Author: Rebecca Rowland

Epeolatry Book Review: Aliens: Vasquez by V. Castro

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Title: Aliens: Vasquez
Author: V. Castro
Genre:  Science Fiction
Publisher: Titan Books
Release Date: 24th October, 2023

Synopsis: A groundbreaking Latinx Aliens novel by a rising star Latina author, featuring the fan-favorite character PFC Jenette Vasquez from the hit movie Aliens and the family she is forced to leave behind.
For the very first time, the canonical background of the breakout Aliens hero Jenette Vasquez, as well as the story of the children she was forced to leave behind as written by the rising Latina horror star V. Castro (Queen of the Cicadas).
Even before the doomed mission to Hadley’s Hope on LV-426, Jenette Vasquez had to fight to survive. Born to an immigrant family with a long military tradition, she looked up to the stars, but life pulled her back down to Earth—first into a street gang, then prison. The Colonial Marines proved to be Vasquez’s way out—a way that forced her to give up her twin children. Raised by Jenette’s sister, those children, Leticia and Ramon, had to discover their own ways to survive. Leticia by following her mother’s path into the military, Ramon into the corporate hierarchy of Weyland-Yutani. Their paths would converge on an unnamed planet which some see as a potential utopia, while others would use it for highly secretive research. Regardless of whatever humans might have planned for it, however, Xenomorphs will turn it into a living hell. 

 

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Epeolatry Book Review: Erie Tales #15: Classic Monsters edited by Michael Cieslak

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Erie Tales #15: Classic Monsters 

Edited by Michael Cieslak

Publisher: Great Lakes Association of Horror Writers

Published: Feb 1, 2023

93 pages

Synopsis: The members of the Great Lakes Association of Horror Writers love their monsters, and since you picked up this book, we suspect you do, too. Our brave authors have turned their ghoulish gazes towards the classic monsters of the past. Prepare to visit some of your old favorites and meet new interpretations of your old friends. Open to book, step into the theater, and settle in because this time… It Came From The Movies.

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Epeolatry Book Review: Spinal Remains by Chad Lutzke

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Title: Spinal Remains
Author: Chad Lutzke
Publisher: Cemetery Gates Media
Genre: Horror
Release Date: 9th August, 2022

Synopsis: In his third short story collection, Lutzke offers yet another bender-tossed concoction of fiction colored dark. Fourteen tales covering a multitude of subgenres, including: psychological, crime, extreme, human horrors, bizarre, coming of age, and humor.

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Epeolatry Book Review: We Haunt These Woods by Holley Cornetto

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Title: We Haunt These Woods
Author: Holley Cornetto
Publisher: Bleeding Edge Books
Genre: Horror/Coming of Age
Release Date: 19th July, 2022

Synopsis: Nate Holbrook had put his past behind him. When his friends went missing all those years ago at Lake Swart, it had been nothing more than a tragic mystery. No matter what stories they’d told each other about the “Forest Man,” there was no primeval menace lingering in that cave they found deep in the woods.
But when Nate meets up with Jennifer, a fellow Lake Swart survivor and his first love, everything changes. Finding her scarred and broken by the weight of the past, he proposes a daring remedy for their shared trauma—to return to their old summer haunt and prove the thing in the cave nothing more than a delusion and a myth.
But what if Nate is wrong?
What if the Forest Man is still waiting, after all this time, for a new friend to sing his song… to take his hand and disappear?

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Epeolatry Book Review: Three Days in the Pink Tower by EV Knight

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Title: Three Days in the Pink Tower
Author:  EV Knight
Publisher: Creature Publishing, LLC
Genre: Occult
Release Date: July 12th, 2022

Synopsis: Josey Claypool begins the summer before her senior year at a carnival, where a fortune teller with milky-white eyes gives her a foreboding tarot reading. She’s spooked, but nothing could prepare her for the following day when two strange men show up at her front door. Josey is kidnapped at gunpoint and brought to a pink cabin in the woods where she is held prisoner. In her darkest moment, the fortune teller appears and gives her a deck of tarot cards, which she must cast and interpret in a fight for her life.

In this work of speculative autofiction, award-winning author EV Knight reclaims the narrative of her own past in an exploration of trauma, agency, and survival.

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Epeolatry Book Review: Growth by Elin Olausson

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Title: Growth
Editor: Elin Olausson
Publisher: Dark Ink
Genre: Horror
Release Date: 20th June, 2022

Synopsis: Twenty dark tales of psychosocial horror fill the pages of Elin Olausson’s stunningly creepy short story collection debut. Three sisters live isolated in the wilderness, unbothered, until their world shatters with the arrival of a stranger. A young man revisits the childhood home where his sister danced and his mother died. A woman is promised the house of her dreams and goes mad when she doesn’t get it. Two evil teens stand united against the world, until one of them falls in love. In an abandoned asylum in the desert, a girl chants her own name.

Filled with madness, darkness and the truth of the human condition, Olausson’s stories will leave readers thinking about their own sanity and questioning the motives of those who are closest to them.

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Epeolatry Book Review: Symphony of the Damned, ed. TroyAnthony Schermer

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Title: Symphony of the Damned
Author: Various, ed. TroyAnthony Schermer
Publisher: Savage Realms Press
Genre: Horror
Release Date: 16th April, 2022

Synopsis: From Savage Realms Press comes a dark and twisted tome with over 400 pages of skin-crawling, spine-tingling horror that is sure to make you sleep with the lights on!
This eclectic mix of the macabre and the maniacal features 27 tales of terror:

  • A man purchases a painting by the notorious serial killer, John Wayne Gacy.
  • A night of seemingly harmless flirtation brings a woman much more than she bargained for.
  • A journalist’s interview for a human-interest story quickly evolves into a living, breathing nightmare.
  • A man’s dream of making contact with extraterrestrials has unforeseen consequences.
  • While investigating a beautiful and mysterious planet, the crew of the Starship Tigris quickly discovers that all is not the paradise it appears to be
  • A doctor’s emergency house call results in a truly horrifying discovery
  • In a near-future dystopia, stringent laws are passed dictating how men can interact with women
  • A couple receives a phone call from their daughter on the 15-year anniversary eve of her death
  • An elite team discovers the sole lifeform on a deserted planet is carrying a deadly secret
  • A bus ride takes an unexpected detour into the gruesome and the macabre
  • and many more

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Epeolatry Book Review: The Ghost That Ate Us by Daniel Kraus

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Title: The Ghost That Ate Us: The Tragic True Story of the Burger City Poltergeist

Author: Daniel Kraus

Genre: Horror

Publisher: Raw Dog Screaming Press

Release Date: 12th July, 2022

Synopsis:

You remember the brutal crime, don’t you?

Maybe you read about it on Twitter. Maybe a friend sent you a news clip. Maybe you saw it on an episode of Spectral Journeys that night you were flipping through channels, unable to sleep.

Maybe after reading the true story, you won’t ever sleep again.

On June 1, 2017, six people were killed at a Burger City franchise off I-80 near Jonny, Iowa. It was the bizarre and gruesome conclusion to nine months of alleged paranormal activity at the fast-food joint-events popularly known as “the Burger City Poltergeist.”

The story inspired Facebook memes, Twitter hashtags, Buzzfeed listicles, Saturday Night Live sketches, and more. But the case was never much more than a punchline…until bestselling writer Daniel Kraus (The Shape of Water, The Living Dead) decided to head to Iowa to dig up what really happened.

Presented here is the definitive story of “the most exhaustively documented haunting in history,” including-for the first time ever-interviews with every living survivor of the tragedy.

The employees of Burger City were a family. They loved one another. At least, at the beginning.

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