Saturday, December 03, 2016

Five top books about human horror

J.A. Rock is the author or coauthor of over twenty LGBTQ romance, suspense, and horror novels, as well as an occasional contributor to HuffPo Queer Voices. One of her five "favorite horror stories where the real danger is human, rather than paranormal," as shared at Tor.com:
The Wicked Girls by Alex Marwood

I’m a sucker for anything carnival-themed, but there are no evil clowns or funhouses of death here. Instead, The Wicked Girls follows two middle-aged women—Amber, a carnival cleaner, and Kirsty, a journalist—as they attempt to keep their separate, unremarkable lives under control. Until a chance encounter sets things spiraling toward disaster.

The book weaves back and forth in time, from the present to a childhood where Amber and Kirsty knew each other by different names. The two women are bound together by a horrible event: the long ago murder of a four-year-old, for which they were jointly convicted and served time in a juvenile prison before being released with new identities and a legal mandate never to contact each other again. Props to Marwood for her ability to make her leads by turns sympathetic and repellant, while casually offering mob mentality as an alternative villain in this story. What’s scarier—two allegedly murderous eleven-year-olds, or a gang of self-righteous townspeople hell-bent on vigilante justice? At times, it’s a toss up.
Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue