haunting

Small Town Horror by Ronald Malfi, Narrated by Joe Hempel

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Ronald Malfi excels in telling tales that center around mistakes we make as children coming back to haunt us, whether it’s a manifestation of our own guilt, someone exacting their revenge, a supernatural force, or a combination of those things. One of the most thrilling aspects of Malfi’s storytelling is that we’re often left to wonder which scenario(s) we’ll encounter in the story we’re reading. Small Town Horror is just such a story.

When a successful attorney, Andrew Larimer, receives an unexpected phone call from a childhood friend and agrees to return to the hometown he left in the rearview 20 years earlier, it sets him down a path of deception, mystery, and horror. Reuniting with former friends he hasn’t seen in decades, Andrew quickly learns that he might have been better off staying home than involving himself in the nightmare unfolding in Kingsport. As the shadow of an unspeakable event from the shared past of these five friends looms over their lives, they will find themselves tested and pushed to their limits.

Though it takes a while to discover the dark secret they’ve carried with them all these years, it’s fairly easy to figure out the broad strokes as the story unfolds. And while the revelations may not be a shock or surprise, I don’t think that was the point. It was the journey there that Malfi seemed to be focused on, building the tension as we wondered what would come next and who would suffer. We’re forced to wonder what might have happened if they’d only made different choices. Would honesty and accountability have produced a different outcome? I can only imagine that would be the case. That is, after all, the overarching theme–the danger of deception, and especially self-deception.

Even knowing the likely outcome, the conclusion hits like a punch to the gut. That is, after all, another of Malfi’s skills.

Joe Hempel, as always, brings the story to life as only the hardest-working audiobook narrator in the world (I can only assume) can manage.

https://www.audible.com/pd/Small-Town-Horror-Audiobook/B0D1RKVRJL?action_code=ASSGB149080119000H&share_location=pdp

Horrorstor by Grady Hendrix, Narrated by Tai Sammons & Bronson Pinchot

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It’s not a popular opinion within the horror community, but I have not been a fan of Grady Hendrix. His writing is top-tier, and the concepts behind his work have always been compelling, but there’s something in the execution that’s never worked for me in the past. I’ve seen the rave reviews of books like My Best Friend’s Exorcism and The Final Girl Support Group, and I’ve gone into them hopeful…only to feel disappointed. I wanted to like them. Something about the characters and the pacing always left the stories lacking.

And then I took a chance on Horrorstor.

This was what I was hoping to find. The other Hendrix books didn’t do it for me, but this one contained the perfect blend of wry humor and sincere horror. The characters didn’t irritate me, the pacing felt simultaneously practiced and natural, and the story itself was fascinating.

If you’ve spent any time shopping at IKEA, you’re familiar with the planned layout that’s guaranteed to draw you deeper into the store before you ever have a chance to find an exit. The way out is through, but it’s a long way through. This is precisely the dynamic ORSK has implemented in its shameless attempt to copy the already established IKEA. And that makes it all the more difficult for employees to figure out how or why things are being damaged, defiled, and destroyed overnight. And, what’s worse, sales are down.

Could someone be breaking in? Or is this a case of someone phrogging in the establishment? That’s what the manager hopes to find out when he enlists two of his employees to spend the night there with him, as they prepare for a visit from corporate headquarters.

Unfortunately, the truth is far worse and infinitely more difficult to understand. Will any of the employees survive the night, or will they get lost in the labyrinth?

There’s a lot to unpack, from the scathing indictment of consumerism and the mindless drive to shop and spend that’s promoted and encouraged by the corporations hoping to pad the bottom line to the predatory conditions at-will employees are subject to, simply to keep the lights on. Hendrix imbues this story with plenty of social commentary.

The chapter breaks–with their increasingly sinister product descriptions–were one of the best things Hendrix could have added, making the whole experience that much more entertaining.

Tai Sammons’s narration of the main story was fantastic, and Bronson Pinchot’s delivery of the product advertisements separating the chapters was a masterful stroke of brilliance.

https://www.audible.com/pd/Horrorstoer-Audiobook/B00NLPAZ9W?action_code=ASSGB149080119000H&share_location=pdp

The Perfectly Fine House by Stephen Kozeniewski & Wile E. Young

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Imagine living in a world where the dead remain side-by-side with the living–whether it’s animals or people, the dead remain tethered to the world and free to interact with it. This is the only world you’ve ever known–the way it’s always been. Imagine you find a house without any spectral presence–a place ghosts fear to tread–where any ghost unfortunate enough to cross a certain boundary is snuffed out. Would that place be as terrifying to you as a “haunted” location is to those of us in the more familiar world?

