Alien Covenant Origins by Alan Dean Foster ★★★☆☆

The Covenant is getting ready to launch and fulfill mankind’s promise of colonizing the stars.  Who wouldn’t want that?  

Miscreations: Gods, Monstrosities & Other Horror

My Knowing Glance by Lucy Snyder ★★★★½ 

“It’s just more satisfying to think that he died out of a deep, soul-wrenching despair rather than garden-variety cowardice.”

Type 5 Armageddon Hellspawn, batter up!  Gory, violent, and entertaining, Lucy Snyder hits a home run!

One Last Transformation by Josh Malerman ★★★★☆ 
Shudder.  Maybe because I have been binge watching Criminal Minds, but that felt real in an unsightly way.

Last Days by Brian Evenson ★★★★☆

The Puppet Show (Washington Poe #1) by M.W. Craven ★★★★★

“This wasn’t about justice, Poe. It was never about justice.” 

ALL THE STARS!!!

You dark twisty bitch of a book! I love you! So many threads to neatly bring together, so much mystery and pain, to burn. 

NOS4A2 by Joe Hill

"She had wanted to find some trouble, and the Shorter Way Bridge had never steered her wrong." 

This is my first Joe Hill and I ate it up. Kate Mulgrew read this audiobook into a page turner, I haven't gone through a thousand pages this quickly ever! Even The Stand and Pillars of the Earth took over a week. 

Wounds: Six Stories From the Border of Hell by Nathan Ballingrud

The Butcher’s Table by Nathan Ballingrud ★★★★★ 
Hideous beauty, confronting and objectionable grace - everything I ever wanted from Clive Barker.  

Skeleton Crew by Stephen King

The Jaunt ★★★★½ 
I was wondering about the sweet family trip to Mars, but then the story had a stopover in Providence and I knew where we were going :)

The Long Walk by Stephen King ★★★★★

I walked all eleven hours of this audiobook and I highly recommend you do the same. 

The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty ★★★★☆

“You don't blame us for being here, do you?  After all, we have no place to go.  No home... Incidentally, what an excellent day for an exorcism...” 

The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell ★★★★★

“I was naked before God and I was raped." 

I'm trying to remember a book that traumatized me this much and failing.

Unidentified by Michael McBride ★★★★★

Damn but this was good. An effective combination of Fire in the Sky and Stephen King’s IT in under one hundred pages?!?!  

Michael McBride, You. Fucking. Genius.

SNAFU: An Anthology of Military Horror

Blank White Page by James A. Moore ★★★★½ 
“Whatever makes you think a few buildings brings about a civilized human being?” 

I have a soft spot for weird westerns. I enjoyed this story of mysterious monsters facing off against mysterious monsters. The backstory of the albino mulatto cryptozoologist who is transforming into an unknown creature is a great story of its own. And is Crowley some kind of Faust? This story deserves a book or at least a novella.

Final Girls by Riley Sager ★★☆☆☆

No no no no no. You cannot talk big game slasher movie talk and then give me a weak Girl on the Train. Ninety percent of this book could have been called Lying Paranoid Bitches. 

The Red Mohawk by Anonymous ★★★★★

"The whole place is a tribute to movie clichés from the eighties. They’ve got a Nakatomi Towers, a Rocky Balboa statue, a McDowell’s restaurant, you name it."

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins ★★★★☆

“I once read a book by a former alcoholic where she described giving oral sex to two different men, men she'd just met in a restaurant on a busy London high street. I read it and thought, I'm not that bad. This is where the bar is set." 

Mapping the Interior by Stephen Graham Jones ★★★★☆

“And he was looking across the room like an animal, right into my soul. His eyes shown, not with light but with a kind of wet darkness." 

Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse

The End of the Whole Mess by Stephen King ★★★★★ 

"The world needs heroic measures, man. I don't know about long-term effects, and there's no time to study them, because there's no long-term prospect. Maybe we can cure the whole mess. Or maybe—" 

I read Nightmares & Dreamscapes when it first came out in the early 90s, and was ridiculously proud of myself (huge book); this was the story that stayed with me. It was my first apocalypse story, and it felt real because there were no zombies, no aliens, no Revelation. Just Yankees coming down to Texas and deciding they knew it all and had the right to “fix us.” 

Decades later it’s still chilling. Somehow more so hearing Waco mentioned again and again as a place of peace and madness - known today for the Branch Dividian Rape Factory.

The Hunger by Alma Katsu ★★☆☆☆

A motley collection of Christians-with-secrets sets out by wagon train to California. Along the way they fight, hate, rape, and kill until succumbing to nature and German sociopathy.

I was hoping for Lonesome Dove meets Ravenous and found boredom instead.

Ghost Story by Peter Straub ★★★★☆

The slow burn of darkness seeping inexorably into a small town. A classic that takes it’s time to haunt you.

“Wouldn't you like to live forever? Even if you must die first? It's a good Christian bargain, after all.” 

Patient Zero (Joe Ledger #1) by Jonathan Maberry ★★★★☆

Joe Ledger is the James Bond of zombie slayers. This book was well paced, action packed, and sometimes funny - in short, this was an entertaining action movie of a book!