Neena Viel is a Bram Stoker Award-nominated author of supernatural and social horror books, including her acclaimed debut Listen to Your Sister and her new release, I’ll Watch Your Baby.
Viel sat down with Cemetery Dance to discuss I’ll Watch Your Baby, the author’s love of horror icon and scholar Tananarive Due, looking at horror through a social and historical lens, and crafting fiercely complex characters.Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: I’ll Watch Your Baby by Neena Viel I’ll Watch Your Baby by Neena Viel
St. Martin’s Press (May 2026)
Reviewed by Haley Newlin
Somehow, I missed Neena Viel’s debut, and Bram Stoker-nominated novel, Listen To Your Sister. After reading Viel’s new supernatural and historical horror novel, I’ll Watch Your Baby, I can’t fathom being a horror fan and not experiencing her work. It’s sharp, poignant, and terrifically terrifying.
I’ll Watch Your Baby is an informative and evocative horror novel for fans of Tananarive Due, Catriona Ward, and Victor LaValle. It’s a thrilling reimagining of the story of Linda Taylor, aka the original “Welfare Queen,” whose media portrayal and extensive coverage affected generations of black women and fed an apathetic narrative that still exists today. In her new novel, Viel conjures a wicked and unforgettable plot of vengeance for this oppression.Continue Reading
Johanna Van Veen’s debut Gothic horror novel, My Darling Dreadful Thing, was a Bram Stoker Award nominee, and her sophomore novel, Blood on Her Tongue, became an instant USA Today Bestseller. Both journey into historical settings, as does her latest release, Bone of My Bone, set in Germany during the ruthless Thirty Years’ War. It explores the convergence of three horror subgenres: folk, historical, and religious. As well as the effects of war on everyday people.
Johanna Van Veen sat down with Cemetery Dance to discuss her new release, Bone of My Bone.
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: Bone of My Bone by Johanna Van Veen Bone of My Bone by Johanna Van Veen
Poisoned Pen Press (May 26, 2026)
Reviewed by Haley Newlin 
One saint. One sinner. One skull.
Horror readers, rejoice. Bram Stoker Award-nominee and USA Today bestseller Johanna Van Veen is back with another haunting, sapphic, and terrifically terrifying tale of wickedry in Bone of My Bone. For fans of Robert Eggers’ The Witch and Cassandra Khaw’s The Salt Grows Heavy, Bone of My Bone unveils the brutality of the Thirty Years’ War and the demented depravity of man. Sister Ursula, a young nun fleeing the ruins of her convent, and Elsebeth, a headstrong and scrappy farmhand, form an alliance and move through the Bavarian forest in hopes of appeasing the spirit of a saint contained within a fragile holy relic they carry—a skull. A dying man tells the women of its secret: reunite the skull with the saint’s body, and a wish will be granted.
A. Rushby (also writing as Allison Rushby and A.J. Rushby) has published more than thirty books. Whether writing for junior and middle grade readers or adults, Rushby is known for her love of all things dark and peculiar. Sometimes she writes about Victorian death photography and installation art. Sometimes it’s haunted houses or kittens who have midnight tea parties.
In Slashed Beauties, Rushby’s adult body and feminist horror novel, she writes about bewitched anatomical wax models, cursed lockets, and women’s never-ending fight for autonomy.
Rushby sat down with Cemetery Dance to discuss, Slashed Beauties, Anatomical Venuses, her favorite feminist/body horror books, and her next release, All Her Beautiful Deaths.
You can connect with her on Instagram @allisonrushbyauthor and at allisonrushby.com
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Format QuoteCategories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: Slashed Beauties by A. Rushby Slashed Beauties by A. Rushby
Berkley (September 2025)
Reviewed by Haley Newlin
“I am the mistress of my own fate.”
Slashed Beauties by A. Rushby is a sophisticated gothic feminist horror novel laced with rage and history told through dual timelines: Alys, an antique dealer in present day who is related to Eleanor–one of the Venuses–and Eleanor, an eighteenth-century sex worker taken in by a beautiful and powerful courtesan, Elizabeth, and Elizabeth’s previous recruitment, Emily. Eleanor believes she has found her savior at last but things never come easy to women. Being a woman means fighting tooth and nail for agency and peace only to have it stolen again and again. And for this, in this story, anyway, men will burn.
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 InterviewsLeave a comment on Interview: Kristi DeMeester on Dark Sisters 
Kristi DeMeester is the author of Dark Sisters, Such a Pretty Smile (which was selected as a Georgia Author of the Year finalist) and Beneath. Her short fiction has appeared in publications such as The Dark, Black Static, multiple volumes of The Year’s Best Horror, Year’s Best Weird Fiction, and in her short fiction collection Everything That’s Underneath. She lives, writes, and makes horror-themed candles in Atlanta, Georgia.
