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.

Adam-Troy Castro examines a thriller (What Happened to Nina? by Dervla McTiernan) whose ending puts it squarely in the realm of horror. He also discusses A Scout Is Brave, a new novella by Will Ludwigsen and a zombie movie you might want to check out.

I think the short story is the most effective form of horror. This is not to say a horror novel can’t be scary or great—there are many great horror novels—but the brevity of the short story serves to heighten the fear because, like a knife in the dark, it’s fast, it’s sudden, it’s unexpected, and you don’t have time to recover once it appears.

Adam-Troy Castro looks at two new novels about haunts and houses: Elizabeth Hand’s A Haunting on the Hill and Gwendolyn Kiste’s The Haunting of Velkwood.

Let me begin as simply as I can: It’s really weird to revisit Stephen King’s The Stand in late 2023. Here’s where the simplicity stops, because said weirdness is multifaceted, and each facet is rooted in a variety of different variables.

Adam-Troy Castro dives into Stephen King’s new novel Holly, then goes on to recommend a dark Chilean film (El Conde) and the latest adaptation of A Haunting in Venice.

Find out why critically acclaimed editor and author Shane Hawk loves Stephen Graham Jones’s The Babysitter Lives, a novella originally released only in audio.

Find out a little more about Chuck Wendig’s Black River Orchard and why veteran reviewer Adam-Troy Castro is recommending it.