She's currently the fiction editor at StoryBottle Co. Her work has appeared in Waxwing, F(r)iction, Iron Horse Literary Review, Tales to Terrify, and elsewhere. She is the author of In the Woods They Wait. When she's not reading and writing, she's spending time with birds: the ones outside and the four parrots that live in her house.
At CrimeReads South tagged five powerful horror novels in which "the animal characters are given agency." One title on the list:
Kira Jane Buxton, Hollow KingdomRead about another novel on the list.
Speaking of The Incredible Journey, if it took place in the world of 28 Days Later, you’d get something like Kira Jane Buxton’sHollow Kingdom. A pet crow named Shit Turd narrates this bizarre but heartwarming zombie apocalypse story. The humans (or as ST calls them, Mofos) have all succumbed to a strange sickness. It’s making them violent and unrecognizable–literally, their body parts are falling off.
ST and his fellow pet, Dennis the dog, set out to find help for their owner, Big Jim. It looks like the Mofos might be beyond saving. But you know who else needs saving? All the pet cats and dogs and birds trapped in their zombified owners’ houses. Hilarious, devastating, disturbing, and gorgeously written, I seriously cannot recommend this book enough.
Hollow Kingdom is among Liberty Hardy's five top SFF novels centering older characters and E.B. Bartels's thirteen books about the joy in a life filled with non-human creatures.
My Book, The Movie: Hollow Kingdom.
The Page 69 Test: Hollow Kingdom.
--Marshal Zeringue
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