Author: Kirsten Barger

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Epeolatry Book Review: Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil by Ananda Lima

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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: Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil
Author: Ananda Lima
Genre: Horror Short Stories, Fantasy Anthologies, Contemporary Horror
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Date: 23rd July, 2024

Synopsis: Strange, intimate, haunted, and hungry―Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil is an intoxicating and surreal fiction debut by award-winning author Ananda Lima.

“An astounding new voice.” ―ERIC LaROCCA • “I love it so much.” ―KELLY LINK • “Trippy, eerie, wry, and always profound.” ―JOHN KEENE • “Incredible. Truly wondrous.” ―KEVIN WILSON • “Heart-wrenching and wickedly funny.” ―GWEN KIRBY • “Propulsive, uncanny, and expertly built.” ―JULIA FINE

At a Halloween party in 1999, a writer slept with the devil. She sees him again and again throughout her life and she writes stories for him about things that are both impossible and true.

Lima lures readers into surreal pockets of the United States and Brazil where they’ll find bite-size Americans in vending machines and the ghosts of people who are not dead. Once there, she speaks to modern Brazilian-American immigrant experiences–of ambition, fear, longing, and belonging―and reveals the porousness of storytelling and of the places we call home.

With humor, an exquisite imagination, and a voice praised as “singular and wise and fresh” (Cathy Park Hong), Lima joins the literary lineage of Bulgakov and Lispector and the company of writers today like Ted Chiang, Carmen Maria Machado, and Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah.

Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil includes: “Rapture,” “Ghost Story,” “Tropicália,” “Antropógaga,” “Idle Hands,” “Rent,” “Porcelain,” “Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory,” and “Hasselblad.”

A great next read for fans of Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties and V. E. Schwab’s The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue.

Recommended reading by Chicago Review of Books, Electric Literature, The Kenyon Review, and more!

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Epeolatry Book Review: Rogue Sequence by Zac Topping

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​Title: Rogue Sequence
Author: Zac Topping
Genre: Action Adventure
Publisher: Tor Publishing Group
Date: 4th June, 2024

Synopsis: It’s 2091 and independent contract companies around the world are producing genetically modified soldiers…to be sold to the highest bidders.

Ander Rade is a super-soldier, a genetically engineered living weapon, and has been dutifully following orders since he gave himself to Xyphos Industries’ Gene-Mod Program several years ago. But when a mission goes sideways, he’s captured, imprisoned, and forced into brutally violent fighting pits for the better part of the next decade…until agents from the Genetic Compliance Department of the United American Provinces appear in the visiting room.

Things have changed since Rade was captured. Shortly after his incarceration, the World Unity Council banned human genetic engineering and deemed all modified individuals a threat to society. Overnight, an entire subculture of people became outlaws simply for existing. But instead of leaving Rade locked behind bars, the GCD agents have come with an offer: Freedom in exchange for his help tracking down one of his former teammates from that ill-fated mission all those years ago.

It’s an offer Rade can’t refuse, but he soon realizes that the situation is far more volatile than anyone had anticipated, and is forced to take matters into his own hands as he tries to figure out whose side he’s really on, and why.

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Epeolatry Book Review: Tidal Creatures by Seanan McGuire

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Title: Tidal Creatures
Author: Seanan McGuire
Genre: Speculative Fiction
Publisher: Tordotcom
Publication Date: 4th June, 2024
Synopsis: New York Times bestselling author Seanan McGuire takes us back to the world of the award-winning Alchemical Journeys series in this action-packed follow-up to Middlegame and Seasonal Fears.

Every night, a Moon shines down on the Impossible City…

All across the world, people look up at the moon and dream of gods. Gods of knowledge and wisdom, gods of tides and longevity. Over time, some of these moon gods incarnated into the human world alongside the other manifest natural concepts. Their job is to cross the sky above the Impossible City—the heart of all creation—to keep it connected to reality.

And someone is killing them.

There are so many of them that it’s easy for a few disappearances to slip through the cracks. But they aren’t limitless.

In the name of the moon, the lunar divinities must uncover the roots of the plot and thwart the true goal of those behind these attacks—control of the Impossible City itself.

At the Publisher’s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

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Epeolatry Book Review: Running Close to the Wind by Alexandra Rowland

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Title: Running Close to the Wind
Author: Alexandra Rowland
Genre: Fantasy
Publisher: Tor Publishing Group
Publication Date: 11th June, 2024

Synopsis: A queer pirate fantasy standalone adventure by Alexandra Rowland, the author of A Taste of Gold and Iron.

“Come for the irrepressible gremlin of a narrator, stay for the plot-relevant cake competitions! A whip-smart, hilarious and exuberant high seas romp.”―Freya Marske, Sunday Times bestselling author of A Marvellous Light

A LitHub most anticipated book of 2024

Avra Helvaçi, former field agent of the Araşti Ministry of Intelligence, has accidentally stolen the single most expensive secret in the world―and the only place to flee with a secret that big is the open sea.

