edited by Joyce Carol Oates ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 5, 2023
A bold collection of horror stories that flies in the face of both gender and genre conventions.
In this haunting new collection, edited by Oates, 15 women writers explore the manifold horrors of living (and dying) in a patriarchal society.
Divided into three parts—“You’ve Created a Monster,” “Morbid Anatomy," and “Out of Body, Out of Time”—this collection may initially appeal to readers eager for tales filled with vampires and werewolves, influences from beyond the grave, and gore, guts, and ooze. They will not be disappointed. However, the stories not only bleed across the categorical boundaries they have been assigned, but also expand the scope of what is terrifying about the body—living or dead, human or nonhuman—in the first place. Some stories lean into the visceral imagery typical of the body horror genre. In “Muzzle,” Cassandra Khaw explores the terrors of transforming from a human into a werewolf: feeling muscle, bone, teeth, and primal urges realigning inside oneself. Similarly, Aimee LaBrie’s “Gross Anatomy” and Valerie Martin’s “Nemesis” attend to the body's bumps, scabs, and pus (though both stories dip into ableist territory by presenting illness as a moral punishment). Other stories, however, like Margaret Atwood’s “Metempsychosis, or The Journey of the Soul,” focus more on existential terrors. Through the point of view of a snail whose soul has been ripped from its body and transplanted into that of a human woman, Atwood taps into the fears surrounding not only mortality, but also bodily misalignment, confinement, existential dread, and not being recognized for who you really are. “To be female,” Oates writes in her introduction, “is to inhabit a body that is by nature vulnerable to forcible invasion, susceptible to impregnation.” In the pages that follow, not only men and offspring, but also the desires of the dead, the societal expectations of the living, powerful weapons, self-doubts, and new souls creep into the bodies of women characters, taking up space. Yet the women are not entirely powerless. In “Breathing Exercise,” Raven Leilani’s protagonist, Myriam, works to tease apart the criticism she faces for her performance art, the violence with which men threaten her, and her own relationship to her body and work as a Black woman artist. For Myriam, power, pain, fear, and vulnerability do not exist in static relationships to one another—nor do they in many of the stories in this collection.
A bold collection of horror stories that flies in the face of both gender and genre conventions.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9781636141374
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Akashic
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2023
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by Joyce Carol Oates ; edited by Greg Johnson
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by Colleen Hoover ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 18, 2022
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.
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New York Times Bestseller
The sequel to It Ends With Us (2016) shows the aftermath of domestic violence through the eyes of a single mother.
Lily Bloom is still running a flower shop; her abusive ex-husband, Ryle Kincaid, is still a surgeon. But now they’re co-parenting a daughter, Emerson, who's almost a year old. Lily won’t send Emerson to her father’s house overnight until she’s old enough to talk—“So she can tell me if something happens”—but she doesn’t want to fight for full custody lest it become an expensive legal drama or, worse, a physical fight. When Lily runs into Atlas Corrigan, a childhood friend who also came from an abusive family, she hopes their friendship can blossom into love. (For new readers, their history unfolds in heartfelt diary entries that Lily addresses to Finding Nemo star Ellen DeGeneres as she considers how Atlas was a calming presence during her turbulent childhood.) Atlas, who is single and running a restaurant, feels the same way. But even though she’s divorced, Lily isn’t exactly free. Behind Ryle’s veneer of civility are his jealousy and resentment. Lily has to plan her dates carefully to avoid a confrontation. Meanwhile, Atlas’ mother returns with shocking news. In between, Lily and Atlas steal away for romantic moments that are even sweeter for their authenticity as Lily struggles with child care, breastfeeding, and running a business while trying to find time for herself.
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-668-00122-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
by Liane Moriarty ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 10, 2024
A fresh, funny, ambitious, and nuanced take on some of our oldest existential questions. Cannot wait for the TV series.
What would you do if you knew when you were going to die?
In the first page and a half of her latest page-turner, bestselling Australian author Moriarty introduces a large cast of fascinating characters, all seated on a flight to Sydney that’s delayed on the tarmac. There’s the “bespectacled hipster” with his arm in a cast; a very pregnant woman; a young mom with a screaming infant and a sweaty toddler; a bride and groom, still in their wedding clothes; a surly 6-year-old forced to miss a laser-tag party; a darling elderly couple; a chatty tourist pair; several others. No one even notices the woman who will later become a household name as the “Death Lady” until she hops up from her seat and begins to deliver predictions to each of them about the age they’ll be when they die and the cause of their deaths. Age 30, assault, for the hipster. Age 7, drowning, for the baby in arms. Age 43, workplace accident, for a 42-year-old civil engineer. Self-harm, age 28, for the lovely flight attendant, who is that day celebrating her 28th birthday. Over the next 126 chapters (some just a paragraph), you will get to know all these people, and their reactions to the news of their demise, very well. Best of all, you will get to know Cherry Lockwood, the Death Lady, and the life that brought her to this day. Is it true, as she repeatedly intones on the plane, that “fate won’t be fought”? Does this novel support the idea that clairvoyance is real? Does it find a means to logically dismiss the whole thing? Or is it some complex amalgam of these possibilities? Sorry, you won’t find that out here, and in fact not until you’ve turned all 500-plus pages. The story is a brilliant, charming, and invigorating illustration of its closing quote from Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (we’re not going to spill that either).
A fresh, funny, ambitious, and nuanced take on some of our oldest existential questions. Cannot wait for the TV series.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9780593798607
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
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