“Rocky Mountain Gothic” by Ev Datsyk – 2.8
Augur Literary Society, #8.3 November 2025 In an unnamed mountain town bordered by dense forest, a class of second graders is supernaturally summoned into the woods during recess. The forest…
“The Threads That Never Go Slack”: Continuity, Grief, and the Archive of Song in E.M. Linden’s “The Tawlish Island Songbook of the Dead” – 4.0
A Formal Academic Literary Review I. Introduction E.M. Linden, a speculative fiction writer from Aotearoa New Zealand, has established a recognizable voice at the intersection of literary and genre fiction—a…
“The Tawlish Island Songbook of the Dead” by E.M. Linden – 4.0
PodCastle, Episode 879, February 2025 The dead of Tawlish Island watch from the shore as the last thirty-seven living inhabitants evacuate their remote, failing community. The freshwater has gone brackish,…
“Worlds Over The Edge” by Caleb Coy – 3.4
Ember Journal, 2025 Rila stands at a seaside bluff, methodically hurling marbles into the ocean below. Each one vanishes over the edge with a small clatter on the rocks —…
“Chlorophilia” by Mike Thorn & Miriam Richer – 3.1
Augur Literary Society, #8.3 November 2025 This unsettling epistolary horror story unfolds through a series of recovered dark web messages, framed as evidence submitted to a district attorney investigating a…
Conversations with You by Teresa Milbrodt – 2.6
Baffling Magazine, Issue 5 April 2025 This poignant short story explores grief, memory, and the different ways people preserve connections to those they’ve lost. The narrator prepares eggplant parmesan using…
Pandora’s Formula by Hannah Yang – 3.6
Strange Horizons, April 2025 The narrator, Em, marries Minju—the girl who bullied her in middle school—on the same day that “Pandora’s Formula” is published online. This formula is a simple,…
Crisis Actors by Maddison Stoff and Corey Jae White – 4.4
Strange Horizons, 20 January 2025 In a dystopian near-future America, the Department for a Safe America employs “Watchers” who monitor surveillance feeds across the country, flagging suspicious activity to law…
Technical Subconscious: A Review of Laila Lalami’s The Dream Hotel (Novel) – 1.2
Introduction In The Dream Hotel (2025), Pulitzer Prize finalist Laila Lalami delivers a chillingly prescient exploration of the intersection between technology, state surveillance, and the human subconscious. Building on her…
Harmattan Season by Tochi Onyebuchi (Novel) – 1.1
Harmattan Season by Tochi Onyebuchi is a noir detective novel set in a French colonial city in West Africa during the dry Harmattan season. Plot Overview Boubacar, a down-on-his-luck "chercher"…