Malerman, Josh

These stories offer up a history lesson and guided tour of a severely troubled town. The writer-as-tour-guide is very clearly enjoying the trip, and it’s impossible not to revel in the dark glee.

Having read Bird Box will help, but essential worldbuilding is seamlessly interwoven in a narrative paired with enlightening flashbacks into Malorie’s childhood, making this a solid stand-alone. Malerman will no doubt add to his legions of fans with this title ripe for readers of any genre seeking an intensely thrilling ride.

Admirers of the bleakly lyrical à la Cormac McCarthy and Flannery O'Connor's gothic grotesque will find this appealing. [See Prepub Alert, 10/22/17.]

Bram Stoker Award winner Malerman (Bird Box) delivers a chilling collection of tales about a place that's likely to linger in the imagination, one that readers shouldn't plan on visiting.

Readers of weird, atmospheric fiction with a conspiratorial bent will enjoy Malerman's latest offering. [See Prepub Alert, 11/27/16.]

A good horror story lets the tension build slowly, eventually ending in a nail-biting crisis that is finally resolved by the novel's last page. Debut author Malerman, however, takes the pressure level from zero to 100 on page one and attempts to keep it there for the entire book. That extreme suspense becomes tedious after about 50 pages, and yet there are another 200-plus pages that the reader must get through. Malerman does attempt to add dimension to his protoganist by interspersing her backstory into the main plotline, but that addition only serves to make the peripheral characters more interesting than Malorie. With an anticlimactic ending, there is little reward here for the faithful reader who perseveres to the end.