In BOYS IN THE VALLEY by Philip Fracassi, demonic possession spreads among the boys in a remote orphanage, resulting in nightmarish horror. The publisher ambitiously billed it as THE EXORCIST meets LORD OF THE FLIES, and the read pays off on its promise.

At St. Vincent’s Orphanage for Boys in the early 1900s, thirty boys live a hard life under the watchful eyes of a handful of priests. One boy, Peter, cares for the younger children as best he can and faces a difficult decision–whether to follow his heart to Grace, the young woman living at a neighboring farm, or into the priesthood under the guidance of Father Andrew.

One night, a posse led by the local sheriff arrives with a prisoner accused of unspeakable acts. When the man dies, his death releases an evil that spreads like disease, infecting the boys and splitting them into sides. Then the violence begins.

The novel rings with solid and straightforward old-school horror. Fracassi strikes a nice balance between character and pacing, keeping the story moving and steadily raising the stakes, especially at around the midpoint, when all hell breaks loose, and then the pages fly by. The characters are all likeable or at least sympathetic, kids you can root for and a few people you can enjoy loathing. The demonic kids are straight-up evil and offer chilling antagonists.

On a personal note, I had the opportunity to hang out with Fracassi at KingCon, and we had a blast talking shop for hours. I’ll be watching his career with interest, and I’m happy to recommend checking out his stuff.

In STOLEN TONGUES by Felix Blackwell, a young couple travels to a remote cabin, where they are terrorized by voices calling out in the night. The situation gets worse when the woman starts whispering back in her sleep. Originally a contest-winning story on Reddit.com’s horror community NoSleep, this horror novel delivers all the creeps and then some.

Stephen King once categorized horror as being horror (grotesque), gross-out (gore), or terror (chilling). He identified the third as being the most powerful, and I’d agree, as it taps into fear of the unknown, and it fires the imagination. The scares in STOLEN TONGUES almost entirely stem from this type of horror, and Blackwell pushes the pedal to the max.

The story starts with the couple being under siege at the cabin and escaping, only to discover the creature has followed them. The creature is pretty well drawn, with its own strange habits, customs, and lore. The effects it has on Faye, the protagonist’s fiancee, are beautifully creepy. I had a lot of fun with it, though it comes in for a very long landing that had me a little impatient, but that was just me, I’m a bit jaded.

I liked it so much I ended up picking up the prequel that Blackwell later wrote, titled THE CHURCH UNDER THE ROOTS, which goes even deeper into the weird lore. I liked that one a lot too.

Unfortunately, as far as I know, the author hasn’t written anything since then, and he said on a podcast that he has anxiety issues and that his sudden success gave him an extraordinary amount of stress. I can absolutely relate. Readers can be beautiful rays of sunshine or absolutely cruel. I know of one author whose second novel completely took off, only for him to suffer near collapse, and another who ended up quitting Big Five publishing and sticking with self-publishing under a pseudonym.

It’s unfortunate, as Blackwell is clearly a talented writer, but maybe he’ll return. Until then, I’d recommend these novels, which offer some great scares.

In Paddy Chayefsky’s ALTERED STATES, a brilliant young scientist obsessed with exploring the relationship between consciousness and matter undergoes a series of experiments with horrifying results. This is the novel that inspired the 1980 movie directed by Ken Russell. It’s even more fun to read this story than rewatch the classic movie.

Chayefsky is one of my favorite screen writers, giving us some of my favorite movies of the ’60s and ’70s: NETWORK, THE AMERICANIZATION OF EMILY, HOSPITAL, and then of course 1980’s ALTERED STATES. I loved the ideas in the movie so much that when I found out Chayefsky based it on a novel he’d written, I had to have it. The problem was the only copies available were used, and I have a massive allergy to mildew. Whereas I could spend hours in a used bookstore in my younger days and come out with armfuls of cheap gems, these days I can’t stand being in one for longer than 10 minutes. I obtained a few copies but couldn’t get through even a few pages, even after using every trick in the book to dry them out.

Fast forward to a week or so ago, and I learn they finally adapted the book to a Kindle version. What this means: Basically, the publisher scanned the paperback and created a Kindle file, resulting in some weird formatting issues. What it also meant: I finally got to read it.

In the novel, Eddie Jessup is a brilliant scientist obsessed with using various ancient drugs and sensory deprivation to cultivate hallucinations that he believes are actually primal memories, allowing him to regress farther and farther back to the original self, the first thought, the creation of the universe. What he ends up finding terrifies him. Emily, his wife, is far more practical, believing there is no ultimate truth and humans live with pain, and the way they truly live well is by loving others. These viewpoints clash frequently in the novel.

It’s a smart book by an obviously smart writer, packed with interesting ideas. Chayefsky was a far more gifted screenwriter than he was a novelist, resulting in long-winded expositions and monologues loaded with exclamation points. But the ideas are fantastic, smart, interesting–I look at ALTERED STATES the same way I did THREE-BODY PROBLEM, which honestly in my view was not well written as a dramatic narrative yet completely fascinating as a novel of ideas.

So, I’d recommend this one if you’re looking for something different and weird that punches you in the brain.

In WE USED TO LIVE HERE by Marcus Kliewer, a young woman welcomes a family into her home, as the man says he grew up in the house. The result is a nightmare of shifting reality. Creepy and crisply paced, this new horror novel was a lot of fun.

Eve and Charlie live in a big old house they recently purchased and intend to flip. Eve is an anxious people pleaser, Charlie tougher and more practical. When a family arrives one day asking to have a look around the house, as the man once lived there, Eve lets them in. Only, events cascade that prevent them leaving, and the longer they stay, the more reality itself seems to shift. Intermittent epistolary chapters establish a spooky lore around the house, giving us the impression that it is not just a house.

Apparently, the novel started as a series on Reddit back around 2014, and it was so popular it was eventually fleshed out as a novel. My short review is I loved the read, though the last act wasn’t as strong as I would have liked as it doesn’t quite pay off on all the strong elements.

What I liked: Eve and Charlie are very likeable characters, the lore around the house provokes a sense of wonder and by the end makes sense, the writing has a page-turning pace, and there are plenty of little creepy moments that never feel kitchen-sinked. The mystery really propels the story, reminding me of novels like 14 by Peter Clines and HOUSE OF LEAVES by Mark Danielewski. What I didn’t: The last act is solid but rolls out as fairly conventional, not quite paying off the numerous questions raised earlier in the story. Which would be fine if the lore and those questions were in the background, only the story really leans into it.

All told, this jaded horror reader closed the covers a very happy camper. WE USED TO LIVE HERE is a super impressive debut and a distinctive addition to horror.

Alex Grecian’s RED RABBIT turned out to be one of my favorite horror reads during an explosive year for quality horror.

The publisher synopsis promises a tale of a posse hunting a woman wanted for practicing witchcraft in the Old West. I love horror and I love Westerns, so I thought I’d give it a shot. I ended up reading a story that was far richer and more imaginative than the simple tale I expected.

The novel mostly focuses on a widowed schoolteacher who connects with two cowboys and a witch hunter named Old Tom, who is en route to a small town to collect the bounty for killing a local witch. Together with a mute child named Rabbit, they all set out for the town, only to run into numerous obstacles in what is a somewhat meandering and quite episodic plot; the Old West, it seems, is a dangerous place and very haunted.

I loved the imaginative integration of so many horror elements into the Western genre. Demons, witches, ghosts, cannibals, and other horror elements are expertly woven by Grecian into the story as a kind of haunted Americana, and very convincingly too, providing an alternate history of sorts where monsters are real and just another hazard in the American landscape. Part of the charm is each is given an interesting back story or folkore-ish element. The demon in particular is very well done, as is the “hunter.” The horror elements really shine. They’re super well done, and they make the story surprising and feel driven by its own odd logic.

On the downside, there are a lot of characters, and we never really get too deep into any one of them, making it difficult to really empathize all that much. That may bother some readers. As each character was otherwise very well drawn and interesting, I personally didn’t mind it; I found them all quite memorable, and the emotional distance I wound up feeling from them didn’t bother me, as there was so much other stuff going on that kept me turning pages.

Overall, RED RABBIT is a solid Western and a terrific horror novel. Recommended for fans of both looking for something different.