Nonfiction
Reviews: September 2025
Adam-Troy Castro recommends a movie and two new books. Find out what he’s excited about!
Adam-Troy Castro recommends a movie and two new books. Find out what he’s excited about!
Archaeology is a method and practice which resurfaces the past. It can help us reconstruct the history and culture of ancient (or not so ancient) people, and give us insight into what it means to be human. Archaeology produces more than museum displays, and it can be used to manipulate and disempower.
Adam-Troy Castro argues that Ryan Coogler’s Sinners is a new horror classic. Find out why in his review.
A Meditation on the Witch The witch is a shapeshifter, a marvelous creature who evolves with the times. Those who fear her have burned her at the stake, hung her body from the gallows, and drowned her in the sea—none of which were able to properly kill her because the witch is more than a […]
Guest reviewer J.B. Kish shines a spotlight on a French horror film you might have missed: MadS. Find out why it’s a must-see on for both film nerds and horror fans!
Because all horror stories are about survival, aren’t they? It’s the shadow cast at the heart of the genre. The thing in the dark, in the closet, under our beds; the thing with the knife, the teeth . . . or the roaring chainsaw—they are all just different costumes draped upon the same bony shoulders. Death, that’s what’s wearing the shroud, and no one survives its slow pursuit forever.
This month Adam-Troy Castro dives into two upcoming novels—one by horror legend Robert McCammon (Leviathan, the final volume in his Matthew Corbett series), one by legend-in-the-making Clay McLeod Chapman (Wake Up and Open Your Eyes). Find out why you’ll want to read ’em!
This story’s been bothering me for a long time. It has the sort of title that sticks in your head: The Turn of the Screw. I knew the title before reading the book, or perhaps I read it and forgot, as I read so many books on the shelves of the rich whose houses my mother cleaned.
Looking for a different kind of slasher flick? Adam-Troy Castro recommends Shudder’s In a Violent Nature.
I don’t like “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe. This is what I’m thinking while I am helping my daughter through the last bits of her Gothic Literature class. She doesn’t actually need my help, she just wants it. The class was taught by a woman who was clearly passionate about the Gothic.