What comes out at night? In my neighborhood you’ll see young couples pushing baby strollers, dog walkers, joggers and men smoking cigarettes on their front porches. Later, coyotes come down from the mountains looking for scraps of food in the alleyways behind restaurants and convenience stores.

It’s clear that Ambrose Ibsen, author of What Gathers at Dusk, doesn’t live in my neighborhood. There are no joggers or dog walkers in his book of short stories. Instead, there’s a psychometrist, an empathic predator,  a chthonic monster, an albino man-bat, two skeletal leshies, a restaurateur obsessed with exotic morels and a restless spirit seeking emotional redress. 

There’s also a lot of sadness in these stories that ultimately manifests as monstrous aberrations. Wishing and waiting for something is dangerous, warns Ibsen. “Wishes cast carelessly into the void sometimes come true; desperate whispers of the heart do not always go unheard. If you leave your porch light on long enough, something is sure to come shambling out of the gloom eventually.”

“Home Again, Home Again” sets the tone for this ongoing melancholy. A mother continues to pine for her missing teenage daughter even after eight years. Naturally, she’s happy when her child eventually returns. But is the thing standing at her stoop really her daughter? Or has her sadness brought an opportunistic monster to her doorway?

In a story called “It Waits Along the Left-Hand Path,” a 12-year-old boy named Jonah (!!) strides into the bowels of a labyrinthine bunker and disappears forever. Twenty years later, still haunted by the tragedy, a friend returns to the bunker. He finds Jonah (kind of) but he also finds an abyssal creature waiting for him at the end of the underground maze. He knows immediately that he should never have returned to the bunker. “I learned the hard way that, sometimes, the best method of dealing with a traumatic memory is to just leave it alone,” he says. 

And finally, “The Smell of Old Paper” is a love story from beyond the grave. When Michael sees a serpent-like creature in his attic, he immediately knows that it’s his old college girlfriend Allegra. She died years ago, but here she is hanging from the ceiling and making noise like windswept leaves in autumn. Her voice speaks the language of old memories left to molder—it is the sound, says Ibsen, of important things unsaid. 

After decades apart, the two ex-lovers finally had their little reunion—and under far stranger circumstances than either of them could ever have imagined. When it was over, all Michael can do is shake his head pensively. “Holding onto the past, to nostalgic bits and bobs, no longer strikes me as healthy,” he says. 

[ What Gathers at Dusk / By Ambrose Ibsen / First Printing: January 2026 / ISBN: 9781963107578 ]

When choosing books to review, I favor preposterous stories about abominable creatures. For example, the things that interest me are gelatinous blobs (Beware the Blobs! edited by Raymond Johnson and Roma Gray), giant turtles (Flesh-Eating Turtles! by Nora B. Peevy), anthropomorphic chalupas (Chalupacabra Y2K by V.S. Lawrence), biotech powersaurs (Reign of the Titans: Ragnarok … Now! edited by Christofer Nigro), skull-faced reptile men (Kaiju Bites by Neil Riebe), cocaine addled cryptids (SmackSquatch by J. Rocky Colavito), vagina squids from Mars (Vagina Squids from Mars by Kelvin V.A. Allison and Renn White), Godzilla-sized crickets (Crics by Edward J. McFadden III), zombie gumshoes (Dead Detective Society edited by James Aquilone), rockabilly mummies (Cleo’s All Tied Up by Loretta Kendall), werewolf porn stars (The Damned: Classic Monsters edited by Mathew Kaufman), zombie mermaids (Dark and Lonely Water by Graeme Reynolds), horny satyrs (Dark Hollow by Brian Keene) and evil robots (Invasion of the Robots edited by Roger Elwood).  

Stay Silent by Keeley Webb is not the kind of book I usually read. It’s a typical zombie apocalypse story—no better or worse than any other zombie apocalypse story. It’s a fast-paced and easy-to-read thriller, the kind of mainstream paperback you’d typically find in a grocery store or drugstore. 

In Webb’s novel, the zombies are called the “infected” because they’ve been exposed to a virulent, flu-like chemical weapon. “The whole thing was a terrible mistake,” confesses a scientist connected to the project. “Had we gone into another world war, our intention was to release it behind enemy lines.”

