Crafty and classically subtle horror tales for all ages.
This debut collection features nautical horror stories along the Pacific Northwest coast.
The first four of these short stories were previously published between 1993 and ’97 in various issues of 48° North—The Northwest Sailing Magazine. In “The Figurehead,” a trader of maritime goods finds the perfect object waiting for him on a Puget Sound beach—a well-preserved bust, broken from a ship’s prow. “The Face in the Water” details a lone sailor’s descent into madness while heading for Hawaii. “Nightmare in a Bottle” is about sailors stranded on an island, remembered through the nightmares of the man responsible. In “From Over the Dead Horizon,” a widower vanishes from his newly purchased yacht at sea, much like his deceased wife. The next three tales—including “The Deep Fall” (in which a professional diver enlists Russian expats to help retrieve a sunken safe) and Taboo Island (a novella about whether or not Sasquatch exists)—are longer thrillers on how the sea can turn greed and hubris against those who ply its waves. Writing with a reliably chilling smoothness, debut author Morris sometimes wears a love of Poe quite boldly (e.g., the “tap tap tap” of a bottle). As the stories progress, however, he more masterfully tinges them with hints of unreality, as when an octopus nibbles a corpse’s head as its “many tentacled arms wave continuously, sinuously, seductively, seem positively to beckon.” Morris also uses legends (Davy Jones’s locker) and anthropological insight (the body boats of Indian tribes) to shade his dark blue realms. And each story delivers a satisfying psychological impact, either up front or as a suitable denouement. A drowning man, for instance, is sure there’s “some intervening phenomenological stage between inundation and annihilation.” The ambitious final tale about Sasquatch is the outlier, though it also proves the author’s restless intellect knows no bounds.
Crafty and classically subtle horror tales for all ages.Pub Date: March 20, 2015
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 222
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.
When tragedy strikes, a mother and daughter forge a new life.
Morgan felt obligated to marry her high school sweetheart, Chris, when she got pregnant with their daughter, Clara. But she secretly got along much better with Chris’ thoughtful best friend, Jonah, who was dating her sister, Jenny. Now her life as a stay-at-home parent has left her feeling empty but not ungrateful for what she has. Jonah and Jenny eventually broke up, but years later they had a one-night stand and Jenny got pregnant with their son, Elijah. Now Jonah is back in town, engaged to Jenny, and working at the local high school as Clara’s teacher. Clara dreams of being an actress and has a crush on Miller, who plans to go to film school, but her father doesn't approve. It doesn’t help that Miller already has a jealous girlfriend who stalks him via text from college. But Clara and Morgan’s home life changes radically when Chris and Jenny are killed in an accident, revealing long-buried secrets and forcing Morgan to reevaluate the life she chose when early motherhood forced her hand. Feeling betrayed by the adults in her life, Clara marches forward, acting both responsible and rebellious as she navigates her teenage years without her father and her aunt, while Jonah and Morgan's relationship evolves in the wake of the accident. Front-loaded with drama, the story leaves plenty of room for the mother and daughter to unpack their feelings and decide what’s next.
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5420-1642-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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