Category: Articles

Articles

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Indie Bookshelf Releases 12/29/2023

Got a book to launch, an event to promote, a kickstarter or seeking extra work/support as a result of being hit economically by life in general?

Get in touch and we’ll promote you here. The post is prepared each Thursday for publication on Friday. Contact us via Horror Tree’s contact address or connect via Twitter or Facebook.

Click on the book covers for more information. Remember to scroll down to the bottom of the page – there’s all sorts lurking in the deep.

 

Before you scroll down through the books however, please could you consider checking out the ‘Creatives in Crisis’ section. This has been added to help those who need additional support at this time. Thank you!

 

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Articles / Reviews

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Epeolatry Book Review: The Woods all Black by Lee Mandelo

Disclosure:

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 Woods all Black
Author: Lee Mandelo
Genre: historical fantasy, dark fantasy, romantic fantasy
Publisher: Tordotcom
Release Date: 19th March, 2024

Synopsis: The Woods All Black is equal parts historical horror, trans romance, and blood-soaked revenge, all set in 1920s Appalachia

Leslie Bruin is assigned to the backwoods township of Spar Creek by the Frontier Nursing Service, under its usual mandate: vaccinate the flock, birth babies, and weather the judgements of churchy locals who look at him and see a failed woman. Forged in the fires of the Western Front and reborn in the cafes of Paris, Leslie believes he can handle whatever is thrown at him―but Spar Creek holds a darkness beyond his nightmares.

Something ugly festers within the local congregation, and its malice has focused on a young person they insist is an unruly tomboy who must be brought to heel. Violence is bubbling when Leslie arrives, ready to spill over, and he’ll have to act fast if he intends to be of use. But the hills enfolding Spar Creek have a mind of their own, and the woods are haunted in ways Leslie does not understand.

The Woods All Black is a story of passion, prejudice, and power ― an Appalachian period piece that explores reproductive justice and bodily autonomy, the terrors of small-town religiosity, and the necessity of fighting tooth and claw to live as who you truly are.

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Articles / Reviews

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Epeolatry Book Review: Alfred Hitchcock Storyboards by Tony Lee Moral

Disclosure:

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: Alfred Hitchcock Storyboards
Author: Tony Lee Moral
Genre: Individual Directors, Art of Film & Video, Pop Culture Art
Publisher: Titan Books
Release Date: 6th February, 2024

Synopsis: A one-of-a-kind historical document and celebration of the artwork behind several of the Master of Suspense’s greatest films.

This stunning coffee table book focuses on the storyboards for nine of Alfred Hitchcock’s classic movies – Vertigo, The Birds, Psycho, North by Northwest, The 39 Steps, Torn Curtain, Marnie, Shadow of a Doubt and Spellbound. It includes never before-published images and incisive text putting the material in context and examining the role the pieces played in some of the most unforgettable scenes in cinema. Hitchcock author and aficionado Tony Lee Moral takes you through the last 100 years of cinema, with the Master of Suspense as your guide.

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Articles

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Indie Bookshelf Releases 12/22/2023

Got a book to launch, an event to promote, a kickstarter or seeking extra work/support as a result of being hit economically by life in general?

Get in touch and we’ll promote you here. The post is prepared each Thursday for publication on Friday. Contact us via Horror Tree’s contact address or connect via Twitter or Facebook.

Click on the book covers for more information. Remember to scroll down to the bottom of the page – there’s all sorts lurking in the deep.

 

Before you scroll down through the books however, please could you consider checking out the ‘Creatives in Crisis’ section. This has been added to help those who need additional support at this time. Thank you!

 

(more…)

Articles / Reviews

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Epeolatry Book Review: Inujini by Angela Yuriko Smith

Disclosure:

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: Inujini
Author: Angela Yuriko Smith
Genre: historical Asian fiction, literary fiction, historical literary fiction
Publisher: Yuriko Publishing
Release Date: 23rd June, 2024

Synopsis: Three indigenous Ryukyuan girls are stripped of everything in a war their people will gain nothing from, except loss. As they struggle to survive, they learn the power of resilience lies in connecting with who they were, who they are and who they will be together.

