Some AI artwork to promote my #zombies on the moon opus. Created with Nightcafe.

#horrorfiction #horrorfan #halloween2022 #halloweenbooks #horrornovel #halloweenreads #horrorread #paperbacksfromhell #horrorrecs #horrorrecommendation #scaryreads #horrorpaperbacks #scarybooks

So here's what I've been up to. Zombies. On the moon. Just dropped on Amazon.

I'm posting daily Hallowe'en reading recommendations through October on Book/TikTok! Follow me there and find the perfect scary read for the season!

#booktok #pulpfiction #pulpyourcherry #books📚 #booklover #readthis #bookrecs #halloweenreads #horrornovel #horrorreads #bookrecommendations #horrorbooktok #halloweenbooks #horrorfiction #🎃 #📚 #horrorpaperbacks #paperbacksfromhell #halloweenvibe #halloween2022 #halloweenbooks

Paperback on sale on Amazon right now! The perfect Hallowe'en read at a perfect price!

#pulpfiction #ghosts #supernatural #indiebooks #halloween #hauntings #spookyreads #paranormal #horrorfiction #indiehorror #halloweenreads #scaryreads #amityville #halloween2022

Brillian Alaneme has just solved one of the minor historical mysteries of space: What happened to the long-range freighter Talladessner? But when she sets down on the asteroid where the long-lost vessel ultimately came to rest, she finds not the missing starship but a house, and not just any house, but a haunted house, straight out of a creaky B-movie. It seems like it must be a delusion, or a hoax, but what dwells within this house is no joke...

Everything about this is insultingly sub-amateurish, from the artwork to the writing right down to the print job, which renders a handful of pages nearly impossible to read. Absolutely the pits.

Never had any interest in this author, but having read this I am now a convert. (I read the original, serialized "Sense of Obligation" version. It was subsequently released in paperback as "Planet of the Damned".)

People often point out that many of the Oz books are just travelogues, with little or no plot. Well, yes, but they're such delightful travelogues with little or no plot that you'll get no complaints from me!

This comic book adaptation pales in comparison to the real deal, but how could it not? That said, the art is evocative and appropriately dreamlike and surreal, and it was nice to re-experience the story at light speed. There's an interview with Clive at the end, but due to a printing error the last page of it is missing. ☹

Man, I really wanted to like this, but there's just too much goofy insanity, all dumped on the reader at once. The real tragedy is that there's a character who's new to the world of the titular Projects and, optimally, he could've been used to ease us in too. Unfortunately, the story is in such a pants-wetting hurry to get from one "kewl" setpiece to another that they just can't be bothered.

The first third is pretty engaging, if solely for the atmosphere and creep factor. Unfortunately it eventually turns into a sort of monster mash, and the climax has a rushed, "Meh, time to wrap this nonsense up" feel to it.

This is what happens when you give up on marketing entirely. Now available in BOOK STORE.

I always pick these up when I stumble across original versions (originals have 25 chapters, "updated" editions are edited down to 20). Frankly I've always preferred the adventures of Nancy and her friends Bess (the chubby one) and George (the "tomboy" - read: lesbian). Those Hardy Boys were just too damn smug.

Typical modern comics, which is to say total rubbish. Lots of fighting. A story that substitutes "high-concept" for being engagingly told or even entirely coherent. Self-referential to a narcissistic degree. No characterization. And the art makes the characters look like Muppet Babies versions of themselves.

An amalgamation/pastiche of things I love (folklore), things I kind of like when they're done well (Conan) and things I despise (Masters of the Universe), this works more often than not, and the art is clean and appealing. Oh, and birds. Lots and lots of birds.

The last bunny book I read was a bust, but this one at least delivers what it promises, although the cover of this edition does its best to hide the fact that it is, in fact, about killer rabbits. It's a silly book, but most of this comes not from the rabbit attacks but from the human characters and their absurdly melodramatic antics. I've read the dog book hyped on the cover and was fairly underwhelmed by that one too.

How am I only just now finding out that C.S. Lewis penned a sequel to THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS? More relevant today than ever, and I say that as an agnostic.

Kinda stoked at how accidentally awesome the sales page for my new book looks.

https://www.amazon.com/Avatar-Noir-Brad-D-Sibbersen-ebook/dp/B0B784T2V4/

https://books2read.com/u/ba6Awx

I love bunnies and, by extension, jackalopes, so I thought this might be a cute read. Wrong. It's not cute, it's not exciting, it's not funny, and the end blatantly cheats to make itself work. Worst of all, the titular jackalope spends 99% of the story zipped up in a backpack (and later a suitcase), and might as well be an envelope full of bearer bonds (or any other macguffin) for all he contributes. I'm going to gift my copy to a child I dislike.