One thing leads to another, and the British Isles are quickly overrun with swarms of undead monsters. These airborne viruses travel fast. Remember how quickly COVID-19 spread? “Literally, everything about our current predicament is off the fucking scale,” says one character. “It’s straight out of the movies—a fucked-up fever dream.” 

The story follows a tight-knit group of survivors over a two-year period: sisters Kayla and Cristy; restaurateurs Nico and Luke; and a six-year-old orphan named Poppy. Along the way, they encounter other survivors (both good and bad) and a totalitarian subterranean community that’s trying to save humanity from itself. Fans of Resident Evil, The Walking Dead and The Omega Man will surely enjoy the author’s apocalyptic mashup. 

From start to finish, the Earth continues to cycle through the seasons, unaffected by the carnage befalling its inhabitants. In fact, it’s thriving. The lack of pollution and all the dead bodies are bringing new life back to the planet. “I had never seen the grass so green, thick and luscious,” notes Kayla, the POV character. “The trees seemed to stand taller and the flowers were blooming everywhere!”

[ Stay Silent / By Keeley Webb / First Printing: January 2026 / ISBN: 9798241993847 ]

Tooth and Claw features a giant shark (Tooth) and a giant crab (Claw). The book title borrows its nomenclature structure from old TV shows like Laverne and Shirley, Will and Grace and Mork and Mindy.

But Michael Cole’s monster novel wasn’t a fun-lovin’ sitcom romp. Instead, it was the story of two marine animals that ingest a deadly runaway mutagen created in a laboratory. 

Cole introduced the giant crab right away. Emerging from the shallows of Florida’s High Point Beach, the craggy sea beast resembled a small mountain. Two nearby tourists didn’t have time to scream before the crab snipped them into tiny pieces and sucked down their arms and legs like it was eating a bowl of ramen noodles. The crab had a voracious appetite and soon developed a taste for human flesh. 

When the giant shark showed up, it was like a locomotive tearing loose from its rails. With its newly enhanced muscularity and insane growth spurt, the shark was nearly unstoppable. No longer did it find satisfaction with skimpy sea-dwelling creatures; it craved larger prey, something that could provide adequate sustenance. Every time it spotted a boat from below, the shark knew it had found a smorgasbord of fatty man meat.

The shark’s rampage was absolute, but one scene in particular will undoubtedly have readers squirming in their seats. Hungry and impatient, the shark swallowed the local sheriff in one greedy gulp.  

I’ll spare you the gory details, but here, in part, was how the author described it: “A surge of water carried the sheriff into the tooth-lined tunnel. Miraculously, he didn’t feel any pain initially. His first thought was that his death was instant. Darkness surrounded him.” Is this what death was like? he thought to himself.

After a few pages describing thoracic confinement and hydrostatic pressure, the author continued: “It suddenly became clear that he wasn’t dead yet. He was slowly being eaten alive! Doomed to suffer the agonies of digestion. This wasn’t hell, he realized—it was just the warmup.”

It didn’t take long for the crab and shark to start competing for food, and their novel-ending battle lasted 50 pages. The survivor would become the undisputed apex predator of High Point Beach. 

The deformed titans brawled tooth and claw in the shallow water. The crab resembled a professional boxer in its technique; its pincers had the power of 12-ton hydraulic presses. The 40-foot shark was ravenous, unbowed and seemingly possessed by the devil. The audience on the beach were awestruck by the majesty of witnessing two gigantic sea beasts locked in combat. Both creatures were incapable of showing emotion, but they certainly looked pissed off during their endgame death match. 

[ Tooth and Claw / By Michael Cole / First Severed Press Edition: January 2026 / ISBN: 9781923663053 ]

Two years ago, the movie Godzilla Minus One received an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects. Although I still enjoy watching Godzilla stomp miniature model sets, I admit the FX on Minus One were very, very good. Overall, they were immersive and organic in a way that’s rarely seen in Hollywood Godzilla films these days.  

