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1 month ago | 
crimereads.com | Aggie Blum Thompson |Micah Nemerever |Liv Constantine |Catriona Ward
There’s nothing more delicious than getting to the end of a mystery only to have the author expertly pull the rug out from under. Done well, an ending that reframes the entire book and turns everything we think we just learned on its head is both dizzying and invigorating, sending us back to chapter one to see if we can spot what was hiding in plain sight all along.
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Sep 30, 2024 | 
reactormag.com | Kay Chronister |Daryl Gregory |Rachel Harrison |Catriona Ward
We all inherit things from our families of origin—hair color, earlobe shape, self-destructive tendencies. While science is still deciding how to balance the blame between heredity and environment (and how to account for epigenetics, which threatens to dissolve the boundary between them), Gothic horror novels have always excelled at exploring the complex entanglement of the two.
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Jul 24, 2024 | 
crimereads.com | Heather Chavez |Catriona Ward |Dean Koontz |Alice Sebold
As I write this essay at the start of fire season, the skies near me are smoky from a blaze north of where I live. For many residents of wildfire-prone areas, the smell of smoke or strong gusts on a hot day can be triggering. We check our apps or bookmarked links. We text friends and family. Some of us pack go-bags, or record quick videos to document our belongings.
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May 28, 2024 | 
shorturl.at | Alana Portero |Garrett Graff |Catriona Ward |Miranda July
Buy from our bookstore and 25% of the cover price will be given to a school of your choice to buy more books. *15% of eBooks. At LoveReading we read a LOT of books. Here you can find a selection of our favourites, the ones that really stand out from the crowd. If you are only going to buy a few books this year, pick from this list as they are all stars! Each calendar year the books featured here become our Books of the Year.
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Dec 3, 2023 | 
inkl.com | Catriona Ward
Catriona Ward, author of the ‘chillingly brilliant’ Looking Glass Sound. Photograph: Antonio Olmos/The Observer Thanks to the success of the likes of Richard Osman and Lucy Foley, this was a year when we couldn’t move for cosy crime novels or locked room mysteries (or locked island or snowed-in ski lodge, you get the picture). Celebrities turning to crime (fiction) have also been thick on the ground, with everyone from Michael Caine to Martin Kemp and Shirley Ballas dabbling in the mystery genre.
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Nov 10, 2023 | 
thefandomentals.com | Catriona Ward
November. The month that strikes fear and excitement into the hearts of writers everywhere. When others are making their shopping lists or dinner menus, they’re counting words. It’s National Novel Writing Month, the month where we all try (and some succeed) to write fifty thousand words in thirty days. This year, NaNoWriMo is celebrating its 25th year. So, to celebrate, here are eight books for any writer in your life. On Writing by Stephen King from ScribnerThis book is a classic.
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Oct 25, 2023 | 
toronto.com | James Grainger |Joyce Carol Oates |Catriona Ward |Stephen King
A Darker Shade of Noir: New Stories of Body Horror by Women WritersBy Joyce Carol Oates, editorAkashic Books, 270 pages, $26.95Given our culture’s prurient obsession with the female body, it’s no wonder that many of the finest practitioners of the body horror sub-genre should be women.
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Oct 24, 2023 | 
audiofilemagazine.com | Catriona Ward
Christopher Ragland delivers a story featuring three unreliable narrators, all keeping secrets. The shifting tale suggests that no one can be trusted. Ted is a broken man who spends his nights drinking and struggling with his fractured memory; his daughter Lauren, who isn't allowed outside; and their family cat, Olivia, who reads the Bible and prays. Ragland's boyish voice adds to the unsettling nature of the story.
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Sep 6, 2023 | 
washingtonindependentreviewofbooks.com | Catriona Ward
It can be difficult to review metafictional horror. As I sat down to start this piece, I found myself wondering two things brought on by Catriona Ward’s masterful writing: Am I in a novel myself? And is something highly unpleasant about to pop out of my closet? All this to say that Ward’s latest, Looking Glass Sound, is a marvelously spooky tale, though it doesn’t rely solely on its ominous plot to snare readers.
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Sep 2, 2023 | 
theguardian.com | Catriona Ward
Holly opens with a scene of peculiar horror. In 2012 Jorge Castro, a creative writing teacher in a university town, is jogging on a misty evening. He sees two colleagues, professors Emily and Rodney Harris, struggling to load Rodney in his wheelchair into their van. “She can’t be much more than seventy. Her husband looks much older.” He offers to help push the chair up the ramp. Too late, he realises their objective. Jorge wakes confined to a cage in their basement.
