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Holiday Gift Guide 2022: Horror for the Holidays
The holidays are the best time to read horror, in our opinion. Whether you’re looking for fiction or nonfiction, we have your one-stop-shop for horror fans below.
Posted by Quirk Books Staff
Cruisin’ for Cryptids: J. W. Ocker’s Road Trip Tips for The United States of Cryptids
Maybe you’re lucky enough to live in a town where bigfoot is sighted so often you need bigfoot crossing signs. Or a town with a lake so well-stocked that every cast yields reptilian monsters. Or one where midnight visits from flashlight-headed pterodactyls and woman-faced wolves are common. But chances are you don’t. Cryptids—those beasts that science doesn’t (yet) acknowledge but so many eye-witnesses do—don’t always come to you. Sometimes you gotta go to them.
And that means a road trip.
Posted by J. W. Ocker
Wanna Get Haunted?: A Look at Clay McLeod Chapman’s Inspiration for Ghost Eaters
We’ve all got our ghosts. Some of them simply stick around a lot longer than others. For my new novel, Ghost Eaters, the idea had been haunting the back of my brain for years.
Five-ish, to be (kind of) exact.
Posted by Clay McLeod Chapman
Bride of the Tornado
A young woman’s secretive midwestern town is engulfed by a mysterious plague of tornadoes every generation–and she must escape it before it claims her.
Stephen King’s The Mist meets David Lynch’s Twin Peaks in this inventive, mind-bending horror-thriller.
In a small town tucked away in the midwestern corn fields, the adults whisper about Tornado Day. Our narrator, a high school sophomore, has never heard this phrase but she soon discovers its terrible meaning: a plague of sentient tornadoes is coming to destroy them.
The only thing that stands between the town and total annihilation is a teen boy known as the tornado killer. Drawn to this enigmatic boy, our narrator senses an unnatural connection between them. But the adults are hiding a secret about the origins of the tornadoes and the true nature of the tornado killer—and our narrator must escape before the primeval power that binds them all comes to claim her.
Audaciously conceived and steeped in existential dread, this genre-defying novel reveals the mythbound madness at the heart of American life.
Posted by Christina Schillaci
The United States of Cryptids
Meet the monsters in our midst, from bigfoot to Mothman and beyond!
Welcome to the United States of Cryptids, where mysterious monsters lurk in the dark forests, deep lakes, and sticky swamps of all fifty states. From the infamous Jersey Devil to the obscure Snallygaster, travel writer and chronicler of the strange J. W. Ocker uncovers the bizarre stories of these creatures and investigates the ways in which communities embrace and celebrate their local cryptids. Readers will learn about:
• Batsquatch of Washington, a winged bigfoot that is said to have emerged from the eruption of Mount Saint Helens
• Nain Rouge of Michigan, a fierce red goblin that has been spotted before every major city disaster in Detroit
• Flatwoods Monster of West Virginia, a robotic extraterrestrial that crash-landed in rural Appalachia
• Lizard Man of South Carolina, a reptilian mutant that attacked a teenager in the summer of 1988
• Glocester Ghoul of Rhode Island, a fire-breathing dragon that guards a hoard of pirate treasure
• And many more!
Whether you believe in bigfoot or not, this fully illustrated compendium is a fun, frightening, fascinating tour through American folklore and history, exploring the stories we tell about monsters and what those stories say about us.
Posted by Christina Schillaci
Toil and Trouble
This celebration of forgotten magical women, from Salem to WitchTok, is a fascinating and empowering read for anyone interested in occultism or feminist history.
Meet the mystical women and nonbinary people from US history who found strength through the supernatural—and those who are still forging the way today. From the celebrity spirit mediums of the nineteenth century to contemporary activist witches hexing the patriarchy, women have long used magic and mysticism to seize the power they’re so often denied.
Organized around different approaches women have taken to the occult over the decades—using the supernatural for political gain, seeking fame and fortune as spiritual practitioners, embracing their witchy identities, and more—this book shines a light on underappreciated magical pioneers, including:
• Dion Fortune, who tried to marshal a magical army against Hitler
• Bri Luna, the Hoodwitch, social media star and serious magical practitioner
• Joan Quigley, personal psychic to Nancy Reagan
• Marie Laveau, voodoo queen of New Orleans
• Elvira, queer goth sex symbol who defied the Satanic Panic
• And many more!
Posted by Christina Schillaci
