Horror Stories to Read in Your Basement This Summer
Happy Tuesday, shipmates! It’s Alex, and today we’re going a bit eerie with the new releases and recommendations. An odd choice in the summer, perhaps, but the summer slasher is a staple of film — and also, with the current heatwave, we’ve got the horrors of global climate change hanging over us anyway. Something a bit… chilling might be in order. Stay cool, stay hydrated, and definitely read these books in a cold, faintly creepy basement if that’s an option for you.
Bookish Goods
Friday the 13th Teddy Bear Magnetic Bookmarks by PeachyDreamsDesigns
Since we’re going a bit horror today, here’s a very appropriate — and adorable — bookmark. A perfect choice for Stephen Graham Jones’s new book, say. $5
New Releases
I Was a Teenage Slasher by Stephen Graham Jones
Late ’80s, small-town Texas already sounds like the setting for a horror movie; it’s the kind of place where everyone knows everyone else’s business, and people are doomed to play the roles their community decides they should have. Tolly Driver is a good kid with a lot of potential — and an outsider who is destined to kill for revenge.
Smothermoss by Alisa Alering
Nineteen-eighties Appalachia sounds about as much fun as ’80s small-town Texas, and in this case, two sisters are just trying to get through life, one caring for the home and the other living in her own fantasies. But when the community is rocked by a brutal double murder of female hikers, the sisters find themselves drawn into a crime that may not be entirely of this world, one where the mountain they live on has its own part to play.
For a more comprehensive list of new releases, check out our New Books newsletter.
Riot Recommendations
Keeping with our rather scary-for-the-summer theme, here’s a set of anthologies that play off each other perfectly.
The White Guy Dies First: 13 Scary Stories of Fear and Power edited by Terry J. Benton-Walker
The title of this anthology is both self-explanatory and delightful. Here’s a collection of horror staples like evil clowns, hedge mazes, horrible and bored rich children…but you already know one twist that’s coming to all the tropes.
The Black Girl Survives in This One edited by Desiree S. Evans
It’s time for the Black girls to have their turn as the final girl in this anthology, another one that turns tropes on its head.
See you, space pirates. If you’d like to know more about my secret plans to dominate the seas and skies, you can catch me over at my personal site.
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