Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: Pushing Daisy by Christopher O’Halloran 
Pushing Daisy by Christopher O’Halloran
Lethe Press (May 23, 2025)
Reviewed by Elizabeth Broadbent
Christopher O’Halloran’s Pushing Daisy has a simple premise: a grieving widower begins to suspect that his recently departed wife has returned from the great beyond. Roger Darling is the type of man women tell their girlfriends to dump immediately. He’s bitter and manipulative, self-centered and cruel. Daisy martyred herself to assure his happiness. Continue Reading
Down The Hill: My Descent into the Double Murder in Delphi by Susan Hendricks
Hachette Books (September 2023)
288 pages; $19.58 hardcover; $15.99 e-book
Reviewed by Haley Newlin
As a child, I spent summers in Delphi, Indiana. I remember sycamores and cottonwood trees climbing the blue sky and the churn of gravel as we sipped on McDonald’s sweet teas, approaching “the farm.”
Reading Down The Hill: My Descent into the Double Murder in Delphi was nostalgic, hopeful, and tragic. I naively believed McDonald’s sweet tea and car rides through the small town were unique to my childhood. But I was wrong. Many kids in Delphi did the same — like 13-year-old Abby Williams and 14-year-old Libby German on the day they disappeared. Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: Hospital of Haunts edited by Heather Daughrity 
Hospital of Haunts edited by Heather Daughrity
Watertower Hill Publishing (October 2024)
Reviewed by Rowan B. Minor
Hospital of Haunts, edited by Heather Daughrity, is the second installment in a unique horror anthology series. The first book in this series focuses on a haunted house; the current book is set in a hospital; and the forthcoming installment will be in a hotel. Although part of a series, these books also stand alone as individual anthologies. Hospital of Haunts includes twenty-three stories by twenty-three authors. All stories in this book were written for and are set in Lychhurst, a fictional hospital set in the mountains of West Virginia, and are sectioned off into different “triage levels.” Not only does Hospital of Haunts include interactive passages that break the fourth wall, but readers get floor plans and a history of the hospital as well. Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories The Comic VaultLeave a comment on Review: The Harrowing Game by Antoine Revoy 
The Harrowing Game by Antoine Revoy
23rd St. (May 27, 2025)
Reviewed by Joshua Gage
Antoine Revoy is an award-winning French writer, artist and designer, raised in Tokyo, Japan and Mexico City, Mexico. Revoy has created illustrations for clients such as The New York Times, Der Spiegel and Harvard University. He teaches visual storytelling and comics-making courses at the Rhode Island School of Design and is a thesis mentor at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Revoy lives in Providence, Rhode Island, with his wife, author-illustrator Kelly Murphy, and their many animal companions. His newest graphic novel is The Harrowing Game.Continue Reading
Haint Country: Dark Folktales from the Hills and Hollers edited by Matthew R. Sparks and Olivia Sizemore
University Press of Kentucky (October 2024)
Reviewed by Rowan B. Minor
Haint Country: Dark Folktales from the Hills and Hollers is a new book of over 50 chilling short stories adapted, collected, and edited by Matthew R. Sparks and Olivia Sizemore. These local legends center around haints, boogers, UFOs, and supernatural happenings within the Appalachian region. Separated into five sections, the otherworldly retellings in Haint Country are accompanied by unsettling watercolor illustrations by co-author Olivia Sizemore. These beautifully eerie designs are reminiscent of those by Stephen Gammell in Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, and the legends and lore will remind you of an adult version of the Short and Shivery series. Haint Country also corrects misinformation and harmful stereotypes about rural folklore and Appalachia as a whole. Authors Sparks and Sizemore have expanded the traditions within Appalachian storytelling and invite their audience to participate in its culture. Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil by Ananda Lima 
Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil by Ananda Lima
Tor Books (June 2024)
Reviewed by Chandra Claypool (Instagram) (TikTok)
Imaging meeting the Devil at a bar and they convince you that you’re kindred spirits because you both crave stories and you’re just drunk and heartbroken enough to let them in. This book has a unique format in that there’s stories within the main story. We follow the main character and her several encounters with the Devil as we get a peek into the stories she is writing for them. I absolutely love the cover for this as it shows this concept so well.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 Rowan B. Minor
Erika T. Wurth, a Kenyon and Sewanee fellow, lives in Denver, Colorado and is an urban Native of Apache, Chickasaw, and Cherokee descent. She has published in The Kenyon Review, Buzzfeed, and The Writer’s Chronicle. She is a narrative artist for the Meow Wolf Denver installation and has been a guest writer at the Institute of American Indian Arts. Wurth’s horror novel White Horse is a New York Times editor’s pick and a Good Morning America buzz pick. Her most recent novel is The Haunting of Room 904. Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: The Night Birds by Christopher Golden 
The Night Birds by Christopher Golden
St. Martin’s Press (May 6, 2025)
Reviewed by Blu Gilliand
It is, as they say, a tale as old as time.
