But when they arrive at their rental cottage, it becomes clear Naomi has something else in mind. She wants Sloane to stop letting things happen to her, for Sloane to really live. So Naomi orchestrates a wild night out with a group of mysterious strangers, only for it to take a horrifying turn that changes Sloane’s and Naomi’s lives literally forever. The friends are forced to come to terms with some pretty eternal consequences in this bloody, seductive novel about how it’s never too late to find satisfaction, even though it might taste different than expected.

Review

Life sucks. You wake up, go to work, eat, shit, sleep and repeat. And most of the time, you do all this on a form of autopilot, never really confronting the fact that you’re just living, but not really living. Yeah, sure, for most people (and very generally speaking here), you have these moments of life that make the more mundane worth pushing through.

Do you know what doesn’t suck? So Thirsty by Rachel Harrison, which is a book that questions the difference between just surviving and living life to its fullest, about catering for our wants and not just our needs.

So Thirsty follows Sloane, a thirty-something year old woman on the cusp of another miserable birthday, as she heads off on a getaway with her best friend, Naomi, organised by her cheating husband. Whilst there, they encounter a group of vampires, and things take a turn that change their lives forever. Now, from the off, this isn’t a book where the vampires are uber scary. They aren’t the kind of Barlow type vampire, terrifying and monstrous beyond understanding. Neither are they brooding vampire who only want love ala Edward Cullen. Really, they feel very human, more akin to Dracula’s “brides” in S.T. Gibson’s A Dowry of Blood. This group they encounter are humorous, multi-faceted, have a deep history with one another with their own wants and desires, yet bound together by a shared bond. It’s a very post-modern take on the vampire concept – if that isn’t a too “up my own arse” thing to say. Yet they still have this sense of danger, at least to start, particularly as Sloane first interacts with them.

Sloane herself is very interesting. The book is entirely in her headspace, and it’s the mind of a person so deeply in denial about her own self that she’s struggling to claw this back, yet she is fully aware of this. It’s fascinating watching her contradict her own actions, her own thoughts, wants and needs to fit with this pre-conceived notion of who she should be. This book is very much a feminist shout of rage at societal norms surrounding women – this idea of suburbanism (if that’s even a word), of having value through how you present outwardly – particularly the whole aging woman thing and losing purpose as a woman ages. I could say I find this very thought pattern to be utterly ridiculous, which I do, but I also acknowledge that me pointing this out just makes me look like a “good guy”, a real fedora twirling “pick me” and can often actually have the opposite effect of what this is trying to challenge. I digress. Sloane’s struggles throughout with her own identity, of her own regrets and paths not tread, of settling down for what she thinks she deserves and never trying to strive for more, and vampirism acts as a metaphor for this. As the need for blood, that overpowering slam of thirst in those early days of vampirism, counters against everything she ever strived for or what she thought she should strive for, and what she really wants from life. I know this book is a feminist take on this, and I’m not detracting from that, but I feel like this sense of longing is a universal feeling in many of us. Like I said previously, I’d like to think that many of us enjoy most aspects of our lives, but there are naturally going to be things we want. To self-indulge for a moment, I think I managed to read this book at a time where I am feeling the same feelings – well, I’m not having a shitty time of life like Sloane, I’m just thinking about where I want to go in my career, how I want to explore my own writing and how to build this, what I need to do to strive for this idea of me becoming a published author etc. Even if you can’t relate to the exact things that are going on in Sloane’s life, you can definitely and would have definitely felt these feelings before.

Sloane & Naomi’s relationship is very realistic. They have this deep unspoken bond that is unexplainable, it’s more like magic really, a bond you tend to have with very few people. I loved the moments where we step away from the events unfolding before us so Sloane can reflect on her friendship with Naomi over the years. Despite them being two completely separate people on paper, throughout the story you can really begin to understand why they have this deep infatuation with each other. It’s a love that’s not romantic at all, it’s a familial love. Sloane’s relationship to the rest of the group also feels natural in both its initial first steps and its culmination. Each person in that group represents some part of Sloane even if she doesn’t know it. But one of my favourite moments is hers and Henry’s first true meeting, alone in a room in a dark house. It’s both scary & sensual. Either way, my heart was pounding!

So Thirsty is a metaphorical title. It’s about that thirst for blood, for base carnal desires, but its also that thirst for something more in life, for a life worth getting up for. Not about getting up and making a huge difference in the world, but just making a change to your own being so you can feel fulfilled in yourself. I think the question that Rachel Harrison conveys here, and the answer that it ultimately comes up with, is a hopeful one. It’s a book I’d highly recommend. Don’t go thinking you’ll be terrified or grossed out or horrified; that isn’t this book. Instead, let yourself be swept away by the characters, the message, the words between the words, and the reflective nature of this books closing few pages. I can’t wait to read more of Harrison’s works. If they make think and feel as much as this one did, then I may have found a new favourite author.