Gertrude Stein once wrote that "Considering how dangerous everything is, nothing is really very frightening." I think if Stein read these horror novels, she'd change her mind.
'The Reformatory'
Ryan Murphy, take note. Tananarive Due has written the "American horror story." Set in Jim Crow Florida of the 1950s, "The Reformatory" is a mesmerizing novel full of haunting twists and heartbreaking horrors. The story is about a Black family fighting (real) monsters with all the power they can manifest.
Gloria has always scoffed at her brother Robert's claims he sees ghosts, "haints." She even represses her own ability to see a person's future unraveling like "a ribbon" in her mind. After all, "there's worse things to worry about." On their way home from school one day, a white teenager tries to force himself on Gloria. Robert retaliates. He's sentenced to six months in the Gracetown Boys Reformatory.
At first glance, the reformatory looks bucolic. But "ugly is just beneath the surface." While Gloria does all she can to advocate for her brother's release, Robert slowly realizes his supernatural ability to conjure ghosts may be the only way to survive.
When a "corruption is big enough," says Miz Lottie, the siblings' guardian and one of the novel's most compelling characters, "it can be a 'haint' too" that, like a mirror, "shines yo' ugly back at you."
'The September House'
If you prefer your horror off-kilter, shockingly funny and bloody good, step inside the September House, where one month a year the walls bleed, the basement bursts with bad things and everything screams and moans in the night. Carissa Orlando has tucked a clever story about the horrors of domestic violence inside an ingeniously constructed haunted house novel.
