The Companions We Lose – Micah Castle
Grief horror
After his divorce, Michael had one anchor remaining: Zylo, his beloved dog and only companion. But when Zylo is found disemboweled outside his home, his world unravels. The police dismiss his case, but Michael refuses to let his death be in vain.
Overtaken by grief and rage, he searches for answers only to discover something darker than Zylo’s death. The deeper he digs, the more unbelievable and disturbing it becomes: organ harvesting, a secret cult, and the worship of old gods.
The Creed Falls Massacres – Jon Cohn
Small town horror
A town divided. An unknowable evil. Actually, make that two evils.
Seventeen years ago, a machete wielding masked maniac known as the Silver Fox terrorized Camp Creed, killing nineteen people on a night that became infamous as The Creed Falls Massacre. His bloody rampage ended when final girl Jamie Campbell fought back. At least, that’s how Jamie tells it.
Today, the small town of Creed Falls can’t decide if the Silver Fox was the killer, or if Jamie used him as a scapegoat to hide her own crimes.
With tensions between factions reaching their peak on the anniversary of the massacre, a new threat emerges, as well as a very old one. A strange meteor crashes on the outskirts of town, transforming townsfolk into hideous mutated monsters.
Meanwhile, an old foe is somehow resurrected at the site of the old campground; the Silver Fox. With an unstoppable slasher carving his way from one side of town, and this mysterious infection spreading on the other, Jamie Campbell and her teenage daughter Claire find themselves caught in the middle of a double-feature of small town cosmic horrors.
Culling of the House of Boars – Jack Finn
Vampire horror
Strigoi. Living dead monstrosities haunting the villages and byways of Romania and Eastern Europe for over two millennia, shunning the sun and preying upon the blood of the living. They are a thing of nightmare, born of ancient dark arts and created to instil fear in the hearts of the invaders of their ancestral lands.
What you see is only a hateful remnant of what once incited such terror in the heart of Rome that Emperor Aurelian withdrew his legions from the frontier for fear of them. They hunt in the shadows of your world now, but once they roamed these lands like vengeful gods.
You see, the strigoi are an invasive species and have no natural predators. They are the locust in the wheat field of humanity.
I know this, for I am Adaric, Culling Master of the House of Boars.
And I am strigoi.
Howl: An Anthology of Werewolves – Lindy Ryan & Stephanie M. Wytovich (editors)
Werewolf horror anthology
Flesh splits. Bones break. Screams build.
The synchronicity of woman and wolf has long been buried. Ruled by the moon and her cycles of blood, rage, and transformation, the desire and pull to shapeshift and transmute runs deep beneath her skin. She is a beacon of duality, the divine and the monstrous, the deep glow of wolfsbane and the indent of fresh bite marks on skin. We fear her because we are her: the feral, the wild, the mad.
Women have been dancing with the wolf and teasing it out of the woods for centuries. We feed the untamed, hoping to release the beast inside, giving us strength, sisterhood, and the confidence to howl. The animal releases us from shame and permits us to seek out and accept our truth. With the wolf, we are free; with freedom, we are empowered.
In a world where silver is the least of our worries, HOWL seeks to give voice to the wolves and women of contemporary horror as they shed their skin, unhinge their jaws, and bare their teeth for all to see.
