“In the house behind the sword ferns, there was a man, and a murderer, and a stain.” Kylie Lee Baker, the author of Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng, builds a beautifully haunting tale in her latest horror novel, Japanese Gothic, which came out in April. The title of this novel is, I assume, playing upon Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s highly successful Mexican Gothic, which heralded the current resurgence of the Gothic in popular horror literature. But while Mexican Gothic is a sweeping tale of family drama, generational sins, and colonialism, Japanese Gothic is a quieter story in which the entangled lives of an American college dropout and a young samurai woman play out in a small house tucked away at the edge of reality. Continue reading Review of Japanese Gothic—Beautiful Hauntings
Month: May 2026
Review of Morsel—Anti-Capitalist Folk Horror
Don’t let your job consume your life. That’s a good reminder we all could probably use, but for the protagonist of Carter Keane’s debut horror novella, Morsel, it’s a dire warning that should be taken very literally. The gorgeous cover first drew me to this book, which came out a few weeks ago, but it was the suspenseful narration style and creepy folk horror atmosphere that had me devouring it over the course of a weekend. Continue reading Review of Morsel—Anti-Capitalist Folk Horror