3 Scary Short Story Collections #WickedGoodReads

October is #WickedGoodReads Month here at Outlandish Lit and GXO. And it's the last week and my last post! Today's topic: scary short stories (see the full list of discussion topics here).

SONGS OF A DEAD DREAMER BY THOMAS LIGOTTI

This is by far one of the best collections of supernatural horror that I've ever read. It does not at all feel like a contemporary read, so prepare yourself for that. Once you get used to his style, you can fully appreciate the scares and disturbing plots he has created.

Songs of a Dreamer was Thomas Ligotti’s first collection of supernatural horror stories. When originally published in 1985 by Harry Morris’s Silver Scarab Press, the book was hardly noticed. In 1989, an expanded version appeared that garnered accolades from several quarters. Writing in the Washington Post, the celebrated science fiction and fantasy author Michael Swanwick extolled: “Put this volume on the shelf right between H. P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe. Where it belongs.”

THE LOTTERY AND OTHER STORIES BY SHIRLEY JACKSON

Honestly, everything Shirley Jackson writes is amazing. If you didn't have to read The Lottery in school, READ IT NOW. Another horrifying story I love (I don't know if it's in this particular collection) is The Summer People, so google that.

The Lottery, one of the most terrifying stories written in this century, created a sensation when it was first published in The New Yorker. "Power and haunting," and "nights of unrest" were typical reader responses. This collection, the only one to appear during Shirley Jackson's lifetime, unites "The Lottery:" with twenty-four equally unusual stories. Together they demonstrate Jackson's remarkable range--from the hilarious to the truly horrible--and power as a storyteller.

THREE MOMENTS OF AN EXPLOSION BY CHINA MIEVILLE

I didn't love this collection, but I do love China Mieville. He's one of the most original minds in fiction/genre fiction today. It would be a mistake not to mention this book, just because it has a few of the scariest short stories I have ever read: The Condition of New Death, In The Slopes, Sacken.

London awakes one morning to find itself besieged by a sky full of floating icebergs. Destroyed oil rigs, mysteriously reborn, clamber from the sea and onto the land, driven by an obscure but violent purpose. An anatomy student cuts open a cadaver to discover impossibly intricate designs carved into a corpse's bones—designs clearly present from birth, bearing mute testimony to . . . what?

What are your favorite scary short story collections? I need more in my life!

That's it for #wickedgoodreads! I hope you enjoyed it and read a ton of scary books this month.

4 Horrifying Graphic Novels/Comics #WickedGoodReads

October is #WickedGoodReads Month here at Outlandish Lit and GXO. This is the final week!. Today's topic: scary graphic novels and comics (see the full list of discussion topics here).

  BLACK HOLE BY CHARLES BURNS

Charles Burns' illustrations are so iconic, you have to read this if just to see them. His mind is also particularly peculiar. Black Hole is a bit dark and gruesome, but it's utterly fascinating.

Suburban Seattle, the mid-1970s. We learn from the out-set that a strange plague has descended upon the area’s teenagers, transmitted by sexual contact. The disease is manifested in any number of ways — from the hideously grotesque to the subtle (and concealable) — but once you’ve got it, that’s it. There’s no turning back.

As we inhabit the heads of several key characters — some kids who have it, some who don’t, some who are about to get it — what unfolds isn’t the expected battle to fight the plague, or bring heightened awareness to it , or even to treat it. What we become witness to instead is a fascinating and eerie portrait of the nature of high school alienation itself — the savagery, the cruelty, the relentless anxiety and ennui, the longing for escape.

And then the murders start.

HARROW COUNTY BY CULLEN BUNN

This is a comic series that's still running; currently volume one is out. The art is super charming and so is the main character. The "country haints" are delightfully creepy and so is the story of the witch that rules them.

Emmy always knew that the woods surrounding her home crawled with ghosts and monsters. But on the eve of her eighteenth birthday, she learns that she is connected to these creatures--and to the land itself--in a way she never imagined.
A southern gothic fairy tale from the creator of smash hit The Sixth Gun, beautifully and hauntingly realized by B.P.R.D.'s Tyler Crook!

