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.

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.