Becky's Favorite Horror of 2021

From December 8th to 17th I participated in LibFave2021 on Twitter. LibFaves is a Twitter crowdsourced best list by library workers. For 10 days we all tweet out 1 title a day, a 2021 release that we would consider one of our favorites of the year.

Because every title that is mentioned eventually gets included in a spread sheet which contains every single title Tweeted during the event, I use the event each year to highlight my personal Top 10 of 2021 #HorrorForLibraries titles.

For more on #LibFaves2021 you can see this post from 12/8 on the general blog.

Here is my Twitter thread of the 10 books I added to the conversation during the official event . I did not put them in any ranked order, but here today, I will with my 3 words and links to my longer reviews. Please remember, this list is my PERSONAL best list. Some of it crosses over with critical lists I have been a part of [some still to be published] but not all of it.

But before that list, here is a reminder that I have all of my annual "Best Horror" lists going back to 2005 on my "Archive of Becky's Lists, Articles, and Presentations," a permanent page at this link. Because yes, I follow my own rules and make sure backlist best lists are easily to access anytime and with on click on any new best list. These books are still "best," they just aren't brand new.

Okay, with no further ado...

Becky's Personal Top 10 Horror of 2021

10. Hearts Strange and Dreadful by Tim McGregor [pervasively creepy, strong sense of place, slow burn]

9. Yours Cruelly, Elvira: Memoirs of the Mistress of the Dark [audio, read by the author] [conversational, compelling, empowering]

8. The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix [darkly humorous, great world building, flawed by sympathetic narrator]

7. The Last House of Needless Street by Catriona Ward [layered, multiple points of view, heartbreaking]

6. Children of Chicago by Cynthia Pelayo [strong world building, relentless pace, harrowing]

5. Queen of Teeth by Hailey Piper [body horror, thought provoking, immersive] Also my pick for first novel of the year

4. My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones [heartbreakingly beautiful, meticulously crafted, thought provoking]

3. Things Have Gotten Worse since We Last Spoke by Eric LaRocca [epistolary, menacing, engrossing]

2. Goddess of Filth by V. Castro [reclaiming the possession trope, unsettling, immersive]

1. Reprieve by James Han Mattson [thought provoking, immersive, high anxiety]

Feel free to share your favorites int he comments. And check out the general blog next Monday for my final post of 2021 and my overall best reads of the year [regardless of publication date].

#HorrorForLibraries Giveaway 66: Infinity Dreams

Today I have a lesser known title by a well known and respected small press, but first, here is a refresher on the basic rules to enter:

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. Meaning you enter once, and you are entered until you win. 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 #65. Our winner was Melissa from Kokomo-Howard County [IN] Public Library. Now on to today's giveaway. 

At the end of every year we are inundated with best lists of all the books that came out over the year, and often titles that release in December are just lost in the sea of yearly recaps. And if you have a December book as a lesser known author from a small press, well then you get buried even deeper into the coverage.

Today I want to do my part to help highlight a lesser known voice, from one of my most trusted small presses, Cemetery Dance. Infinity Dreams is by critically acclaimed, Shirley Jackson Award nominee and 5-time World Fantasy Award finalist Glen Hirshberg.

Hirshberg is a great example of an author who is perfect for library collections, and yet, very few libraries carry his books. With this Cemetery Dance release, I hope many of your consider adding this one and get Hirshberg into your collections. Your patrons will thank you. Here is the Goodreads entry for an extra nudge: 

There are people who collect coins, baseball cards, flashlights. They trade and sell them at conventions, flea markets, antique malls.

Those are not the people Nadine and Normal (a.k.a. The Collector) serve, and those places are not where you’ll find them.

Their quests have led them to decidedly less familiar characters and locales: 

A music obsessive who gives a little more than fandom—and takes a little more than music—from the artists he loves. 

A bouquiniste stall along the Left Bank of the Seine that has remained locked—for good reason—for 150 years. 

A box full of View-Master reels showing tiny photographs of places—some of which don’t exist.  

A former Nazi-in-training, haunted—to the point of life-crippling paralysis—by a taste.

But now, Nadine lives sequestered in the Northern California woods, caring for the Collector, who has slid into early-onset dementia. One day, against her better judgment, she accepts an interview request from a young journalist. Who might not be a journalist. He has come for their stories.

Or maybe for something else.

Meanwhile, down the coast, in the cities, a wildness has gotten loose, and the world is tilting out of true, and the boundaries between reality and dream are not just blurring but melting.

But is that for better or worse? And who gets to say?

Welcome to Infinity Dreams, a novel-in-stories about dreaming your life, and living in dreams, and the permeable limbo we insist on calling reality. 

