#HorrorForLibraries Giveaway 52: Brand New Bentley Little

After a few weeks off, the #HorrorForLibraries giveaway is back and we have many amazing titles coming between now and Halloween. Hold on to your hats and get your self entered. Here is how:

1. You need to be affiliated with an American public library. My rationale behind that is that I will be encouraging you to read these books and share them with patrons. While many of them are advanced reader copies that you cannot add to your collections, if you get the chance to read them, my hope is that you will consider ordering a copy for your library and give away the ARC away as a prize or pass it on to a fellow staff member.
2. If you are interested in being included in any giveaway at any time, you must email me at zombiegrl75 [at] gmail [dot] com with the subject line "#HorrorForLibraries." In the body of the email all you have to say is that you want to be entered and the name of your library.
3. Each entry will be considered for EVERY giveaway. I will randomly draw a winner on Fridays sometime after 5pm central. But only entries received by 5pm each week will be considered for that  week. I use Random.org and have a member of my family witness the "draw"based off your number in the Google Sheet.
4. If you win, you are ineligible to win again for 4 weeks; you will have to re-enter after that time to be considered [I have a list of who has won, when, and what title]. However, if you do not win, you carry over into the next week. There is NO NEED to reenter.

Click here to see giveaway #51. Our winner was Melissa from Niles-Maine District Library [IL].

This week I have an ARC of the brand new Bentley Little novel, Gloria, courtesy of the publisher, Cemetery Dance and coming 10/21/21!

Here are the details from the publisher:

Stephen King says: "When it comes to horror, nobody does what Bentley Little does.... Scary, funny, weird, satiric, fucking surreal."

Gloria: A New Novel

by Bentley Little

Also to be published as an eBook!

About the Book:
Considering she had just attended her mother's funeral, Gloria Jaymes never expected to see the woman again, but then her dead mom shows up at her house.

Gloria's mom is... different. She's younger than when she died, dressed in clothes from the 1980s. And nobody else in Gloria's family seems to recognize her.

As Gloria tries to figure out the reason for her mother's reappearance — and the odd behaviors the woman begins to exhibit — other bizarre events occur. The changes to Gloria's world are small and subtle, at first... then they become much more startling.

The freaky situation might just be connected to a mysterious shed in a small California town. The strangers who gather around the shed seem to know Gloria's name... and maybe they aren't strangers after all.

With Gloria, Bentley Little presents one of his most complex and compelling novels — one that is certain to surprise readers on every page. 

Published as a trade hardcover:
• Printed on acid-free paper
• Bound in cloth with colored head and tail bands
• Featuring hot foil stamping on the front boards and spine
• Wrapped in a full-color dust jacket
• Retail price just $25

Get this one on order now! Every Little novel is a must add to all public library collections:

Good luck! 

2021 Splatter Punk Awards Announced

On Saturday KillerCon happened, virtually. At this event the Splatterpunk awards are given out. Click here for all of the nominees and here for backlist nominees and winners. Below is the full press release with this year's winners.

These winners are titles you need to add. One, True Crime, I featured in my October 2020 Readers' Shelf column in Library Journal here, but all are excellent choices for general public library collections. Yes they are technically, "Extreme" Horror, but if you have a single erotica title [and I know every single one of you has 50 Shades of Grey so the answer is, yes you do], you can have these titles.

Show your Horror readers that you are thinking of them by having award winning titles available for them to check out.

Also, don't forget, I have a page on this blog which archives all of the major Horror Awards.

Founders Wrath James White and Brian Keene announced the winners of the 4th annual Splatterpunk Awards — honoring honoring superior achievement in horror fictions’ Splatterpunk and Extreme Horror categories published in 2020 — on Saturday, August 21, 2021.

The Splatterpunk Award nominations are suggested by readers and fans. The final ballot is made up of the top seven nominations for each category. Then, a rotating jury of critics and academics read the works on the ballot and vote on the winners.

The winners for this year are:

Best Novel: The Magpie Coffin - Wile E. Young (Deaths Head Press)
Best Novella: True Crime - Samantha Kolesnik (Grindhouse Press)
Best Short Story: “My Body” - Wesley Southard (from Midnight In The Pentagram, Silver Shamrock Publishing)
Best Collection: The Essential Sick Stuff - Ronald Kelly (Silver Shamrock Publishing)
Best Anthology: Worst Laid Plans - Samantha Kolesnik (Grindhouse Press)

In addition, John Skipp was presented with the J.F. Gonzalez Lifetime Achievement Award. Previous LAA recipients are David J. Schow, David G. Barnett, and Edward Lee.

White and Keene also announced the formation of the Splatterpunk Awards Hall of Fame - a physical, traveling memorial and showcase honoring those who have left their mark on the fields of Splatterpunk and Extreme Horror. The initial Splatterpunk Award Hall of Fame Inductees will be: David J. Schow, David Barnett, Edward Lee, John Skipp. Richard Laymon, Jack Ketchum, Charlee Jacob, John Pelan, and J.F. Gonzalez. The Hall of Fame will debut in Austin, Texas next August.

Horror Content in August Spotlight for Booklist Including an Excerpt from my New Book

 My personal favorite issue of the year for Booklist is out now-- the annual Spotlight on Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror. And since my book and Booklist are both under the ALA publishing umbrella, they are also running this excerpt from the preface of my about to be published [any day] new book, and if you click through, there is an even better coupon than the one at the top of this page! 

This year there are the standard top 10 lists for books in these genres: one for debuts and one for the rest. Click here for the Top 10 SF/F/H and one for the Top 10 Debuts. Both feature books reviewed by me.

Also of note is a great list by Summer Scares committee member and Booklist editor, Julia Smith entitled, Scaring Up YA: Adult Horror Novels for Teens. This list features books both brand new and a bit from the backlist. All are great and many I have read and reviewed in either Booklist or Library Journal. Click here to access that one.

But my favorite part of the entire issue is a list that was my editor Susan Maguire's idea, one that we worked on together entitled: "Spectrum of Horror: From Shivers to Terror." Click here to access it or click on the screen shot of the page [below] as it is laid out in the print issue.

But to get you as excited as we are about this list, here is the introduction:

Spectrum of Horror: From Shivers to Terror

By Susan Maguire and Becky Spratford.

Horror is a genre that elicits strong feelings, and readers look for those thrills and chills. But not everybody wants an all-out gore fest, nor does everybody want a light sense of spookiness, and fortunately horror writers provide many levels of fright in between these extremes. This Spectrum of Horror will help you match the right intensity of scariness with the right reader. Of course we understand that “scary” means different things for different people, but between a horror-reading veteran, Booklist horror reviewer Becky; and a real scaredy-cat, Booklist senior editor Susan, we think we’ve placed each book in the right place.

Click here or below to keep reading.

Halloween is coming and you need to get ready and Booklist is here to help. And now I am off to finish another review for a future issue of Booklist which is due today! 

Click here to access the list online

#HorrorForLibraries Giveaway #51: This Thing Between Us [Debut]

After a week off for my vacation, the giveaway is back and this time it is an exciting debut which I am featuring in the August issue of Booklist. More on that below, but first here is a rules reminder:

1. You need to be affiliated with an American public library. My rationale behind that is that I will be encouraging you to read these books and share them with patrons. While many of them are advanced reader copies that you cannot add to your collections, if you get the chance to read them, my hope is that you will consider ordering a copy for your library and give away the ARC away as a prize or pass it on to a fellow staff member.
2. If you are interested in being included in any giveaway at any time, you must email me at zombiegrl75 [at] gmail [dot] com with the subject line "#HorrorForLibraries." In the body of the email all you have to say is that you want to be entered and the name of your library.
3. Each entry will be considered for EVERY giveaway. I will randomly draw a winner on Fridays sometime after 5pm central. But only entries received by 5pm each week will be considered for that  week. I use Random.org and have a member of my family witness the "draw"based off your number in the Google Sheet.
4. If you win, you are ineligible to win again for 4 weeks; you will have to re-enter after that time to be considered [I have a list of who has won, when, and what title]. However, if you do not win, you carry over into the next week. There is NO NEED to reenter.

Click here to see giveaway #50. Our winner was Ivette from the Crawfordsville District Public Library Library [IN].

Now on to This Thing Between Us by Gus Moreno which is this week's giveaway. I have a full review in the August issue of Booklist which is also the Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror spotlight issue. I will be posting that draft review with more bonus info on the regular blog soon, but in the meantime here is the plot summary: 

A widower battles his grief, rage, and the mysterious evil inhabiting his home smart speaker, in this mesmerizing horror thriller from Gus Moreno.

It was Vera's idea to buy the Itza. The "world's most advanced smart speaker!" didn't interest Thiago, but Vera thought it would be a bit of fun for them amidst all the strange occurrences happening in the condo. It made things worse. The cold spots and scratching in the walls were weird enough, but peculiar packages started showing up at the house--who ordered industrial lye? Then there was the eerie music at odd hours, Thiago waking up to Itza projecting light shows in an empty room.