To find a buyer with deep enough pockets, Avra must ask for help from his on-again, off-again ex, the pirate Captain Teveri az-Ḥaffār. They are far from happy to see him, but together, they hatch a plan: take the information to the isolated pirate republic of the Isles of Lost Souls, fence it, profit. The only things in their way? A calculating new Araşti ambassador to the Isles of Lost Souls who’s got his eyes on Avra’s every move; Brother Julian, a beautiful, mysterious new member of the crew with secrets of his own and a frankly inconvenient vow of celibacy; the fact that they’re sailing straight into sea serpent breeding season and almost certain doom.

But if they can find a way to survive and sell the secret on the black market, they’ll all be as wealthy as kings―and, more important, they’ll be legends.

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Epeolatry Book Review: Iron Star by Loren D. Estleman

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Title: Iron Star
Author: Loren D. Estleman
Genre: Western; Historical Thriller
Publisher: Tor Publishing Group
Publication Date: 18th June, 2024

Synopsis: Set against the sprawling landscape of the Wild West, this riveting adventure by Spur Award-winning author Loren D. Estleman follows a man on a journey to set his legacy, and the men dedicated to bringing his story to life.

From his youth as a revolutionist to his time as a Deputy U.S. Marshal, aging lawman Iron St. John has become a larger-than-life figure―and in the process, the man has disappeared behind the myth. During his brief, unsuccessful political career, St. John published his memoirs―a sanitized version of his adventures to appeal to the masses. A generation later, the clouded truth of this giant of the Old West has been all but lost.

Now, Buck Jones, a pioneering film star, is vying for a cinematic story that will launch his career to incredible heights. He approaches Emmet Rawlings, a retired Pinkerton detective, to set the record of St. John’s life straight once and for all. Twenty years ago, Rawlings accompanied St. John on his final manhunt, and in desperate need for the funding a successful book promises, he dives deep into St. John’s past―and his own buried memories―to tell the truth about this part-time hero.

As the story of St. John unfolds, the romance of the period is stripped away to reveal a reality long-forgotten in this unvarnished, heart-racing depiction of the American West by acclaimed author Loren D. Estleman.

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Epeolatry Book Review: Momma Durtt by Michael Shea

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Title: Momma Durtt: A Novel
Author: Michael Shea
Genre: Horror
Publisher: Hippocampus Press
Release Date: July, 2024

Synopsis: Something strange is going on at the Quicksilver Mine in central California. Dead bodies are being dumped there; strange sounds and smells are emanating from its black depths. As increasingly bizarre phenomena occur in the area around the mine, people begin to wonder if Nature itself has turned against humanity and is rebelling at the violation of its pristine beauty. And are some of those who work in the mine actively conspiring to bring about a cataclysm that will overwhelm the region and the Earth?

Michael Shea began writing Momma Durtt in 1986. A few years later, he entered the University of San Francisco, to secure a master’s degree in its writing program, and he completed this novel as his thesis. But Momma Durtt has lain unpublished ever since. Hippocampus Press is proud to present this novel of cosmic eco-horror from the pen of one of the masters of contemporary weird fiction. With vibrant characters, racy language, and a spectacular denouement, Momma Durtt is uniquely suited to our own times, when climate change is alerting us to the dangers of tampering with Nature.

As a bonus, “Momma Durtt” (novelette version) is included as an appendix.

Michael Shea (1946–2014) is the author of the Nifft the Lean series of fantasy novels, as well as many other novels and tales of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. The Autopsy: Best Weird Stories of Michael Shea was released by Hippocampus Press in 2022.

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Epeolatry Book Review: Dead Girl, Driving and Other Devastations by Carina Bissett

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Title: Dead Girl, Driving and Other Devastations​
Author: Carina Bissett
Genre:  horror
Publisher: Trepidatio Publishing
Release Date: 9th March, 2024

Synopsis: In this powerful debut, Carina Bissett explores the liminal spaces between the magical and the mundane, horror and humor, fairy tales and fabulism. A young woman discovers apotheosis at the intersection of her cross-cultural heritage. A simulacrum rebels against her coding to create a new universe of her own making. A poison assassin tears the world apart in the relentless pursuit of her true love-the one person alive who can destroy her. Dead Girl, Driving and Other Devastations erases expectations, forging new trails on the map of contemporary fiction.


Includes an introduction by Julie C. Day, author of Uncommon Miracles and The Rampant.

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Epeolatry Book Review: Waterlore by Teika Marija Smits

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Title: Waterlore
Author: Teika Marija Smits
Genre:Anthology; Collections; Horror; Speculative Fiction
Publisher: Black Shuck Shadows
Release Date: 30th November, 2023

Synopsis: A series of micro-collections featuring a selection of peculiar tales from the best in horror and speculative fiction.

From Black Shuck Books and Teika Marija Smits comes Waterlore, the thirty-fourth in the Black Shuck SHADOWS series.

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