Book Reviews, Find Your Next Read

Make Me Better by Sarah Gailey: A hypnotic look at belonging, control, and the cost of transformation

What would you give up to finally belong somewhere—and would you recognize the moment it stopped being your choice? Make Me Better is an unsettling, slow-burn descent into the seductive promise of community, where healing and control blur until they’re indistinguishable. Fans of Wife Shaped Bodies, The Unworthy, or Sorrowland will find something deeply familiar—and deeply disturbing—here.

Get your copy of Make Me Better from my independent online bookstore today!

At the center of the story is Celia, a woman whose longing for connection overrides her sense of self-preservation. She doesn’t just develop crushes—she builds entire imagined lives around men she barely knows. When she recognizes how precarious that pattern is, she redirects that intensity toward the idea of motherhood. A baby, after all, would be hers in a way no one else ever has been. That same vulnerability makes her the perfect target for something like Kindred Cove.

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Beautiful and Terrifying releases April 23, 2026: A new anthology from the edge of the uncanny

Beautiful and Terrifying: Tales and Visions from the Edge of the Uncanny, the newest anthology from Elderfly Press, will be released on April 23, 2026, bringing together haunting fiction, poetry, and black-and-white artwork that explore the strange space where beauty and fear collide.

The cover of Beautiful and Terrifying: Tales and Visions from the Edge of the Uncanny, Elderfly Press’s upcoming anthology of eerie fiction, dark poetry, and black-and-white art, releasing April 23, 2026.

I’m thrilled to finally share the release date for this collection, which has been such a meaningful project to bring into the world. From eerie woods and submerged cities to folklore retellings, grief-soaked landscapes, and intimate encounters with the supernatural, this anthology embraces the unsettling and the sublime in equal measure.

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Book Reviews, Find Your Next Read

Trad Wife by Saratoga Schaefer: A ferocious horror novel about motherhood, patriarchy, and the cost of being “good”

Trad Wife by Saratoga Schaefer is a horror novel that knows how to tell a gripping story while quietly dismantling the cultural myths propping it up. Scheduled to release on February 10, 2026, it’s the rare book that makes you start mentally planning your year-end “best of” list before you’re even finished reading. Trad Wife is an unsettling, deeply intelligent literary thriller that uses horror not just to disturb, but to say something urgent about womanhood, motherhood, and the performance of femininity in the age of social media.

Get your copy of Trad Wife from my independent online bookstore today!

Camille Deming presents herself online as the ideal #tradwife: cooking from scratch, tending her homestead, centering her life around her husband and home. The problem is that she’s missing the one thing her followers—and the ideology she’s bought into—demand most: a baby. When Camille discovers a mysterious well behind her farmhouse and makes a wish, her desire is answered in ways that are grotesque, intimate, and impossible to undo. Her pregnancy brings skyrocketing engagement and validation, even as her body begins to change in frightening ways and her marriage quietly continues to rot.

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