Off the Reservation

 

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Thank you Simon Audio for the gifted audiobook.

 

Off the Reservation was my first Stephen Graham Jones book. It's the sequel to Only the Good Indians, but there's enough background woven in that I never felt lost jumping in here.

Nathan Yellow Tail and his best friend Sebby rob an isolated cabin owned by a "weekend Indian" on the reservation. While fleeing, they crash, and Sebby ends up in a coma, kept alive by machines. Nathan barely survives, but his life is out of balance. Nurse Seine offers him a way to set things right and pull Sebby back from the brink. All he has to do is join her on a road trip to return the bones of a young Blackfeet boy who died after being taken to the infamous Carlisle Indian Industrial School.

Along for the ride are Christian, a young man who doesn't speak, and Mooch, a grieving mother who lost her husband and sons. Nurse Seine and Mooch each have their own hidden reasons for going.

This was the weirdest road trip ever, and I had no idea where it was headed. I knew I was getting horror. I didn't expect possession. When they dug up the boy's bones at Carlisle, they dug up something else too.

But the real horror here is the oppression inflicted on tribal peoples, and the racism and injustice Native Americans still face today.

🎧 The full cast narration was exceptional. Every narrator gave a fantastic performance and made it easy to keep the characters straight.

It's atmospheric and character-driven, with dark humor running all the way through. A few spots dragged for me, but overall I really enjoyed it. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Grab a copy at Bookshop.org and help out an indie bookstore while you're at it.

About the Author

Stephen Graham Jones is the New York Times bestselling author of The Only Good Indians, My Heart Is a Chainsaw, and I Was a Teenage Slasher. He has been an NEA fellowship recipient and a recipient of several awards including the Ray Bradbury Award from the Los Angeles Times, the Bram Stoker Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, the Jesse Jones Award for Best Work of Fiction from the Texas Institute of Letters, the Independent Publishers Award for Multicultural Fiction, and the Alex Award from American Library Association. He is the Ivena Baldwin Professor of English at the University of Colorado Boulder. Follow Stephen on Instagram and visit his website for more news and information about his books.

Look What the Cat Dragged In

 

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Pub Day Review 🐈‍⬛

Thank you Macmillan Audio for the gifted early listen!

Some pet owners joke they have the cat from hell. Penny's new houseguest actually is one. 😈🐈‍⬛

Penny is heartbroken when her cat Popcorn runs away. Popcorn wasn't just a pet. She was the inspiration for Penny's book series. So when her boyfriend asks her to cat-sit for one of his very wealthy clients, she reluctantly says yes. Godfrey takes to Penny right away, but strange things start happening, and Penny realizes this is no ordinary cat. Godfrey is a demon. Literally.

Look What the Cat Dragged In by Jason Rekulak looks like a cozy, but there's plenty of blood and gore for horror fans. It's a perfect spooky season read. The audiobook is a romp, and Stephanie Németh-Parker's narration is a big part of why. She voices every character beautifully and really brings out Penny's emotions.

Pick this one up if you want campy horror and don't mind some blood with your cat hair. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Grab a copy at Bookshop,org and hekp an indie bookstore while you're at it.

If you enjoyed this review, you might be interested in my review of Dive Bar at the End of the Road.

About the Author

Jason Rekulak lives in Philadelphia with his wife and family. His novels include Hidden Pictures (winner of a Goodreads Choice Award), The Last One at the Wedding (winner of the ITW Award for Best Standalone Thriller), and The Impossible Fortress (an Edgar Award finalist). Follow Jason on Instagram and visit his website for more news and information about his books.

Dive Bar at the End of the Road

 

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Check out my full review of Dive Bar at the End of the Road by Kelley Armstrong on Instagram!

Thank you Macmillan Audio for the gifted audiobook!

This is a perfect read for a dark and stormy night. 

A car crash on an empty road. A dive bar where nobody is who they seem. And something deadly waiting in the woods.

Kelley Armstrong's Dive Bar at the End of the Road is fast, tense, and gory supernatural horror. I couldn't stop listening. Narrators Helen Laser, Shane Ghostkeeper, and Sean Patrick Hopkins brought their A-games.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️Dive Bar at the End of the Road is out now.

Grab a copy at Bookshop.org and help an indie bookstore while you're at it.

If you enjoyed this review, you might be interested in my review of Trad Wife by Sarah Langan.

About the Author

Kelley Armstrong is the author of over 50 novels in mystery, fantasy and horror. She believes experience is the best teacher, though she’s been told this shouldn’t apply to writing her murder scenes. Follow Kelley on Instagram and visit her website for more news and information about her books.

