Tagged: Book Review

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Epeolatry Book Review: The Best Horror of the Year, Volume Sixteen, ed. Ellen Datlow

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Title: The Best Horror of the Year, Volume Sixteen (Best Horror of the Year, 16)
Author: Various, Ellen Datlow (Editor)
Publisher: Night Shade
Genre: Horror
Release Date: November 26, 2024

Synopsis:  From Ellen Datlow—“the venerable queen of horror anthologies” per the New York Times—comes a new entry in the series that has brought you thrilling stories from Stephen King and Neil Gaiman, the best horror stories available.

For more than four decades, Ellen Datlow has been at the center of horror. Bringing you the most frightening and terrifying stories, Datlow always has her finger on the pulse of what horror readers crave. Now, with the sixteenth volume of the series, Datlow is back again to bring you the stories that will keep you up at night. Encompassed in the pages of The Best Horror of the Year have been such illustrious writers as: Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, Stephen Graham Jones, Joyce Carol Oates, Laird Barron, Mira Grant, and many others.

With each passing year, science, technology, and the march of time shine light into the craggy corners of the universe, making the fears of an earlier generation seem quaint. But this light creates its own shadows. The Best Horror of the Year chronicles these shifting shadows. It is a catalog of terror, fear, and unpleasantness as articulated by today’s most challenging and exciting writers.

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Epeolatry Book Review: Aliens vs. Predators: Rift War by Weston Ochse and Yvonne Navarro

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Title: Aliens vs. Predators: Rift War
Author: Weston Ochse and Yvonne Navarro
Publisher:  Titan Books
Genre: Science Fiction, Horror
Release Date: 6th, September 2022

Synopsis: When the Predators choose LV-363 for a hunt and seed it with Xenomorph eggs, the result is bizarre alien hybrids and humans trapped between the Predators and their prey.

The planet LV-363 teems with exotic life, including a plant growing in the shadows of its deep rifts. The plant’s flower yields a valuable narcotic, and people are forced by the cartels to harvest it. When a Yautja (Predator) ship arrives for a hunting ritual, the Predators seed the rifts with Xenomorph eggs. The aliens emerge and the result is bizarre and deadly hybrids, with humans trapped between the Predators and their prey. These deadly Xenomorph hybrids—some of which possess the ability to fly—swarm out of control and may prove more than either the Yautja or the humans can defeat.

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Epeolatry Book Review: The Damnations – M.R. James Short Stories, A Special Ramsey Campbell Edition

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​Title: The Damnations: M.R. James Short Stories
Author: M.R. James, A Special Ramsey Campbell Edition
Genre: Ghost Stories
Publisher: Flame Tree Press
Date: 14th October, 2025

Synopsis: “Ramsey Campbell is the nearest thing we have to an heir to M.R. James” – Times. Special Collector’s edition of the old master of the supernatural story, by the current one!

Special, collectable hardcover edition for Ramsey Campbell’s 60 years in publication.

With his subtle sense of dread and use modern settings, M.R. James’ ghost stories formed a firm foundation for the modern horror story with his presence felt in all forms of literature and media. This special collectable edition of short stories features a new introduction by the greatest current inheritor of the Jamesian mantle, Ramsey Campbell, along with one of Ramsey’s own tales.

The Ramsey Campbell Special Editions. Campbell is the greatest inheritor of a tradition that reaches back through H.P. Lovecraft and M.R. James to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and the early Gothic writers. The dark, masterful work of the painter Henry Fuseli, a friend of Mary Wollstonecraft, is used on these special editions to invoke early literary investigations into the supernatural.

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Epeolatry Book Review: Withered Hill by David Barnett

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Title: Withered Hill
Author: David Barnett
Genre: Folk horror
Publisher: Canelo Horror
Publication date: September 26, 2024

Synopsis: A year ago, Sophie Wickham stumbled into the isolated Lancaster village of Withered Hill, naked, alone and with no memory of who she is.

