Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: The Haunted Houses She Calls Her Own by Gwendolyn Kiste 
The Haunted Houses She Calls Her Own by Gwendolyn Kiste
Raw Dog Screaming Press (April 14, 2026)
Reviewed by Elizabeth Broadbent
Raw Dog Screaming Press releases another banger with Gwendolyn Kiste’s The Haunted Houses She Calls Her Own. Containing the Bram Stoker Award-winning “The Eight People Who Murdered Me (Excerpt from Lucy Westerna’s Diary),” it’s a feminist howl of a collection that takes a hard look at the ways family and society can trap women. Continue Reading
The Undertaker Volume 1: The Gold Eater & Dance of the Vultures by Xavier Dorison and Ralph Meyer
Abrams ComicArts (March 31, 2026)
Reviewed by Joshua Gage
Xavier Dorison was born in 1972. He is a prolific author known for his immersive narratives across multiple genres. He started a comics festival while in college, and within a few years he had become a pillar of that very scene, thanks to series like Long John Silver. Dorison continues to shape modern comics with his high-energy storytellingContinue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: Cracking Spines by Jason Cavallero 
Cracking Spines by Jason Cavallero
Cracking Spines (September 2025)
Reviewed by Dave Simms
Guides to horror books are great. Sometimes they’re a little cute, fancy, or obviously biased towards the freshest faces in the genre. All are fine, and some are incredibly done. This reviewer has gone through most of them and many are entertaining, sometimes, readers need a no-frills approach to their book addiction searches.
Jason Cavallero is a different beast entirely. Besides performing in a heavy metal band and playing drums for the New Orleans Saints, he lives and breathes horror fiction. It’s not something he picked up because it was cool or to help friends. Horror is IN his DNA. He devours over 200 books a year, but that’s likely an understatement.
The key thing is: he does this so the average horror fan doesn’t have to.Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: The Hive by Ronald Malfi 
The Hive by Ronald Malfi
Titan Books (April 14, 2026)
Review by W.D. Gagliani
Ronald Malfi (author of The Fall of Never, The Narrows, Bone White, December Park, Small Town Horror, Little Girls, Come With Me, and numerous others) knows that deep down, most of us fear — or at least distrust — the small-town dynamic…unless we grew up with it, and even then the American Way is often to leave the small town behind. In the horror tradition, it’s probably a cliché to say that Stephen King rewrote the book on small town horror, and folks like Ray Bradbury had been there before. But there’s nothing wrong with echoing those voices with a current-day vibe, and that’s what Malfi gives us with The Hive.Continue Reading
Requiem: Tales of the Undead edited by Lisa Mangum with Wendy Christensen
WordFire Press (February 2026)
Reviewed by Rowan B. Minor
Requiem: Tales of the Undead is a brand new horror anthology edited by Lisa Mangum with Wendy Christensen. Mangum’s first anthology, One Horn to Rule Them All, was released by WordFire Press in August 2014. Since then, she has edited several other anthologies, including Weird Wilderness: A Cryptid Bestiary (2025). Requiem: Tales of the Undead is Mangum’s tenth anthology with WordFire Press. This collection features nineteen uniquely horrifying short stories that center around the undead, including innovative spins on ghost, zombie, and vampire tropes. What makes this anthology more creative than the average horror anthology isn’t just the titular theme, but the subtheme of music throughout. Continue Reading
Oversight: Erasure Poetry by Carina Bissett and Lee Murray
Running Wild Press (March 8, 2026)
Reviewed by Elizabeth Broadbent
Poetry is a difficult beast. We authors often say that it’s harder to write a great short story than a good novel. If that’s true, great poetry is more difficult by far. Not only does condensation of theme and economy of language winnow to the level of a single word, but the limits of theme and the necessity of rhythm further force the writer’s hand. Good poetry is hard. Great poetry is a life’s work. Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: Nowhere Burning by Catriona Ward 
Nowhere Burning by Catriona Ward
Tor Nightfire (February 2026)
Reviewed by Haley Newlin
Of all of Catriona Ward’s books, Nowhere Burning might be the most unputdownable. Ward is known for her rich, gothic, atmospheric horror that turns readers around and around, only to reveal that the story on the surface is far more complex than they could’ve imagined. In Nowhere Burning, Ward delivers another character-driven psychological horror narrative that presents the terrifying possibility that we don’t know ourselves as well as we think we do.Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: The Mills of the Gods by Tim Powers 
The Mills of the Gods by Tim Powers
BAEN Books (December 2025)
Review by W.D. Gagliani
A new novel by two-time World Fantasy Award-winning author Tim Powers (author of The Anubis Gates, The Stress of Her Regard, Declare, On Stranger Tides, and the Last Call/Fisher King trilogy, and many others) is always cause to celebrate. Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: A Song for the End of the World by Mia Dalia 
Review: A Song for the End of the World by Mia Dalia
Earthling Publications (January 2026)
Reviewed by Dave Simms
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: Dark Sisters by Kristi DeMeester 
Dark Sisters by Kristi DeMeester
St. Martin’s Press (December 2025)
Reviewed by Haley Newlin
“And from their blood we will prosper.”