The movie wasn’t just another CGI blowout, however. When it was first released, many critics praised the movie’s emphasis on character-driven drama, especially the ongoing storyline surrounding Koichi Shikishima, the disgraced kamikaze pilot. 

But in my opinion Godzilla movies have always had compelling human characters. The original Dr. Daisuke Serizawa, for example, and mecha pilot Akane Yashiro. My personal favorite has always been Mr. Tako (no first name). While other kids my age admired Bruce Lee, Muhammad Ali or Fonzie, I found a kinship with the comedic idiot from King Kong vs. Godzilla. 

Here in the movie novelization of Godzilla Minus One (written by director Takashi Yamazaki), the plight of Koichi Shikishima is emphasized even more than it was in the movie. 

“To be cursed for having returned alive from a losing battle was about the harshest reception a soldier could endure,” writes Yamazaki. “Abandoning his mission as a kamikaze bomber was a felony offense in Japan. He was a man whose only value to his country was in death.” 

Koichi’s personal life takes a turn for the better when he meets Noriko Oishi, a young homeless woman who survived the bombings of Tokyo during WWII. Koichi allows Noriko and an infant in her care to share the warmth of his hovel. Along with a grumpy next-door neighbor, Koichi slowly builds a support system for his postwar redemption.

One negative comment here: When Noriko is first introduced, she’s a scrappy street urchin. Her seamless transformation into a docile homemaker is an easy narrative convenience. But Iet’s not be too critical. This is a monster novel, after all—not something from Charles Dickens. 

While Koichi and Noriko are slowly falling in love, Godzilla causes problems wherever he goes. After surviving U.S. nuclear blasts at Bikini Atoll, he transforms into the kaiju icon he is today. 

Here’s how the author describes the transformation: “Any ordinary life-form would have perished instantly but Godzilla’s extraordinary regenerative capabilities allowed him to weather the blast. And as his body regenerated, a rage began to form within him—an immense hatred toward whoever or whatever had inflicted this pain upon him. 

“But even with his great power of regeneration, Godzilla’s body would not return to its original shape. The radiation from the blast had penetrated so deeply into his epidermis that his cells grew distorted and irregular, turning his hide rugged and rocklike as the replacement tissues hardened. The dorsal fins along his spine grew longer and sharper, branching out in fractals like Hell’s own snowflakes. This process repeated, the body building layer upon layer of new armor over itself until it took on the appearance of an impenetrable, battle-hardened oyster shell that had lived for eons at the bottom of the sea. 

“Yet still, Godzilla’s body grew larger and larger, as if his biological systems had broken and no longer knew when to stop, until eventually he became so gargantuan and so mutated that he hardly even resembled the being he had been before.” It was at this moment, says Yamazaki, that Godzilla became the king of all monsters. 

[ Godzilla Minus One / By Takashi Yamazaki / Translated by Evan Ward / First U.S. Printing: September 2025 / ISBN: 9798895617588 ]

Creature Feature, a chilling new anthology from Raconteur Press, is filled with all sorts of monsters— werewolves, warlocks, dinosaurs, psychic dinosaurs, bog-bred things, cosmic gods, kaiju, Venusians, mummies and a sundry of other supplemental hobgoblins. 

It’s interesting, then, that one of the highlights of the volume is a story by T.R. Tuttle with a title that asks the question: “What Is a Human?” 

Amelie Wheeler, the appointed Senior Representative of Humanity, is tasked with an impossible job. She must describe all the vagaries of human behavior to a council of aliens from outer space. To complicate matters further, she finds herself trapped in a Groundhog Day-like time loop. With each new iteration, Amelie must answer the same question over and over again with further nuance—what is a human?  

Every day that Amelie returns to the spacecraft, the aliens change their appearance in surprising ways. During her final visit, for example, they look like something from an Area 51 gift shop. She wonders, “Are they trying to be funny, or are they mocking me?”

In the end, Amelie cannot adequately describe her own species in a simple, straightforward manner. How can she? And who are these aliens to ask? They can’t even decide what they look like from one moment to the next. 

