Elderfly Press

Introducing Mother Monster, Father Fiend: An Anthology of the Monsters Who Raised Us

Some monsters live under the bed. Others tuck you in at night.

I’m excited to announce the publication of my newest anthology, Mother Monster, Father Fiend: An Anthology of the Monsters Who Raised Us, edited by me and published by Elderfly Press. This collection has been a particularly meaningful project because it explores something that can be difficult to talk about: the ways the people who raise us can also hurt us.

We tend to think of childhood as a time of safety and parents as the people who are supposed to provide that safety. But families are complicated, and not every child grows up in a home where love is unconditional or protection is guaranteed. Sometimes the people who are supposed to nurture us become the source of our deepest wounds. Sometimes those wounds follow us into adulthood. And sometimes breaking the cycle means confronting what happened and refusing to let it define what comes next.

Continue reading “Introducing Mother Monster, Father Fiend: An Anthology of the Monsters Who Raised Us” →
Book Reviews, Find Your Next Read

Our Cut of Salt by Deena Helm: A haunting story of home, memory, and inherited trauma

Some stories teach us about history by giving us facts. Others make us feel what it means to live through that history. Our Cut of Salt by Deena Helm belongs firmly in the second category. This lyrical, unsettling debut follows three generations of Palestinian women as they confront the history of their family, the loss of their ancestral home in Haifa, and the supernatural consequences of a trauma that has never really been allowed to end.

It is a heart-wrenching story, but it is also an important one. There are some subjects that fiction can illuminate in ways that straightforward nonfiction cannot, because fiction allows us to inhabit the emotional reality of an experience rather than simply learning about it. Helm uses the conventions of the haunted-house story to explore displacement, cultural erasure, generational trauma, and the complicated meaning of home. The result is a novel in which the supernatural elements are disturbing, but the real-world horrors behind them are even more so.

Continue reading “Our Cut of Salt by Deena Helm: A haunting story of home, memory, and inherited trauma” →
Book Reviews, Find Your Next Read

Rooted by Leopoldo Goût: A horror novel about memory, history, and ancient gods

What if the past isn’t really the past? In Rooted, Leopoldo Goût turns a woman’s return to Mexico City into a terrifying confrontation with buried memories, ancient gods, and a world that refuses to remain neatly separated into the categories modern humanity has created for it. The result is a horror novel that is as much about our relationship to the world around us as it is about supernatural terror.

Rooted, which releases September 15, 2026, follows Aurora, a successful art lawyer who returns to Mexico to celebrate a campaign she helped lead to repatriate stolen artifacts, including a mysterious statue of an Aztec god known as the Flayed One. But her homecoming quickly becomes unsettling. Mexico City is familiar and unfamiliar at the same time, and Aurora begins to experience impossible memories, disturbing dreams, and increasingly frightening distortions of reality. There is nothing wrong with Aurora—or at least, that is what everyone keeps telling her.

Continue reading “Rooted by Leopoldo Goût: A horror novel about memory, history, and ancient gods” →
Book Reviews, Find Your Next Read

Something of a Calling by Zoje Stage: Unsettling Horror or Unintentional Comedy?

Some books are unsettling because they burrow under your skin and refuse to leave. Others leave you staring at the final page thinking, “What did I just read?” Zoje Stage’s Something of a Calling falls firmly into the second category.

Releasing September 15, 2026, Something of a Calling follows Detective Andy Cooper, a woman approaching retirement with very little waiting for her on the other side of it. Her daughter was killed by a drunk driver, her marriage ended in divorce, and her career has become the one thing she has left—and now she is about to lose that, too. She imagines an RV she hasn’t bought, a dog she doesn’t own, and a garden she might someday tend once the cable company finishes tearing up the woods behind her house. Then people start turning up dead.

Continue reading “Something of a Calling by Zoje Stage: Unsettling Horror or Unintentional Comedy?” →
Book Reviews, Find Your Next Read

She’s a Doll by Barbara Truelove turns the haunted-doll story upside down

What if the creepy haunted doll isn’t the monster in the story—but the victim who has finally come back to make her killer pay? That’s the deliciously dark premise behind Barbara Truelove’s She’s a Doll, a horror novel that takes the familiar haunted-doll story and gives it a very satisfying twist. Instead of an innocent person becoming the target of an inexplicably murderous antique doll, this time the doll has every reason to be angry. Lucy McQuinn was murdered, and now her ghost has taken up residence in an eighteen-inch porcelain body. She may be small, but she has unfinished business with Kyle, the man who killed her.

There’s something wonderfully subversive about the way Truelove approaches the haunted-doll trope. We’re accustomed to assuming that the doll is the threat. The creepy porcelain face, the old-fashioned clothes, the unnatural movements—everything about a haunted doll is designed to make us wonder what it’s going to do to us.

Continue reading “She’s a Doll by Barbara Truelove turns the haunted-doll story upside down” →
Book Reviews, Find Your Next Read

We Are for the Dark by Gretchen McNeil: An unsettling descent into Newfoundland horror

What if a missing-person investigation led you to an island where nothing is quite what it seems—and something ancient beneath the ground is very, very hungry? Gretchen McNeil’s We Are for the Dark, releasing September 1, 2026, takes that premise and turns it into a fast-paced supernatural horror story filled with isolated communities, religious unease, strange traditions, and a growing sense that the people arriving on the island may have made a terrible mistake.