That is where this story begins, the discovery of a place that is not only devoid of spiritual entities but fatally harmful to them. Where it ends is far worse.

Kozeniewski and Young created a fantastic vision of a world in which things are quite different from our own, a society that is familiar enough to feel real yet so wildly different as to provide the reader with a sense of adventurous thrill as they learn how things work when the dead don’t leave us. We’re provided adequate time to explore this world before we’re forced to fear that it’s all going away, as whatever unknown force transformed the un-haunted house into a place of certain death for spirits begins to spread.

It’s a story of family, unanticipated romance, and the five stages of grief played out on a global scale…as humanity is forced to learn–for the first time–how to mourn the loss of those they loved in life. It’s a story of the sudden fear of mortality striking home everywhere, all at once…with devastating consequences. It’s all of those things, and so much more. There’s humor, there’s heart, and there is ample horror too.

Three Little Pigs by Edward Lee

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When you frequent literary circles you find yourself asked questions like, “What is the best opening line you’ve ever read?”

For many years now, my answer to that question has invariably been The Pig by Edward Lee. I won’t include the quote here, because it’s sure to force one algorithm or another to reject my review of this single-volume trilogy. Suffice it to say, it’s irreverent, humorous, captivating, and vile…all things that virtually insist that the reader keep on going. The discerning reader will be satisfied to discover that the rest of the tale is similarly irreverent, humorous, captivating, and vile. I had the pleasure of reading The Pig and The House in a single volume quite some time ago, but this new edition from Evil Cookie Press is a trifecta, in that it includes an additional installment, picking up the loose threads left behind and running with it until anything sane is unraveled. If there’s a trigger warning out there, this volume contains the associated trigger.

The meta commentaries from the perspective of the author are an excellent touch in this new installment, providing an amusing insight into the creative mind behind this perverse and sordid tale of an isolated house on an isolated tract of land where truly awful things have taken place over a handful of decades. If you had the pleasure of experiencing this unlikely vacation spot in the previous glimpses of the 1970s and the early 2000s, you won’t be disappointed. There’s a sense of coming home as Lee invites us to revisit the haunted house in the modern day–when everything comes full circle and we are truly introduced to the monstrous forces at work. If this is your first visit–well, then–I truly envy you the opportunity that awaits.

The Babysitter Lives by Stephen Graham Jones, Narrated by Isabella Star LaBlanc

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In The Babysitter Lives, Stephen Graham Jones tackles the haunted house theme with the same unique style and flair readers have come to expect. When Charlotte arrives at the Wilbanks’ house to babysit their twin six-year-olds, she has no idea she’s walking into a place more dangerous and horrifying than anywhere else she’s been. In what could be described as House of Leaves meets Stranger Things, Jones weaves a disorienting tale that leaves the reader questioning what’s real just as much as the narrative forces the same confusion on Charlotte.
Charlotte, Ron, and Desi are not alone in the house, and there’s a depth to the shadows and dark corners that threatens to swallow anyone who ventures into the dark spaces without caution.
Ultimately, the story succeeds in being a unique and tense haunted house story, capturing the highest stakes on a small scale. The natures of reality and identity are questioned in a big way, but Jones isn’t satisfied simply leaving us with questions. He wants to delve into the how and why of it all. Jones forces us to think about everything happening through the lens of Charlotte’s analysis and the horrors of the past she’s forced to witness.
This might be my second favorite story from the author, following the masterpiece that was The Only Good Indians, and with good reason.
The narration provided by Isabella Star LaBlanc combines with Jones’s writing to make Charlotte feel like a real girl. She’s smart, funny, and thoroughly out of her depths but too stubborn to give up. The supplemental material from Jones himself adds a nice touch, touching on his inspirations and what he hoped to accomplish with The Babysitter Lives. I’d say he was more than successful.

Ghost Summer: Stories by Tananarive Due, Narrated by Tananarive Due, Robin Miles, and Janina Edwards