Everything else in the collection is a straight up monster story—there’s even a story about classic mid-century Aurora hobby kits that come to life. If you’re a certain age, you undoubtedly have fond memories of these iconic plastic models. Certainly author Gregory Nicoll does. “Everything You Need to Make Your Monsters Come Alive” is written with love and affection for the monster kits of Aurora.

In editor Spearman Burke’s story, “The Rescue Shelter for Ravenous Things,” a shelter for monsters is in danger of being shut down. The U.S. Inhumane Society doesn’t think federal money should be spent providing safe harbor for cryptids and abominations. Things take a life-changing twist when the society’s peevish inspector is accidentally bitten by a werewolf. 

There are a handful of great stories in Creature Feature. “Ole Maw” by Gina Sakalarios-Rogers is perhaps one of the best. It’s about a swamp crone and generational secrets screaming for redress. “Soldier of Fortune” by Dean Stone is a tangled tale of military obligations and misfortune. “The Sky Falls Up” by Paul Ryan O’Connor is about the simmering war between psychic dinosaurs at the Earth’s Core. And finally there’s Geoff Holder’s shitty (not shitty) story called “What the Kaiju Leaves Behind.” 

Without a doubt, however, my favorite thing in this anthology is “Spats Tut” by Lee Allred. A 4,000-year-old crime-fighting mummy comes to Chicago in this neo-pulp adventure that predates comic book superhero archetypes. It’s a story that perfectly captures this website’s love of monsters and superheroes. 

[ Creature Feature / Edited by Spearman Burke / First Printing: October 2025 / ISBN: 9798270059286 ]

’Tis the season for another volume of Halloween Horrors, the perfect yuletide balm for fruit cake, tangled Christmas lights, airport delays and Mariah Carey. 

Both Halloween and Christmas share a disreputable past. Did you know, for example, that English Puritans thought Christmas was a time of carnal and sensual delights? Massachusetts even outlawed the holiday for a short period of time. 

Halloween, however, continues to be the top banana of disreputable holidays. Its celebration of pre-Christian traditions still irks many people to this day. Seeing kids roaming the neighborhood in Art the Clown costumes doesn’t help matters either. 

But some people think Halloween has gotten too soft—Jennie Quinn, for one. She’s tired of all the candy corn, Hallmark gewgaws and Great Pumpkin ornaments. She wants to bring back the ancient Celtic ways filled with fairies, spirits, magic and divination. 

“I’m a girl on a mission,” she states. “I want the Old Ways to return, and I’m gonna be the queen bitch to do it.” 

She continues: “The world will once again be filled with magic and wonder and enchantment and terror and all that shit. It’ll be the exact opposite of this stupid pathetic world we live in now. These days, it’s all boring as fuck.”

In Halloween Horrors, Vol. 1, Jennie almost accomplished her mission. Unfortunately, she found herself on the wrong side of Lord Samhain. Her considerable Celtic magic was no match for the mighty Dark Lord of All Hallows—sometimes referred to as the demonic pumpkin patch kid, squash-head and bulb-headed cunt. 

This year, Jennie is in Rutland, Vermont, for the town’s annual Halloween parade. She’s got insider information that Lord Samhain will be the celebration’s guest of honor, and like all disgruntled 22-year-olds, she’s looking for some revenge. 

Little did she know that Samhain was waiting for her in Vermont with a cadre of monsters at his side—a cyclopean centaur, a minotaur, a white buffalo, a gargoyle and a huge crab called Crancer. Also making an appearance would be Black Annis, the blood-drinking hag; Lingus, the Killer Klown; Genzel, the fearsome sasquatch; and Kire, the demon of music. 

Complicating matters even further, a legendary monster-hunting organization called the Boogey Knights (monsters themselves) was also on duty. In my opinion, Halloween Horrors, Vol. 2, represents the greatest confluence of monsters ever assembled in one place. 

Beyond all the monsters and supernatural shenanigans, the story “Boogey Knights: A Halloween Horror in Rutland,” features a surprising (or maybe shocking?) development between two major characters. Congratulations to writer (and editor) Christofer Nigro for finding ways to twist his multiverse into tighter and tighter knots. 