Sleepers in the Snow

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Thank you Pegasus Books and Megan Beatie Communications for the gifted copy!

I just finished this creepy book about a haunted electrical pylon, and I'm talking to the author next week. 

Author Joanne Harris captures both the beauty and the loneliness of the moors, and that pylon becomes more unsettling with every chapter. The deeper he digs into the previous owners, the stranger things get.

Grab a copy of Sleepers in the Snow at Bookshop.org and help out an indie bookstore while you're at it!

if you enjoyed this review, you might be interested in my review of They Say a Girl Died Here. It's a creepy atmospheric psychological thriller.

About the Author

Joanne Harris is an Anglo-French author, whose books include twenty novels, three cookbooks, and many short stories. Her work is extremely diverse, covering aspects of magic realism, suspense, historical fiction, mythology, and fantasy. In 2000, her 1999 novel Chocolat was adapted to the screen, starring Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp. She is an honorary Fellow of St. Catharine's College, Cambridge, and in 2022 was awarded an OBE by Queen Elizabeth II. Follow Joanne on Instagram and visit her website for more news and information about her books.

Trad Wife

 

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Thank you Simon Audio for the gifted audiobook! 

A viral trad wife influencer. A disgraced journalist. A farm hiding something much worse than a behind-the-scenes staff. 

Journalist Jenny Kaplan writes a brutally honest essay about her own life. It goes viral and revives her career for about five minutes, until online backlash gets her fired.

Mia Wright is the reigning queen of trad wife influencers, showing off her idyllic life on a farm with her picture-perfect family.

When Mia invites Jenny to the farm to see her life up close, Jenny jumps at it. She's desperate to save her career and hopes to expose Mia's carefully curated deception. What she finds instead is a horrifying secret, and both women's lives start to spiral.

This is horror, but not the blood-and-jump-scares kind. It's more creepy than scary. Yes, Mia's perfect life is a lie, but not in the way you'd expect. There's no team of nannies and assistants doing the real work. It's something much more insidious.

The whole book is unsettling in the best way. Author Sarah Langan keeps the tension high from start to finish, and her writing is sharp and engaging. I never knew where the story was headed. What a weird, wild ride.

Stephanie Németh-Parker does a fantastic job with the narration. Mia and Jenny have distinct voices, and her performance nails the tension and creepiness all the way through.

Trad Wife is the perfect addition to your spooky season TBR. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Out September 29.

Grab a copy at Trad Wife from Bookshop.org and help out an indie bookstore while you're at it.

If you enjoyed this review, you might be interested in my review of Yesteryear. It also has an influencer main character and a big twist.

About the Author

Sarah Langan, a Columbia MFA graduate and three-time recipient of the Bram Stoker Award, is the author of several novels including A Better World, Good Neighbors, and Trad Wife. She’s got an MS in environmental health science, grew up on Long Island, and she currently lives in Los Angeles with her husband and daughters. Follow Sarah on Instagram and visit her website for news and information about her books.

Last, Now, Next

 

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Thank you Sourcebooks Audio and Simon and Schuster Audio for the gifted audiobooks!

Last: The Sins of Summer Daughters by Lo Patrick. A grandmother in small-town Georgia watches her granddaughter get accused of murder, and it drags up something she buried back in the 70s. Slow, humid, and quietly brutal. Out now.

Now: It's Not What You Think by Clare Mackintosh. Nadeeka is positive her partner is cheating. She goes home to confront him and walks into a crime scene instead. The title is not messing around. Out Sept. 22.

Next: Trad Wife by Sarah Langan. A journalist shows up at a trad wife influencer's picture-perfect farm to write a takedown. The farm has other plans. Langan says it's not satire, it's horror. Out Sept. 29.

Grab a copy of The Sins of Summer Daughters or preorder It's Not What You Think and Trad Wife from Bookshop.org and help out an indie bookstore while you're at it.

Them

 

This post contains affiliate links. If you buy through them, I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. It just helps keep this space going.

Thank you Simon Audio for the gifted listen. 

They made contact with an alien species and thought they could turn it into a weapon. They could not. 

Them by W.H. Chizmar is a stunning dystopian thriller that will leave you thinking “who are the real monsters here?” A top secret government project finds a way to move matter across space and brings something back alive. Something they think can be tamed into the perfect soldier. It cannot. 

Years later one man walks the earth by night, scavenging abandoned houses and hiding from the creatures that wiped out most of humanity. Another man sits alone in an underground bunker with nothing but a journal and the guilt of knowing he’s the one who started all of this. Their stories collide and the full picture of how the world ended comes into focus. 

