Book Reviews, Find Your Next Read

What Feeds Below by Tatiana Schlote-Bonne: A lush, terrifying descent into the Void

Tatiana Schlote-Bonne’s What Feeds Below is an immersive fantasy horror novel filled with lush worldbuilding, gruesome monsters, claustrophobic environments, and enough heart-pounding action to make you feel as though you’re trapped alongside its characters in the depths of the earth.

At the edge of the City of the Void lies a massive chasm that stretches miles underground. Known simply as the Void, its layers are filled with monsters, carnivorous plants, and dangers that become increasingly difficult to understand—and survive—as travelers descend. For Petra and Jade, two orphaned best friends living in the city’s slums, the Void is also a way out. They make money by guiding tourists who are willing to risk their lives in search of whatever treasures might be waiting below.

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Book Reviews, Find Your Next Read

Trad Wife by Sarah Langan: When the perfect life becomes a horror story

Sarah Langan’s Trad Wife is a sharp, unsettling horror novel about the dangers lurking behind the perfectly curated image of domestic bliss, using social media, patriarchy, and the modern trad-wife movement as the raw material for a genuinely disturbing story. The novel follows journalist Jenny Kaplan to Black Swan Farm, where she expects to expose the deception behind trad-wife influencer Mia Wright’s idyllic online persona. Instead, she finds herself trapped in a nightmare in which nothing—and no one—is quite what it seems.

This is the second novel I’ve read this year with Trad Wife in the title, and I believe there’s at least one more out there that I haven’t read yet. That alone says something about how much cultural attention this particular phenomenon has received. The trad-wife trend has become a subject of endless discussion, particularly on social media, where women debate everything from the validity of choosing a traditional domestic role to the political implications of promoting that lifestyle to millions of followers. It’s also an excellent example of the way our cultural anxieties inevitably find their way into art, and particularly into fiction. We write about the things we are afraid of, fascinated by, angry about, or simply unable to stop discussing. And in Trad Wife, Langan turns all of that discomfort into horror.

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Call for Submissions

Call for Submissions: What Will Become of Us?

Elderfly Press is seeking submissions for a new anthology of stories and poetry exploring an unsettling question: What will become of us?

Submissions for What Will We Become of Us? are open through December 15, 2026.

We are living through a period of enormous uncertainty. The world around us is changing rapidly, and the future can sometimes feel impossible to predict. The institutions we rely on are shifting. Technology is transforming how we work and communicate. Economic pressures affect where and how we live. The environment is changing. Political and social divisions seem increasingly difficult to bridge. At the same time, individuals are constantly navigating their own smaller transformations: growing older, falling in love, losing someone, starting over, becoming parents, leaving home, changing careers, discovering who they are, or realizing that the person they thought they would become is no longer who they are.

So, we want to ask the question: What will become of us?

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Book Reviews, Find Your Next Read

The Strangers by Naomi Alderman: Grief, strange creatures, and a world that keeps moving

Naomi Alderman’s The Strangers is an unusual and deeply thoughtful blend of memoir and speculative fiction that uses the arrival of a mysterious new species to explore grief, human nature, and the unsettling realization that the world keeps going even when your own world has changed forever.

A few months after the death of her mother, novelist Naomi Alderman installs a wildlife camera in the garden of her parents’ home. What it captures is something no one has seen before: a strange, badger-sized animal with a flat face and a long, trunk-like nose. Soon these creatures, called mimmoths, are appearing everywhere. They spread across the United Kingdom and then around the world, seemingly without explanation. They don’t behave like ordinary animals. They won’t take food from humans, they can’t be captured, and they seem to possess an intelligence and purpose of their own.

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Author Interview

Author Suzanne Junered discusses motherhood, identity, and the darkness behind Goodnight Monsters

In today’s author interview, Suzanne Junered discusses Goodnight Monsters, her unsettling novel about motherhood, identity, grief, and the disturbing thoughts we don’t always admit. When I reviewed Goodnight Monsters, I was struck by the novel’s unsettling exploration of motherhood, identity, and the thoughts we’re often afraid to admit we have. Through Lia’s fascination with death and decomposition, her complicated relationship with pregnancy, and her increasingly blurred line between fantasy and reality, Junered creates a story that is as psychologically disturbing as it is thought-provoking.

Suzanne Junered is the author of Goodnight Monsters, which releases today!

