Book Reviews, Find Your Next Read

The Gallery Assistant by Kate Belli: A twisty, sinister thriller with a uniquely New York perspective

Mandy Webster

Kate Belli’s The Gallery Assistant is a thriller that keeps readers on edge, blending the tension of a murder mystery with the complexity of a city and world forever changed by tragedy. Chloe Harlow, a young gallery assistant in New York, wakes up one morning in November 2001 with hazy memories of the night before—and quickly discovers that an up-and-coming painter and the gallery’s newest artist has been murdered. Pulled between her life in Williamsburg and the high-stakes Upper East Side art world, Chloe is thrust into a dangerous web of deceit, secrets, and deadly intrigue.

Get your copy of The Gallery Assistant from my independent online bookstore today!

While the story is undeniably gripping, it does fall into the familiar—and sometimes frustrating—trope of a main character holding crucial information back from the authorities. Chloe’s insistence on solving the murder herself, despite having no investigative training and facing serious danger, is occasionally hard to swallow. Her reluctance to report even life-threatening incidents strains believability, though it does drive the narrative tension. A bit more insight into her reasoning could have made these choices feel more grounded.

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Book Reviews, Find Your Next Read

Her One Regret by Donna Freitas: A feminist thriller that dares to question motherhood

Mandy Webster

Motherhood is supposed to be the pinnacle of womanhood. At least, that’s what society keeps telling us. But what happens when a woman doesn’t want to be a mother? Or worse—what if she becomes a mother and regrets it? Donna Freitas takes on this taboo head-on in Her One Regret, a feminist thriller that is both riveting and deeply necessary.

Get your copy of Her One Regret from my independent online bookstore today!

The story begins with Lucy Mendoza, a successful Rhode Island real estate agent who vanishes, leaving her baby behind in a grocery store parking lot. It’s the kind of headline that grips national attention and instantly frames her as a monster in the public eye. But Lucy’s best friend Michelle knows something the rest of the world doesn’t: Lucy once confessed that she regretted becoming a mother, so much so that she had fantasized about faking her own kidnapping.

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Writers on Writing

The key difference between horror and thriller books that most readers miss

Mandy Webster

The line between horror and thriller fiction is thinner than most readers think. Both keep you turning pages late into the night, heart pounding and mind racing—but they do it for very different reasons. Understanding what separates them reveals not only why we read them, but why they haunt us in different ways.

Sometimes it’s hard to find the line between a thriller novel and a horror novel.

A thriller’s purpose is to thrill, to make readers feel a rush of danger and urgency. It’s about tension, pace, and cleverness—the satisfaction of watching a hero outthink or outrun the forces closing in. The threat is usually external and grounded in reality: a killer, a kidnapper, a conspiracy, or a psychological cat-and-mouse game. The pleasure comes from seeing order restored, justice served, or a mystery solved, even if the cost is high. Books like Keep This for Me by Jennifer Fawcett or Hannah Richell’s One Dark Night are perfect examples of thrillers that keep you on the edge of your seat, weaving suspense with high-stakes personal drama.

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Book Reviews, Find Your Next Read

The Ordinary Bruja by J.E. Ortega shows us the histories we’ve been taught to forget

Mandy Webster

What do we inherit from the generations before us—magic, shame, resilience, silence? In J.E. Ortega’s novel The Ordinary Bruja (coming November 4, 2025), Marisol Espinal returns to her hometown of Willowshade, Ohio, after her mother’s death and finds herself face-to-face with the family secrets she’s been running from. The story unfolds with an atmosphere of both dread and wonder, as Marisol confronts not only the haunting presence of Hallowthorn Hill but also the pieces of her own identity she’s been taught to bury.

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The novel is steeped in Dominican folklore and written with a lyricism that brings the supernatural to life. The hill itself becomes a character—watching, waiting, whispering—and what it wants is Marisol’s surrender to fear. But Ortega makes clear that the greater threat isn’t the folklore itself, but the way Marisol has been taught to erase herself: her culture, her curls, her curves, her magic. The suspense is as much psychological as it is spectral, and the real horror comes from how shame and generational trauma can consume us if we let them.

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Author Interview

Author interview with Becky Healy

Mandy Webster

From newspaper deadlines to creative freedom, writer Becky Healy has spent a lifetime chasing stories. Her nonfiction piece, The Bad Moon and Me, appears in Bad Moon on the Rise: An Anthology of the Unsettling, where she blends the sharp instincts of a journalist with the reflective tone of a storyteller exploring new terrain. In this interview, Becky shares how childhood mysteries sparked her love of writing, what keeps her inspired today, and how her definition of success has evolved from Oscar dreams to the quiet satisfaction of connecting with readers.

Becky Healy’s work appears in the recently released Bad Moon on the Rise: An Anthology of the Unsettling.

Q: What’s a memory of a story or book that made you realize you wanted to be a writer?
A: When I was in the fourth grade, I remember walking into my classroom one day and deciding I wanted to be a writer. I loved reading, especially the Nancy Drew mystery series, and the idea of creating these kinds of stories appealed to me. I didn’t know what kind of writing I wanted to do or how I would make it a career, but my decision to be a writer was born that day.

