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<\/p>\nRight now, I find reading horror cathartic. No matter how bad things get, at least my house isn\u2019t haunted, an ancient entity hasn\u2019t possessed my husband (as far as I know) and the penguins I\u2019ve seen recently at the Minnesota Zoo didn\u2019t peck out my eyes. <\/p>\n
In his introduction to Ira Levin\u2019s horror classic \u201cRosemary\u2019s Baby,\u201d Chuck Palahniuk wrote that until Levin\u2019s novel, \u201cthe real horrors were not at home.\u201d Home became dangerous because we refused to acknowledge what was growing inside us until it was too late.<\/p>\n
Kit Burgoyne\u2019s ingenious \u201cThe Captive\u201d (Soho Press, 376 pages) is set in the \u201ctoo late.\u201d An extraordinarily wealthy British family, the Woolsaws, control everything. Rosa, Cam, and Luke are anti-capitalist revolutionaries, but their organization is broken. They kidnap the Woolsaws\u2019 daughter, Adeline, realizing too late that she has birthed the spawn of a dark entity. Unfortunately, Adeline refuses to be ransomed and the baby turns out to be \u201cChernobyl in nappies.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Captive\u201d is a thrilling, gory tale with comic details (\u201cnext to her daughter, everything else in the universe is just hair-clippings and pencil shavings\u201d) and a cosmic worldview (\u201clarge concentrations of wealth are like deformations in space-time: they warp reality around them\u201d).<\/p>\n
Rachel Harrison\u2019s terrific, psychological \u201cPlay Nice\u201d (Berkley, 336 pages) is about the childhood trauma of three sisters, Leda, Daphne, and Clio, and how that trauma has festered in their adulthood. Clio, as her name in Greek mythology suggests, wants to unpack the truth about the family\u2019s history.<\/p>\n
The official story is their mom was an alcohol-addicted narcissist who believed a demon possessed their childhood house. After her death, the sisters vow never to return to the house. Clio defies them. Let me just say that what ensues is her gradual unraveling. Harrison\u2019s characteristically clever plotting that centers the female experience, a snarky main character and don\u2019t-look-over-your-shoulder horror are in cracking form here. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Macabre (Harper Voyager)<\/p>\n
Kosoko Jackson\u2019s \u201cThe Macabre\u201d (Harper Voyager, 400 pages) is a dazzlingly bold cosmic horror\/fantasy akin to Matt Ruff\u2019s \u201cLovecraft Country\u201d or N.K. Jemisin\u2019s \u201cThe City We Became.\u201d<\/p>\n
Artist Lewis Dixon discovers something is wrong in the British Museum when he brings one of his paintings to contribute to an exhibit. In a secret museum room, he meets Evangeline, \u201ca Black woman in a high-powered magical position\u201d as the head of the Royal Arcane Intelligence Agency, a global organization tasked with limiting casualties caused by \u201ccursed antiquities.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Right now, I find reading horror cathartic. No matter how bad things get, at least my house isn\u2019t…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":73037,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[412,146,85,46],"class_list":["post-73036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-books","tag-books","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73036\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}