In his superb new novel The Fisherman, John Langan…manages to sustain the focused effect of a short story or a poem over the course of a long horror narrative…Langan writes elegant prose, and the novel's rolling, unpredictable flow has a distinctive rhythm, the rise and fall of its characters' real grief. These fishermen are restless men, immobilized but never truly at peace. Again and again, they cast their lines in the hope of catching something, anything, that will restore them to who they were. Abe characterizes himself as "desperate for any chance to recover what I'd lost, no matter what I had to look past to do so," and you feel that sad urgency on every page of his strange and terrifying and impossible story.
This year was an interesting one for horror. Not only did genre fans see new books from established heavy hitters, they welcomed a grandmaster’s novel back into print after 52 years, encountered incredible debuts, rafts of new and disturbing short stories, and at least one satire that frightens just as easily as its source material. If there were room to list every […]
It’s October, and an odd energy hangs in the air. The days have grown shorter, and evenings have taken on a surreal, ethereal cast. A haze of pumpkin spice hangs thick around local pubs and coffeehouses. And you find yourself drawn inexorably to the spookiest books on your bookshelf. With only a few short weeks until Halloween, we’re highlighting […]