It was funny and strange right up until Vera was killed, and Thiago's world became unbearable. Pundits and politicians all looking to turn his wife's death into a symbol for their own agendas. A barrage of texts from her well-meaning friends about letting go and moving on. Waking to the sound of Itza talking softly to someone in the living room . . .

The only thing left to do was get far away from Chicago. Away from everything and everyone. A secluded cabin in Colorado seemed like the perfect place to hole up with his crushing grief. But soon Thiago realizes there is no escape--not from his guilt, not from his simmering rage, and not from the evil hunting him, feeding on his grief, determined to make its way into this world.

A bold, original horror novel about grief, loneliness and the oppressive intimacy of technology, This Thing Between Us marks the arrival of a spectacular new talent

I really enjoyed this debut. The only reason I did not give it a star is because the ending fizzled out a bit, but that is common with debuts. I do need to note that there is a death of a dog in this story; I found a way to note that in the review. Here are a few of my notes since the review is not up yet though.

Three Words That Describe This Book: original, Cosmic Horror, escalating terror

From the last line of my raft review:

Moreno has melded a thought-provoking novel about mourning that is unapologetically Horror much like the very best of 21st Cosmic Horror such as THE FISHERMAN by Langan or THE HOLLOW PLACES by Kingfisher.

What is fascinating here is that it is both a novel about mourning and a nefarious presence at the same time. It also reminded me of the way Stephen Graham Jones writes where every detail matters. As I read I made this note: "SGJ in training" and then I saw Moreno thank him in the acknowledgements.

This novel comes out in October. It is a can't miss debut. I am very excited to see what he writes next, but in the meantime, you should put this in your carts to add to your collections right now.

New Book Bonus Annotations: Chapter 13: Body Horror

When I was writing the Third Edition of the Readers' Advisory Guide to Horror, I originally had over 20 annotated choices per subgenre appearing in chapter 4-13. However, for word count sake, I had to reduce each lists to a well packaged dozen. Obviously making the cuts was hard, but I was able to include the tittles of those deleted annotations in an appendix at the end of the book with a promise that the annotations would run here on the blog.

And that promise begins today. Each list will be posted on the blog over a series of 10 weeks, every Tuesday, beginning June 1, 2021 and running through August 3, 2021. This weekly series will serve to promote the book's upcoming release in August of 2021, but I have also created an archive of all of the lists that will live here. That page is the official index of this bonus content.

In the book, my top three choices in each list are marked to denote Becky's Picks. I will also do that in these lists to give you a place to begin as you suggest. Just like the titles in the print book, every title appearing here is a great options for all public libraries. You can use these lists for collection development, displays, lists, and suggestions. Each subgenre has an essay discussing its history and appeal in the book which you can order here. 

Bonus Annotations

Chapter 13: Body Horror

[+] Denotes Becky’s Picks

Armfield, Julia. Salt Slow: Stories. 2019.

In this provocative and creepy debut story collection, Armfield examines the experience of being a woman by using the female body as the center of her tales and then adds supernatural experiences to heighten the sense of unease to provocative results. Standout stories include one where a teenger’s new stepsister is a werewolf and another where a woman, pregnant during the apocalypse, realizes the baby she is carrying is not what she expected. The characters are all relatable because the author retains just enough realism to keep the stories grounded with the terror firmly rooted in the body, while her lyrical language and imaginative monsters keep readers turning the pages.

+Booth, Naomi. Sealed. 2019.

Combining body horror and climate science fiction, Sealed is the story of an anxious and terrified young woman, Alice, who fled the city with her husband to get away from severe climate change and a spreading virus, a disease which causes human skin to grow unabated until it covers your mouth and nose, suffocating you. Is Alice overreacting because she  is grieving for her mother and unsure about her impending motherhood or is everyone else not taking the horrors unfolding around them seriously enough? Readers need to decide for themselves as Alice is their only witness. This is a fast paced story marked by unrelenting tension and a menacing tone that will haunt readers after completion

Cesare, Adam. Video Night.

Billy Rae and Tom are best friends, on the eve of high school graduation and going in separate directions. The one thing they have in common is their love of horror movies, which comes in very handy when alien invaders sweep into town, taking over their  victims' bodies and transforming them into something monstrous.Nostalgia, body horror, and  alien invasions collide in this terrifyingly fun tale that perfectly captures what  viewers love about the very best horror films of the 1980s in novel form. A twisted wish fulfillment tale where the more you know about horror movies, the better your chance at survival.

