Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: My Darling Dreadful Thing by Johanna Van Veen 
My Darling Dreadful Thing by Johanna Van Veen
Poisoned Pen Press (May 2024)
384 pages
Reviewed by Haley Newlin
My Darling Dreadful Thing by Johanna Van Veen exceptionally invokes gothic tropes such as unearthing buried secrets at a dire cost, and relics of her predecessors to craft a chilling, sapphic love story that is possessive, haunting, and beautiful.Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories Reviews1 Comment on Review: Horror Movie by Paul Tremblay 
Horror Movie by Paul Tremblay
William Morrow (June 11, 2024)
288 pages
Reviewed by Haley Newlin
In his classic, fatalistic tone, Bram Stoker Award-winner Paul Tremblay cleverly assembles a haunting level of empathy between readers, the narrator, and characters in Horror Movie. At times the story felt all-too real, which will appease fans of Tremblay’s previous work like A Head Full of Ghosts (2015) and The Pallbearers Club (2022). Down the road, maybe even a few weeks from now, the characters’ names from Horror Movie may evade you but you’ll never escape the reality-bending and unsettling “horror void.” Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: Grasshands by Kyle Winkler 
Grasshands by Kyle Winkler
JournalStone Publishing (January 2024)
216 pages; $16.95 paperback; $6.95 e-book
Reviewed by Haley Newlin
In Kyle Winkler’s Grasshands, the line between reality and nightmare trembles, unsteady, before dispersing into scattering spiders.
“Farce lands first. Tragedy knocks later.”
Throughout this read, I often thought of Ray Bradbury, who wrote stories like Fahrenheit 451, emphasizing the power of knowledge and caution against its misuse and exploitation. Winkler revived Bradbury’s calling card of creating characters who grappled with the pursuit of knowledge, whether for the exposure of hidden truths or devotion for discovery and conjured an unputdownable biblio-horror novel. Continue Reading
Hitchcock’s Blondes: The Unforgettable Women Behind The Legendary Director’s Dark Obsession by Laurence Leamer
G.P. Putnam’s Sons (October 2023)
335 pages; $21.10 hardcover; $14.99 e-book
Reviewed by Haley Newlin
Alfred Hitchcock’s legacy has, until recent years, mostly been portrayed through the rosy lens of Hollywood. Many consider Hitchcock one of the fathers of horror and a worthy contender amongst the greatest directors of all time. He’s remembered for his brilliance and astute demeanor, evoked throughout the evolution of cinema-from silent films to “talkies” to color to the big screen.Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: This Wretched Valley by Jenny Kiefer 
This Wretched Valley by Jenny Kiefer
Quirk Books (January 2024)
309 pages; $18.99 paperback; $11.99 e-book
Reviewed by Haley Newlin
DO NOT TOUCH THIS GROUND
Some monsters live outside the shadows, beneath the sun, sitting beside you, watching and plotting.
Jenny Kiefer’s debut, This Wretched Valley, will appease horror readers who crave fright outside the typical haunted house or killer’s dimly lit basement. Many hair-raising, nail-biting scenes occur in broad daylight, and exploring an uncharted rock in the valley leaves the team isolated from surrounding campers or hikers. Not that many visit that wretched valley, anyway. Not after all the disappearances over the years. Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories InterviewsLeave a comment on The Cemetery Dance Interview: Clay McLeod Chapman 
Clay McLeod Chapman writes books, comic books, children’s books, as well as for film and television. His most recent novel, What Kind of Mother and Ghost Eaters are grief horror stories. Chapman’s vibrant personality and energy are magnetizing, and seemingly contradictory to his writing material. Todd Keisling and I joked that the Whisper Down The Lane author is “like a cup of coffee” — rejuvenating.
It’s there, in that duality and range both on and off the page, where Chapman’s talent lies.
Chapman spoke to Cemetery Danceabout What Kind of Mother, Ghost Eaters, fellow horror authors, and his upcoming projects. Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: The Maker’s Box by David Barclay 
The Maker’s Box by David Barclay
9 Swords (March 2022)
89 pages; $6.99 paperback; $3.99 e-book
Reviewed by Haley Newlin
Stephen King’s dreamscape fantasy Rose Madder meets the precise cleverness of Richard Chizmar’s Gwendy’s series in The Maker’s Box.
I’d never read anything from Barclay before The Maker’s Box, but now I’m blood-thirsty for more. Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories Reviews, The Comic Vault1 Comment on Review: The Scarecrow Man by Miguel Goncalves 
The Scarecrow Man by Miguel Goncalves
Dark Pine Publishing (September 2023)
40 pages; $4.75 paperback; $0.00 e-book
Reviewed by Haley Newlin
Do you dare enter the Scarecrow Show?
