What it is About?

“A woman is determined to stay in her dream home even after it becomes a haunted nightmare in this compulsively readable, twisty, and layered debut novel.

When Margaret and her husband Hal bought the large Victorian house on Hawthorn Street—for sale at a surprisingly reasonable price—they couldn’t believe they finally had a home of their own. Then they discovered the hauntings. Every September, the walls drip blood. The ghosts of former inhabitants appear, and all of them are terrified of something that lurks in the basement. Most people would flee.

Margaret is not most people.

Margaret is staying. It’s her house. But after four years Hal can’t take it anymore, and he leaves abruptly. Now, he’s not returning calls, and their daughter Katherine—who knows nothing about the hauntings—arrives, intent on looking for her missing father. To make things worse, September has just begun, and with every attempt Margaret and Katherine make at finding Hal, the hauntings grow more harrowing, because there are some secrets the house needs to keep.”

Why This Breaks the Brain?

Reading The September House was akin to standing in the middle of a whirling dervish of wrongness. The entire time I was shouting in my head for the main character to run, but one can’t run from the evils in their mind nor can they run from what lurks in this house. It has been a year since I read this novel and I still can visualize blood running down the walls, and it being treated like an average Tuesday.

What it is About?

Long ago, Nathan lived in a house in the country with his abusive father—and has never told his family what happened there.

Long ago, Maddie was a little girl making dolls in her bedroom when she saw something she shouldn’t have—and is trying to remember that lost trauma by making haunting sculptures.

Long ago, something sinister, something hungry, walked in the tunnels and the mountains and the coal mines of their hometown in rural Pennsylvania.

Now, Nate and Maddie Graves are married, and they have moved back to their hometown with their son, Oliver.

And now what happened long ago is happening again . . . and it is happening to Oliver. He meets a strange boy who becomes his best friend, a boy with secrets of his own and a taste for dark magic.

This dark magic puts them at the heart of a battle of good versus evil and a fight for the soul of the family—and perhaps for all of the world. But the Graves family has a secret weapon in this battle: their love for one another.

Why This Breaks the Brain?

The Book of Accidents effectively has elements of preternatural horror, body horror, psychological, some apocalyptic, Lovecraftian, and even psycho killer style scenes. Wendig distilled the virtues of each of the horror disciplines down into an incredibly atmospheric read that even now, thinking about it, I know that I did not catch every little nuance, and it deserves a second read through. it all works, and not for one moment does this book let up. It is like a symphony starting with many discordant and uncomfortable notes that come together so fully the force of the cacophony nails you to your chair.

Review; The Book of Accidents by Chuck Wendig

Interview With Author Chuck Wendig

What it is About?

Paul Tremblay’s terrifying twist to the home invasion novel—inspiration for the upcoming major motion picture from Universal Pictures

Seven-year-old Wen and her parents, Eric and Andrew, are vacationing at a remote cabin on a quiet New Hampshire lake. Their closest neighbors are more than two miles in either direction along a rutted dirt road.

One afternoon, as Wen catches grasshoppers in the front yard, a stranger unexpectedly appears in the driveway. Leonard is the largest man Wen has ever seen, but he is young, friendly, and he wins her over almost instantly. Leonard and Wen talk and play until Leonard abruptly apologizes and tells Wen, “None of what’s going to happen is your fault.” Three more strangers then arrive at the cabin carrying unidentifiable, menacing objects. As Wen sprints inside to warn her parents, Leonard calls out: “Your dads won’t want to let us in, Wen. But they have to. We need your help to save the world.”

Thus begins an unbearably tense, gripping tale of paranoia, sacrifice, apocalypse, and survival that escalates to a shattering conclusion, one in which the fate of a loving family and quite possibly all of humanity are entwined. The Cabin at the End of the World is a masterpiece of terror and suspense from the fantastically fertile imagination of Paul Tremblay.

Why This Breaks the Brain?

Save your family, or save humanity? The ultimate trolley problem.

Paul Tremblay writes some of the most interesting and evocative horror and suspense writer working today. This story, which was turned into a decent movie is terrifying in its primal simplicity. Save your family or save the world. Most people say they would die for their family when pressed, especially our children. It is a primal desperate need to protect our kids. But can the same be said of humanity, the general massive flawed species that inhabits this world? That is the brain breaker problem that Tremblay tackles. It is scary, and intense not in a traditional slasher type horror style, but it certainly leaves you disturbed and questioning everything you thought was true when you finish the book.

Interview With Author Paul Tremblay

What it is About?

The creeping horror of Paul Tremblay meets Tommy Orange’s There There in a dark novel of revenge, cultural identity, and the cost of breaking from tradition in this latest novel from the Jordan Peele of horror literature, Stephen Graham Jones.

Seamlessly blending classic horror and a dramatic narrative with sharp social commentary, The Only Good Indians follows four American Indian men after a disturbing event from their youth puts them in a desperate struggle for their lives. Tracked by an entity bent on revenge, these childhood friends are helpless as the culture and traditions they left behind catch up to them in a violent, vengeful way.

Why This Breaks the Brain?

“The Only Good Indians has a prologue and three sections that read essentially like novellas tied together. They work like dominos, the prologue touching the first story, the first story punching into the second, and the second crashing into the third. It having been a decade since the hunting trip, two of the characters have moved away from the reservation, and two remained.

