horror

Wolf Worm

Leave a comment

by T. Kingfisher
First sentence: “The rail station was very new, the paint still bright on the lettering that read Siler Station.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Release date: March 24, 2026
Review copy provided by the publisher.
Content: There are some pretty gross moments, so it’s not for the squeamish stomach. I will be in the Horror section of the bookstore.

Sonia Wilson is a naturalist and an artist, but since it’s 1880 and she doesn’t have a husband, and her father recently passed, she doesn’t have many options for work. She grew tired of teaching at a girls’ boarding school, and so when a job opened up in rural western North Carolina with a naturalist looking for an artist to complete his book, she took the job. What she got, however, was much more than she bargained for.

(Read: There’s something very creepy going on in the woods.)

I don’t read horror. I don’t like being creeped out, I don’t like being grossed out. And yet, I adore Kingfisher. I haven’t read any of her horror before (maybe I will after this one), but when this one came across my desk, I couldn’t say no.

On the one hand, it was very creepy, and VERY gross. A lot of that gross was natural grossness; if you are made squeamish by bugs, this may not be for you. But it did get pretty disgusting. On the other hand, Kingfisher (like always) gave us a heroine who was smart, practical, independent, and a critical thinker. Sure, she was probably too curious for her own good, but she was a delight. And it was shot through with Kingfisher’s wit and the way she is able to create a sense of place. It’s not a delightful read, but it is a compelling one.

Just don’t read it at night.

Animus

Leave a comment

by Antoine Revoy
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: There are some unsettling images. It’s in the graphic novel section of the bookstore, but I’d give it to a 5th/6th grader who wants something weird and unsettling.

Tucked away in Kyoto, Japan is a small, unassuming playground. No one things about it, not parents, not kids who play there. Except, one day, friends Hisao and Sayuri see a masked ghost. That tells them the playground is alive: the swings can transport you into people’s dreams, the statues can hear everything, and the slide… well, the slide ages you super fast.

Which might explain all the missing children.

So, Hisao and Sayuri embark to figure out what makes the playground tick, and to perhaps find some of the missing children, and maybe put things back to rights.

I think I expected this to be creepier than it was. It was odd more than unsettling, Weird more than disturbing. The mystery wasn’t terribly mysterious. And I kept thinking that maybe Japanese kids being drawn by a Frenchman was a bit, well, problematic. That said, the art was gorgeous, and I appreciated that Revoy kept the traditional manga black and white instead of coloring it.

Maybe I just went in with too high of expectations.