Someone seeking power and purpose joins a group centered around an ancient evil — in this case, something called an Ur-Witch, with followers known as weavers who practice its mysterious rituals. When the hideous truth of their involvement comes to light, a couple of women break away and seek shelter with an old acquaintance, unwittingly bringing danger and death to his door.Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: Symphony for Walpurgis: A Collection by Rami Ungar 
Symphony for Walpurgis by Rami Ungar
May 1, 2025
Reviewed by Joshua Gage
Rami Ungar is the author of Rose, a novel about a woman who turns into a plant, and the collection Hannah & Other Stories, which includes the tale of a carnivorous horse. He is the Ohio chapter coordinator for the Horror Writers Association. His newest collection of novelletes is Symphony forrWalpurgis.
Novellettes are a strange beast. Many publishers and readers find them difficult because they’re such an in-between style of writing. They’re too short to build real suspense, some readers will tell you. Others will insist that they’re too long, and that they’re just short stories that need more editing. However, as the novelette is Ungar’s chosen form, he’s done his best to prove naysayers wrong, and what a job he has done!Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: Blood On Her Tongue by Johanna Van Veen Reviewed by Haley Newlin
Blood On Her Tongue is a vividly violent and sapphic, good-for-her horror story with a strong appetite and ferocious bite. Johanna Van Veen has repeated her success; Blood On Her Tongue is every bit as unputdownable and shocking as her 2024 novel, My Darling Dreadful Thing.
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories Reviews, The Comic VaultLeave a comment on Review: Saint Catherine by Anna Meyer
Saint Catherine by Anna Meyer
23rd St. (April 29, 2025)
Reviewed by Joshua Gage
Anna Meyer is an author, designer and comic artist living in Brooklyn, New York. Originally from the Midwest, Anna went to a two-year design school in Lakewood, Ohio, where she received her associate degree in graphic design. She has over eleven years of professional design experience as both a senior designer and a design manager. She has been drawing and making comics ever since she could hold a pencil. Anna’s debut graphic novel is Saint Catherine. Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: This Cursed House by Del Sandeen 
This Cursed House by Del Sandeen
Berkley (October 2024)
Reviewed by Haley Newlin
Jemma Barker needs a fresh start, and it appears in a strange letter offering her a position with the Duchon family in New Orleans. It promises the highest pay she’s ever earned.
The author, Del Sandeen, wastes no time settling readers into the gritty anticipation of horror and mystery. When Jemma arrives in New Orleans, a woman in a café urges Jemma to return home. The driver ices her out, not wanting to speak of the Duchon place, much less see it.
This Cursed House was unputdownable from the get-go. Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories Reviews1 Comment on Review: Old Monsters Never Die by Tim Waggoner 
Old Monsters Never Die by Tim Waggoner
Winding Road Stories (May 2024)
Reviewed by Chandra Claypool (Instagram) (TikTok)
“18 provocative tales of terror that explore the darkest corners of the human mind.. concluding with an unforgettable metafictional story on what it takes to be a horror writer.” Yes, please!Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: The Nightmarchers by J.Lincoln Fenn 
The Nightmarchers by J.Lincoln Fenn
Gallery Books (October 2024)
Reviewed by Chandra Claypool (Instagram) (TikTok)
The Nightmarchers is a “bone-chilling novel where a mysterious island holds the terrifying answers to a woman’s past and future.” We start in the past, circa 1939, via journal entries from Irene Greer. We learn that her fall from a waterfall is to try and join her husband and daughter who she believes have “joined the nightmarchers — ghosts of ancient warriors that rise from their burial sites on moonless nights.”Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: Delicate Condition by Danielle Valentine 
Delicate Condition by Danielle Valentine
Sourcebooks Landmark (August 2023)
Reviewed by Haley Newlin
Welcome to pregnancy. As you grow your bundle of joy, you’ll experience discomfort. That’s just part of it.
But why?
In Delicate Condition, Danielle Valentine mounds a tower of dread with every dismissive doctor and sacrifice Anna makes for her child, all before she’s pregnant. Early on, this book reminded me of Ira Levine’s Rosemary’s Baby, where the spouse, neighbors, and doctors view the woman more as a vessel than a person. There’s a simplicity in how Valentine conveys this, so familiar, yet still so horrific. Misogyny needs no ghost. Gaslighting needs no demon.Continue Reading
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