The Rain Dancers

I've read a number of Greg Gifune novels over the last 25 years, including Apartment Seven, Savages, Midnight Solitaire, and Oasis of the Damned. I am staring to re-read a few of his books and wanted to begin with The Rain Dancers. The 77-page novella was originally published by Delirium Press in 2012, then reprinted by Dark Fuse in 2014. As of this writing, I believe the work is out of print.

The novella introduces readers to Will Colby, a New York college professor, and his wife Betty. The married couple are in a rural small town cleaning out an old house that was owned and occupied by Betty's deceased father. Gifune is a master of atmosphere, so the obligatory “one dark night” element rises to glorious fruition. As the two are finishing off a long day of cleaning and packing boxes, they are interrupted by a knock on the door. Will goes to answer and is met by Bob Laurent, an elderly man introducing himself as a close friend of Betty's. Hesitantly, Will invites the man inside.

Will excuses himself to inform Betty of their unexpected visitor. While she dolls herself up for unwanted company, Bob tells Will stories of the friendship he shared with Betty's father, a friendship that extended to Betty for many years. He goes as far as suggesting Betty called him “Uncle Bobbie”. When Betty arrives, Bob begins a physical and emotional recollection by reminding Betty of all the wonderful things they experienced in the house. Later, while Bob is in the bathroom, Betty confesses to Will that she has no idea who this man is.

The Rain Dancers is a potboiler brimming over with an intensity void of any gut-wrenching, explicit violence. Gifune's prose of “less is more” works effectively to build this novella into an emotional, creepy, and atmospheric narrative despite the lack of on-page horror. The author's engaging storytelling incorporates marital fears of unfaithfulness, complacency, and insecurity with a repressed childhood memory too disturbing to fully reveal. It's a masterful blend of secrecy and horror that only Gifune could create. This novella is a must everything – read, reprint, repost, make it relevant.

Conversations - The Book Graveyard

In this episode of Paperback Warrior: Conversations, our host joins forces with Nick Anderson of YouTube’s Book Graveyard to unearth a haunting treasure from 1953 — The Brooding Lake by Dorothy Eden. Originally published twice by Dell, this classic gothic novel drips with atmosphere, mystery, and psychological tension. Together, they explore what makes The Brooding Lake a true gothic masterpiece — from its stormy setting to its shadowy secrets — and put it to the ultimate test: Does it pass The Guide to Gothics checklist? Along the way, they draw uncanny parallels between Eden’s mid-century suspense and David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, revealing how both works blur the line between beauty and menace. Tune in for literary analysis, dark nostalgia, and a touch of the uncanny — all in one brooding conversation. Listen on any podcasting platform or stream below. You can also watch this as a video presentation HERE.

Listen to "Conversations - The Book Graveyard" on Spreaker.

Halloween - The Mad House

In 2023, I reviewed The Scream Factory, the first of a three-book series of young-adult horror novels centered in John Carpenter's Halloween universe. The series was published by Berkley in 1997-1998 in paperback format and authored by Kelly Reno using the pseudonym of Kelly O' Rourke. Halloween is my favorite horror series and my family just recently gifted me a Michael Myers-themed coffee mug. It reminded me to read more of this series, so I grabbed The Mad House, the third installment of the series. 

As I mentioned in my The Scream Factory review, this series ignores the entire Halloween movie franchise aside from the 1978 film. In the town of Haddonfield, life goes on despite the masked serial killer, Michael Myers, vanishing after being shot by his doctor, Sam Loomis. In The Scream Factory, Myers appeared once again in the sleepy midwestern town, stalking and murdering teenagers at a haunted house attraction. At the end of the book, Myers once again vanished. 

While these books can be read in any order and are considered stand-alone novels, each book is set one year apart. The Mad House begins with the book's protagonist, Christine, recalling her school newspaper article, “Good-bye Friends”, as an emotional story about the lives and accomplishments of several students who were murdered a year earlier in The Old Myers Place. It's now late summer, and Christine is meeting a fellow student named Eddie for a planned documentary he hopes to shoot.

Eddie explains to Christine that he plans on shooting his film at Smith's Grove Mental Hospital, the place Myers escaped when he turned age 21. Eddie says the ghost of a deranged doctor, Ernest Blackwell, still haunts the abandoned hospital. In this book, it is explained that Blackwell would often treat Myers and conduct various experiments on him. Eddie hopes he can capture the ghost on film as part of a documentary documenting haunted places in Illinois. 

The bulk of the book's narrative features Eddie, Christine, and a handful of other young people spending the night inside the abandoned mental hospital. Of course, Myers is living there, huddled in the hospital's basement waiting for his next killing cycle. Through the book's second half, Myers methodically kills the kids in different parts of the building. Eventually, Eddie and Christine do find the ghost of Blackwell, but it's not quite what they imagined.