If there was ever a time for a rally cry of a read, one that holds a mirror up to the misogyny in our world, it’s now. Kristi DeMeester delivers just that with snarling fury and unflinching realism in her latest novel, Dark Sisters. It’s folk, historical, and feminist horror interwoven like a three-strand braid and is told through three women’s perspectives across centuries. Dark Sisters is a brilliant criticism of patriarchal structures used to control women’s bodies and beliefs and the damage inflicted upon generations to come. Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: The Tryst by L. Marie Wood 
The Tryst by L. Marie Wood
Mocha Memoir Press (February 14, 2026)
Reviewed by Elizabeth Broadbent
L. Marie Wood’s new novel, The Tryst is the first book in her five-installment Red Thread Saga, and it’s not horror, but slipstream. For those unfamiliar (and I counted myself among them), slipstream is a catch-all term for works that blend elements of different genres to create something new. When I asked Wood about it, she told me that The Tryst blends elements of “romance, horror, sci-fi, action, mystery, thriller, and suspense.” The blend creates a novel that defies expectations — it’s romance, but with a sci-fi bent; it’s horror, but with thriller and mystery thrown in. But slipstream also uses elements of those genres to defy and remix their typical conventions. Continue Reading
The Bride of Ravencrest by Tamara Thorne and Alistair Cross
Glass Apple Press (October 2025)
Review by W.D. Gagliani
If you’re in the mood for a thick and chewy Gothic pastiche replete with larger than life characters and a mile-wide humor streak, this new offering by Thorne & Cross may do the trick. Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: The Stunted Man by Ari Loeb 
The Stunted Man by Ari Loeb
Abandoned House (August 2024)
Reviewed by Danica Davidson
The Stunted Man is well-written, informative, funny, emotional, dark and engrossing. It follows Hollywood stuntman Lex Mercier, who is working on the film Everyone’s Frankenstein — and finding plenty of horror in real life, nothing supernatural needed.Continue Reading
Doodooality: Shots Fired from Uranus by Sumiko Saulson, Emily Loretta Flummox, Mysterious Backup
Dooky Zines (October 2025)
Reviewed by Joshua Gage
Sumiko Saulson, Emily Loretta Flummox, Mysterious Backup are members of the metal karaoke band, NypSlyp. When invited to submit to the sequel of Haipoo: 7 Poospectives in Pooetry, a collection of scatalogical verse, the group decided to create their own concept album of “haipoo, limershits, and other forms of poetry focusing on the fecalarity — the sentience of poop.” This chapbook is meant to mirror or mimick a punk rock or metal concept album, full of political import and social criticism, but quickly devolves into shock for shock’s sake.Continue Reading
Mama Came Callin’ by Ezra Claytan Daniels
William Morrow Paperbacks (February 2026)
Reviewed by Joshua Gage
Ezra Claytan Daniels is a mixed-race (black/white) multidisciplinary artist and creator of the award-winning graphic novels Upgrade Soul and BTTM FDRS (with illustrator Ben Passmore). Ezra’s work has been featured on the Criterion Channel, at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, and is in the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum. Ezra currently resides in Los Angeles, where he writes for film and television, including Doom Patrol, for HBO Max. His newest graphic novel is Mama Came Callin’.Continue Reading
Copyright © 1988 - 2026 Cemetery Dance Publications / Performance Website by 2C