[ Halloween Horrors, Vol. 2 / Edited by Christofer Nigro / First Printing: October 2025 / ISBN: 9798993398006 ]

The name of the titular monster in V.S. Lawrence’s latest novel is obviously a cute portmanteau that immediately evokes images of puffy tacos and bloodsucking cryptids. 

The novel’s title also makes me think of other wacky monster combinations, such as a warty Burritoad, a colossal Nachozilla, a spooky Tacomancer and (my favorite) a Green Enchiloblin. BTW: I freely give the author permission to use any of these puns when she sits down to write her sequel to Chalupacabra Y2K.

The title may be artfully contrived, but it effectively tells readers what they’re getting. However, the question remains: How does a tasty menu item from a Mexican fast food joint become a grotesque monster that sucks the blood out of people and then goes on a hot sauce bender? 

The whole situation is a nightmare, thought Janet. She was one of the two restaurant employees who inadvertently created the Chalupacabra. “Who’s ever heard of a chalupa—or any food, for that matter—coming to life and slaughtering fast food workers?” It didn’t make sense to her. 

One-hundred and eighty-two years ago, Dr. Frankenstein stitched together dead body parts to create life. And now, just a few short months into Y2K, Janet and her coworker have successfully created a sentient monster from a vat of fried food. 

Laugh if you want, but the Chalupacabra wasn’t a joke, especially when it became an eight-foot-tall chalupa deluxe. It was a weirdly rendered creature that skittered on alligator-like legs. In addition, it had a forked tongue, a mouth full of shark teeth and eyes that were literally made of diced red tomatoes. 

The author admits in her afterword that Chalupacabra Y2K was inspired by numerous midnight runs to Taco Bell. I can definitely relate to that. During college, I ate at Taco Bell every single day. And believe me, I can totally see how their food could easily turn into a sentient monster. 

The novel ends when Janet and her friends Trina and Landon confront the Chalupacabra at a weekend chili festival. Together, they have a vague and improbable plan to stop the creature. If they fail, they know that it will be the end of their small town, and very possibly, the entire world. 

Like all high-concept novels, Chalupacabra Y2K includes a strong hook and is written with a clear premise. Characters are generally de-emphasized in favor of high-stakes drama (although I did kinda fall in love with Trina, the MegaBarbie). If the author were to pitch her book to a movie studio, she could probably do it in one simple sentence. Who knows, this could be the start of a long-running deep-fried franchise. 

[ Chalupacabra Y2K / By  V.S. Lawrence / First Printing: September 2025 / ISBN: 9798230647225 ]

In Frank Herbert’s 1966 novel The Green Brain, an alliance of insects unites and begins behaving in a frightening human-like manner. It’s what entomologists might call “swarm intelligence.” 

There’s a story in Dillon Wylder’s first short story collection, that touches on a similar collective consciousness idea—albeit in a more facile way. 

The unnamed narrator of “Hidden Potential” discovers that his dead father was actually a human simulacrum comprised entirely of cockroaches. Now that their human host is dead, the infestation is looking for a new body to inhabit. “They need a new hole,” says Wylder chillingly. 

Comment: Finding out that your father is a human-shaped cockroach is pretty gruesome, but the yuckiest part of the story is when the narrator accidentally discovers his takeout dinner is actually Kung Pao Kockroach. He’s disgusted, of course, but the joke’s on him. We’ll all be eating bugs for sustenance in the near future. Get used to it. 

Continuing with another creepy-crawly story, “Bug Legs” is about the sadistic thrill a young boy gets from pulling the legs off insects. Like Thom Yorke, the boy is “a weirdo and a grade-A creep.” 

Things take a twist when the kid encounters a giant insect-like creature in the woods. Although his comeuppance doesn’t come as a surprise, it’s still an absurd way to end the story of Charlie, the wriggling torso. 

There are a lot of male characters in this anthology who receive brutal comeuppance. For example,“Who Do Voodoo” is about a man who wants to kill his wife using a voodoo doll. There’s only one problem—even with a cursory Google search he can’t figure out how to go about it. Frustrated, he asks his wife (!!) to make the doll for him. She makes the doll and kills him the next morning. Let this be a lesson to all the men out there: always clear your search history before going to bed.  