Surrounded by a thick ring of woodland, its inhabitants seem to be of another world, drenched in pagan, folklorish traditions

As Sophie struggles to regain the memories from her life before, she quickly realizes she is a prisoner after multiple failed escape attempts. But is it the locals who keep her trapped, with smiles on their faces, or something else, lurking in the woods?

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Epeolatry Book Review: Bestiary of Blood, ed. Jamal Hodges

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Title: Bestiary of Blood
Author/Editor: Jamal Hodge
Genre: Horror/fable
Publisher: Crystal Lake Publishing
Publication date: October 4, 2024

Synopsis: Bestiary of Blood was conceived in a moment of revelation, born from the visceral experience of watching nature’s savage ballet- lions tearing into flesh, hyenas gnawing on bones, sharks thrashing in crimson waters. These raw spectacles gave rise to a chilling epiphany: life and death are intertwined in a grotesque dance, each feeding the other in a ceaseless cycle of transformation, creating… beauty.

This paradox is captured in its full glory in Bestiary of Blood, a modern anthology of predatory horrors inspired by the timeless tales of Aesop’s Fables, modernized for a more complex, unforgiving world. Explore the joy in our hurts, the wrongs in our rights, and the suffering in the shadows of our light, Bestiary of Blood invites you to the intersection of human and animal experience, crafting dark tales that resonate with life’s endless cycles of transformation.

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Epeolatry Book Review: Don’t Let ‘Em Take the Children by R H Williams

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​Title: Don’t Let ‘Em Take the Children
Author: R H Williams
Genre: dark fantasy, occult horror, coming-of-age, mystery, thriller, supernatural
Publisher: The Book Guild
Date: 28th September, 2024

Synopsis: Desperate to prove his mother’s death was caused by a supernatural force haunting his hometown, thirteen-year-old Ned discovers evidence linking a missing child to his own quest.

Joined by his friends, Ned embarks on a mission to investigate the boy’s disappearance. However, when they uncover their town’s dark secret, they must find a way to stop the unexpected and dangerous enemy without unleashing a greater evil on the world.

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Epeolatry Book Review: First Light by Liz Kerin

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​Title: First Light
Author: Liz Kerin
Genre: vampire, paranormal, coming-of-age, thriller, queer fiction
Publisher: Tor Nightfire
Date: 23rd April, 2024

Synopsis: It’s been nine months since the catastrophe in Tucson sent Mia fleeing from her home. But she’s not running away from the darkness–she’s running toward it, obsessively pursuing the man who gave her mother a thirst for blood and destroyed their lives. 

But when Mia finds the monsters she’s been hunting and infiltrates a secret network of fugitives, she discovers she might have been their prey all along. 

To escape their clutches, she’ll have to reckon with her mother’s harrowing past and confront a painful truth: that they might be more alike than she ever imagined.

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Epeolatry Book Review: A Conventional Boy by Charles Stross

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​Title: A Conventional Boy
Author: Charles Stross
Genre: Fantasy
Publisher: Tordotcom
Date: 7th January, 2025

Synopsis: In this new Laundry Files adventure the fate of the world will literally depend on the roll of dice… twenty-sided dice, that is.
In 1984, Derek Reilly was just another spotty teenage dungeon master growing up in middle England. But then a secret government agency tasked with suppressing magical intrusions received a tip-off – and one midnight raid later, his life was turned upside down by the Satanic D&D Panic.
Decades later Derek, now middle-aged and institutionalized, is a long-term inmate at Camp Sunshine, a center for deprogramming captured Elder God cultists. He’s considered safe enough to edit the camp newsletter, and he even has postal privileges – which he uses to run a play-by-mail game. After 25 years, Derek finally has reason to escape: a nearby D&D convention. While Derek’s D&D games were full of fictional elder gods and world-ending threats, a LARP game at the con is a dread ritual designed to summon a great evil into our world, and it’s up to Derek and his players to stop them.
The fate of the world may depend on the contents of Derek’s magic dice bag.

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