This is Chizmar’s first solo novel and it does not read like a debut. The writing is sharp and layered. The tension never lets up, and the aliens themselves are nothing like what you’re picturing. These are massive armored killing machines, and somehow they still end up feeling real and complex. 

I don’t usually pick up sci-fi, but the emotional weight of this one pulled me right in and never let go. This is more than just dystopian sci-fi. It's also an examination of loneliness, guilt, and friendship. Narrators Johnny Heller and Kevin R. Free both bring real gravitas to their characters. These are top notch audio performances. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Them is out now. Don't miss it! 

You can grab a copy of Them from Bookshop.org and help an indie bookstore while you're at it.

If you enjoyed this review, you might be interested in my review of The Dorians by Nick Cutter.

About the Author

W.H. Chizmar is the New York Times bestselling coauthor (with Richard Chizmar) of Widow’s Point: The Complete Haunting, as well as numerous short stories and essays. Them is his debut solo novel.

Last, Now, Next - audiobook edition

 

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Last book, now reading, next up — audiobook edition

Thank you tagged publishers for the gifted audiobooks! 

Last: They Say a Girl Died Here by Sarah Pinborough — a family moves into a house their grandmother keeps saying a girl died in, and I still haven’t decided if her dementia is confusion or a warning. Saskia Maarleveld’s narration made the heat and dread in this one feel physical. Atmospheric and genuinely creepy.

Now: One of the Family by Mark Edwards — a boyfriend gets invited to his girlfriend’s family estate in Scotland for New Year’s and walks straight into rich people behaving very, very badly. This trope is my weakness and Edwards is not messing around.

Next: Them by W.H. Chizmar — post-apocalyptic survival horror, a lone man walking a ruined East Coast trying to hold onto his humanity. Not a light palate cleanser but I’m ready for it.

Thank you Simon Audio and Macmillian Audio for the gifted audiobooks!

Grab a copy of One of the Family or preorder They Say a Girl Died Here, or Them at Bookshop.org and help an independent bookstore while you're at it.

Check out my review of The Wasp Trap Mark Edwards.

Cross My Heart, I Hope You Die

 

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Three exes. One dead boyfriend. One very bad plan for revenge.

Cross My Heart, I Hope You Die by Mallory Arnold is a locked-room mystery that crashed into a slasher movie, and I am so here for it. Cham, Nora, and Ruby all find out they’re dating the same man, and that he’s swindled each of them too. So they do what any reasonable person would do: plot some harmless revenge at a secluded mountain cabin Ruby just inherited. A cabin that happens to sit on the old grounds of a cult that may or may not still have members wandering the woods. What could go wrong?

Everything. Everything goes wrong, and it's gory and ridiculous and so much fun. This is not a subtle book and it doesn’t want to be.

The multiple POV structure works because these three women are nothing alike, so I never lost track of who was who, even with the timeline jumping around a little. There’s real humor mixed in with the frights, which kept it from ever feeling too heavy.

The full cast narration seals the deal. Victoria Connolly, Stacy Gonzalez, Alexandra Hunter, and Gary Tiedemann all lean into the campy energy of this thing, and it makes the audio experience even better than reading it on the page would be.

Toss this in your beach bag or pool bag and binge it in a day or two. It’s popcorn thriller-slasher, and it knows exactly what it is. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Thank you to Sourcebooks Audio for the gifted listen. Out now.

Grab a copy at Bookshop.org and help an indie bookstore while you're at it.

If you enjoyed this review, you might be interested in my review of another campy thriller-horror mashup How to Kill a Guy in Ten Dates.

About the Author

Mallory Arnold is the USA Today bestselling author of How to Survive a Horror Story. She writes creepy, mysterious fiction and lives in Nashville, Tennessee, with her husband and three cats. Follow Mallory on Instagram for more news and information about Mallory and her books.

Thrillers Noboby's Talking About (But Should Be)

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You don’t need to read 60 thrillers a year. You just need someone who did.

I spent 20 years as a high school librarian matching readers with books, and if that job taught me anything, it’s that the best book on the shelf is rarely the one with the biggest display. Everyone’s read the thrillers the algorithm keeps pushing. These twelve are the ones it skipped: small presses, quiet releases, debut authors, and stories that got buried under bigger names the same week they came out. I’d press every one of these into your hands.

The Last Hitman by Robin Yocum. He killed for a living. Now lunch at the diner is the highlight of his day, until the FBI comes knocking. A character-driven mob story that deserves so much more attention. Grab a copy on Bookshop.org. Read my full review here.