There’s also a couple of fun stories featuring young women luring feeble-minded men to their doom. Most notably the lacertomorph in “Gone Fishin’” and the flirty amphibian girl in “God of the Gnar.” 

But without a doubt the volume’s centerpiece is “Truckenstein Must Die” a 2000 AD-like story about a man-made monster built from the body parts of the deceased. “Truckenstein likes to destroy electric vehicles and suck the juice from their batteries,” explains the author. “He doesn’t mind killing their owners, either.” 

He’s a massive brick wall of a man, a seven-foot-tall monster with an ugly green mug. He looks like your average run-of-the-mill Frankenstein but with a lug wrench jammed into his skull. 

Not only does he resemble Mary Shelley’s iconic creation, but he also suffers from the same existential sadness. He even quotes from the source material: “All men hate the wretched,” he moans. “How then, must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things?” Truckenstein’s not exactly a sympathetic creature, but readers will recognize his isolation and the hatred he inspires.

[ Ghoul! / By Dillon Wylder / First Printing: September 2025 / ISBN: 9798223498810 ]

After three novels, 999 pages, 328,601 words and countless setbacks, Russian expatriate Dr. Vladislav Volkov is still trying to save the world with his God-like scientific experiments. 

During WWII, Dr. Volkov developed an army of werevolks in an effort to defeat the Nazis. Later, during the swingin’ 60s, he tried to turn people into compliant sheep. And now, in the 80s, he’s back in the game with a dozen scrappy Sharkenstein hybrids. 

A quick comment about these Sharkenstein fellows: Each of them is burdened with a personality quirk that mirrors specific trends from 40 years ago. They represent a fever dream of 1980s pop culture fused with maritime apex predators. Among others, there’s an acid-wash jeans shark, a Karate Kid shark, a mall rat shark, an aerobics shark and one guy who’s simply known as Sharkamania. I’m surprised there isn’t a compact disc shark, a Swatch shark or a Cabbage Patch Kids shark.

Along with his fearsome shark enforcers, Dr. V has developed a nanite autophagic subversion technology system that manipulates the brain. This N.A.S.T.Y. pill is the ultimate cure for the disease of free will. “Control the mind, and you can control the world,” he says. “Where religion has failed repeatedly, science will prevail!”

This time, however, there’s a competing mad scientist working secretly in a subterranean laboratory in Sedona, Arizona. Not only does Elena McCone want to end all wars and strife, but she’s got an apocalyptic plan to bring new genesis to Earth. Inexplicably, she’s created hundreds of faceless mummy assassins to help her achieve her goal. 

Anybody who’s read the first two books in this series (Trapped! and Trapped! Again!) knows that author Richard D. Bailey is a funny guy. He consistently packs his manuscripts with witty wordplay, absurd James Bond-like gimmicks and bombastic monsters. 

Trapped! Finale! is funny as well, but this time the author takes a pause to give readers a somewhat serious plot twist. It all begins in Chapter Eight when Dr. McCone discovers a way to exploit quantum technology to mutate the human race and create a “second genesis.” Cryptically, she calls it Subject 51: Project Elena.

Angel Elena is a clone of Dr. McCone who has transcended the limitations of mere flesh. She is the triumphant conclusion of human evolutionary perfection. “I’m the harbinger of extinction,” she says in her novel-ending soliloquy. “The human experiment has run its catastrophic course—no more endless wars, overpopulation, environmental collapse or mass extinctions of innocent creatures.”

She continues her tirade with a seraphim-like flourish: “You had millennia to evolve beyond your primitive, destructive impulses, countless opportunities to choose wisdom over greed, yet instead, you’ve created weapons capable of sterilizing continents—weapons that can turn your beautiful planet into a dead husk. Extinction is not my judgment, but the logical conclusion of your choices.”

Always ready with a quippy retort, Dr. Volkov is unimpressed with Angel Elena’s incoherent jibber-jabber. “Stand down, child,” he says. “This is what happens when female angst is fueled by hormonal hysteria. You are living proof that God was just an amateur.”

[ Trapped! Finale! / By Richard D. Bailey / First Printing: October 2025 / ISBN: 9798268718119 ]