In this interview, she talks about the deeply personal experiences that shaped the novel, the unexpected origins of the Body Farm setting, and her desire to challenge the idea that there is one “right” way to experience motherhood. She also shares how her own struggles with grief, anger, and loss of identity found their way onto the page—and offers a glimpse at what she’s working on next.

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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.

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Author Interview

Author interview: Sarah Gailey on Make Me Better, cults, belonging, and healing

In today’s author interview, Sarah Gailey discusses the inspiration behind Make Me Better, including the novel’s themes of identity, belonging, cult psychology, climate anxiety, and the complicated pursuit of healing. In my recent review, I described the novel as an unsettling blend of literary fiction, psychological suspense, and horror that asks difficult questions about what people are willing to sacrifice for connection and certainty.

Author Sarah Gailey discusses the inspiration behind Make Me Better, including the novel’s themes of identity, belonging, cult psychology, and the search for healing. Image credit: Kate Dollarhyde

I had the opportunity to ask Gailey about the creation of Kindred Cove, the challenges of writing Celia’s emotional vulnerability, the appeal of high-control communities, and the literary influences that helped shape their work. We also discussed why stories about cults resonate so strongly today and what Gailey hopes readers will take away from the novel’s exploration of wellness culture, manipulation, and transformation.

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Author Interview

Interview: Leslie Baird on Salomé, literary suspense, and the allure of charisma

Leslie Baird’s debut novel Salomé is a hypnotic blend of literary suspense, psychological intrigue, and gothic atmosphere, following a young American woman who becomes entangled in the orbit of a charismatic French family and the enigmatic woman at its center. When I reviewed the novel, I was struck by its dreamlike sense of place, its exploration of longing and vulnerability, and its willingness to venture into stranger, more unsettling territory than readers might expect. In this interview, Baird discusses the cult-like power of charisma, the French landscapes that inspired the novel, the emotional foundations beneath its mystery, and why she is drawn to stories that take risks and embrace the unexpected.

Author Leslie Baird discusses the inspirations behind her debut novel Salomé, including cult charisma, the allure of France, and her fascination with the ways people become vulnerable to mystery and belonging.

Q: Courtney is drawn into Salomé’s world almost immediately. Were you interested in exploring why intelligent, perceptive people can still be captivated by charisma and mystery?
A: I’m fascinated by cults. Not only organized groups, but how even something as ubiquitous as marketing copy can leak over into cultiness. (Shout out to Cultish: the Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell.) How quick we are to align with something, as humans seeking a safe group. And there are so many levels to this, which is fun to tease out in writing. Courtney may be able to scoff at a person who subscribes to Marco’s vitamin MLM subscription, but wasn’t she just as naive when a pretty French woman paid attention to her?

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Book Reviews, Find Your Next Read

Vervain Hollow by Catriona Silvey: A haunting cult novel about addiction, belonging, and the price of escape

Sometimes the most unsettling horror novels aren’t about monsters lurking in the dark—they’re about the things we desperately want, even when we know they’ll destroy us. In Vervain Hollow by Catriona Silvey, a burned-out cult, a charismatic leader who may never have been human, and a young woman unable to let go of the power she once possessed combine to create one of the most compelling and emotionally complex horror novels I’ve read this year.

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Two years ago, Laura escaped Vervain Hollow after the sprawling house burned to the ground with its enigmatic leader trapped inside. Since then, she’s returned to a normal life, but “normal” isn’t the same thing as healing. She still longs for Vervain and the extraordinary power he shared with his followers. When her former friend Aliyah contacts her with shocking news—that another former acolyte has returned to the hollow after receiving a message from Vervain himself—Laura sees only one possibility. Somehow, he’s still alive.

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Book Reviews, Find Your Next Read

Obstetrix by Naomi Kritzer is a chilling cult thriller that feels uncomfortably plausible

Some dystopian novels rely on elaborate worldbuilding to make their horrors believable. Obstetrix by Naomi Kritzer doesn’t need to. Its premise is terrifying precisely because it feels only a few steps removed from reality, taking current political and religious extremism to their logical, ugly conclusion. The result is a tense, claustrophobic thriller about bodily autonomy, fanaticism, and survival that never overstays its welcome.

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I’m a sucker for a good cult novel, so this one was right up my alley. There’s something endlessly fascinating about the power dynamics inside insular religious communities, especially the relationships among women forced to survive within those systems. Kritzer taps into that fascination immediately. The novel is brief and concise, but it uses every page effectively, building constant tension as Doctor Liz navigates a nightmare situation with no safe options.

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