#James R Barker

[veryverytemporary]

Charles Howard Smith, The 1,004-foot-long laker James R Barker heads out of Duluth Harbor and into Lake Superior, beginning its long journey down the lakes, 14 June 2025. instagram

[basicallyanotherwitchesthing]

Denys Val Baker (editor) - Phantom Lovers - William Kimber - 1984

[emoloser2001]

okay okay not cause im biased or anything

hardest ocean liner whistles in order

5. carpathia

4. britannic

3. ssus

2. queen mary

1. queen mary 2

sorry i dont make the rules

[rmstitanics]

* FAMOUS INDIVIDUALS WITH YOUR MOON SIGN.

If you’re looking for suggestions on which authors and music artists to check out next, look to your moon sign! In Western astrology, the moon is said to represent your subconscious mind, emotions, and inner personality, so it is widely believed that we tend to relate to media by artists who share our moon sign.

♈️ ARIES MOON

WRITERS:

Gore Vidal

George R. R. Martin

Nicholas Sparks

Rick Riordan

Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Christopher Paolini

MUSICIANS:

P!nk

Whitney Houston

Céline Dion

Selena Gomez

Rihanna

Tupac

♉️ TAURUS MOON

WRITERS:

Jodi Picoult

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Hans Christian Anderson

Clive Barker

George Bernard Shaw

Aldous Huxley

MUSICIANS:

Pharrell Williams

Kelly Clarkson

Bob Dylan

Demi Lovato

Christina Aguilera

Pitbull

♊️ GEMINI MOON

WRITERS:

C. S. Lewis

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Orson Scott Card

Franz Kafka

Margaret Mitchell

R.A. Salvatore

T. S. Elliot

MUSICIANS:

Ella Fitzgerald

Florence Welch

Art Garfunkel

Billy Idol

Sia

Tina Turner

♋️ CANCER MOON

WRITERS:

George Orwell

Liu Cixin

Brandon Sanderson

Cassandra Clare

Diana Gabaldon

Lois Lowry

MUSICIANS:

Tchaikovsky

Taylor Swift

Kurt Cobain

Halsey

Aretha Franklin

Janis Joplin

♌️ LEO MOON

Oscar Wilde

Holly Black

Geraldine Brooks

James Dashner

Jack London

Ta Nehisi Coates

MUSICIANS:

Lana Del Ray

Paul McCartney

Queen Latifah

Niall Horan

Bruno Mars

David Bowie

♍️ VIRGO MOON

WRITERS:

Leo Tolstoy

John Grisham

Claudia Gray

Isabel Allende

Xiran Jay Zhao

Douglas Adams

MUSICIANS:

Dolly Parton

Nicki Manaj

Madonna

Lorde

Bo Burnham

Lizzo

♎️ LIBRA MOON

WRITERS:

Jane Austen

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Sylvia Plath

William Shakespeare

Maya Angelou

R.F. Kuang

MUSICIANS:

Ariana Grande

Charli XCX

Bruce Springsteen

Jay-Z

Harry Styles

Fergie

♏️ SCORPIO MOON

WRITERS:

Veronica Roth

Edith Wharton

V.E. Schwab

Harper Lee

Keira Cass

Meg Cabot

MUSICIANS:

Lady Gaga

Tyler the Creator

Cyndi Lauper

Beyoncé

Bob Marley

The Weeknd

♐️ SAGITTARIUS MOON

WRITERS:

Stephen King

Victor Hugo

Marie Lu

Suzanne Collins

Samantha Shannon

Adam Silvera

MUSICIANS

Hozier

Freddie Mercury

Adele

Ludwig Van Beethoven

Chappell Roan

John Legend

♑️ CAPRICORN MOON

WRITERS:

Sarah J. Maas

J.M. Barrie

Jeff Shaara

Joyce Carol Oates

Stephanie Meyer

Angie Thomas

MUSICIANS:

Frédéric Chopin

Neil Diamond

Jon Bon Jovi

Lin-Manuel Miranda

Stevie Nicks

Donna Summer

♒️ AQUARIUS MOON

WRITERS:

Margaret Atwood

Leigh Bardugo

Louisa May Alcott

Seth Grahame-Smith

Anthony Horowitz

S.E. Hinton

MUSICIANS:

Cody Simpson

Marilyn Monroe

Britney Spears

Billie Eilish

Tim McGraw

Carrie Underwood

♓️ PISCES MOON

WRITERS:

Toni Morrison

Edgar Allen Poe

Malcolm Gladwell

Lisa McMann

Alice Oseman

Philippa Gregory

MUSICIANS:

Kenny Chesney

Elvis Presley

Frank Sinatra

Prince

Kendrick Lamar

Sabrina Carpenter

[dustedmagazine]

The 2025 Dusted Mid-Year Switch: Part 3

Horsegirl

In part three of our mid-year wrap-up, Dusted writers list their favorite albums from the year’s first half.  Check out parts one and two if you missed them. 

Christian Carey

Raven Chacon — Voiceless Mass (New World)

Car Seat Headrest — The Scholars (Matador)

Jürg Frey — Voices (Neu)

Barbara Hannigan, Katia and Marielle Labéque, and David Chalmin — Electric Fields (Alpha) 

The Hemphill Stringtet — Plays the Music of Julius Hemphill (Out of Your Head)

Jenny Hval — Iris Silver Mist (4AD)

loscil — Lake Fire (kranky) 

David Murray — Birdly Serenade (Impulse)

Quatuor Diotima — Livre Pour Quatuor (Pentatone)

Steve Reich — Jacob’s Ladder (Nonesuch)

Tim Clarke

Sharp Pins — Radio DDR (K/Perennial)

Moreish Idols — All in the Game (Speedy Wunderground)

Perfume Genius — Glory (Matador)

Richard Dawson — End of the Middle (Weird World)

Dutch Interior — Moneyball (Fat Possum)

Natural Information Society / Bitchin Bajas — Totality (Drag City)

Horsegirl — Phonetics On and On (Matador)

Lifeguard — Ripped and Torn (Matador)

Bryon Hayes

Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet — HausLive 4 (Hausu Mountain)

Califone — The Villager's Companion (Jealous Butcher)

CHIME OBLIVION — S/T (DEATHGOD CORP)

The Ex — If Your Mirror Breaks (The Ex)

The High Water Marks — Consult the Oracle (Meritorio)

Index for Working Musik — Which Direction Goes the Beam (Tough Love)

Mess Esque — Jay Marie, Comfort Me (Drag City)

Mark Molnar — EXO (Constellation)

The Moles — Composition Book (Splendid Research)

Open Head — What is success (Wharf Cat)

Sam Amidon — Salt River (River Lea)

Sharp Pins — Radio DDR (K)

Steven R. Smith — Triecade (Worstward)

Tim Hecker — Shards (Kranky)

Water Damage — Instruments (12XU)

Alex Johnson

Artificial Go — Musical Chairs (Feel It)

Francis Bebey — Trésor Magnétique (Africa Seven)

Hectorine — Arrow of Love (Take a Turn)

Horsegirl — Phonetics On and On (Matador)

Cameron Knowler — CRK (Worried Songs)

Willie Lane — Bobcat Turnaround (Cord-Art)

Meetsysteem — Gekleed In Donker, Ze Vroegen Niks (Nous'klaer Audio)

The Tubs — Cotton Crown (Trouble in Mind)

Various — Star Charms (Inscrutable)

Jennifer Kelly

Anika — Abyss (Sacred Bones)

Circuit des Yeux — Halo on the Inside (Matador)

Motorbike — Kick It Over (Feel It)

Michael Grigoni/Pan*America — New World, Lonely Ride (Kranky)

Jerry David DeCicca — Cardiac Country (Sophomore Lounge)

Caroline — Caroline 2 (Rough Trade)

Pulp — More (Rough Trade)

The Mekons — Horror (Fire)

Ty Segall — Possession (Drag City)

Thalia Zedek Band — The Boat Outside Your Window (Thrill Jockey)

Patrick Masterson

Barker — Stochastic Drift (Smalltown Supersound)

Mogwai — The Bad Fire (Temporary Residence Ltd.)

