Tag: Raw Dog Screaming Press

Beyond the Bounds of Infinity – Vaughn A. Jackson & Stephanie Pearre (editors)

I have a weird relationship with anthologies. I usually find my way to them because they include a story by an author I love that I can’t find anywhere else. If I’m lucky, I find another couple of stories to enjoy, then drag myself through the rest. By the end, I decide it wasn’t worth the effort. Until the next time a favourite author is included in one.

It’s Mary SanGiovanni’s fault that I’m here. I’ve loved everything I’ve ever read of hers and couldn’t pass up the opportunity to read something new. It didn’t surprise me that I loved her contribution to this anthology. What did surprise me was that I didn’t find a bad one in the bunch!

Sure, I enjoyed some more than others but I didn’t dislike any! I don’t know if that’s ever happened before. It was actually difficult to pick my favourites. In the order you’ll find them in the book because they’re all so different and I can’t rank them…

Fractures of Her Reflection by Amanda Headlee

If Dava doesn’t tap her bedroom door three times, bad things will happen. Her therapist doesn’t understand this.

The horror when people with preconceived ideas don’t trust your judgement about what your reality looks like. When professionals believe that their expert opinion trumps your lived experience. When validation comes at a cost.

“Does this have something to do with awakening?”

Effigies of Monstrous Things by Pedro Iniguez

Mario just wants his kids to be able to live in a home without mould. It’s clear his landlord isn’t going to fix the problem so Mario has decided to investigate for himself.

The horror when, no matter how hard you try, you’re stuck in a loop. Of being a single parent and doing your very best but not being able to get ahead. The illusion of safety. The injustice when people in authority abuse their power.

“The sculpture is nigh complete…”

Cracks by Mary SanGiovanni

Billy shows his classmates the rock he found in the woods. It’s a pretty rock. His classmates also like looking at the rock.

The horror of being the only one who can truly see what’s going on, understanding the gravity of it and knowing that the someone who needs to do something about it is you.

“Don’t make it harder to play the games.”

I am so glad I read this anthology. I have renewed hope for the ones my favourite authors will make me read in the future.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Raw Dog Screaming Press for the opportunity to read this anthology.

Rating: 5 out of 5.

Once Upon a Blurb

Welcome to a world of horror viewed through a kaleidoscope lens. Embark on a journey to untangle the writhing tendrils of human terror in a dimension where the possible and impossible blend; an unstable realm where comfort can be found in the coldest pits, and dark gods feast upon the sweetest suffering, where infernal sounds birth silent letters that drift along midnight shores and the unexplained lurks beneath crumbling urban structures. Step over the edge of what you think you know, and find yourself … Beyond the Bounds of Infinity!

Featuring stories by L. Marie Wood, S.A. Cosby, Jessica McHugh, and Mary SanGiovanni alongside newer voices like Cassius Kilroy, Jessica L. Sparrow, and Vicky Velvet, Beyond the Bounds of Infinity offers a collection of weird fiction and cosmic horror stories that are diverse down to the cellular level. From Taíno folk horror to the horror of identity in a world that just doesn’t understand, from cozy to apocalyptic, and everything in between, let these authors show you what fear really is, and what it means to them.

Are you brave enough to step into the madness that awaits within these pages?

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Girls From the County – Donna Lynch

If ghosts exist, perhaps this is how it happens. The marks of things that happen in a place never really go away, nor do the pieces of us we leave there.

Girls From the County explores dark truths: personal stories and those of young women the author grew up with, as well as rural legends and folklore. It’s about trauma and the illusion of safety. Given the subject matter, this was at times a difficult read.

I had a number of favourite poems but my top five were Drag, Plot, Girls From the County, Education, and Thirty-two Years (Eighteen Years Reprise).

The one that’s probably going to stay with me the longest, though, is Grave. While it’s the shortest poem in the collection, it certainly packs a punch.

She grew up and became a mortician

so that when he finally died

she could make sure.

Thank you so much to Raw Dog Screaming Press for the opportunity to read this book.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Once Upon a Blurb

This book is merely a record of dark events, the kind that you can sometimes move on from, yet can’t help but see in every old house, high school, or crumbling bridge.

In the county, eerie stillness can be mistaken for stagnation. In the county, rumination on pain and guilt can be confused with omens and curses. In the county, feelings of claustrophobia stem from understanding what the encroaching darkness brings with it.

You’ve heard of country girls, and city girls, but what of the forgotten girls from the in-between space of the county? Confronting the things too wild for urban areas, and too methodically malevolent for the countryside, girls from the county are often dismissed by popular narratives, left to solve riddles of grief and rage for themselves.

Known for weaving folk horror with confessional poetry, unflinching true crime approaches with myth and fable, contemporary appetites with gothic literature, award-winning author Donna Lynch has composed a lyrical reconstruction for readers to navigate the lives – and deaths – of girls from the county.

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