Kaori, Yuki and Shigeko are three island girls on the edge of womanhood who find themselves trapped in a fictionalized Battle of Okinawa. Based on true events, the three girls endure hunger, injury, humiliation and gender based violence as everything they love is stripped from them.

They each survive parallel story arcs that entwine in the last act as they connect to their intuition, in the form of the shiisaa guardians specific to Okinawa, and each other. Shamanistic magic may be what brings them together, but in the end it’s the girls themselves that wind up being the heroines. Their sisterhood is what defies and defeats those that threaten them.

Trigger warning: Sexual violence is an essential part of the plot to represent the real life situation women in Okinawa face to this day, but there are no graphic depictions of the act in this story. It remains only a threat to the characters.

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Articles / Reviews

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Epeolatry Book Review: Split Scream Volume 4 by D. Matthew Urban and Holly Lyn Walrath

Disclosure:

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: Split Scream Vol 4 
Author: D. Matthew Urban – “Nonsense Words” and Holly Lyn Walrath “Bone Light”
Genre: Horror
Publisher: Tenebrous Press
Release Date: 31st October, 2023

Synopsis: SPLIT SCREAM has a new home at Tenebrous Press! Editor Alex Ebenstein brings his acclaimed split-novelette series back for a fourth round featuring:

Nonsense Words by D. Matthew Urban

An aging professor of ancient history strikes up a friendship with her new colleague, Dr. Paul Duncan, a scholar of undecipherable inscriptions. As she finds herself drawn into Dr. Duncan’s life—his brilliant wife and mystical daughters, frightened students and uncanny associates—darker forces behind his research emerge, plunging her into a nightmare of mythical absurdity and ritualistic death. Dark academia meets cosmic horror in Nonsense Words, where the incomprehensible is granted a conjured form—but too much imagination can be a dangerous thing. If the cosmos is nonsense, merely a divine or demonic joke, will she live to have the last laugh, or will she die a punchline?

Bone Light by Holly Lyn Walrath

An icy surf batters Bone Light as its beacon calls to weary souls at sea. This edifice built of bone and wretchedness sits atop a cursed rock, surrounded by death, watched over by the ghosts of light-keepers past. Their records tell of the inhospitable environment, but it is Mary Long’s writings that show the heart. Misfortune necessitates the arrival of her dear Ida, laying bear to the obstacles that shaped their history—a husband and taboo among them. These log entries illuminate Mary’s world—the banality, the heartbreak, the magic. In Bone Light, a beacon of death might finally be the thing to give life to a long-denied romance.

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A Look at Amazon’s New Features: Your Books and Book Clubs

A Look at Amazon’s New Features: Your Books and Book Clubs

By Melody E. McIntyre

 

Recently, Amazon has introduced two new features for its users, Your Books and Amazon Book Clubs. Both are currently in early access, but are open to the public on Amazon.com. Your Books launched December 13, 2023. Amazon’s Book Clubs have been around for a while, but are still in “early access”. I have taken a quick look at both of these new sites and can offer some preliminary thoughts.

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Articles / Guest Post

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A Woman You Should Know: Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (1890-1964)

A Woman You Should Know: Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (1890-1964)

By Kelly Florence

George Grantham Bain Collection/Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (Digital file no. cph 3a48983)

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was a labor organizer, author, and speaker that traveled all over the country helping to organize workers into unions.  She traveled to the Iron Range in Minnesota to help organize miners in the strikes of 1907 and 1916.  She may have been considered controversial but her life and the time period in which she lived explains the differing views of her. Flynn was born in 1890 in Concord, New Hampshire.  She was of Irish descent and grew up aware of her ancestor’s struggles for freedom. She suffered from discrimination because of her ethnicity but her mother always made sure she was respectful of other people’s nationality, language, and religion. Growing up, she saw people’s struggles for better living and working conditions and for better education.  In one town where she lived she saw children, not much older than she was, having to work in mills to support their families.  Some of them were forever scarred or maimed because of the lack of safety regulations in the workplace. This had a tremendous impact on her.

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