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The fifteen stories collected in Ghost Summer are some of the most engaging short stories I’ve had the pleasure of reading. That pleasure was in no small part because these stories often provide a vastly different perspective from much of the horror and speculative fiction on the market, informed by the author’s experiences as a black woman, both socially conscious and attuned to history. It’s a perspective and worldview that readers should actively seek out because Tananarive Due successfully displays both the ways we are all the same and the stark differences that haunt many people to this day.
There’s nothing not to love in this collection, but it’s the Gracetown stories kicking everything off that stuck with me the most. This strange, haunted place in northern Florida arrests the reader just as it seems to capture residents and visitors, sometimes in horrifying ways. Gracetown is a place of transformation and possession. It’s a town where the ghosts of a torturous, hateful past reveal uncomfortable truths.
Due provides us with glimpses of the past, of places where myth and legend overlap with the real world, where cultures collide with sometimes beautiful but often horrific results. We experience sadness and loss, sickness, and terror as the author paints all-too-real portraits of people, from those struggling to escape their circumstances to those hoping to find the peaceful embrace of death.
It isn’t all about the past or present, as she also takes us to the end of the world, displaying a keen understanding of human nature that proved almost prescient when compared to the pandemic conditions that ushered us into the current decade.
Narration provided by Tananarive Due herself, as well as Robin Miles and Janina Edwards makes for a different experience from story to story, each individual breathing life into the narratives in slightly different ways, but never in an unsatisfactory manner.

Come With Me by Ronald Malfi, Narrated by Joe Hempel

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When Allison Decker is shot and killed in a senseless act of violence, her husband’s life is irrevocably changed. But the true extent of his life’s transformations doesn’t begin until he discovers something seemingly innocuous in a box of his wife’s belongings from work. A receipt from a motel in a small town he’d never heard of, from a trip he didn’t know Allison had taken, is all it takes to send Aaron down a path he’d never have imagined possible.
Worried that his wife might have been cheating on him, Aaron begins unraveling the threads of a double-life Allison was leading, and infidelity might have been a relief. Instead, Aaron finds himself stumbling along in the footsteps of the woman he’d married but hardly knew. The truth of Allison’s activities will uncover lies and horrors Aaron could never be prepared to face as he stubbornly and desperately struggles to understand the woman he loved and lost. In the end, we’re forced–along with Aaron–to acknowledge that we might indeed be guilty of haunting ourselves.
Malfi crafts a well-orchestrated mystery that leaves the reader guessing right up until the conclusion. As we join Aaron Decker on his journey of discovery, we’re left reeling with each new revelation alongside the protagonist, forced to question how well we ever know someone and how dark the depths of one’s character might be.
Joe Hempel’s narration of the audiobook is superb, and he captures the confusion, fear, and frustration Aaron feels as he persists in his fool’s quest to solve a mystery Allison may have already solved before she was tragically unable to fulfill her life’s mission.

The Haunted by Bentley Little, Narrated by Dan Butler

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Concerned that their neighborhood might be going downhill, Julian and Claire Perry decide to look at some available properties in their small town of Jardine, New Mexico. Drawn to a house in the historic district near downtown, they’ll soon discover that some neighborhoods are worse than others, and some homes can be worse than they’d ever imagined.
Bentley Little is a master of the haunted house story, somehow managing never to retread his other material, keeping the tales fresh and filled with new horrors each time. The Haunted is no exception.
The Haunted isn’t a story of gradually building unease and uncertainty, as we encounter from many tales of haunted houses. As with most hauntings, it begins with the children, but it isn’t long before everyone in the family recognizes the danger in their home on Rainey Street. It soon becomes clear that everyone in the neighborhood knows what the Perry family will discover. There is no subtlety to the monstrous presence lurking in the Perry family’s new home, and its reach is greater than any of them could have known.
As is often the case with Little’s writing, there’s a massive history he’s built up leading to the events of the novel itself, and he provides readers with tantalizing glimpses of the detailed past as the story approaches its climax. The presence in their home is no mere ghost, and the house is only the most recent structure built on that place.
Dan Butler’s narration is excellent, leaving nothing to be desired. The best narrators do one of two things, they either bring the story and its characters to life, or they manage to make the listener feel almost as though they’re reading the book themselves. Butler is of the latter variety, and one of the better narrators I’ve come across in that respect.

Picture Perfect by Allisha McAdoo

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Picture Perfect tells the tale of a mother and daughter plagued by a cursed or haunted painting brought into their home by the mother. While the daughter finds the imagery depicted on canvas repulsive, her mother seems strangely fascinated by the grotesque artwork.
The fixation takes on a more sinister quality as the picture begins whispering, and driving the mother to madness and self-destructive outbursts. It’s only after the daughter begins hearing those haunting whispers for herself that she understands the helplessness her mother felt under the painting’s influence.
McAdoo provides readers with a story of inescapable fate, loss of control, and suffering, all with a twist and a glimmer of cruel hope at the end.

This story was released on Halloween as part of the 31 Days of Godless event at http://www.godless.com and you can find it for yourself by going to the website or by downloading the Godless app to your preferred mobile device. The link is below:

Picture Perfect by Allisha McAdoo