No idea going in that this anthology was focused solely on haunted house stories, so I ended up being pleasantly surprised. The introduction is downright embarrassing and more than half the stories are duds, but the entries that are good are VERY good, and more than worth the original list price.

Released the same year as Bram Stoker's Dracula, which it reputedly outsold to a significant degree. It's easy to see why it appealed to audiences at the time, given its facination with the Near East, its preoccupation with science, and the inclusion of copious amounts of humor at the expense of the lower class, all major elements of the then-current "trash" literature zeitgeist. Builds nicely to an exciting third act, but the ending's a fizzle.

Another supernatural detective, a genre I can't get enough of. (And apparently I'm not alone, given the popularity of modern takes like the TV show SUPERNATURAL.) The lead character's abrupt dismissal of his audience at the end of most stories "using the recognized formula" (what a smug, douchey phrase) really grated on me, but other than that these were pretty terrific.

Passed on this a couple times before I finally bought it, which is weird because "scary sci-fi" is right up my alley. Maybe the lackluster cover turned me off? Anyway, it's alien abduction / MiB stuff with a bit of a twist. Strong beginning, draggy middle, underwhelming climax. The twist ending redeems it though.

#ufos #alienabduction #meninblack

Ten stories to tickle and torment, featuring dinosaurs, mind control, rogue AI, firearms, cryptids, game shows, altered fairy tales, high adventure, an infinite mansion, and (sigh) leprechauns from outer space.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B3WKCCC8

Four tepid tales, including two mild ghost stories. The most interesting element is that they're spun as if they're thinly-disguised true accounts, and frankly they're so prosaic - ghosts notwithstanding - that they may very well be. Polite and inoffensive, as befits its Canadian origins.

Long on my "occult detectives" to-read list, I finally got around to this, and the sequel (really more like the second part, as the hero re-encounters the evil spirit that escapes at the end of this one). Another entry in the series was announced, but never appeared as the magazine publishing them folded. It was pretty obviously reworked into a story called "The Hand of Saint Ury" though, so I read that one too, making for a nice little trilogy.

This hits all the usual notes - UFOs, the Bermuda Triangle, Bigfoot - but there were a couple of considerably more obscure entries too. As a supplement to a children's encyclopedia, it has a way of cutting through the BS and would probably qualify as skeptical literature. Brimming with beautiful artwork, like many of these vintage children's books about the weird and mysterious.

Frustratingly underwritten, I guess? Disappointing because I really like the Hellcat character and this is ALMOST good. Still, I got it for $2 so I can't complain. Much.

Alternates short, fully illustrated day-in-the-life stories of dinosaurs and their ilk with pages of dry, scholarly text about picayune dinosaur classifications and anatomy. The former are exciting, educational, and engaging. (Only one really fumbles the ball, with its juvenile fixation on the "Isn't nature just so VIOLENT?" angle.) The latter belong in a textbook and are a chore to slog through. So... half a good read, I guess?

[E-book] Your typical mixed bag horror anthology: some good, some not-so-good, a couple outliers in either direction. "Tell Me Your Name" is the standout. "Urbex", "Scarecrow", and "The Sin-Eater" also worked to varying degrees. So that's four keepers out of ten, which is honestly above average for this sort of thing.

Such insight!

Pohl's Gladiator-at-Law is one of my favorite old-school sci-fi novels, but the previous short story collection of his that I read left me pretty cold. This one falls somewhere in the middle; a couple of stinkers, a couple that are just okay, and at least one solid keeper.

Enjoyable enough adaptation of a Dr. Who arc I've never seen. It's a 40-year-old British publication, and the back cover assures us it's for children despite being at least as sophisticated (in both premise and vocabulary) as a lot of current American sci-fi aimed at adults. I'll let that speak for itself.

Featuring "Subterranean Truck Driver's Blues", probably the creepiest thing I've ever written. Now available in paperback.

I recently watched Space: 1999 in its entirety and can safely say that I am not a fan. So why did I read this? In part because I WANT to like the show, more because it promised to be a horror story set in space (a subgenre I absolutely adore), and mostly because I got the book for free. And, honestly, it was pretty solid, really only losing its way in the rushed, closing chapters. Well written overall, completely accessible even to non-fans.