This novel will have high appeal among you Dark Fantasy and Horror fans, and as you can see above, it is fairly easy to book talk. The "novel in stories" format alone will hook a large subset of readers.

Three Words That Describe This Book: novel in stories, slightly askew, immersive

Thank you Cemetery Dance for this ARC to giveaway to a library worker. 

Next week, I have a hotly anticipated title by the author of one of the consensus 2021 "best"  Horror books.

#HorrorForLibraries Giveaway 65: The Valancourt Book of World Horror Stories Vol 2

Today I have a title I recently gave a STAR review in Booklist. Giveaway below, but first, here is a refresher on the basic rules to enter:

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. Meaning you enter once, and you are entered until you win. 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 #64. Our winner was Brittney from the Linebaugh [TN] Public Library. Now on to today's giveaway. 

Today I have an anthology. Below I have adde in my post on the review form RA for All. This is a must order. Thanks to Valancourt for the ARC to giveaway. Good luck.

The Valancourt Book of World Horror Stories Volume 2

Edited by James D. Jenkins & Ryan Cagle

Building off of the enthusiastic reader and critical success of their first volume, editors Jenkins and Cagle gave themselves an even bigger challenge-- to find more of the world’s best Horror authors but without repeating any countries that were represented in the previous book. The editors also refused to rely on authors whose work was already translated into English, rather they went directly to the source in the author’s home country and language, working diligently to commission quality translations, bringing many of these award-winning and popular authors to an English language audience for the first time. Standout tales in this superior anthology include Chinese author Zhang Yueran’s terrifying but also disquietingly beautiful exploration of body horror, Indrek Hargla, a well known Estonian crime writer's first Horror tale translated into English, and a stunning, intensely unsettling, and uncomfortably topical tale by Poland’s Wojciech Gunia. The extra context prefacing each story, introducing the author, their place in the literary landscape of their country, and the state of Horror there, elevates the entire collection and makes it a not to miss addition. Clearly Horror is thriving across the globe, and there is no longer an excuse to not carry these authors in your collections. Pair this with Jenkins and Cagle’s first volume or Eric Guignard’s A World of Horror.

Further Appeal: Even better than the first volume and I loved that one [review here]. As the introduction to this second volume states, first volume garnered multiple, major awards nominations, sold out its first run, and has been added to University curriculums.

I wish I could have highlighted every story, but alas, I get around 200 words. 

My favorite was "The War" by Wojeiech Gunia from Poland. This story was stunning, intensely unsettling, and uncomfortably topical. I read it twice even though I had more than half the book still to go.

Also Chinese author Zhang Yueran's lyrical and terrifying, gross and beautiful-- "Whalebone Spirit." It is a perfect read for fans of The Memory Police by Ogawa or Tender is the Flesh by Bazterrica. Like those readalikes I am still thinking about this story.

Haitian author Gary Victor is one I could not fit in my review. "Lucky Night" was based on well known Hatian folklore that would be tangential to our "selling your soul to the devil." It was also very political which I loved.

The most heartbreaking thing about this book is not only that these amazing voices have been silenced because they have not been translated into English before this but also that many of them [it is revealed] had commissioned, at their own cost, English translations of their work in the hopes that someday someone would ask for them. Kudos to Jenkins and Cagle for diligently seeking them out and commissioning quality translations where necessary.

Three Words That Describe This Book: full range of scares, engrossing, translation

Readalikes: I gave readalikes for specific stories in the "Further Appeal" section and in the review itself. But if you like Horror and are interested in reading new authors from around the globe, this is for you.

Library Journal 2021 Best Horror of the Year

Today the Library Journal Best Books Portal went live. I am part of the Horror team. Below is our official Top 10 Horror Titles for 2021. This is effort between myself and the Horror editor, but we rely on the work of all of the Horror review team. 

I am proud to submit this list for posterity. I will be submitting my person list along with honorable mentions and some standout debuts later this month.

Click the titles for details or here for the entire annotated list on one page with book covers.

Best Horror of 2021

by Stephanie Klose, Becky Spratford 
Dec 06, 2021 | Filed in Reviews+

Body Shocks. Tachyon. ed. by Ellen Datlow. ISBN 9781616963606.

These stories run the gamut from etherealcreepiness to haunt-your-dreams gross-outs. This authoritative collection is an ideal introduction to body and extreme horror for readers and librarians alike.

Castro, V. Goddess of Filth. Creature. ISBN 9781951971038.

This captivating, fast-paced novel lasteeped in Mexican mythology and bruja magic gives new meaning to the term girl power.

