As world leaders gathered across the globe this month to discuss a climate crisis that is rapidly heating the Earth, Billy Barr, 71, paused outside his mountainside cabin to measure snow.
His tools were simple, the same he’d used since the 1970s. A wooden ruler plunged into white flakes accumulating on his snow board — an old freezer door affixed to legs of plastic piping and wood — showed two inches. A section of snow that he slid into a metal bucket and hung from a scale a few paces away told him it was about 10 percent water, which did not surprise him. For years, that number hovered around 6 percent, but snow here has gotten wetter.
Tucked away in a side street near an urban park named Seoul Forest is a tea shop that barely seats 10. Here, you can’t talk. Your phone must be on silent. No shoes allowed.
The rules have one aim. Relax. Just space out.
Beneath the Gothic extravagance of its plot, the book’s success rests on a foundation of seamlessly integrated research and convincing, empathetic characterizations. Newman’s Karloff is a vulnerable, thoroughly decent figure who will go through many changes and emerge more human than before.
Horror is sometimes about the fun of asking "What if?" In The Ghost Tracks, Hurtado asks that question in every chapter, and then offers answers that dance between "Of course this is all real!" and "There's no way any of this is even remotely real." That back-and-forth is great, and it's a great reminder that one of the best things about horror fiction is its ability to twist our guts like a rollercoaster ride and make us ask for more.
What happens when you learn that the place you’ve called home for many years carries inside it a threat that puts your health and the health of those you love at risk? The answers that emerge and the conflict that comes close to tearing a community apart are both heartbreaking and redemptive, emotions that Ash Davidson skillfully weaves throughout her debut novel, Damnation Spring.
The reader gets to understand this Darkness as Thompson identifies the difference between running toward something with confidence and running away out of fear or avoidance. This is an important distinction as readers follow Thompson to rock bottom and then through his subsequent ascendance.