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For Toil and Trouble, our book, we did a deep dive into research of the witch. And since the witch is a mainstay of this time of year, we thought it would be fun to do a little bit of a different episode today. We watched the first two episodes of Disney Plus’s Agatha All Along.
NEWS: We have a Bookshop.org shop now! Find all of our favorite books at our shop–and help out small businesses.
More info about the Canadian museum exhibit here: https://www.orillia.ca/en/visiting/exhibits.aspx?_mid_=28224 (Opening October 5 until December 20, 2024 - Temporary Exhibit)
Recommended in this episode: We Used to Live Here by Marcus Kliewer and Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix (available for preorder)
UP NEXT: An interview with Jenny Keifer. Her new book This Wretched Valley is available on our Bookshop!
Buy our books here, including our newest Toil and Trouble.
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In this episode, we are discussing Christa Carmen’s meta Gothic novel The Daughters of Block Island with special guest Crystal O’Leary-Davidson.
Crystal O’Leary-Davidson, writing as C. O. Davidson has published fiction in PseudoPod, Cemetery Gates, and in anthologies, most recently Hard to Find: An Anthology of New Southern Gothic. Her story, “The Mark,” in Vastarien, was recognized by editor Ellen Datlow in her anthology of The Best of Horror of the Year, Vol. 15 as one of the works of “notable dark fiction in 2022.”
An English professor at Middle Georgia State University, she teaches classes in the Gothic, the Weird, and slasher horror films, and she co-edited a book of critical essays, Monsters of Film, Fiction, and Fable. Currently she is writing on the American mall in teen horror.
Davidson serves on the board of Broadleaf Writers, and is one of the founding members of the Atlanta Chapter of the Horror Writers Association.She makes her home in Georgia amongst the pine trees with her husband, the novelist Andy Davidson, and their clowder of beloved cats.
NEWS: We have a Bookshop.org shop now! Find all of our favorite books at our shop–and help out small businesses.
Recommended in this episode: B.R. Myers’s A Dreadful Splendor and I Saw the TV Glow
UP NEXT: a very special Halloween episode!
Buy our books here, including our newest Toil and Trouble.
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About The Unmothers: After the death of her husband, journalist Marshall is sent to the small town of Raeford to investigate a clearly ridiculous rumor—that a horse has given birth to a human baby. As she's pulled deeper into the town and its guarded people, she realizes Raeford may be harboring more dark secrets than she expected.
NEWS: We have a Bookshop.org shop now! Find all of our favorite books at our shop–and help out small businesses.
Recommended in this episode: The Night Guest by Hildur Knútsdóttir
UP NEXT: The Daughters of Block Island with special guest Crystal O’Leary-Davidson
Buy our books here, including our newest Toil and Trouble.
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Leslie J. Anderson has spent much of her life riding, training, and caring for horses. Her collection of poetry, An Inheritance of Stone, was nominated for an Elgin Award. She has a master’s in creative writing from Ohio University and lives in Ohio with her family.
The Unmothers is her debut novel.
NEWS: We have a Bookshop.org shop now! Find all of our favorite books at our shop–and help out small businesses.
UP NEXT: The Unmothers
Buy our books here, including our newest Toil and Trouble.
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Joyce Carol Oates’s story “The Long-Legged Girl” (collected in Night-Gaunts) is part horror story, part cozy mystery…after all, the plot of the story revolves around a teapot. That tea contains poison, of course, but the sentiment is there nonetheless. Our story begins as a frustrated housewife hosts her professor-husband’s young, gorgeous, and yes, long-legged student at their home.
NEWS: We have a Bookshop.org shop now! Find all of our favorite books at our shop–and help out small businesses.
Recommended in this episode: I Was a Teenage Slasher by Stephen Graham Jones and Hangsaman by Shirley Jackson
Bonus Recs: Let Me Tell You and Come Along With Me
UP NEXT: Interview with Leslie J. Anderson (The Unmothers)
Buy our books here, including our newest Toil and Trouble.
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Join Mel and Lisa as we discuss Tananarive Due’s The Reformatory. When 12-year-old Robert Stephens is sent to Gracetown School For Boys, a reformatory, he finds himself in a nightmare. Like many children in Gracetown, Florida, he has a special ability to see ghosts, a “talent” which the warden exploits, charging Robbie with the task of getting rid of the “haints” of the boys who died because of the warden’s cruel treatment.