I'm trying not to completely nerd out and drown you in Halloween film mythology, but there are a couple of interesting things happening in this slim paperback. 

This novel is the only instance where a character named Blackwell appears. He is absent from the film franchise and the other novels. Also, I found it interesting that Halloween: Resurrection film (2002) used a similar idea of filming in a location central to Michael Myers' past. Like that film, characters are often attempting to record events happening so they can sell the footage to prospective studios and producers. The Mad House predates Resurrection by five years. 

Also, I loved that the author used a laundry chute in one of the chase scenes. This had been used effectively eight years prior, in Halloween 5 (1989). It's a type of homage (I think). Interestingly enough, Halloween: H2O also used a similar device to escape the killer, but instead of a laundry chute it was a dumbwaiter. 

I questioned whether Reno had watched Halloween movies before writing The Scream Factory. Reading The Mad House, I know she hasn't. In this book, she has Myers tying victims to a hospital bed and then torturing them with electricity. Myers never “toyed” with victims like that. Also, there' a strange description of Myers with a deformed head, a plastic mask, and a rotted face. I felt like Reno was confusing Myers with Jason Voorhees (Friday the 13th). Reno also routinely has Myers voicing animal growls and howling to break free from a straitjacket. This isn't the Myers character. If I'm nitpicking, I'd also question Reno using “bullets” in a shotgun.

As a quick horror read, this is a very entertaining read. There's plenty of violence as bodies are impaled, stabbed, electrocuted, and run over through the book's 144 pages. There's also a side story of Blackwell's involvement with Myers and the atrocities that occurred at the hospital in years past. If you love a good horror story, then The Mad House is recommended. However, in terms of traditional Michael Myers characterization, this one is way off.

Bone Chillers #01 - Beware the Shopping Mall

Betsy Haynes authored nearly 100 paperbacks, mostly of juvenile and young-adult fiction. Her bestselling novel, The Great Mom Swap, was published in 1986 and adapted to a film in 1995. She authored the preteen series Taffy Sinclair and its spin-off, The Fabulous Five. Beginning in 1994, Haynes authored a ten-book series titled Bone Chillers, a juvenile horror title created by Harper to compete with the successful Goosebumps series written by R.L. Stine. The series was adapted into a 13-episode television show in 1996. Fans of the PW brand know I never shy away from a good story, no matter what genre or age level. I jumped on the debut Bone Chillers paperback, Beware the Shopping Mall.

In the first-person perspective, Robin begins her tale while being dropped off at the front entrance of the Wonderland Mall. On the drive over, Robin's mom explains that the mall was built over the old Mournful Swamp, a cursed place where three teenagers mysteriously disappeared. Robin would rather trade rumors of haunted swamps for the buzz of the mall's grand opening. 

Inside the mall, Robin and her friends begin the stroll through the new stores. Yet, it seems the same three kids are working all the stores. This is impossible considering that the stores are far apart, sometimes on different levels. Yet the kids are physically identical, other than the store-branded shirts they are wearing. By mid-morning, Robin notices that many of the kids she saw shopping in the mall now resemble mannequins strewn throughout the mall's shops. When her friends begin to disappear, Robin fears that they have secretly been transformed into mannequins!

There's something to be said for a good shopping mall novel. Oddly, it's almost its own sub-genre of horror and suspense. Here on the blog, we have obvious mall-themed books reviewed like Chopping Mall, The Mall, Hacking Mall, and the then novels that take partly take place in malls like Black Friday, Suburban Gothic, and Path to Savagery. 

Beware the Shopping Mall, at 150 pages, is a brisk, breezy read that has a central mystery that kept me interested throughout. Obviously, the connection from the haunted swamp to the new mall structure is paramount to the plot, but I felt the ending was a bit disappointing. Like clowns, mannequins are equally unsettling, and I felt like the author used that to her advantage. If you want a fun, all-ages horror story for an hour of enjoyment, then Beware the Shopping Mall is an easy recommendation.

Get the book HERE. 

The Exorcist's House

West Virginia native Nick Roberts has emerged as one of the most exciting voices in contemporary horror, blending the psychological depth of classic suspense with the visceral terror of modern supernatural tales. With 2022’s The Exorcist's House, Roberts leans into one of the genre’s most enduring tropes, the haunted house possession story.

After a prologue introducing the evil dwelling within this house, we join the action in 1994 in Southern Ohio where psychologist Daniel Hill is excited to be closing on the purchase of a thirty acre plot of land in rural West Virginia with his pregnant wife, Nora, and their teen daughter, Alice.

The house upon the farm hasn’t been upgraded since its construction in the 1940s, so contractors get to work modernizing the place for the Hill family. An old timer on the crew tells his fellow workers that the house used to be owned by a backwoods exorcist before experiencing an unsettling supernatural encounter.

