Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: Marion by Leah Rowan Marion by Leah Rowan
St. Martin’s Press (June 2026)
Reviewed by Dave Simms
Norman was her first…
The “what if” premise is such a cool idea for modern takes on classic tales – if done well. Marion is a great example of how this can be done, with fun storytelling and wickedly sharp, witty writing. Leah Rowan tackles the idea of Robert Bloch’s Psycho, but from Marion’s viewpoint, the victim of the infamous and bloody shower scene. But what would happen if she fought back and killed Norman?
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: Molka by Monika Kim Molka by Monika Kim
Erewhon Books (February 2026)
Reviewed by Briana Morgan
Molka by Monika Kim is a visceral, slow-burn feminist horror novel about the dangers of molka (“secret cameras”) in South Korea. The book follows two characters, Dahye and Junyoung, and their vastly different experiences with secret camera footage. Dahye is a troubled young woman who works in an office during the day and goes out with her wealthy boyfriend at night. Junyoung works in the same office but enjoys darker extracurricular fare—like hiding cameras in the women’s bathroom.
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: Killer Summer by Wendy Dalrymple Killer Summer by Wendy Dalrymple 
Mad Axe Media (May 12, 2026)
Reviewed by Adam Allen
2026 is the year of slashers written by women, and pink horror pioneer Wendy Dalrymple is here to get the party started right with Killer Summer. In this fast-paced and gloriously gruesome novel, we follow Dani as she survives attack after attack from a stalking killer. In Dani, Dalrymple delivers a final girl worthy of the title and then some, and there are multiple moments that will have you cheering as she refuses to play the role of victim to the circumstances around her.
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: Neon Moon by Grace R. Reynolds Neon Moon by Grace R. Reynolds
Dark Matter Ink (May 4, 2026)
Reviewed by Elizabeth Broadbent
A feminist Texas Chainsaw Massacre in a country music bar—that’s a heck of a pitch, and Grace R. Reynolds delivers with her novella Neon Moon. Everyone loves a bloody horror show of a slasher, amiright? But this one’s more than that. Reynolds’ novella might share its DNA with slasher and survivalist books, but Neon Moon is a true-blue Southern Gothic.
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: I Know A Place by Nat Cassidy I Know A Place by Nat Cassidy
Shortwave Publishing (May 2026)
Reviewed by Abby Wolf
I Know A Place: Rest Stop and Other Dark Detours from powerhouse Nat Cassidy (USA Today bestselling author) is not your traditional short story collection. It is more like being handed a map with certain locations circled in blood-red ink. These are the places you are warned not to visit, yet you cannot resist. Each story has its own setting, but they are not just mere backdrops. They are pressure points, spaces where something has gone wrong in ways that feel surreal yet deeply human. Cassidy understands that horror is not just about what lurks in the shadows. It is about why those shadows exist in the first place.
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories Reviews, The Comic VaultLeave a comment on Review: Clara & The Devil, Volume 1 
Clara & the Devil, Volume 1 by Olivie Blake, Little Chmura (Illustrator)
23rd St. (May 5, 2026)
Reviewed by Joshua Gage
Olivie Blake is the New York Times bestselling author of speculative fiction for adults, including The Atlas Six trilogy, Alone with You in the Ether, Masters of Death, the short story collection Januaries, and her novel, Girl Dinner. As Alexene Farol Follmuth, she is also the author of the young adult novels My Mechanical Romance and Twelfth Knight. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and son. With Little Chmura, she is the co-creator of the graphic series Clara & the Devil.
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories Reviews2 Comments on Review: Eat the Light by Andrew Najberg Eat The Light by Andrew Najberg
Wicked House Press (April 2026)
Reviewed by Adam Allen
I’m a sucker for a good post-apocalyptic horror story, whether it’s zombies, aliens, or some kind of disease, and Andrew Najberg’s Eat the Light will absolutely scratch that itch for readers. It is a brutal and gritty survival story that does not hold back in the slightest.
What I love about what Najberg has done with the story is that, for the majority of its page count, the characters and the reader are not entirely sure what exactly has happened or what the threat is for the sisters we follow. This lends a constant sense of mystery and urgency throughout the novel, keeping the pages turning quickly.