Hendrix, Grady. The Final Girl Support Group. Berkley. ISBN 9780593201237.

Hendrix presents a thought-provoking, fun, and chilling winner with perfect timing, as the slasher novel seems to be trending. The story is fast-paced, well plotted, and full of twists, and heroine Lynnette is the perfect imperfect final girl, a character readers want to root for despite her flaws.

Jones, Stephen Graham. My Heart Is a Chainsaw. Gallery/Saga: S.& S. ISBN 9781982137632.

Background tension in Jones’s latest thrums from the start—tension between Indigenous people and white colonizers, between longtime residents and incomers, between haves and have-nots—even before the meticulously crafted horror plot unfolds, hurtling readers toward the vivid, moving, gory end.

LaRocca, Eric. Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke. Weirdpunk. ISBN 9781951658120.

LaRocca’s combination of structure, adept pacing, and masterful language is more complex than meets the eye. The ending turns out to be nothing that anyone could have imagined—as horrific as it is impossible to look away from. A must-read for fans of body horror, epistolary novels, and depravity.

Mattson, James Han. Reprieve. Morrow. ISBN 9780063079915.

Severely unsettling at every turn, the book alternates the unrelenting tension of the real world with in-your-face terror. It will be devoured by fans of pulp horror and those who like the juxtaposition of supernatural and real-world horrors.

Pelayo, Cynthia. Children of Chicago. Agora. ISBN 9781951709204.

This modern fairy tale is peppered with detail that informs the story without sacrificing pacing or atmosphere. Superior worldbuilding, a complex heroine, and a harrowing narrative that plays off current events as much as its well-developed monster all combine to create a stellar horror novel.

Piper, Hailey. Queen of Teeth. Strangehouse. ISBN 9781946335418. 

Visceral, scary, and sensual, tackling issues of gender identity and marginalization head on, this fast- paced body horror creature-feature also follows romance genre rules, resulting in a tale that is both terrifying and sweet, even if the end of the world may be imminent.

Ward, Catriona. The Last House on Needless Street. Tor Nightfire. ISBN 9781250812629.

Ward’s layered plot and multiple points of view, featuring vivid characters with honest but clearly incomplete narration, create a stunning and immersive tale of psychological horror. It’s terrifyingly real and physically upsetting, yet, like the best of the genre, it leaves space for hope to ultimately shine through.

Wendig, Chuck. The Book of Accidents. Del Rey: Ballantine. ISBN 9780399182136.

A bold, impressive novel with fierce intelligence and a generous, thrumming heart. It’s intimate and panoramic. It’s humane and magical. It’s a world-hopping, time- jumping ride that packs a deep emotional punch. Wendig’s ambitious epic about a family and dark magic spans both a multitude of worlds and the interior expanse of the human heart.

#HorrorForLibraries Giveaway 64: Echo by Thomas Olde Heuvelt

Today I have another hugely anticipated title coming in early 2022, a title I already gave a glowing review in Booklist. Giveaway below, but first, here is a refresher on the basic rules to enter:

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. Meaning you enter once, and you are entered until you win. 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 #63. Our winner was Kevin from Boone County [KY] Public Library. Now on to today's giveaway. 

After the HUGE success of Hex, Dutch Horror Author Olde Heuvelt is back with an EPIC novel fueled by intense and sustained terror. Here is an except from my post on the general blog 

Echo by Thomas Olde Heuvelt

Dutch Horror master Olde Heuvelt returns with an epic tale of madness that, while less focused than Hex, is just as frightening. Nick and Sam are young, handsome men, blissfully in love, until Nick is horribly disfigured in a climbing accident on Le Maudit, an Alpine mountain that even the locals won’t climb. From the moment Nick is rescued, it is clear that he has brought something dark back with him, a force whose power is spilling out of his wrecked face and infecting others, with deadly consequences. Opening with a masterfully terrifying scene, the stage is set for a high anxiety, cinematic tale, and Olde Heuvelt delivers with an intimate and disorienting storytelling style, told by alternating Sam’s notes as he grapples with demons from his past and present with Nick’s diary entries and a confession, parsed out in five sections. The plot may be a slow burn, but the horror is immersive and the fear paralyzing, as readers experience mortal danger, freezing cold, and debilitating vertigo along with the characters. Clearly reminiscent of classic King tomes, but also for fans of more recent coming-of-age Horror like The Bright Lands by Fram or highly suspenseful stories with a strong sense of place like Road of Bones by Golden.

Three words that describe this book: slow burn, terrifying, immersive

Click through to read more by me about this book. It will be out in February 2022. Enter now and you can read it first.

Thank you to Tor Nightfire for providing the book for this giveaway.

Good luck!