Each of these sections follows one of the men involved in the hunt. By structuring it this way, the shorter scenarios give just enough time to set up all the pieces that will cascade together into their tableau of horror.

The spirit hunting them doesn’t want to directly confront the hunters. We aren’t given much of an idea of what the spirit hunting them is capable of, but early on she seems to enjoy toying with them and letting them ruin themselves.

The Only Good Indians does exceptional character work, especially in Lewis’s section. With Lewis, Jones gives us no reprieve, no other points of view. We see what he sees, regardless of how accurate to reality it is. We watch his uneasiness turn to full-blown paranoia.”

What it is About?

Winner of the Golden Poppy Octavia E. Butler Award!
A Bram Stoker and Splatterpunk Award Nominee!
One of Esquire’s Best Horror Books of the Year!
An Indie Next Pick!

“This is gory and brutal and beautiful and painful and terrifying and a pure delight.”—Stephen Graham Jones

A provocative and unforgettable debut that is both a blood-soaked love letter to Los Angeles and a gleeful send-up to iconic horror villains, Maeve Fly will thrill fans of slashers and the macabre.

By day, Maeve Fly works at the happiest place in the world as every child’s favorite ice princess.

By the neon night glow of the Sunset Strip, Maeve haunts the dive bars with a drink in one hand and a book in the other, imitating her misanthropic literary heroes.

But when Gideon Green – her best friend’s brother – moves to town, he awakens something dangerous within her, and the world she knows suddenly shifts beneath her feet.

Untethered, Maeve ditches her discontented act and tries on a new persona. A bolder, bloodier one, inspired by the pages of American Psycho. Step aside Patrick Bateman, it’s Maeve’s turn with the knife.

“An apocalyptic Anaheim Psycho.” —Grady Hendrix, New York Times bestselling author of How to Sell a Haunted House

Why This Breaks the Brain?

Some of the most psychologically scary books challenge your mental comfort. Some things that are truly disturbing and be a bit of psychological warfare for the reader, and Maeve Fly falls into this category.

What it is About?

Against the wishes of his mother, sixteen-year-old Ray Garraty is about to compete in the annual grueling match of stamina and wits known as The Long Walk. One hundred boys must keep a steady pace of four miles per hour without ever stopping… with the winner being awarded “The Prize”—anything he wants for the rest of his life. But, as part of this national tournament that sweeps through a dystopian America year after year, there are some harsh rules that Garraty and ninety-nine others must adhere to in order to beat out the rest. There is no finish line—the winner is the last man standing. Contestants cannot receive any outside aid whatsoever. Slow down under the speed limit and you’re given a warning. Three warnings and you’re out of the game—permanently…

Why This Breaks the Brain?

I know that King tends to be on every horror list. He and his writing are a staple, so I very much wanted to keep him off of this list to give some other books an opportunity to shine. That is true for all books but this one. The Long Walk is a novel that, from what I understand, is a bit of a dark horse among King lovers. There is something very bleak in the horror of inevitability, everyone will fall except one. It is also novella length and quite punchy, so those who don’t want to try a King book that has 1k pages can start with. this one and see his mastery in a bite sized chunk. I have read many of the King books, and this one is one that has never left me and it has been more than a decade.

What it is About?

Working at the local processing plant, Marcos is in the business of slaughtering humans – though no one calls them that anymore.

His wife has left him, his father is sinking into dementia, and Marcos tries not to think too hard about how he makes a living. After all, it happened so quickly. First, it was reported that an infectious virus has made all animal meat poisonous to humans. Then governments initiated the “Transition”. Now, eating human meat – “special meat” – is legal. Marcos tries to stick to numbers, consignments, processing.

Then one day he’s given a gift: a live specimen of the finest quality. Though he’s aware that any form of personal contact is forbidden on pain of death, little by little he starts to treat her like a human being. And soon, he becomes tortured by what has been lost – and what might still be saved.

Why This Breaks the Brain?

This book is graphic, and disturbing. Talking about a human processing plant, for special meat. This book can be a hard sell for some readers, but it certainly hits psychologically.

What it is About?

In this deeply scary and intensely unnerving debut novel, Jake and a woman known only as “The Girlfriend” are on a drive to visit his parents at their secluded farm. But when Jake leaves “The Girlfriend” stranded at an abandoned high school, what follows is a twisted unraveling of the darkest unease, an exploration into psychological frailty, and an ending as suspenseful as The Usual Suspects and as haunting as Misery.

Deeply scary and intensely unnerving, Iain Reid’s debut novel is a tightening spiral of a story about a woman’s uncertainty of her relationship with her boyfriend, Jake. After an uncomfortable and confusing trip to meet Jake’s parents at their isolated farmhouse, reality unravels, and events spin out of control when Jake and “The Girlfriend” make an unscheduled stop at an abandoned high school.

Part murder mystery, part psychological thriller, I’m Thinking of Ending Things is about doubt, psychological fragility, and the lengths we’ll go to avoid the truth. As twisted as Shutter Island, as suspenseful as Under the Skin, and as atmospheric as The Sisters Brothers, Reid’s breakout literary thriller is sure to keep listeners guessing until the last minute.

Why This Breaks the Brain?

A weirdly wonderful book that has an offness to it and depending on the reader can be either a horror or a thriller.