Grant, Mira. Parasite.

Set in a near future where humans have been implanted with a biologically altered tapeworm that protects them from disease, the company that created the technology has grown as everyone accepts and ingests this preventive medical technology. However, years later, strange alterations in people’s brains seem to be happening.The tapeworms are changing and they are not content with their preassigned job anymore. Told through the eyes of Sally, who lost her memory in a car  accident and her parasitologist boyfriend as they begin a desperate search for answers, with the counter perspective of the evil corporate doctors in this is a gruesome and suspenseful crowd pleasing Biomedical-Horror Thriller. The Parasitology trilogy continues with Symbiont and Chimera.

+Hall, Polly. Taxidermist’s Lover.

In two alternating styles and timelines, Scarlett tells readers of the year when her lover  got serious about the artistic expression of his work as he stopped merely stuffing animals, and instead actively combined creatures into new, grotesquely beautiful pieces  of  art. But this is a year that ended very differently than it began for  Scarlett as well. One timeline is recounted as a monologue by Scarlett to her lover from Christmas Day, while the other is a month by month account of how Scarlett got to the place she is in, both in physical body and spirit. This is a slow burn, a harrowing  tale of creeping dread and disorientation that will slowly inhabit the reader with its disquieting realizations and perfectly rendered horrific conclusions. Hall’s debut showcases a promising genre talent.

+Nonami, Asa. Body.

This atmospheric and unsettling story collection features characters whose perceptions of their bodies lead them directly into a tale of terror. Featuring five stories, each titled for a part of the body, readers are introduced to a new character in each tale and their corporeal obsessions such as the young man with thinning hair, the women who start getting plastic surgery but cannot stop, or a married man with a knee fetish. These are psychological tales where the unease begins with a single body part, but eventually it spreads out to permeate every page of the volume.

Pohlig, Molly. The Unsuitable.

Iseult’s father wants to marry her off as quickly as possible, but Iseult , at age 30, is a spinster by Victorian standards. She is also extremely troubled. You see, her mother who died in childbirth, is living inside her, constantly chiding and nagging her. The only way she can quiet the voice, is to jab repeatedly at the scar on her neck, trying to let her mother out. With a suitor found and marriage impending, Iseult’s mental state is deteriorating while the self harm is increasing. Written in a modern style but set in the world of VIctorian England, this is a disorienting tale of self mutilation where the monster’s origin may be supernatural or societal, but the visceral body horror is inescapable.

Sena, Hideaki. Grillo, Tyran, Translator. Parasite Eve.

When Dr. Toshiaki’s wife dies in a car accident, some of her organs are donated. A young girl gets her kidney, but soon after she is plagued by unsettling dreams and  depression. Both Toshiaki and the girl’s doctors discover that the mitochondria in the kidney cells themselves have evolved into a monster, more sentient than humanity, a creature that is growing in strength and is ready for more hosts. With a chilling biomedical threat and told in alternating past and present storylines which helps to magnify the mourning dread, the horrors in this novel fester inside both the characters and readers. Parasite Eve won the 1995 Japan  Horror Novel award but was not published in English until 2005.

VanderMeer, Jeff. The Southern Reach Trilogy, begins with Annihilation. 2014.

This title was added because I had room with the inclusion of the appendix. See my review of Annihilation here.

Whiteley, Aliya. The Beauty. 2018.

Sometime in the future  exists a world where all women have been killed by an epidemic, readers are introduced to “The Group,” a community  of men and boys who are living, biding their time until they die, Narrated by Nathan, the group storyteller, we learn of  how a mushroom  that  grew from the graves of the dead women, took on an approximation of their  shae, and “meld” with the men. Are they there  to  help the men or are these  fungi  monsters meant to torment them? Atmospheric and bleak, yet  peppered with gorgeous language, this novel contemplates gender and the body in original, thought provoking and chilling ways.

Wong, David. John Dies At The End. 2007.

John and David, friends and recent college dropouts are living for the moment and partying all the time. They hear about a new recreational drug that allows its users access to unseen dimensions; however, they soon find out that it is way more nefarious. It opens a portal for aliens to come and take over human bodies. Our protagonists quickly turn from slackers to heroes as they  use  their video game experience  to try to save their friends and  family from being sucked into a wormhole from which they will be  unable to climb out. A humorous spoof on Horror that simultaneously crafts a satisfying entry into  the genre on its own, John Dies at the End is the book that took Wong from an internet creator to a novelist.