Molka by Monika Kim. Feminine rage from page one. A dark, unflinching revenge thriller about hidden cameras and the women who fight back. Not an easy read, but a necessary one. Grab a copy on Bookshop.org. Read my full review here.

Dead Man Blues by S.D. House. Your ex-wife married your best friend. Now he needs your help solving a murder or two. Yes, it’s as good as it sounds. Grab a copy on Bookshop.org. Read my full review here.

Fun City Heist by Michael Kardos. A washed-up drummer, a dying friend, and one last job on a crumbling Jersey Shore boardwalk. Funny, chaotic, and with way more heart than a heist book has any right to have. Grab a copy on Bookshop.org. Read my full review here.

Where the Bones Lie by Nick Kolakowski. A drought reveals a barrel at the bottom of a dried-up lake with a long-missing mob boss inside. Sharp, twisty noir with a bourbon-loving Hollywood fixer you’ll root for. Grab a copy on Bookshop.org. Read my full review here.

Headlights by C.J. Leede. Part police procedural, part horror, completely gripping. An FBI agent pulled back into the bizarre unsolved case that broke him. I had no notes. None. Grab a copy on Bookshop.org. Read my full review here.

Saint of the Narrows Street by William Boyle. A gritty Brooklyn family crime drama where secrets and lies won’t hold. Atmospheric and quietly devastating. Grab a copy on Bookshop.org. Read my full review here.

Dark Neon & Dirt by Thomas Trang. A Vietnamese war orphan turned master thief in Los Angeles. One of the most original premises I’ve read in years, from an author nobody’s talking about yet. Grab a copy on Bookshop.org. Read my full review here.

Fadeaway Joe by Hugh Lessig. An aging enforcer whose boss goes legit and leaves him out in the cold. Tons of personality and a character who sticks with you. Grab a copy on Bookshop.org. Read my full review here.

Penitence by Kristin Koval. A small-community crime story that flew under the radar. A quiet, powerful debut worth finding. Grab a copy on Bookshop.org. Read my full review here.

Only Way Out by Tod Goldberg. A hapless lawyer engineers a heist, then dies before he can enjoy it, leaving a mess behind. Darkly funny with a great premise. Grab a copy at Bookshop.org. Read my full review here.

Dead Money by Jakob Kerr. A Silicon Valley fixer, a murdered tech CEO, and a debut author who came out swinging. Twisty and smart. Grab a copy at Bookshop.org. Read my full review here.

Want the whole dozen in one place? I put them all on a Bookshop list so you can browse the covers and grab whichever one calls to you.

Which one are you adding to your list? Tell me in the comments, and if you’ve got a hidden gem of your own, I want to hear about it.

 

Molka

 

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This is all feminine rage and I’m here for it.

Molka is the Korean word for a spy camera, the kind secretly and illegally installed to record women without their knowledge. That alone tells you what kind of book you’re walking into.

Dahye is still grieving her older sister and buckling under a mother who makes her feel like she’ll never measure up. Then she falls into a fast, dizzying romance with a wealthy, charming man, and for a minute it feels like things are finally turning her way. Until a hidden camera captures one of their private moments and it ends up all over the internet.

What she doesn’t know is that an IT guy in her building has been quietly spying on women for a long time, and he’s fixed his attention on her.

When Dahye finally grasps the full scope of what’s been done to her, she stops absorbing it and starts fighting back. Hard.

I felt for her on every single page. This is a dark, disturbing, modern horror story about terrible men and the women they violate, and it does not flinch. Monika Kim writes with a blade. She refuses to look away from the daily reality so many women live with.

On audio, Rosa Escoda is fantastic. She carries Dahye from the giddiness of new love to the gut-punch of public humiliation to full-blown rage, and never drops a beat.

Not an easy listen. But a necessary one. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Molka is out now. Grab a copy on Bookshop.org and help an indie store while you're at it.

If you enjoyed this review, you might be interested in Murder Bimbo by Rebecca Novack, another novel about an unhinged woamn looking for revenge.

About the Author

Monika Kim is an acclaimed, Sunday Times bestselling author of “violent, smart, gruesome and wildly original” (The New York Times Book Review) horror novels. Her debut, The Eyes Are the Best Part, was a TIME Magazine, New York Times, B&N, and Kobo Best of the Year, as well as a Goodreads Choice Awards finalist and a Bram Stoker Award nominee. A second-generation Korean American, she learned about eating fish eyes and other Korean superstitions from her mother, who immigrated to California from Seoul in 1985. She lives in Los Angeles’s Koreatown.

Follow Monika on Instagram and visit her website for more news and information.