BEAUTIFUL DARKNESS BY FABIEN VEHLMANN

SO cute and SO creepy. Beautiful Darkness looks like a big illustrated storybook about fairies and little animals, but then it gets so so dark. I highly recommend it.

Kerascoët’s and Fabien Vehlmann’s unsettling and gorgeous anti-fairy tale is a searing condemnation of our vast capacity for evil writ tiny. Join princess Aurora and her friends as they journey to civilization's heart of darkness in a bleak allegory about surviving the human experience.  The sweet faces and bright leaves of Kerascoët’s delicate watercolors serve to highlight the evil that dwells beneath Vehlmann's story as pettiness, greed, and jealousy take over. Beautiful Darkness is a harrowing look behind the routine politeness and meaningless kindness of civilized society.

THROUGH THE WOODS BY EMILY CARROLL

Another one with bonkers good art. This is a collection of creepy short, fairy tale-like stories. I LOVED it. You can read one of the best ones online here. The online format works really well. Upon looking at her site, you might be able to see all the stories there, but if you love them, buy the book!!

'It came from the woods. Most strange things do.'

Five mysterious, spine-tingling stories follow journeys into (and out of?) the eerie abyss.

These chilling tales spring from the macabre imagination of acclaimed and award-winning comic creator Emily Carroll.

What are your favorite horror comics and graphic novels?

Sorry for the delay in this post. I just got a new laptop and scheduling got a little out of whack. Tomorrow is my last #wickedgoodreads post with scary short stories!

3 Books With Monsters From Folklore #WickedGoodReads

October is #WickedGoodReads Month here at Outlandish Lit and GXO. This week, we’re focusing on books with Dangerous Creatures. Today's topic: books with monsters from folklore (see the full list of discussion topics here).

  MOONSHOT BY HOPE NICHOLSON

Starting off this list with some more comics. Moonshot is a collection of short comics by many different Native American creators. Even though they don't all feature monsters, they're super beautiful and interesting and important. And the ones that are about monsters from folklore are SO CREEPY. They just got funding on Kickstarter for a second volume, so look out for that!!

MOONSHOT brings together dozens of creators from across North America to contribute comic book stories showcasing the rich heritage and identity of indigenous storytelling. From traditional stories to exciting new visions of the future, this collection presents some of the finest comic book and graphic novel work in North America. The traditional stories presented in the book are with the permission from the elders in their respective communities, making this a truly genuine, never-before-seen publication. MOONSHOT is an incredible collection.

WHERE WE GO WHEN ALL WE WERE IS GONE BY SEQUOIA NAGAMATSU

This is a perfect pick for this topic. All of the short stories in this collection are super strange, and most of them have some sort of monster or demon from Japanese folklore. I'm going to go ahead and say the stories that do are the best ones. Godzilla (and other kaiju), long necked demons, horrifying shapeshifting beings, etc.

“The Return to Monsterland” opens 'Where We Go When All We Were Is Gone,' a collection of twelve fabulist and genre-bending stories inspired by Japanese folklore, historical events, and pop culture. In “Rokurokubi”, a man who has the demonic ability to stretch his neck to incredible lengths tries to save a marriage built on secrets. The recently dead find their footing in “The Inn of the Dead’s Orientation for Being a Japanese Ghost”. In “Girl Zero”, a couple navigates the complexities of reviving their deceased daughter via the help of a shapeshifter.

THE BRIDES OF ROLLROCK ISLAND BY MARGO LANAGAN

I'm OBSESSED with selkies. I watched The Secret of Roan Inish at a very young age and it was a formative experience. I haven't read this one, but apparently it's wacky and sad and dark and beautiful af. One review said you'll like this if you liked the last episode of Twin Peaks. So I guess I'll like it? It's hard to say.

Rollrock island is a lonely rock of gulls and waves, blunt fishermen and their homely wives. Life is hard for the families who must wring a poor living from the stormy seas. But Rollrock is also a place of magic - the scary, salty-real sort of magic that changes lives forever. Down on the windswept beach, where the seals lie in herds, the outcast sea witch Misskaella casts her spells - and brings forth girls from the sea - girls with long, pale limbs and faces of haunting innocence and loveliness - the most enchantingly lovely girls the fishermen of Rollrock have ever seen.

