April Horror Round-Up

This Skin Was Once Mine and Other Disturbances - Eric LaRocca (Titan Books) *Pick of the Month*

It seems like anytime LaRocca has a new book it shoots up to the top of that month’s must-read list. While we are waiting for an upcoming television project and 2025 new novel, we got a book incredibly similar to his 2022 effort, They Were Here Before Us: A Novella in Pieces. This, like that previous book, is actually a series of short stories, or novellas or novelettes, that stick together on a shared theme, rather than a unitary novel. This Skin Was Once Mine has one, deceptively simple observation: people hurt others in their attempt to heal. The first story in the book is a rather shocking parable featuring child abuse, something LaRocca acknowledges with a page-long content warning at the beginning fo the book asking readers to take a walk and consider whether or not they are in the right headspace to read something like this. LaRocca’s books are upsetting, to say the least, but going in with that knowledge allows you to take the plunge with intentionality: you wait until you’re ready. All four stories that make up this book are fabulous and emotionally devastating, each with a haunting quality that makes them linger in the back of your mind as a corollary to painful memories that float in the background of our literary experiences. I am unsure how LaRocca is able to maintain the quality of his work with the speed of his output, but these short, pithy, and explosive books have completely changed the horror world in just a few short years.

White Horse - Erika T. Wurth (Flatiron Books)

White Horse is a popular novel by indigenous horror writer Erika T. Wurth that establishes a type of  “urban Indian” neo-noir set in Denver and the outskirting rural areas, both impacted by generations of anti-indigenous land theft and policies. We follow Kari James, whose mother disappeared two days after she was born and only returns in the form of spectral visions James begins witnessing after receiving a discarded piece of Jewelry. She sets out to find out what exactly happened to her mother, which creates a parallel narrative about the forgotten victims of the FBI’s war on the American Indian Movement (AIM). A horror story told through classic paperback mystery tropes, White Horse is an easy read that tries its best to excavate the political history of indigenous power movements (with uneven success). 

Midnight on Beacon Street - Emily Ruth Verona (Harper Perennial)

Emily Ruth Verona’s debut novel may be the most readable book so far this year: a fun (however, eventually bloody) story about a teen babysitter, her horror movies, and her panic disorder. The book is set in an indistinct early 90s suburb, where a young mother entrusts her kids to a teenage babysitter (and her boyfriend) while she, once again, tries to have a normal dating life. The events have some escalating intruders, cast against the stories the kids tell about a poltergeist causing mild mayhem around the home. The characters are lovable and familiar, the plot is perfectly paced and concise in its prose, and it even injects a fair bit of cultural Judaism into the family home (Jewish horror books are few and far between). Highly recommended for those who plan on reading on the beach this summer. (I would also note that this is a steal at $1.99 on Kindle)

Ultrasound - Conor Stechshulte (Fantagraphics)

Ultrasound kind of came and went without much American fanfare, despite a movie (now streaming on Hulu) that rendered the prose and images rather accurately. The book follows a man who was caught in a stranger’s house after a flat tire, recruited to sexually engage with a lonely wife, and then was caught by what he believed was an ensuing pregnancy. This is only the very beginning for what devolves into a psychotropic nightmare edging into a speculative fiction of madness designed to make us question our own sanity. The book is itself as perfectly balanced as you can get, with clear and compelling storytelling that exceeds the bounds of the normal narrative models of science fiction. This is an engaging entrypoint to the modern world of alternative SF comics, and it's wonderful to see Fantagraphics reproduce it in this rich hardback volume.