Once the Hill family is occupying the house, they quickly determine that all the spookiness seems to be emanating from the basement, and the paperback doesn’t waste any time becoming seriously scary. In the cellar filled with cobwebs, there’s a small sealed door that is difficult to open. Our new homeowner, Daniel, is giddy and determined to find out what’s beyond the door because he hasn’t read as many cursed houses books as you and me.

The scares escalate throughout the novel with terror, possessions and explanations of how this poor family’s basement became a portal unleashing demons from hell. There are some really terrifying scenes that work because the characters are so vivid. No joke, this is one of the scariest books I’ve ever read.

The Exorcist’s House is a seriously frightening haunted house book that was so wildly popular that it spawned two sequels with equally terrifying online buzz. I look forward to diving into the next novel about the house, but I need to let my heart rate stabilize first. Recommended. Get the book HERE. 

The Sinister House of Secret Love #01

DC Comics flirted with the gothic romance/suspense genre with a couple of titles in 1971. The Dark Mansion of Forbidden Love, originally published in September/October 1971, ran four issues before abandoning the gothic romance feel for more of a horror anthology flavor under the new title Forbidden Tales of Dark Mansion. DC's other venture into the genre was The Sinister House of Secret Love, which also launched September/October 1971. Again, it ran four issues before abandoning the gothic romance tropes with its new title Secrets of Sinister House. I wanted to give The Sinister House of Secret Love (what a name!) a try, so I read the first issue.

This debut is titled “The Curse of the Macintyres”. It was written by Mary Skrenes, a veteran scripter that also contributed to The Dark Mansion of Forbidden Love, House of Mystery, House of Secrets, Young Love, and Detective Comics. The artwork is by the famed Don Heck, a talent that touched hundreds of comic titles during his illustrious career. 

In the opening pages, Rachel's father is dying. On his deathbed, he tells Rachel he has a formula that will make her rich, but he stresses that she hide his journal, go live with her cousin Blair, and to beware of the Macintyres Curse. Included in the first chapter is the initial meeting between Rachel and Blair at her father's funeral service, Blair's explanation that his wife died, and that he has a young son named Jamie. He asks that Rachel be the boy's tutor and she accepts.

Days later, as Rachel is traveling to Blare's dilapidated mansion, she receives ominous warnings from the train conductor and the coachman. Inside the mansion, Rachel meets Blare's dwarf cousin, Jamie, and the family maid. She's warned to never go to the third floor, which is a bold invitation in any gothic romance paperback. Eventually, Rachel learns that Blare may have a split personality and his sister may be a giant lunatic living upstairs.

The book's narrative features several attacks on Rachel, her romantic involvement with Blare, and the inevitable origins of the family's curse stemming from genetic deformity. I enjoyed the homage to The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and the gothic romance overtones that saturate nearly every page – new job, stranger in a strange land, atmosphere, supernatural rumors, the giant mansion, and of course, the vulnerable beauty striving to escape her newfound prison.

Lords of Twilight

I'm continuing my re-reading of the Greg Gifune bibliography. I've enjoyed and respected his novels and novellas for the past 25-years. Next on my list is Lords of Twilight. It was originally published by Dark Fuse in 2011 and now exists in a new Crossroads Press' Macabre Ink edition alongside the author's 2013 novella House of Rain. 

The main character is Lane Boyce, a former educator. Although the author doesn't offer explicit details, it is revealed in snippets that Lane had an alleged sexual relationship with a student. Whether he did or didn't, the incident led to Lane's formal dismissal as a professor and the upending of his marriage. In a type of self-imposed punishment, Lane moves to a small rural house in Edgar, Maine, an off-grid type of locale where he can become riddled in self-pity. But, things are weird in Edgar.

There's an early indication that something has invaded the town. It begins with cattle mutilation and the discovery of a local farmer's mysterious corpse. Later, three hunters appear at Lane's house with a frenzy of instructions, one of which is to load a shotgun and prepare. As government employees, the proverbial men-in-black, appear in the countryside, events begin to spiral out of control. Is Lane losing his mind in this off-the-grid frosty Hell or is something from another world inhabiting this small town?

Gifune shines when he reveals fragments of the story to readers. Often, his characters revel in emotional turmoil with undertones of loss, regret, and frustration. Along with weather elements, it is the characteristic of his writing. 

In Lords of Twilight, Lane is mentally traipsing a balance beam of what's real and unreal. That instability conveys to the readers, leaving much of the narrative as a foggy suggestion that readers can contemplate subjectively. Whether events are actually happening or simply figments of a character's imagination is the charm of Gifune's literary work and this novella is no different. Lords of Twilight is a captivating horror yarn (I think) or, at the very least, an unsettling descent into a man pushed from the rungs of relevancy. Regardless, it is a real masterpiece of the genre. Highly recommended. Get it HERE.