A haunting set of tales that balances horror with heart.
Foley offers a horror short-story collection that explores the shadows of everyday reality.
A middle-aged writer on retreat is haunted by predatory snowmen in “Snowman, Frozen.” In “Room 413, Silver Spruce Hotel,” a ghostly bride attaches herself to a visiting journalist. A tech support agent in “Beetles” becomes convinced that the titular insects are crawling under his skin. These are just a few of the paranormal tales in Foley’s compilation, each crafted to evoke a sense of dread amid the ordinary. From the haunting guilt of “Aneurism” to the demonic taxi of “Flowers Along the Seawall,” each story reveals how terror can manifest itself in the most banal moments. Across the collection, the author deftly delivers sharply drawn, multifaceted characters, whether a story is depicting a strained marriage (“The House Opposite”) or a man’s brief, grief-stricken vision of ghostly kids in “The Sound of Children Playing”: “Two of the swings were moving, leaping upward, shapes riding in the saddles. On the monkey bars, shadows seemed to tumble and flow.” Overall, the author’s attention to emotional nuance gives these chilling stories a rare tenderness, grounding surreal elements in believable emotion. The unnamed narrators of “Galen’s Closet” and “Emir” are especially memorable, rendering their accounts believable, even as the lines between reality and delusion begin to blur. Other entries forcing readers to question their own perceptions with the surreal language of “The Figure on the Sidewalk” and “An Effect of the Moonlight.” Most tragic of all are the doomed spirits of “Nineteen Sixty-Five Ford Falcon” and “The Ghost of Niles Canyon,” whose spectral suffering lingers long after the last page is turned. Foley doesn’t shy away from hard topics, either, confronting such concepts as the psychological aftermath of war with restraint and compassion. Some stories feel less developed than others—most notably, “On the Pier at Midnight” and “A Hitch”—but they are exceptions in an otherwise remarkable collection.
A haunting set of tales that balances horror with heart.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2025
ISBN: 9781803943404
Page Count: 258
Publisher: PS Publishing, Hornsea
Review Posted Online: Nov. 6, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Though it falters a bit under its own weight, this series still has plenty of fight left.
In this long-awaited fifth installment of Shannon’s Bone Season series, the threat to the clairvoyant community spreads like a plague across Europe.
After extending her fight against the Republic of Scion to Paris, Paige Mahoney, leader of London’s clairvoyant underworld and a spy for the resistance movement, finds herself further outside her comfort zone when she wakes up in a foreign place with no recollection of getting there. More disturbing than her last definitive memory, in which her ally-turned-lover Arcturus seems to betray her, is that her dreamscape—the very soul of her clairvoyance—has been altered, as if there’s a veil shrouding both her memories and abilities. Paige manages to escape and learns she’s been missing and presumed dead for six months. Even more shocking is that she’s somehow outside of Scion’s borders, in the free world where clairvoyants are accepted citizens. She gets in touch with other resistance fighters and journeys to Italy to reconnect with the Domino Programme intelligence network. In stark contrast to the potential of life in the free world is the reality that Scion continues to stretch its influence, with Norway recently falling and Italy a likely next target. Paige is enlisted to discover how Scion is bending free-world political leaders to its will, but before Paige can commit to her mission, she has her own mystery to solve: Where in the world is Arcturus? Paige’s loyalty to Arcturus is tested as she decides how much to trust in their connection and how much information to reveal to the Domino Programme about the Rephaite—the race of immortals from the Netherworld, Arcturus’ people—and their connection to the founding of Scion, as well as the presence of clairvoyant abilities on Earth. While the book is impressively multilayered, the matter-of-fact way in which details from the past are sprinkled throughout will have readers constantly flipping to the glossary. As the series’ scope and the implications of the war against Scion expand, Shannon’s narrative style reads more action-thriller than fantasy. Paige’s powers as a dreamwalker are rarely used here, but when clairvoyance is at play, the story shines.
Though it falters a bit under its own weight, this series still has plenty of fight left.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9781639733965
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Sharp writing, vivid characters, and puzzle box plotting bring the trilogy to a ringing conclusion.
A dark fantasy set on the Yale campus ends with a bang.
Galaxy “Alex” Stern of Lethe House, one of Yale’s storied secret societies, has been to hell and back. That was in Hell Bent (2023), the middle book in Bardugo’s Ninth House trilogy, where the secret societies wield not just temporal power but magic as well. Hell Bent ended with Alex and her friends rescuing her crush, mentor, and fellow Lethe officer, Daniel “Darlington” Arlington V, from eternal torment. One small wrinkle: The demon Golgarot used Alex’s blood to wedge a door open between Hell and New Haven, and his minions are slipping through. Also, one of the group has turned into a vampire, and Darlington is now half demon. “He’d given up some part of himself to preserve the rest of his human soul. He’d become both prisoner and warden.” As the final book opens, the exhausted crew are hunting yet another monster. They can’t keep this up forever; they will have to find a way to close the portal. Alex has the energetic, driven melancholy of the hard-boiled, dark fantasy heroine she is. She believes “magic is real, but safe is make-believe,” as her roommate puts it. An open hellmouth, a supportive scholar, a vampire whose story arcs precariously toward redemption, a gentleman fiend who gets literally horny when aroused, a California girl with rare supernatural powers who cracks wise as she fights fiends—the series has a lot in common with Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spawn, but Bardugo’s way with words and her keen social observation keep the book from feeling derivative. A demon’s classic New England house is decorated with “ruthlessly inoffensive watercolor seascapes”; Lethe’s board president “wore the new uniform of Wall Street: a dress shirt, khakis, and a fleece with a Yale Y embroidered over the heart, as if he were on his way to a hostile takeover followed by some light rock climbing.” Will Alex and her friends get the door shut without losing Darlington? Bardugo injects her protagonist with such a convincing mix of cynicism and hope that failure seems like a distinct possibility.
Sharp writing, vivid characters, and puzzle box plotting bring the trilogy to a ringing conclusion.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2026
ISBN: 9781250884312
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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