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: Dead Weight by Hildur Knútsdóttir 
Dead Weight by Hildur Knútsdóttir (translated by Mary Robinette Kowal)
Tor Nightfire (May 26, 2026)
Reviewed by Rowan B. Minor
Hildur Knútsdóttir, born in Reykjavík, Iceland, has lived in Spain, Germany, and Taiwan. She has written fiction, as well as plays and screenplays, for both adults and teenagers. Knútsdóttir has studied literature and creative writing at The University of Iceland and her work has received various awards and nominations including: The World Fantasy Award, The Icelandic Women’s Literary Prize, The Reykjavík Children’s Literature Prize, and The Icelandic Bookseller’s Prize. In 2016, she won the Icelandic Literary Prize for children’s books for her novel Vetrarhörkur. The Night Guest, her first book translated into English, was named one of the best thrillers of 2024 by The New York Times. Knútsdóttir’s most recent book, also translated into English, is a 160 page novella titled Dead Weight that is to be released from Tor Nightfire in May 2026.Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: Songs of Enough: An Inferno All My Own by Maxwell I. Gold 
Songs of Enough: An Inferno All My Own by Maxwell I. Gold
Hippocampus Press (September 2025)
Reviewed by Joshua Gage
Maxwell I. Gold is a Jewish-American prose poet, author, and editor, with an extensive body of work comprising over 300 poems since 2017. His writings have earned a place alongside many literary luminaries in the speculative fiction genres and his work has garnered nominations for multiple awards including the Pushcart Prize, the Eric Hoffer Awards, Rhysling Awards, and the Bram Stoker Awards. His work has appeared in numerous literary journals, magazines, and anthologies such as Weird Tales Magazine, Startling Stories, the recent Horror Writers Association anthology Other Terrors: An Inclusive Anthology, Chiral Mad 5, and many more. His newest collection is Songs of Enough: An Inferno All My Own, an epic prose poem based on his Cyber Gods mythos.Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: Dancing Before Azathoth by Darrell Schweitzer 
Dancing Before Azathoth by Darrell Schweitzer
Hippocampus Press (November 2025)
Reviewed by Joshua Gage
For more than half a century, Darrell Schweitzer has been contributing poems of fantasy, horror, and the supernatural to countless venues. Dancing Before Azathoth is a major retrospective of Schweitzer’s verse over the past two or three decades, selecting the best poems from earlier collections — including Groping Toward the Light (2000) and Ghosts of Past and Future (2008) — with uncollected poems that have appeared in Weirdbook, Spectral Realms, Asimov’s, Space and Time, and other periodicals.Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: Psychopomp & Circumstance by Eden Royce 
Psychopomp & Circumstance by Eden Royce
Tordotcom (October 2025)
Reviewed by Rowan B. Minor
Eden Royce, a Shirley Jackson Award winner, is a writer and member of the Gullah-Geechee nation from Charleston, South Carolina, who is now living in Southeast England. Her work has appeared in numerous publications including: Nightmare, Strange Horizons, The Horn Book Magazine, Writer’s Digest, and Western Colorado University. Her debut middle grade novel, ROOT MAGIC, is a Walter Award honoree, a Nebula Award finalist, a Mythopoeic Fantasy Award winner, and an Ignyte award winner for outstanding children’s literature. In 2024, Royce was the joint winner of the Middle Grade Bram Stoker Award for her third YA book, The Creepening of Dogwood House. Her debut adult fiction horror novella, Psychopomp & Circumstance, was released in October 2025. Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: Monumental by Adam L.G. Nevill 
Monumental by Adam L.G. Nevill
Ritual Limited (April 2, 2026)
Reviewed by Dave Simms
Adam Nevill is a force of writing that combines the literary aspects of Ramsey Campbell and Peter Straub with the approachability of Tim Lebbon or Michael Marshall Smith. Monumental is a “big” novel in that its reach stretches beyond the folk horror he has mastered but also returns to his deep, dark dive into characterization that transforms what could be just another entry into the cultish, elder god culture into something modern and relevant.Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: Decomposition Book by Sara Van Os 
Decomposition Book by Sara Van Os
HarperCollins (May 19, 2026)
Reviewed by Elizabeth Broadbent
Loneliness and desperation ooze from Sara van Os’s Decomposition Book: A Novel. Os paints a compelling, bleak, and darkly humorous portrait of two women in crisis: Ava, hopelessly lost in the Adirondacks during a weekend hiking trip with two work friends, and Savannah, a Gen Z college student desperate to call herself “on a break” from school. Holed up in a secluded lake house after the stunning betrayal of her best friend, Savannah finds Ava’s corpse during a walk in the woods. Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: The Curse of Hester Gardens by Tamika Thompson 
The Curse of Hester Gardens by Tamika Thompson
Erewhon Books (March 31, 2026)
Reviewed by Elizabeth Broadbent
Tamika Thompson’s The Curse of Hester Gardens is an urgent novel. Set in the Michigan projects, it’s a novel about gun violence, and if you suspect that makes for a rough emotional ride, you’d be right. It’s a novel about poverty, and it’s a novel about racism.
The Curse of Hester Gardens is a novel about America.Continue Reading
Copyright © 1988 - 2026 Cemetery Dance Publications / Performance Website by 2C
