Tag: Supernatural

The Drive-in – Joe R. Lansdale

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The end of the 1980s. Drive-in movie culture is mostly dead with one significant exception: THE ORBIT DRIVE-IN. A drive-in theater so large it houses multiple stories-high screens that fill the sky, and can hold four thousand cars and all the people who can squeeze in them. It’s a lit city that fills to the brim on Friday nights, crowds gather for the Dusk-to-Dawn Horror Shows. Horns honk, BBQ grills sizzle, people yell and act the fool, ready for the marathon of one low-budget horror film after another. But then suddenly the world changes in front of their eyes, not on the screens.

A comet, red and smiling with jagged teeth, flashes across the sky. People try to leave but find they are trapped by some acidic goo surrounding the entire drive-in. They grow hungry, homicidal and suicidal. Then along comes the Popcorn King, a jiving, rhyming creature formed by blue-white lightning, with four arms and a popcorn bucket on its head. A monster as strange and dangerous and mesmerizing as the creatures and villains on the screens. It offers the starving masses food, but there’s always a price to pay for survival.

And THEN things start to get wicked… Continue reading “The Drive-in – Joe R. Lansdale” →

Rolling in the Deep – Mira Grant

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When the Imagine Network commissioned a documentary on mermaids, to be filmed from the cruise ship Atargatis, they expected what they had always received before: an assortment of eyewitness reports that proved nothing, some footage that proved even less, and the kind of ratings that only came from peddling imaginary creatures to the masses.

They didn’t expect actual mermaids. They certainly didn’t expect those mermaids to have teeth.

This is the story of the Atargatis, lost at sea with all hands. Some have called it a hoax; others have called it a maritime tragedy. Whatever the truth may be, it will only be found below the bathypelagic zone in the Mariana Trench…and the depths are very good at keeping secrets. Continue reading “Rolling in the Deep – Mira Grant” →

The Babysitters Coven – Kate Williams

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Seventeen-year-old Esme Pearl has a babysitters club. She knows it’s kinda lame, but what else is she supposed to do? Get a job? Gross. Besides, Esme likes babysitting, and she’s good at it.

And lately Esme needs all the cash she can get, because it seems like destruction follows her wherever she goes. Let’s just say she owes some people a new tree.

Enter Cassandra Heaven. She’s Instagram-model hot, dresses like she found her clothes in a dumpster, and has a rebellious streak as gnarly as the cafeteria cooking. So why is Cassandra willing to do anything, even take on a potty-training two-year-old, to join Esme’s babysitters club?

The answer lies in a mysterious note Cassandra’s mother left her: “Find the babysitters. Love, Mom.”

Turns out, Esme and Cassandra have more in common than they think, and they’re about to discover what being a babysitter really means: a heroic lineage of superpowers, magic rituals, and saving the innocent from seriously terrifying evil. And all before the parents get home. Continue reading “The Babysitters Coven – Kate Williams” →

Cursed – Various

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ALL THE BETTER TO READ YOU WITH

It’s a prick of blood, the bite of an apple, the evil eye, a wedding ring or a pair of red shoes. Curses come in all shapes and sizes, and they can happen to anyone, not just those of us with unpopular stepparents… 

Here you’ll find unique twists on curses, from fairy tale classics to brand-new hexes of the modern world – expect new monsters and mythologies as well as twists on well-loved fables. Stories to shock and stories of warning, stories of monsters and stories of magic. Continue reading “Cursed – Various” →

The Boatman’s Daughter – Andy Davidson

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Ever since her father was killed when she was just a child, Miranda Crabtree has kept her head down and her eyes up, ferrying contraband for a mad preacher and his declining band of followers to make ends meet and to protect an old witch and a secret child from harm.

But dark forces are at work in the bayou, both human and supernatural, conspiring to disrupt the rhythms of Miranda’s peculiar and precarious life. And when the preacher makes an unthinkable demand, it sets Miranda on a desperate, dangerous path, forcing her to consider what she is willing to sacrifice to keep her loved ones safe. Continue reading “The Boatman’s Daughter – Andy Davidson” →

Zero Sum Game – S. L. Huang

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Cas Russell is good at math. Scary good. The vector calculus blazing through her head lets her smash through armed men twice her size and dodge every bullet in a gunfight, and she’ll take any job for the right price.

As far as Cas knows, she’s the only person around with a superpower…until she discovers someone with a power even more dangerous than her own. Someone who can reach directly into people’s minds and twist their brains into Moebius strips. Someone intent on becoming the world’s puppet master.

Cas should run, like she usually does, but for once she’s involved. There’s only one problem…
She doesn’t know which of her thoughts are her own anymore. Continue reading “Zero Sum Game – S. L. Huang” →

Midnight Taxi Tango – Daniel José Older

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Carlos Delacruz straddles the line between the living and the not-so alive. As an agent for the Council of the Dead, he eliminates New York’s ghostlier problems. This time it’s a string of gruesome paranormal accidents in Brooklyn’s Von King Park that has already taken the lives of several locals—and is bound to take more.

 The incidents in the park have put Kia on edge. When she first met Carlos, he was the weird guy who came to Baba Eddie’s botánica, where she worked. But the closer they’ve gotten, the more she’s seeing the world from Carlos’s point of view. In fact, she’s starting to see ghosts. And the situation is far more sinister than that—because whatever is bringing out the dead, it’s only just getting started. Continue reading “Midnight Taxi Tango – Daniel José Older” →

Osgood Riddance – Cooper S. Beckett

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After tracking down the missing sister of her former partner Audrey, and helping to put an end to a monstrous being’s reign of terror, one would think they’d find Prudence Osgood riding high. Instead, they couldn’t find her at all.

A year and change after the events of Osgood as Gone, our titular hero has returned. Osgood is confused, exhausted, and dragging along more quirks than she ever remembers having. Her friends Zack and Audrey, the makeshift Spectral Inspector crew in her absence, don’t quickly believe that things are back to normal, but have to admit that no one is quite as grumpy and belligerent as “their Osgood.”

Unfortunately for all involved, something has hitched a ride back from the space between worlds, and not even Osgood can guess what its plans are. She will need to stand with her friends against a monstrous emergent evil, and it will take everything the Spectral Inspectors have to stop what’s coming once the events are set in motion. Continue reading “Osgood Riddance – Cooper S. Beckett” →

Conspiracy of Ravens – Lila Bowen

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Nettie Lonesome made a leap — not knowing what she’d become. But now her destiny as the Shadow is calling.

A powerful alchemist is leaving a trail of dead across the prairie. And Nettie must face the ultimate challenge: side with her friends and the badge on her chest or take off alone on a dangerous mission that is pulling her inexorably toward the fight of her life.

When it comes to monsters and men, the world isn’t black and white. What good are two wings and a gun when your enemy can command a conspiracy of ravens? Continue reading “Conspiracy of Ravens – Lila Bowen” →

The Devil You Know – Mike Carey

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Felix Castor is a freelance exorcist, and London is his stomping ground. It may seem like a good ghostbuster can charge what he likes and enjoy a hell of a lifestyle, but there’s a risk: sooner or later he’s going to take on a spirit that’s too strong for him.

When Castor accepts a seemingly simple ghost-hunting case at a museum in the shadowy heart of London, what should have been a perfectly straightforward exorcism is rapidly turning into the Who Can Kill Castor First Show, with demons and ghosts all keen to claim the big prize.

But that’s business as usual: Castor knows how to deal with the dead. It’s the living who piss him off…. Continue reading “The Devil You Know – Mike Carey” →