NEWS: We have a Bookshop.org shop now! Find all of our favorite books at our shop–and help out small businesses.
Recommended in this episode: Stephen Graham Jones’s I Was a Teenage Slasher and Julia Alvarez’s The Cemetery of Untold Stories
UP NEXT: “The Long Legged Girl” by Joyce Carol Oates (collected in Night-Gaunts)
Buy our books here, including our newest Toil and Trouble. -
Join Lisa and Mel as they discuss Lora Senf’s The Clackity. Young Evie lives with her aunt in Blight Harbor–a seemingly quiet small town where everyone knows each other and looks out for each other. There’s just one small problem: it is the seventh most haunted town in America. Nearly everywhere you go, there are ghosts. Most are friendly. Still, there are some places everyone avoids. Like the abattoir. But now Evie must go there to save her aunt, who has gone missing.
NEWS: We have a Bookshop.org shop now! Find all of our favorite books at our shop–and help out small businesses.
Recommended in this episode: Catriona Ward’s Looking Glass Sound
UP NEXT: The Reformatory by Tananarive Due
Buy our books here, including our newest Toil and Trouble.
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We have a bookshop.org shop set up. Now you can shop for all of your favorite horror books by women. You’ll find Lisa's books, Mel’s books, and the books you hear about on this podcast. Plus, bookshop helps small bookstores.
Find all of our favorite books at Bookshop.org shop now!
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Mothers come in all shapes and sizes. Some are good, caring, and loving. And some are a bit more complicated. Sometimes it feels like a mother can be out to absolutely destroy your world–the mother at the heart of Gwendolyn Kiste’s story “Your Mother’s Love is an Apocalypse” (from the Mother Knows Best anthology) is of the latter ilk. Kiste explores the difficult mother-daughter relationship and asks the question: when does the responsibility of the daughter to take care of the mother end?
NEWS: We have a Bookshop.org shop now! Find all of our favorite books at our shop–and help out small businesses.
Recommended in this episode: Simone St. James’s Murder Road and the anthology Mother Knows Best (which includes the story “Your Mother’s Love is an Apocalypse”)
UP NEXT: Lora Senf’s The Clackity
Buy our books here, including our newest Toil and Trouble.
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SPOILERS ABOUND! This novel contains a TWIST you don’t want to ruin, so listen at your own risk.
Vesper Wright left home at eighteen to escape her family, who has been entrenched in a religious cult community for decades, and she hasn’t looked back. That is, until she gets a wedding invitation for her childhood best friend’s marriage to her high school love. She doesn’t know who sent the invitation or if she is even welcome back home, but she finds that curiosity is too overwhelming and decides she has to attend. Whoever said you can’t go home again must not have had such a toxic upbringing…
Recommended in this episode: T. Kingfisher’s What Feasts at Night
UP NEXT: “Your Mother’s Love is an Apocalypse” by Gwendolyn Kiste (the last story in the anthology MOTHER KNOWS BEST, which includes Lisa Kroger’s own story “Almonds”) Buy the anthology at your favorite local bookstore or online here.
Buy Toil and Trouble here!
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Tananarive Due’s “Summer” (from her story collection Ghost Summer) is set in her fictional town of Gracetown, Florida, where the humid and murky swamps hide bodies and demon leeches. It’s not a place to raise a baby–or maybe it is.
Recommended in this episode: Shirley Jackson’s Sundial and Netflix’s Bridgerton
UP NEXT: Rachel Harrison’s Black Sheep
Buy Toil and Trouble here!
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Sisters Anna and Jennie live in a big house right on the Chicago river, where they are dealing with the grief following the aftermath of a family tragedy and the dead bodies that keep floating to the surface of the water. So join us as we discuss Cynthia Pelayo’s Forgotten Sisters, a novel that is part ghost story, part fairy tale, and part real-life Chicago history.
Recommended in this episode: Abigail
UP NEXT: Tananarive Due’s “Summer”
Buy Toil and Trouble here!