What are your favorite books with monsters from folklore?

That's it for #wickedgoodreads posts this week, because I have a lot of good stuff coming up for you all this week - plus Readathon on Saturday! But I'll be back Monday with scary graphic novels/comics!

3 BeWITCHing Reads - Get It? #WickedGoodReads

October is #WickedGoodReads Month here at Outlandish Lit and GXO. This week, we’re focusing on books with Dangerous Creatures. Today's topic: books about witches (see the full list of discussion topics here). I haven't read very many at all, but now I'm trying to correct that! Basically I just want The VVitch (amazing horror movie) to be in book form and then I'll be happy.

WYTCHES BY SCOTT SNYDER

The art and color in this comic are SO BEAUTIFUL. It's not horrifying, but it's definitely creepy. If you want an original take on witches, this is definitely one.

Everything you thought you knew about witches is wrong. They are much darker, and they are much more horrifying. Wytches takes the mythology of witches to a far creepier, bone-chilling place than readers have dared venture before. When the Rooks family moves to the remote town of Litchfield, NH to escape a haunting trauma, they're hopeful about starting over. But something evil is waiting for them in the woods just beyond town. Watching from the trees. Ancient...and hungry.

LOLLY WILLOWES BY SYLVIA TOWNSEND WARNER

I've only just started this one, but the writing is SO GOOD. This book about witches was written in the 20s by a woman, which is badass. About a "spinster" who opts to become a witch instead of getting married.

In Lolly Willowes, Sylvia Townsend Warner tells of an aging spinster's struggle to break way from her controlling family—a classic story that she treats with cool feminist intelligence, while adding a dimension of the supernatural and strange. Warner is one of the outstanding and indispensable mavericks of twentieth-century literature, a writer to set beside Djuna Barnes and Jane Bowles, with a subversive genius that anticipates the fantastic flights of such contemporaries as Angela Carter and Jeanette Winterson.

HEX BY THOMAS OLDE HEUVELT

I'm going to be very real - I'm trying this book again right now, but I bailed on it the first time. The writing about technology and the internet is SO cringey. And how the teenagers talk is utter nonsense. But I really really love the idea of this witch, so I'm giving it another shot.

Welcome to Black Spring, the seemingly picturesque Hudson Valley town haunted by the Black Rock Witch, a 17th century woman whose eyes and mouth are sewn shut. Muzzled, she walks the streets and enters your homes at will. She stands next to your bed for nights on end. Everybody knows that her eyes may never be opened.

What are your favorite books about witches?

Tomorrow's topic is Books With Monsters From Folklore - see you there!

4 Books That Make The Woods A Terrifying Place #WickedGoodReads

October is #WickedGoodReads Month here at Outlandish Lit and GXO. This week, we’re focusing on books with Dangerous Places. I tried to narrow it down to 3, but I have 4 scary books set in the woods that I love. (see the full list of discussion topics here).

THE RITUAL BY ADAM NEVILL

In this horror novel, a hiking/camping trip in Sweden goes horribly wrong when a short cut is taken. NEVER TAKE SHORT CUTS. If you liked The Blair Witch Project, you'll like this. It was actually horrifying. Do not read while camping.

Four old university friends reunite for a hiking trip in the Scandinavian wilderness of the Arctic Circle. No longer young men, they have little left in common and tensions rise as they struggle to connect. Frustrated and tired they take a shortcut that turns their hike into a nightmare that could cost them their lives.

Lost, hungry and surrounded by forest untouched for millennia, they stumble across an isolated old house. Inside, they find the macabre remains of old rites and pagan sacrifices; ancient artefacts and unidentifiable bones. A place of dark ritual and home to a bestial presence that is still present in the ancient forest, and now they’re the prey.

