Author: Corinne Pollard

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Epeolatry Book Review: Myrrh by Polly Hall

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Our reviews may contain affiliate links. If you purchase something through the links in this article we may receive a small commission or referral fee. This happens without any additional cost to you.

Title: Myrrh
Author: Polly Hall
Genre: Psychological Horror
Publisher: Titan Books
Release Date: 9th April, 2024

Synopsis: Myrrh has a goblin inside her, a voice in her head that tells her all the things she’s done wrong, that berates her and drags her down. Desperately searching for her birth-parents across dilapidated seaside towns in the South coast of England, she finds herself silenced and cut off at every step.

Cayenne is trapped in a loveless marriage, the distance between her and her husband growing further and further each day. Longing for a child, she has visions promising her a baby.

As Myrrh’s frustrations grow, the goblin in her grows louder and louder, threatening to tear apart the few relationships she holds dear and destroy everything around her. When Cayenne finds her husband growing closer to his daughter – Cayenne’s stepdaughter – and pushing her further out of his life, she makes a decision that sends her into a terrible spiral.

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Epeolatry Book Review: Shadow of the Hidden by Kev Harrison

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Our reviews may contain affiliate links. If you purchase something through the links in this article we may receive a small commission or referral fee. This happens without any additional cost to you.

Title: Shadow of the Hidden
Author: Kev Harrison
Publisher: Brigids Gate Press
Genre: Horror/Occult Horror
Release Date: 19th March, 2024

Synopsis: It’s Seb’s last day working in Turkey, but his friend Oz has been cursed. Superstition turns to terror as the effects of the ancient malediction spill over and the lives of Oz and his family hang in the balance. Can Seb find the answers to remove the hex before it’s too late?

From Kev Harrison, author of The Balance and Below, journey with Seb, Oz and Deniz across ancient North African cities as they seek to banish the Shadow of the Hidden.

 

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Epeolatry Book Review: The Night Guest by Hildur Knútsdóttir

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Our reviews may contain affiliate links. If you purchase something through the links in this article we may receive a small commission or referral fee. This happens without any additional cost to you.

Title: The Night Guest
Author: Hildur Knútsdóttir
Genre: Horror
Publisher: Tor Nightfire,
Release Date: 3rd September, 2024

Synopsis:Hildur Knutsdottir’s The Night Guest is an eerie and ensnaring story set in contemporary Reykjavík that’s sure to keep you awake at night.
Iðunn is in yet another doctor’s office. She knows her constant fatigue is a sign that something’s not right, but practitioners dismiss her symptoms and blood tests haven’t revealed any cause.
When she talks to friends and family about it, the refrain is the same ― have you tried eating better? exercising more? establishing a nighttime routine? She tries to follow their advice, buying everything from vitamins to sleeping pills to a step-counting watch. Nothing helps.
Until one night Iðunn falls asleep with the watch on, and wakes up to find she’s walked over 40,000 steps in the night . . .
What is happening when she’s asleep? Why is she waking up with increasingly disturbing injuries? And why won’t anyone believe her?

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Epeolatry Book Review: Question Not My Salt by Amanda M. Blake

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Our reviews may contain affiliate links. If you purchase something through the links in this article we may receive a small commission or referral fee. This happens without any additional cost to you.

Title: Question Not My Salt
Author: Amanda M. Blake
Genre: Horror, Serial Killer Horror
Publisher: Torrid Waters, Crystal Lake Entertainment Publishing
Release Date: 16th February, 2024

Synopsis: Come for Thanksgiving Dinner. Stay for the Feast.
Sierra’s first American Thanksgiving promises to be unforgettable when her college roommate, Zoe, invites her to the Samuels family feast. But as the ten-hour banquet unfolds, it becomes clear this is no ordinary holiday gathering.
With everyone bound by a chilling rule—eat and drink exactly as served, and enjoy it, or face dire consequences—the traditional celebration quickly takes a dark and macabre turn. Will Sierra survive the Samuels’ sinister hospitality or become part of a feast far more horrifying than she could have ever imagined?
Question Not My Salt is a gripping tale blending the terror of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre with the culinary horror of Hannibal and The Menu.