McNeil’s novel begins with Father Shane Ryan, a recently ordained Catholic priest with an unusual past as an FBI analyst. When a priest disappears from a remote island off the coast of Newfoundland, Cardinal Jacobs calls on Ryan to investigate. At roughly the same time, Royal Newfoundland Constabulary constable Miriam Rideout becomes concerned about a frantic call she received from the missing priest. When her superiors refuse to authorize a wellness check, Miriam takes matters into her own hands and travels to the island herself. Naturally, the two eventually end up together—and neither is particularly thrilled about it.

Continue reading “We Are for the Dark by Gretchen McNeil: An unsettling descent into Newfoundland horror” →
Book Reviews, Find Your Next Read

The Sleeping Sisters by Jennifer Givhan: A haunting literary horror novel about motherhood, myth, and generational trauma

Some books arrive with impossible expectations, and somehow, they still manage to exceed them. Jennifer Givhan’s The Sleeping Sisters is one of those rare novels that not only lived up to my hopes but cemented her place as one of my favorite voices in literary horror.

When I saw that this ARC had finally reached the top of my NetGalley reading queue, I couldn’t have been more excited. Because I read mostly advance reader copies, my reading schedule is dictated almost entirely by publication dates. Givhan’s Salt Bones was my favorite book of 2025, and I absolutely loved River Woman, River Demon, so this latest novel was an automatic must-read. I was thrilled when my request for an advance copy was approved, and it quickly reminded me why I keep recommending her work every chance I get.

Continue reading “The Sleeping Sisters by Jennifer Givhan: A haunting literary horror novel about motherhood, myth, and generational trauma” →
Book Reviews, Find Your Next Read

The Minimalist by Kailee Pedersen: A haunting literary descent into obsession that values atmosphere over momentum

The Minimalist by Kailee Pedersen is a novel that will likely divide readers based on what they hope to find in literary horror. Richly written and emotionally unsettling, it leans heavily into music theory, artistic obsession, and psychological disintegration. While I admired Pedersen’s prose and the ambition behind the novel, I ultimately found myself wishing the story would spend less time exploring musical philosophy and more time advancing the narrative.

Mia Voss was once the prized student of legendary minimalist composer Ryder Wakefield, who promised she would become one of classical music’s next great talents. After Ryder dies unexpectedly, Mia inherits not only his estate but also the unfinished manuscript for his final masterpiece, Death Fugue: Music for Orchestra. Returning to his isolated home to complete the composition forces her to confront the lingering grief surrounding Ryder’s son Oliver, her former lover whose suicide continues to haunt her, while also unraveling Ryder’s own carefully concealed identity. As Mia immerses herself in the unfinished work, the music itself begins to exert an increasingly disturbing influence, blurring the boundaries between artistic devotion, mental illness, and obsession.

Continue reading “The Minimalist by Kailee Pedersen: A haunting literary descent into obsession that values atmosphere over momentum” →
Find Your Next Read

9 unsettling novels that imagine the future in ways that feel too close to ignore

The future has never felt more intimate—or more unsettling—than in contemporary fiction that bends time, technology, and human behavior into something eerily recognizable. These novels imagine what comes next when memory, bodies, surveillance, climate collapse, and intimacy itself begin to shift beyond control. The result is a collection of stories that don’t just predict the future—they make it feel uncomfortably close.

The cover of the novel Ruins by Lily Brooks-Dalton

Ruins by Lily Brooks-Dalton

At the center of Ruins is an archaeologist whose fascination with a long-lost civilization places her at odds with accepted history. As she pieces together fragments of a forgotten world, she becomes increasingly convinced that the stories people tell about the past are incomplete—or perhaps entirely wrong. Lily Brooks-Dalton unfolds the mystery slowly, allowing readers to uncover the significance of each discovery alongside the protagonist. The result is a literary novel that rewards curiosity, revealing its larger premise gradually rather than all at once.

Continue reading “9 unsettling novels that imagine the future in ways that feel too close to ignore” →
Book Reviews, Find Your Next Read

Dreamland by Olivie Blake: Hollywood gothic horror wrapped in occult secrets

Hollywood dreams have always come with a price, and in Dreamland, Olivie Blake imagines that price as a centuries-old curse lurking behind one of the film industry’s most powerful dynasties. Blending gothic horror, occult mythology, and sharp social commentary, Blake crafts an atmospheric novel filled with unforgettable ideas—even if its ambitious storytelling doesn’t always land as cleanly as its vision deserves.

Anya Morris has spent years believing she’s destined for something greater than working part-time in her family’s store while enduring her mother’s constant dismissal of her acting ambitions. When an unexpected invitation arrives from the de Witts—one of Hollywood’s most influential and enigmatic film families—it seems like the breakthrough she’s been waiting for.

Continue reading “Dreamland by Olivie Blake: Hollywood gothic horror wrapped in occult secrets” →