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Book Reviews, Find Your Next Read

Night Watcher brings Halloween horror vibes to a storm-soaked thriller

Mandy Webster

Sometimes a thriller doesn’t just keep you on edge—it crawls under your skin and lingers like a nightmare. That’s exactly what Daphne Woolsoncroft achieves in Night Watcher, a dark, atmospheric suspense novel set in Portland, Oregon, where the rain never stops and neither does the fear.

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Nola Strate has spent her adulthood trying to outrun the shadows of her past. As a child, she narrowly escaped a notorious Pacific Northwest serial killer known as the Hiding Man. Now she’s a late-night radio host, fielding calls about hauntings and strange sightings on the show her father once made famous. It’s the perfect job for someone who wants to talk about fear without facing it directly.

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Call for Submissions

Submissions open for Beautiful and Terrifying: Tales and Visions from the Edge of the Uncanny

Mandy Webster

There’s beauty in the things that unnerve us. Beautiful and Terrifying is the next anthology from Elderfly Press—an exploration of the eerie, the intimate, and the in-between. Submissions are now open for short stories, poetry, and black-and-white art that linger in the shadows of the strange and the sublime.

There’s beauty in what haunts us.
Submit to Beautiful and Terrifying today!

This collection seeks work that blurs boundaries—between beauty and fear, humanity and monstrosity, love and decay. We’re drawn to dark, literary narratives and haunting imagery that leave readers with a sense of wonder and unease. Not every story needs to fit neatly into horror or realism; the best pieces often live in the uncanny space between.

What Elderfly Press is looking for:

This anthology invites a wide range of voices and forms with themes of transformation, obsession, decay, beauty, violence, or the supernatural:

  • Genre fiction: horror, speculative, gothic, dystopian, weird, sci-fi, supernatural—anything that chills, disturbs, or unsettles
  • Literary fiction: moody, shadowed, emotionally raw
  • Poetry: rooted in chaos, shadow, or change
  • Visual art: black-and-white art that captures the eerie, surreal, or dreamlike
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Book Reviews, Find Your Next Read

The Haunting of Paynes Hollow by Kelley Armstrong: When family secrets won’t stay buried

Mandy Webster

When Kelley Armstrong writes horror, you know you’re in for a story that goes beyond simple scares—and The Haunting of Paynes Hollow (releasing October 14, 2025) is no exception. This chilling, supernatural thriller digs into the shadows of family history, twisted memory, and the things we inherit whether we want to or not. The book is available now for pre-order on Amazon.

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Samantha Payne never expected to inherit anything from her grandfather, not after years of distance and the painful memory of her father’s alleged crime. Fourteen years earlier, Sam witnessed her father burying the body of a child—an image that convinced her he was guilty, despite his own father’s unshakable belief in his innocence. But at the reading of the will, Sam is shocked to discover she’s been left the family’s valuable lakefront property at Paynes Hollow, with one strange condition: she must stay in the cottage for a month and “face the fact she was wrong.”

That’s when the real terror begins.

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Book Reviews, Find Your Next Read

Something in the Walls by Daisy Pearce is a haunting #spooktober thriller that cuts deep

Mandy Webster

Daisy Pearce’s Something in the Walls is the kind of book that makes you glance over your shoulder while reading. Equal parts folklore horror and psychological suspense, it delivers a chilling blend of witchcraft, mob mentality, and small-town secrets that feel both timeless and terrifying. If you’re looking for a gripping #Spooktober read, this one absolutely delivers.

Get your copy of Something in the Walls from my independent online bookstore today!

The story follows Mina, a young psychologist still finding her footing, who takes on the case of Alice Webber, a troubled thirteen-year-old girl in the remote village of Banathel. Alice insists she’s haunted by a witch, and her symptoms grow more alarming as the days pass. Mina, desperate to prove herself and help the girl, joins forces with journalist Sam Hunter. But Banathel is a place steeped in superstition, and the villagers have their own brutal methods of “dealing with” witches. The deeper Mina digs, the more dangerous the truth becomes—especially as echoes of her own past begin to surface.

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Author Interview

Interview with poet Jack Love

Mandy Webster

Jack Love’s poem “Cured Are You Above All,” featured in Bad Moon on the Rise: An Anthology of the Unsettling, reveals a writer deeply attuned to the beauty and complexity of everyday life. A lifelong reader inspired by the fantastical worlds of C.S. Lewis, Tolkien, and Rick Riordan, Love’s influences now span from the poetic precision of Langston Hughes and W.B. Yeats to the immersive storytelling of modern science fiction. In this interview, he reflects on how parenthood, memory, and simplicity shape his work—and how he balances creativity, academia, and the ongoing pursuit of artistic growth.

Q: What/who were your early literary influences, and how do you think their writing has shaped you as a storyteller today?
A: For a large part, it was the conventional children’s authors who had significant influence on my interest in writing. I remember loving C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, Roald Dahl, and Tolkien’s Hobbit. I also remember thoroughly enjoying Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series, which was being published while I was a kid. I think these writers (among many others) shaped me while I was young because they imagine such fantastic worlds that you can lose yourself in. As a kid, I recall trying to mimic their world-building by creating my own strange worlds when I would play by myself.

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