ANNIHILATION BY JEFF VANDERMEER

Nothing makes sense in Area X. There's a border nobody can see. Fungus grows in the shape of words. There are strange creatures. Maybe people turn into animals? Doppelgangers? Psychosis? It's so weird and tense, and the wilderness is as much a character as anybody else.

Area X has been cut off from the rest of the continent for decades. Nature has reclaimed the last vestiges of human civilization. The first expedition returned with reports of a pristine, Edenic landscape; all the members of the second expedition committed suicide; the third expedition died in a hail of gunfire as its members turned on one another; the members of the eleventh expedition returned as shadows of their former selves, and within months of their return, all had died of aggressive cancer.

This is the twelfth expedition.

THE TROOP BY NICK CUTTER

This book is definitely more focused on the horror of the "bioengineered nightmare" referenced below (I won't spoil it) and the tensions that appear between these stranded scouts. But it is set in a forest on an island that leaves them all stuck with each other and with someone infected. THIS BOOK IS SO GROSS.

Once a year, scoutmaster Tim Riggs leads a troop of boys into the Canadian wilderness for a three-day camping trip—a tradition as comforting and reliable as a good ghost story and a roaring bonfire. But when an unexpected intruder—shockingly thin, disturbingly pale, and voraciously hungry—stumbles upon their campsite, Tim and the boys are exposed to something far more frightening than any tale of terror. The human carrier of a bioengineered nightmare. An inexplicable horror that spreads faster than fear. A harrowing struggle for survival that will pit the troop against the elements, the infected...and one another.

THE WOODS BY JAMES TYNION IV

A high school is all of a sudden transported to some whole other, slightly magical world that nobody can make heads or tails of. The woods surrounding the high school is filled with monsters and mystery. It's a whooooole other world out there in the forest. It is just my type of weird. There's a hint at maybe aliens or at least something Ancient Aliens-y?? It's like The Breakfast Club, but with more angry monsters. If you're interested in comics, check this out!

On October 16, 2013, 437 students, 52 teachers, and 24 additional staff from Bay Point Preparatory High School in suburban Milwaukee, WI vanished without a trace. Countless light years away, far outside the bounds of the charted universe, 513 people find themselves in the middle of an ancient, primordial wilderness. Where are they? Why are they there? The answers will prove stranger than anyone could possibly imagine.

What are your favorite scary stories set in the woods?

The next #WickedGoodReads topic I'll be getting in on is on Monday - Witches!!

3 Favorite International Horror & Weird Books #WickedGoodReads

October is #WickedGoodReads Month here at Outlandish Lit and GXO. This week, we’re focusing on books with Dangerous Places. I've been looking forward to this topic - International Horror & Weird Books (see the full list of discussion topics here).

REVENGE BY YOKO OGAWA

These horror stories are all interconnected and they are SUCH a delight to read. Creepy, dark, and murder-y. And, bonus: They are pretty distinctly Japanese.

An aspiring writer moves into a new apartment and discovers that her landlady has murdered her husband. Years later, the writer’s stepson reflects upon his stepmother and the strange stories she used to tell him. Meanwhile, a surgeon’s lover vows to kill him if he does not leave his wife. Before she can follow-through on her crime of passion, though, the surgeon will cross paths with another remarkable woman, a cabaret singer whose heart beats delicately outside of her body. But when the surgeon promises to repair her condition, he sparks the jealousy of another man who would like to preserve the heart in a custom tailored bag. Murderers and mourners, mothers and children, lovers and innocent bystanders—their fates converge in a darkly beautiful web that they are each powerless to escape.

JAGANNATH BY KARIN TIDBECK

This is one of my favorite short story collections EVER. Not necessarily horror, but definitely weird. Karin Tidbeck wrote them in Swedish then translated them herself into English, which is pretty impressive. Read more about how much I love this strange, unsettling, and very Scandinavian collection here.

Enter the strange and wonderful world of Swedish sensation Karin Tidbeck with this feast of darkly fantastical stories. Whether through the falsified historical record of the uniquely weird Swedish creature known as the “Pyret” or the title story, “Jagannath,” about a biological ark in the far future, Tidbeck’s unique imagination will enthrall, amuse, and unsettle you. How else to describe a collection that includes “Cloudberry Jam,” a story that opens with the line “I made you in a tin can”? Marvels, quirky character studies, and outright surreal monstrosities await you in what is likely to be one of the most talked-about short story collections of the year.