She is represented by Stefanie Lieberman at Janklow & Nesbit Associates. She is at work on her next novel.
DeMeester sat down with Cemetery Dance to talk about her new folk and religious horror novel, Dark Sisters, what it’s like growing up in a mega church, the increasing demand for feminist and pink horror, and book recommendations within the subgenre. Continue Reading
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 InterviewsLeave a comment on Interview: Laurel Hightower on The Long Low Whistle
Laurel Hightower is a bourbon-loving native of Lexington, Kentucky. She is the Bram Stoker-nominated author of Whispers In The Dark, Crossroads, Below, Every Woman Knows This, Silent Key, Spirit Coven, The Day Of The Door, and The Long Low Whistle, and has more than a dozen short fiction stories in print.
Hightower sat down with Cemetery Dance to talk about cryptid horror, powerful and flawed female characters, horror films, The Long Low Whistle, and Shortwave Publishing’s Killer VHS Series. Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: The Long Low Whistle by Laurel Hightower 
The Long Low Whistle (Killer VHS Series #7) by Laurel Hightower
Shortwave Publishing (November 2025)
Reviewed by Haley Newlin
The seventh installment in Shortwave Publishing’s Killer VHS Series is gory, claustrophobic, and probably the most terrifying book you’ll read all year. Laurel Hightower’s The Long Low Whistle swells with an aching grief that throbs through the pages from start to finish and will thrill fans of cryptid and survival horror. Not only would this be a great introduction for readers new to Hightower’s work but it will make fans of the Bram Stoker-nominated author absolutely giddy because, like most of Hightower’s books, The Long Low Whistle is packed with creative, but brutal body horror you won’t be able to shake for days. Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories InterviewsLeave a comment on Interview: Viggy Parr Hampton
Viggy Parr Hampton, MPH is an epidemiologist, host of the podcast “Horror Humor Hunger,” and the author of A Cold Night for Alligators, Much Too Vulgar, The Rotting Room, and A Veritable Household Pet. She is a graduate of Georgetown University and Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health. She is also a member of the Purgatory Media team, producing the popular YouTube segment “Tag Team Tales of Terror,” where she challenges fellow horror authors to create a progressive story with her.
Hampton sat down with Cemetery Dance to talk about feminist horror, lobotomies, and A Veritable Household Pet. Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: A Veritable Household Pet by Viggy Parr Hampton 
A Veritable Household Pet by Viggy Parr Hampton
Horror Humor Hunger Press (January 2026)
Reviewed by Haley Newlin
Viggy Parr Hampton is a force to be reckoned with in her medical-body horror novel, A Veritable Household Pet. It’s a blistering indictment of patriarchal power and a tragic story of the nightmare that is the theft of autonomy and identity, a quiet and constant terror women know all too well.Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories InterviewsLeave a comment on Interview: Erika T. Wurth on The Haunting of Room 904
Erika T. Wurth is an urban native of Apache/Chickasaw/Cherokee descent. She is the author of the New York Times editor’s pick, White Horse. She is both a Kenyon and Sewanee fellow. She’s published in Buzzfeed and The Writer’s Chronicle, and is a native artist for the Meow Wolf Denver installation. Her most recent release, The Haunting of Room 904, has garnered national attention and received praise from some of the biggest names in horror, including Paul Trembly, S.A. Cosby, and Phillip Fracassi. She also has a short story in the recently published and highly anticipated Howl: An Anthology of Werewolves from Women-In-Horror alongside Gwendolyn Kiste, Christina Henry, Ai Jiang, Katrina Monroe, and so many other incredible women from the genre.
Wurth sat down with Cemetery Dance to discuss The Haunting of Room 904, religion and lore in horror, Howl, and more.
You can find Erika T. Wurth on Instagram @erikatwurth or on her website. Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: The Haunting of Room 904 by Erika T. Wurth 
The Haunting of Room 904 by Erika T. Wurth
Flatiron Books (March 2025)
Reviewed by Haley Newlin
What is it that horror readers love about a haunted hotel?
Is it the haunted house feel but with more witnesses? The hauntings that vary from floor to floor as though specters and entities take the elevator themselves? The idea of a place that has seen such tragedy, death after death, that it shines like a ghoulish beacon for spirits and curses? It’s really all the above. The isolation, the secrets and hidden history, the absorption and spiritual/paranormal preservation of human suffering have popularized stories like Stephen King’s The Shining, Psycho by Robert Bloch, and The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James. Continue Reading
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