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Epeolatry Book Review: Posthaste Manor by Jolie Toomajan & Carson Winter

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Title: Posthaste Manor
Author: Jolie Toomajan & Carson Winter
Genre: Ghost Fiction; Dark Fantasy
Publisher: Tenebrous Press
Release Date: 18th October, 2023

Synopsis:  NEVER TRUST A HOUSE WITH A NAME
Everyone has a story about Posthaste Manor.
None of the stories end well, but that doesn’t stop the hopeful from hoping and the desperate from trying.
This composite novel stands as both history and eulogy of one very haunted house, as recounted by artists, real estate agents, and beloved family pets; by the debauched, the dead and the dying, and anyone looking for one last chance.
Raise a glass in celebration. Just don’t linger within its walls for long.

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Epeolatry Book Review: Hemlock Island by Kelley Armstrong

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Our reviews may contain affiliate links. If you purchase something through the links in this article we may receive a small commission or referral fee. This happens without any additional cost to you.

Title: Hemlock Island
Author: Kelley Armstrong
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Genre: Ghost Fiction, Occult Fiction, Horror
Release date: 12th September, 2023

Synopsis: Laney Kilpatrick has been renting her vacation home to strangers. The invasion of privacy gives her panic attacks, but it’s the only way she can keep her beloved Hemlock Island, the only thing she owns after a pandemic-fueled divorce. But broken belongings and campfires that nearly burn down the house have escalated to bloody bones, hex circles, and now, terrified renters who’ve fled after finding blood and nail marks all over the guest room closet, as though someone tried to claw their way out…and failed.
When Laney shows up to investigate with her teenaged niece in tow, she discovers that her ex, Kit, has also been informed and is there with Jayla, his sister and her former best friend. Then Sadie, another old high school friend, charters over with her brother, who’s now a cop.
There are tensions and secrets, whispers in the woods, and before long, the discovery of a hand poking up from the earth. Then the body that goes with it… But by that time, someone has taken off with their one and only means off the island, and they’re trapped with someone―or something―that doesn’t want them leaving the island alive.

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Epeolatry Book Review: Looking Glass Sound by Catriona Ward

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Our reviews may contain affiliate links. If you purchase something through the links in this article we may receive a small commission or referral fee. This happens without any additional cost to you.

Title: Looking Glass Sound
Author: Catriona Ward
Publisher: Viper Books
Release date: 8th August, 2023

Synopsis: In a cottage overlooking the windswept Maine coast, Wilder Harlow has begun the last book he will ever write.

It is the story about the sun-drenched summer days of his youth in Whistler Bay, and the blood-stained path of the killer that stalked his small vacation town. About the terrible secret he and his companions, Nat and Harper, discovered entombed in the coves off the bay. And how the pact they swore that day echoed down the decades, forever shaping their lives.

But the more Wilder writes, the less he trusts himself and his memory. He starts to see things that can’t be real – notes hidden in the cabin, from an old friend now dead; a woman with dark hair drowning in the icy waters below, calling for help; entire chapters he doesn’t recall typing, appearing overnight. Who, or what, is haunting Wilder?

No longer able to trust his own eyes, Wilder begins to fear that this will not only be his last book, but the last thing he ever does.

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How to Write a Sonnet

How to Write a Sonnet

 

Does the word ‘Sonnet’ make you flashback to your school days? Does the mere mention make your eyes water as you yawn while your mind wanders to escape? 

 

I was the same. I thought, ‘it’s too difficult’ and ‘I can’t write Shakespeare, so there’s no chance of a sonnet.’ You can imagine my horror when my poetry professor started her module with, you guessed it, sonnets! But she broke it down for me, and from practising and practising, I grew used to the ways of the sonnet. 

 

Rather than bore you with the details of the sonnet’s history and have an in-depth (yawn) look at the main four types (Petrarchan, Shakespearean, Spenserian, and Miltonic; for those who want to look them up), we’ll be focusing on making the sonnet relevant and unique to you.

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