STEVE CARROLL WRITES

I have been on a bit of a folk horror kick recently . I have found it   to be a rich and fertile subgenre worthy of a deep dive. For anyone curious as   to what   this genre entails, I found the Wikipedia description to be   surprisingly on point (slightly edited by me): Folk horror  is a subgenre of horror ... that   uses elements of folklore to invoke fear in its audience. Typical elements   include a rural setting and   themes of isolation, religion, the power of nature,   and the potential darkness of rural landscapes. Many derive their horror from   the actions and   beliefs of people rather than explicitly supernatural elements;   the primary focus of the stories is often upon naïve outsiders coming up   against   these forces. I found out about  Revelator   through some online research into modern folk horror where it was near the top   of many lists. I was unfamiliar with Daryl Gregory, but ...

Nick   Cutter first came to my attention when researching the sub-genres of  body   horror and survival horror within the context of modern horror literature   at   large. His book The Troop was my introduction to his work and I was blown away.   Its plot hurtles forward and embraces both body horror and survival   horror   while achieving an escalating sense of dread and terror that becomes uncomfortably   difficult to endure. I count it among the top 5 best horror   reads I’ve encountered. I recently was researching recommendations for folk horror (do others do this?) and found a list of the best examples that listed Little Heaven near the top. So, it was with both excitement and not a small amount of trepidation that I waded into this one. In simple terms, the book is seemingly a mash-up of Lovecraftian cosmic horror, mixed with a fanatical religious cult clearly inspired by Jim Jones and his People...

Over the last few decades there have been some excellent examples of the effectiveness of combining horror or mystery plots with a coming of age/ bildungsroman   tale. Robert McCammon’s   Boy’s Life   is a great example, as is Dan Simmons’   Summer of Night.   Stephen King has done it a couple of times with great success, both in his novella,   The Body   (made into the movie   Stand by M e) and perhaps his most famous example,   IT . December Park   takes place over the course of a single year starting in the fall of 1993. Harting Farms is a small, quiet Maryland town in the grips of an increasing realization that they have become the hunting grounds for a predator who abducts and murders teens, labeled by the local media as The Piper. Our main character and narrator is 15-year old Angelo (Angie) Mazzone, the son of a local police officer investigating the abductions. At the beginning of the book, Angie and his tight-knit group of frien...

Green River Rising (1994)   by Tim Willocks What if the warden of a huge Texas penitentiary were to go insane and not only incite a riot, but keep its existence hidden from governing authorities in an attempt to allow it to escalate and run its course in order to cleanse itself?  And what if an unjustly convicted man, who is set to be released the next day after the riot begins, suddenly finds himself trapped inside?  And what if that innocent man’s love interest is in the prison’s infirmary and no one knows she’s there as the worst criminal elements in that prison population do everything possible to break into that infirmary to kill its dying patients and have their way with her?  Green River Rising  is a genuine epic in every sense of the word. Despite a single setting and a palpable sense of claustrophobia, the intertwining stories of the inmates and how they each factor int...