Despite the sole name on the cover several people contributed chapters to this book, and seeing as the one who tackled the Tsavo Lions segment doesn't know what some common words mean (or how to write at an adult level), and another one thinks the Beatles were American, it's kind of hard to take seriously as a source of factual information. Fun bathroom read, but if you're writing a research paper you'll want to give it a hard pass.

I liked this comic strip as a kid, and I thought it might be interesting to go back and read through the point where it transitioned from a silly, jokey strip to a dramatic strip about smug, unlikable people dying of cancer and committing suicide. The transition was planned for months so I expected a clever, smooth, well-executed segue. Instead, we get a bunch of kids who are still attending high school in 1990 somehow graduating in 1988.

It got awful reviews, but I'm glad the Morbius movie happened because it resulted in this, which simplified collecting these comics for me. I now own nearly every original appearance of the Marvel Comics monster characters, excluding, annoyingly, only the big one, Dracula. His stuff was collected in three huge hardcovers, but only the first is still in print. 🤬

Oh yeah, the review: Old Morbius comics are terrible. LOL

I once stumbled across an online discussion of this book in which one of the participants claimed to be the author. She said she wished she'd had more experience when she'd written it and seemed disappointed with the result. It's, well, pretty absurd, and is definitely the victim of a "and then... and then..." plot, but it makes up for this by being completely rat-bastard insane from start to finish. Absolutely recommended... for the right reader.

"His scream was stifled by a mouthful of humus as he disappeared from sight, becoming posthumous."

Ha ha ha ha! Classic.

"The man in the coffee in St. Peter's Cemetery..."

Ah, Leisure Books. You never fail to entertain, one way or another.

A "Something Wicked This Way Comes" post reminded me how much I like "kids on bikes vs. supernatural evil" books. I've read "It", of course, "Summer of Night", "Boy's Life", "Shadowshow" by Brad Strickland, and Thomas Tessier's "Phantom". I'm also familiar with (but haven't read) Brain Keene's "Ghoul". Anyone know of any more I can add to this list?

#it #summerofnight #strangerthings

Mad Magazine works best when you're about 12 years old, and the material really doesn't age well. EXCEPT for Sergio Aragones, whose captionless cartoons remain brilliant and insightful, and are so jam-packed with detail... Really, it's amazing. I always grab these little Mad paperbacks when I see them... but only if they're entirely dedicated to Sergio.

Only after I received this in the mail did I realize I'd read one of this guy's books before... and hated it. It's a scenario I like - ancient evil descends on a small town with a large cast of characters (Stephen King is rather good at this) - but it's a clumsy mixture of the kind-of-clever and just plain dumb, and the style alternates between clunky, brilliant, and overwritten, sometimes all in the same sentence.

#horror

It's downright embarrassing how hard this opening is trying to evoke "The Haunting of Hill House". And failing.

#horror

Two standouts: "A Mountain Walked" by Caitlin R. Kiernan (I swear she's channeling Algernon Blackwood here) and "A Quirk of the Mistral" by Jonathan Thomas. Most of the rest of this is utterly forgettable. Still, I got it at the Dollar Tree before their recent, brutal price hike so I can't complain. Two great stories for $1 is a bargain no matter how you slice it.

Marvel Comics really does the whole "exploiting our back catalog" thing right. The Liberty Legion only appeared in two storylines ever, and nobody cared, and yet here it all is, collected, with supplemental material, in frigging HARDCOVER yet. Rival publisher DC, meanwhile, has whole swathes of legitimately popular comic books it hasn't bothered to reprint at all. I guess they prefer leaving stacks and stacks of free money on the table.

With the caveat that this book is aimed at very young children... it's really good. I read one of co-author D.J. Arneson's books in grade school ("Strange Monster Stories") and it freaked me out then and actually kind of holds up as an adult (I still have it). His approach is really weird and imaginative, often coming at old horror tropes from crazy new angles, and he's not afraid to go for the nasty, cynical ending, despite the intended audience.

Been poking through this one for weeks, mostly because I'd read some of the stories before but couldn't remember which ones. I bought this volume primarily for "The Cheetah Girl", which is obscenely rare and damn near impossible to find. It's also obscene in the literal sense, and it's no wonder it wasn't widely published when first written. It's pretty daring and tasteless even by modern standards. Back then, EHA probably would've been strung up.

Twenty-five years after buying my first Planet of the Apes movie novelization, on a whim, I finally got around to reading them all. This one, at least, was pretty solid, much better than the halfassed film it's based on. Apparently my copy used to belong to a guy named "Jim Flack", who wrote his name on the inside covers, the fore edge, and the first page. Relax, Jim, no one wants to steal your beat-up Planet of the Apes paperback.