ONE HUNDRED SHADOWS BY HWANG JUNGEUN

This novella was translated from Korean to English and is being praised by Han Kang (author of The Vegetarian). And, I'm going to be real, I think it's better. With creepy magical realism abound, this novella about shadows detaching themselves from their humans had me completely hooked. I kind of want everyone to read this.

An oblique, hard-edged novel tinged with offbeat fantasy, One Hundred Shadows is set in a slum electronics market in central Seoul – an area earmarked for demolition in a city better known for its shiny skyscrapers and slick pop videos. Here, the awkward, tentative relationship between Eungyo and Mujae, who both dropped out of formal education to work as repair-shop assistants, is made yet more uncertain by their economic circumstances, while their matter-of-fact discussion of a strange recent development – the shadows of the slum’s inhabitants have started to ‘rise’ – leaves the reader to make up their own mind as to the nature of this shape-shifting tale.

What are your favorite international horror & weird reads?

Tomorrow's topic is Books That Make The Woods Seem Like A Scary Place - see you there!

3 Books That Prove You Can't Always Trust Your Neighbors Or The People Close To You #WickedGoodReads

October is #WickedGoodReads Month at Outlandish Lit and Girlxoxo. This week, we’re focusing on books with wicked people, and today’s discussion is on Books That Prove You Can’t Always Trust Your Neighbors or The People Close to You (see the full list of discussion topics here).

CONFESSIONS BY KANAE MINATO

This is an incredibly twisty thriller that's HIGHLY messed up. What evil can young students do? And how far will a trusted figure, a teacher, go to get revenge? Thank god I'm not in school anymore, because now I don't trust anybody.

After an engagement that ended in tragedy, all Yuko Moriguchi had to live for was her four-year-old child, Manami. Now, after a heartbreaking accident on the grounds of the middle school where she teaches, Yuko has given up and tendered her resignation. But first, she has one last lecture to deliver. She tells a story that will upend everything her students ever thought they knew about two of their peers, and sets in motion a maniacal plot for revenge.

THE TRAITOR BARU CORMORANT BY SETH DICKINSON

Revenge, revenge, revenge! This isn't a spooky horror novel. It's an amazing geopolitical fantasy and one of the best books I've read this year. Our hero, Baru Cormorant, gives her life to lying her way through an empire and never knows who to trust herself.

Tomorrow, on the beach, Baru Cormorant will look up from the sand of her home and see red sails on the horizon. The Empire of Masks is coming, armed with coin and ink, doctrine and compass, soap and lies. They'll conquer Baru’s island, rewrite her culture, criminalize her customs, and dispose of one of her fathers. But Baru is patient. She'll swallow her hate, prove her talent, and join the Masquerade. She will learn the secrets of empire. She’ll be exactly what they need. And she'll claw her way high enough up the rungs of power to set her people free.

THE GIRL NEXT DOOR BY JACK KETCHUM

This book sounds so disturbing that I am too scared to read it. It just seemed like the perfect pick as neighborhood kids torture a girl in what seems like a normal suburban neighborhood.

Suburbia. Shady, tree-lined streets, well-tended lawns and cozy homes. A nice, quiet place to grow up. Unless you are teenage Meg or her crippled sister, Susan. On a dead-end street, in the dark, damp basement of the Chandler house, Meg and Susan are left captive to the savage whims and rages of a distant aunt who is rapidly descending into madness. It is a madness that infects all three of her sons and finally the entire neighborhood. Only one troubled boy stands hesitantly between Meg and Susan and their cruel, torturous deaths. A boy with a very adult decision to make.

What books have you read where family, neighbors, and friends turn out to be the ones that you really have to watch out for?

Tomorrow's topic is your Favorite Psychological Thrillers, but I'll be back on Thursday with my Favorite Female Horror Authors!