What happens when a mirror world brushes up against another? Perhaps by way of a newly discovered portal, or a magic spell gone awry. What if our world was the shadow world for an innocent world free of strife and conflict? What would happen then? What if you threw in a pair of star-crossed lovers? How would you reinvent that trope?
Deck: The Unicorn Tarot by Suzanne Star and illustrated by Liz Hilton
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Title: Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird: Stories
Author: Agustina Bazterrica
Publisher: Pushkin Press
Genre: Horror
Release date: 4th May, 2023
Synopsis: A collection of nineteen dark, wildly imaginative short stories from the author of the award-winning TikTok sensation Tender Is the Flesh.
From celebrated author Agustina Bazterrica, this collection of nineteen brutal, darkly funny short stories takes into our deepest fears and through our most disturbing fantasies. Through stories about violence, alienation, and dystopia, Bazterrica’s vision of the human experience emerges in complex, unexpected ways—often unsettling, sometimes thrilling, and always profound. In “Roberto,” a girl claims to have a rabbit between her legs. A woman’s neighbor jumps to his death in “A Light, Swift, and Monstrous Sound,” and in “Candy Pink,” a woman fails to contend with a difficult breakup in five easy steps.
Written in Bazterrica’s signature clever, vivid style, these stories question love, friendship, family relationships, and unspeakable desires.
You may be asking, “What’s so scary about Virginia?”
Well, from Edgar Allan Poe’s Ragged Mountains to the shores of Tidewater’s Seven Cities… From the blood-soaked battlegrounds of the Civil War to the shadowy political arena of the D.C. Beltway… We have four hundred years’ worth of ghost stories, folk horrors, small-town terrors, urban legends, backwoods beasts, otherworldly secrets, and down-home Southern Gothic.
“Dark Corners of the Old Dominion: A Virginia Horrors Anthology” explores those dangerous destinations, myths, and monsters from the Commonwealth’s past, present, and future.
Twenty-three authors with close ties to Virginia volunteered their time and talent to be part of this charity anthology, for which all of the publisher and author proceeds will be donated to Scares That Care, a 501c3 nonprofit dedicated to helping those with childhood illness, breast cancer fighters, and burn survivors.
A very special thanks to all the authors who contributed work for a wonderful cause. Some of the authors had time to sit down and answer a couple of questions about scary places in Virginia. We asked them to tell us about their stories, as well as where in the state they’d send a paranormal investigation team. They’ve dug up some dirt on the darkest places and here’s what they had to say:
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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.
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What with this heat we’ve been having, students might actually be excited to leave the summer behind, and enter into the cool hallways of these venerated academics. However, even posh private academies have their hidden dangers, and it’ll remain to be seen if these collective zodiac signs survive until the winter break.
Disclaimer: As always, these are mock “horrorscopes” and should not be considered as predictive or indicative of any specific person or persons, posh private academies, or the (fictional) demises that take place within the ivy-covered walls. Or suggestions to try any of these activities at school…or at home.
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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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Title: Bad Moon Rising
Author: Luisa Colón
Publisher: Cemetery Dance Publications
Genre: Horror, Occult
Release date: 11th August, 2023
Synopsis: In Gravesend, Brooklyn, sixteen-year-old Elodia is an outcast at school, at odds with her father, and longing for her mysteriously absent mother. Lonely and isolated, Elodia knows that something unspeakably terrible has happened to her—she just can’t remember what.
Miles away in upstate New York, a young man named Gabriel occupies his time by killing sparrows and searching for his birth parents. Gabriel wants to show them what a good son he can be, well-behaved and helpful and no trouble at all—until a savage betrayal plants an ever-growing seed of revenge within him.
Desperate for the promise of their past lives and future dreams, both Elodia and Gabriel are broken and scarred, their lives shattered. Their wounds run deep—and that kind of damage is irrevocable. Unchangeable. Irreversible.
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Title: The Black Lord
Author: Colin Hinckley
Publisher: Tenebrous Press
Genre: Horror
Release date: 12th September, 2023
Synopsis: New Weird Folk Horror intertwines with a troubled family history in the debut novella from Colin Hinckley!
Eddie’s parents may be arguing about the disappearance of his infant brother Danny, but Eddie’s facing a terror all of his own. There’s a strange figure outside that claims it has Danny safe and sound—all Eddie needs to do to get his brother back is open that window.
Eddie’s father is filled with guilt over his relationship with his own lost brother. His mother has been abandoned to navigate her grief and terror alone. And his grandmother carries a disturbing, all-too-relevant truth about their shared family history.
As minutes tick by and hope for Danny grows ever smaller, the very fabric of their world disintegrates, welcoming eldritch terrors of unspeakable provenance to their doorstep. The family is losing a decade-long struggle against an entity that is not of this world, and its hunger threatens to swallow them whole.
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