A well done, page-turning anthology of stories about home being where the horror is.
A collection of contemporary horror fiction.
This debut offering from Whisper House, edited by its founder Capone, features a selection of horrific short stories united by home-and-neighborhood themes, with contributors ranging from seasoned, award-winning veterans of the publishing world to newcomers seeing their work in print for the first time. The stories cover the whole of the human landscape, from city life to country life to the most obviously terrifying location of all (the suburbs), and they vary in length from just a couple of pages to an average page count of around 10. The ethos of the anthology will be familiar to fans of Stephen King (there are virtually no stories here that aren’t explicitly cut from King’s cloth): the unexpected horror in the quotidian and familiar, whether it’s the neighborhood playground or that particular terror of modern life, the local homeowners association. In Sam Weller’s “Creepy Crawly,” the hapless narrator finds himself in an increasingly aggressive standoff with a millipedelike creature in his apartment (“We both lived in a hole-in-the-wall,” he observes. “And if you really look at it, in one way or another, don’t we all?”), and a Jewish mother and her son encounter particularly virulent xenophobia in an Adelaide suburb in Jordan King-Lacroix’s “Just Being Neighborly.” Capone edits this collection with evident skill, choosing solid work and arranging it effectively. Brisk, businesslike entries like “Decorations” by J.D. Simpson, featuring a town that takes Halloween very, very seriously (“Around eleven forty-five, the temperature plunged” on the big night. “Dead grass hardened into hoary spikes of frost; fog formed in the shivering woods”), contrast well with more diffuse outings like “The Annual Family Reunion” by Christina Griffith. As in all anthologies, there’s some uneven qualities, but fans of modern horror will find plenty to please them here.
A well done, page-turning anthology of stories about home being where the horror is.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2025
ISBN: 9798989391936
Page Count: 344
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A feisty storm of Greek tragedy headlined by three very modern women.
On the isle of Capri, Helen Lingate seeks revenge on the people responsible for her mother’s death 30 years earlier—her own family.
When Sarah Lingate fell to her death on Capri in 1992, she left behind a 3-year-old daughter, Helen, and a legacy as a gifted playwright; her favorite necklace of golden snakes was lost to the sea. Thirty years later, Helen, chafing at the restrictions she’s grown up under as a member of the old-money Lingate family, hatches a plan with her uncle Marcus’ assistant, Lorna Moreno, to blackmail her uncle and her father with that same necklace, which mysteriously entered her possession a few months before. The novel begins on Capri just after Lorna disappears, and then traces her steps from 36 hours earlier. Interweaving chapters from the points of view of Helen, Lorna, and Sarah—as well as, later, a few others—we learn how Sarah gradually became stifled by the constant pressure of keeping up appearances until she became inspired to write a play, Saltwater, that was a not-so-thinly veiled tell-all revealing dark Lingate family secrets. It was shortly after this that she fell to her death. The loss of her mother has come to define Helen’s life, and if she can use the necklace as leverage to escape her family, and maybe learn the truth along the way, she’ll take the risk. Lorna’s motives are both murkier and more straightforward—she’s never had money, and she’s got a chip on her shoulder about it, so splitting 10 million euros with Helen sounds like a way to discard her past and start fresh. These strong, conniving women drive the drama and the narrative, and they are captivating enough that as twist after twist begins to unfurl, the novel still feels character-driven. The end—well, the end shocks. And it’s well earned. By the time the sun sets on the gorgeous excess and rugged coast of Capri, lives will have been destroyed.
A feisty storm of Greek tragedy headlined by three very modern women.Pub Date: March 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593875551
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
An addictive psychological thriller.
When a mysterious novel appears on her bedside table, a successful documentary filmmaker finds herself face to face with a secret that threatens to unravel life as she knows it.
Catherine Ravenscroft has built a dream life, or close to it: the devoted husband, the house in London, the award-winning career as a documentary filmmaker. And though she’s never quite bonded with her 25-year-old son the way she’d hoped, he’s doing fine—there are worse things than being an electronics salesman. But when she stumbles across a sinister novel called The Perfect Stranger—no one’s quite sure how it came into the house—Catherine sees herself in its pages, living out scenes from her past she’d hoped to forget. It’s a threat—but from whom? And why now, 20 years after the fact? Meanwhile, Stephen Brigstocke, a retired teacher, widowed and in pain, is desperate to exact revenge on Catherine and make her pay for what happened all those years ago. The story is told in alternating chapters, Catherine's in the third-person and Stephen's in the first, as the two orbit each other, predator and prey, and the novel moves between the past and the present to paint a portrait of two troubled families with trauma bubbling under the surface. As their lives become increasingly entangled, Stephen’s obsession grows, Catherine’s world crumbles, and it becomes clear that—in true thriller form—everything may not be as it seems. But how much destruction must be wrought before the truth comes out? And when it does, will there be anything left to salvage? While the long buildup to the big reveal begins to drag, Knight’s elegant plot and compelling (if not unexpected) characters keep the heart of the novel beating even when the pacing falters. Atmospheric and twisting and ripe for TV adaptation, this debut novel never strays far from convention, but that doesn’t make it any less of a page-turner.
An addictive psychological thriller.Pub Date: May 19, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-236225-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