From the pages of Devil’s Reject (by Dark Pine Publishing) comes Miguel Goncalves’s short story, “The Scarecrow Man,” where the line between reality and nightmare blurs into a devilish dance of psychological horror and crime fiction. As I devoured this debut, I couldn’t shake the echoes of Robert Bloch’s Psycho and A24’s cinematic masterpiece Pearl. Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: Vampires of El Norte by Isabel Cañas 
Vampires of El Norte by Isabel Cañas
Berkley (August 2023)
371 pages; $19.58 hardcover; $14.99 e-book; $20.25 audiobook
Reviewed by Haley Newlin
Some things are too precious to lose.
Nena and Nestor were inseparable as children. They even shared their first kiss. To Nena, Nestor’s voice is like coming home, but her father wishes to marry her to a wealthy rancher’s son to acquire more land for the family.
She didn’t always dread the idea of marriage, not when she envisioned it with Nestor.Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia Reviewed by Haley Newlin
Silvia Moreno-Garcia makes her much-anticipated return to horror (after Mexican Gothic) with her latest release, Silver Nitrate. It wasn’t just the Twilight Zone and Psycho-reminiscent imagery on the cover that pushed me to read Silver Nitrate; it was also because of its emphasis on oldies horror in the same vein as Hammer films and the rare chance to learn about Nazism in Mexico.
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: The Unhallowed Horseman by Jude S. Walko 
The Unhallowed Horseman by Jude S. Walko
Blue Falcon Productions LLC (Oct. 2021)
319 pages; $25.67 hardcover; $14.99 paperback; $3.99 e-book
Reviewed by Haley Newlin
“Villainy wears many masks, none so dangerous as the mask of virtue” – Washington Irving
Jude S. Walko’s The Unhallowed Horseman scrupulously reimagines the infamous tale of a silent secluded valley, a place laced with superstition and scandal, called Sleepy Hollow. Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: Looking Glass Sound by Catriona Ward 
Looking Glass Sound by Catriona Ward
Tor Nightfire (August 8, 2023)
352 pages; $25.19 hardcover; $20.53 paperback; $14.99 e-book
Reviewed by Haley Newlin
Catriona Ward lures readers with charming coming-of-age humor and strife in her latest novel, Looking Glass Sound, reminiscent of Stephen King’s “The Body.”
Those who’ve read Ward’s previous work, Little Eve and The Last House on Needless Street (favorites of mine), know the loveable and exciting are a facade. And the truth, particularly a harsh one, leaves readers black with poison, bitten by the spider, trapped in her intricate web. Twitching with metaphysical dread, desperate for answers.Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories Reviews1 Comment on Review: Dead of Winter by Darcy Coates 
Dead of Winter by Darcy Coates
Poisoned Pen Press (July 11, 2023)
352 pages; $14.39 paperback; $4.99 e-book
Reviewed by Haley Newlin
Darcy Coates upholds her reputation as a deft storyteller with a knack for conjuring atmospheric page-turners in her latest release, Dead of Winter, “an icy homage to Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None.” Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: Graveyard of Lost Children by Katrina Monroe 
Graveyard of Lost Children by Katrina Monroe
Poisoned Pen Press (May 2023)
368 pages; $15.17 paperback; e-book $6.49
Reviewed by Haley Newlin
Katrina Monroe has done it again.
Much like in her debut, They Drown Our Daughters, Monroe’s latest release, a modernized and stylish gothic grim, Graveyard of Lost Children doesn’t just scare. It lurks, prods, then manifests into a hellish dreamscape where reality bends and breaks. And it all starts with the skull-splitting cry of life of a baby.Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: Mothered by Zoje Stage 
Mothered by Zoje Stage
Thomas & Mercer (March 2023)
318 pages; $19.15 hardcover; $12.78 paperback; e-book $2.49
Reviewed by Haley Newlin
Zoje Stage’s latest release, Mothered, festers with feverish delirium.
Paper dolls can’t speak for themselves. They can’t escape the shears slicing through their limbs nor the violent grasp of their manipulator. That’s what life was like for Grace. Her chronically ill twin sister, Hope, was sickly pale with a delicate dust of warm freckles across her cheeks. Her smile fooled their mother, Jackie, and just about everyone else, but Grace knew that a glee-ridden Hope spelled trouble. Continue Reading
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