Here’s a small selection of the horror and genre news that caught our eye during the last week …
Out now from author Kealan Patrick Burke and Elderlemon Press, Cottonmouth
A thrilling prequel to Kealan Patrick Burke’s southern gothic horror novel Kin, Cottonmouth is set in the aftermath of the Great Depression in Tennessee, a time of religious fervor and charlatanism, of thieves, murderers, and moonshiners.
Here you’ll meet Horseshoe Collins, a traveler on a vengeful search for the father who abandoned him; Billy Wray, a snake-handling Pentecostal preacher bringing the promise of salvation to rural communities paralyzed by fear of the Devil; and Jonah Merrill, a child grieving the loss of his beloved father and tormented by his mother’s wrath.
With the threat of a second World War looming on the horizon, destiny will bring these three people together and set innocent young Jonah on the path to his eventual fate and a new name: Papa-In-Gray, the patriarch of the dreaded Merrill family whose horrific exploits were first introduced to the world in Kin. Available now in eBook and paperback, you can grab your copy here.
Arriving tomorrow from Infested Publishing, The Cleansing Power of Fire
From religious trauma, to ancient Gods demanding their dues, The Cleansing Power of Fire is a searing collection of cosmic, folk, and religious horror. These stories and poems carve through the flesh of belief, exposing visceral undercurrents of faith, ritual, and the horrors that drive unwavering devotion.
Infested Publishing bring together a group of talented writers and poets to bring you this collection of short fiction and poetry that will burn its way through to your soul and leave its mark long thereafter.
Give us your affliction, let us carry your curse. Available for pre-order now in eBook, with other editions to follow, you can guarantee your copy here.
Coming 3 July from author Rose Keating and Canongate Books, Oddbody
Oddbody is a collection of ten bold and unsettling short stories that confront themes of desire, fear and shame, each one asking how far the bounds of the human form can be pushed, stretched – and subverted. A woman finds herself navigating a co-dependent relationship with a ghost. A waitress gives birth to an egg during her breakfast shift. A doctor puts his patient on a cleanse to ‘purify’ her mind, body and soul.
Through playful but provocative prose, Rose Keating traverses a realm both dreamlike and nightmarish, exposing – to the bone – the absurdities and horrors of the feminine experience. Oddbody prods a finger at societal norms, gleefully turns familiar tropes on their head and announces Keating as an audacious new voice in Irish fiction. Available for pre-order now in eBook and paperback, you can guarantee your copy here.
Available 27 June from author Craig Wallwork and Underbelly Books, The Skin We Feel Most Comfortable In
From a boy raised by a mother with the power to light up the sky, to stories of sea monsters, ghosts, Greek mythology, aliens, Elvis, suicide pandemics, and a girl born without a head, Wallwork holds your hand through each line on the page, guiding you out of the dark and back into the light. Available for pre-order now in eBook, with other editions to follow, you can guarantee your copy here.
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KEV HARRISON