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Cynthia Pelayo is a Bram Stoker Award® winning and International Latino Book Award winning author and poet. She is the author of Children of Chicago, The Shoemaker’s Magician, Loteria, Santa Muerte, The Missing, and Poems of My Night, all of which have been nominated for International Latino Book Awards. Poems of My Night was also nominated for an Elgin Award. Her collection of poetry, Into the Forest and All the Way Through explores true crime, that of the epidemic of missing and murdered women in the United States. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism, a Master of Science in Marketing, a Master of Fine Arts in Writing, and is a Doctoral Candidate in Business Psychology. Cynthia was raised in inner city Chicago, where she lives with her husband and children.
To learn more about her visit: www.cinapelayo.com and follow her on Instagram @cynthiapelayoauthor and TikTok @cynthiapelayoauthor
UP NEXT: We discuss Pelayo’s novel Forgotten Sisters!
Buy Toil and Trouble here!
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If you ever thought to yourself, “I wish Beauty and the Beast had aliens in it,” then today’s story is for you. In her short story “Beauty,” Tanith Lee takes the classic fairy tale out of the castles and forests and into the stars.
Recommended in this episode: Ann Patchett’s Tom Lake
UP NEXT: Interview with author Cythia Pelayo
Buy Toil and Trouble here!
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The mysterious Velkwood Vicinity is an occult and paranormal marvel, occupying the interest of scientists and conspiracy theorists alike. But for three friends, Talitha, Brett, and Grace, the Velkwood Vicinity is their painful past. It’s the neighborhood they grew up in, and where their families still live–as ghosts. But now, Talitha returns, hoping for answers and maybe closure. The past is never really dead, though, and it may be more than she bargained for.
Recommended in this episode: The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo
UP NEXT: Tanith Lee’s short story “Beauty”
Buy Toil and Trouble here!
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Join Lisa and Mel as we talk with author Gwendolyn Kiste about her newest novel, The Haunting of Velkwood.
Gwendolyn Kiste is the three-time Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Rust Maidens, Reluctant Immortals, Boneset & Feathers, Pretty Marys All in a Row, and The Haunting of Velkwood. Her short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in outlets including Lit Hub, Nightmare, Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, CrimeReads, Tor Nightfire, The Lineup, and The Dark. She's a Lambda Literary Award winner, and her fiction has also received the This Is Horror award for Novel of the Year as well as nominations for the Premios Kelvin, Ignotus, and Dragon Awards. Originally from Ohio, she now resides on an abandoned horse farm outside of Pittsburgh with her husband, their excitable calico cat, and not nearly enough ghosts. Find her online at gwendolynkiste.com
Purchase The Haunting of Velkwood here.
Buy Toil and Trouble here!
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This episode is a little different from our usual format, but we promise you'll love it. It's all about book recommendations and what Mel and Lisa are loving right now.
UP NEXT: An interview with author Gwendolyn Kiste!
Buy Toil and Trouble here!
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A rogue adventurer meets a woman with snakes for hair, and he falls under her seductive spell. Luckily, a friend gives our hero a heads up: don’t look in her eyes for that leads only to certain doom. No, we aren’t talking about the legend of Perseus and Medusa. This is a space adventure story set on Mars, and written by C L Moore.
Recommended: Starling House and Never Whistle at Night
UP NEXT: A recommendation episode!
Buy Toil and Trouble here!
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Kelly Link’s “Stone Animals” begins with an unspoken question, immediately throwing readers into an ambiguous but nightmarish journey as a family moves into a new home, where nothing is as it should be. Rabbits are taking over the yard. The children are eating grass and complaining of haunted items. And the husband never wants to come home. But is it really a haunted home? Or has this family made it that way by moving their own baggage into this contested domestic space?
Recommended in this ep: Carissa Orlando’s The September House; The Haunting of Velkwood by Gwendolyn Kiste
UP NEXT: C.L. Moore’s “Shambleau”
Buy Toil and Trouble here!
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What Moves the Dead is T. Kingfisher’s retelling of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher.” More than that though, it’s the tale of Alex Easton, a retired soldier, who visits their dying friend, Madeline, at her family manor. Something very sinister is going on, and it’s up to Alex, along with their newfound friends, a mycologist and a doctor, to figure it out before it’s too late.
Recommended in this episode: The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno Garcia
UP NEXT: Kelly Link’s “Stone Animals”
Buy Toil and Trouble here!
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