Author: Melody E McIntyre

Articles / Reviews

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Epeolatry Book Review: Dead by Daylight #1 by Nadia Shammas, Dillon Snook, Emilio Lecce

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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: Dead by Daylight #1
Author: Nicole Shammas
Art: Dillon Snook, Emilio Lecce
Publisher: Titan Comics
Genre: Horror Graphic Novels, Media Tie-in Graphics
Release date: 14th June, 2023

Synopsis: When the rebellious FRANK crashes into the lives of JULIE, JOEY, and SUSIE, together they’ll unleash bloody chaos onto the sleepy, dead-end town of Ormond.

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Articles / Interviews

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An Interview With Scott Leeds On Schrader’s Chord

Melody E. McIntyre’s Interview Questions for Scott Leeds

Scott Leeds lives in the Pacific Northwest and his debut novel, Schrader’s Chord comes out September 5, 2023 from Tor Nightfire. It’s a gripping tale about a man who returns to clean up his father’s estranged estate and inadvertently opens a portal to the underworld when he and his friends play four cursed records. It’s a fun, scary horror thriller and I was happy to read and review an ARC for The Horror Tree, and now I’ve had the opportunity to interview Scott Leeds himself.

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Articles / Reviews

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Epeolatry Book Review: Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake

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Title: Anna Dressed in Blood
Author: Kendare Blake
Publisher: Tor Teen
Genre: YA / Horror / Fantasy 
Release date: 12th September, 2023

Synopsis: Cas Lowood has inherited an unusual vocation: He kills the dead.

So did his father before him, until he was gruesomely murdered by a ghost he sought to kill. Now, armed with his father’s mysterious and deadly athame, Cas travels the country with his kitchen-witch mother and their spirit-sniffing cat. Together they follow legends and local lore, trying to keep up with the murderous dead—keeping pesky things like the future and friends at bay.

When they arrive in a new town in search of a ghost the locals call Anna Dressed in Blood, Cas doesn’t expect anything outside of the ordinary: track, hunt, kill. What he finds instead is a girl entangled in curses and rage, a ghost like he’s never faced before. She still wears the dress she wore on the day of her brutal murder in 1958: once white, now stained red and dripping with blood. Since her death, Anna has killed any and every person who has dared to step into the deserted Victorian she used to call home.

But she, for whatever reason, spares Cas’s life.

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Articles / Reviews

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Epeolatry Book Review: The Devil’s Pocketbook by Ross Jeffery

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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 Devil’s Pocketbook
Author: Ross Jeffery
Publisher: DarkLit Press
Genre: Occult Fantasy, Horror
Release date: 23rd May, 2023

Synopsis: Erik and Lara are in mourning for their daughter, who was born “incompatible with life”. To get away from their suffocating grief and the ever-present shadow their daughter has cast in their lives since passing, and desperately trying to recover their increasingly rocky relationship, they take a trip to the seaside town of Polperro, in Cornwall. But no sooner have they arrived, than they realize that their grief cannot be so easily eluded. Drawn to the waters, Erik and Lara discover a large Devil’s Pocketbook, and inside: the miracle child they could never have. Scylla.

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Articles / Reviews

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Epeolatry Book Review: The Water Outlaws by S. L. Huang

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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 Water Outlaws
Author: S. L. Huang
Publisher: Tordotcom
Genre: Fantasy, Martial Arts
Release Date: 22nd August, 2023

Synopsis: In the jianghu, you break the law to make it your own.

 

Lin Chong is an expert arms instructor, training the Emperor’s soldiers in sword and truncheon, battle axe and spear, lance and crossbow. Unlike bolder friends who flirt with challenging the unequal hierarchies and values of Imperial society, she believes in keeping her head down and doing her job.

 

Until a powerful man with a vendetta rips that carefully-built life away.

 

Disgraced, tattooed as a criminal, and on the run from an Imperial Marshall who will stop at nothing to see her dead, Lin Chong is recruited by the Bandits of Liangshan. Mountain outlaws on the margins of society, the Liangshan Bandits proclaim a belief in justice—for women, for the downtrodden, for progressive thinkers a corrupt Empire would imprison or destroy. They’re also murderers, thieves, smugglers, and cutthroats.

 

Apart, they love like demons and fight like tigers. Together, they could bring down an empire.

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Articles / Reviews

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Epeolatry Book Review: Schrader’s Chord by Scott Leeds

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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: Schrader’s Chord

Author: Scott Leeds

Genre: Horror/Thriller

Publisher: Tor Nightfire

Release date: September 5, 2023

Synopsis: I told you they were real.

 

After his estranged father’s mysterious death, Charlie Remick returns to Seattle to help with the funeral. There, he discovers his father left him two parting gifts: the keys to the family record store and a strange black case containing four ancient records that, according to legend, can open a gate to the land of the dead.

 

When Charlie, his sister, and their two friends play the records, they unwittingly open a floodgate of unspeakable horror. As the darkness descends, they are stalked by a relentless, malevolent force and see the dead everywhere they turn.

 

With time running out, the only person who can help them is Charlie’s resurrected father, who knows firsthand the awesome power the records have unleashed. But can they close the gate and silence Schrader’s Chord before it’s too late?

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Articles / Reviews

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Epeolatry Book Review: Lords of Uncreation by Adrian Tchaikovsky

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Title: Lords of Uncreation
Author: Adrian Tchaikovsky
Publisher: Orbit
Genre: Science Fiction
Release date: 2nd May, 2023

Synopsis: He’s found a way to end their war, but will humanity survive to see it?

Idris Telemmier has uncovered a secret that changes everything – the Architects’ greatest weakness. A shadowy Cartel scrambles to turn his discovery into a weapon against these alien destroyers of worlds. But between them and victory stands self-interest. The galaxy’s great powers would rather pursue their own agendas than stand together against this shared terror.

Human and inhuman interests wrestle to control Idris’ discovery, as the galaxy erupts into a mutually destructive and self-defeating war. The other great obstacle to striking against their alien threat is Idris himself. He knows that the Architects, despite their power, are merely tools of a higher intelligence.

Deep within unspace, where time moves differently, and reality isn’t quite what it seems, their masters are the true threat. Masters who are just becoming aware of humanity’s daring – and taking steps to exterminate this annoyance forever.

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Articles / Reviews

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Epeolatry Book Review: The Witch in the Well by Camilla Bruce

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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 Witch in the Well
Author: Camilla Bruce
Publisher: Tor
Genre: Horror, Thriller
Release date: 4th, October 2022

Synopsis: When two former friends reunite after decades apart, their grudges, flawed ambitions, and shared obsession swirl into an all-too-real echo of a terrible town legend. 

 

Centuries ago, beautiful young Ilsbeth Clark was accused of witchcraft after several children disappeared. Her acquittal did nothing to stop her fellow townsfolk from drowning her in the well where the missing children were last seen.

 

When author and social media influencer Elena returns to the summer paradise of her youth to get her family’s manor house ready to sell, the last thing she expected was connecting with—and feeling inspired to write about—Ilsbeth’s infamous spirit. The very historical figure that her ex-childhood friend, Cathy, has been diligently researching and writing about for years.

 

What begins as a fiercely competitive sense of ownership over Ilsbeth and her story soon turns both women’s worlds into something more haunted and dangerous than they could ever imagine.

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