PinkPantheress — Fancy That (Warner)

Boldy James — Conversational Pieces (Real Bad Man) or Permanent Ink (Royal House Recording)

Maribou State — Hallucinating Love (Ninja Tune)

Quade — The Foel Tower (AD 93)

Ghais Guevara — Goyard Ibn Said (Fat Possum)

Ela Minus — Día (Domino)

Anthony Naples — Scanners (ANS)

FACS — Wish Defense (Trouble in Mind)

Maria Somerville — Luster (4AD)

Water Margin — Gleaming Cursed (Darla)

Ian Mathers

Alan Sparkhawk — With Trampled by Turtles (Sub Pop)

Brìghde Chaimbeul — Sunwise (Glitterbeat/tak:til)

Circuit des Yeux — Halo on the Inside (Matador)

Cloakroom — Last Leg of the Human Table (Closed Casket Activities)

Hekla — Turnar (Phantom Limb)

Horsegirl — Phonetics On and On (Matador)

loscil — Lake Fire (Kranky)

Oklou — choke enough (True Panther Sounds)

Sleigh Bells — Bunky Becky Birthday Boy (Mom + Pop/Torn Clean)

Walt McClements — On a Painted Ocean (Western Vinyl)

Bill Meyer

AMM with Sachiko M — Testing (Matchless)

The Ancients — The Ancients (Eremite / Black Edition Archives)

The Ex — If Your Mirror Breaks (Ex)

Mike Gangloff — April Is Passing (VHF)

Edith Frost — In Space (Drag City)

Vijay Iyer / Wadada Leo Smith — Defiant Life (ECM)

Damon Locks — List of Demands (International Anthem)

Brandon Lopez / DoYeon Kim — Syzygy Vol. 1 (577)

Natural Information Society & Bitchin Bajas — Totality (Drag City) 

Sarah Belle Reid + Vinny Golia — Accidental Ornithology (Infrequent Seams)

Josh Moss

Sadie Siskin — Sadie Siskin (Drongo Tapes)

David Ivan Neil — I Hope Yer Ok (Perpetual Doom)

Playboi Carti — I Am Music (Interscope )

John Swanke — Horizon Lines (Bud Tapes)

Aux Meadows — Draw Near (Eiderdown)

Jerry David DeCicca — Cardiac Country (Sophomore Lounge)

Free Water Shrew Ensemble — Bounty of the Floe Edge (Drongo Tapes)

Daniel Bachman — Moving Through Light (self released)

Midwestern Medicine — Ripped Headline (self released)

Austin Potter — New Romantic (Cruel Nature/Liquid Library)

Ella Hanshaw — Ella Hanshaw's Black Book (Spinster Records)

Joseph Allred — Old Time Fantasias (Scissor Tail Records)

Ernie Francestine — Alternate Place (WarHen Records)

Bantam Draper — Inversion Therapy (Funny/Not Funny Records)

Barry Walker Unit — At The 13th Moon Gravity Well (Jean Sandwich Records)

Jonathan Shaw

Blood Monolith — The Calling of Fire (Profound Lore)

Culture Shock — S/T (Youth Attack)

Puffer — Street Hassle (Static Shock)

Retirement — Attention Economy (Iron Lung)

SUMAC & Moor Mother — The Film (Thrill Jockey)

Wulkanaz — Luftus (Regain)

[citizenscreen]

Make-up artist Jim Barker (James R. Barker) works on Anne Baxter on the WB set of Fritz Lang’s THE BLUE GARDENIA (1953).

[o0oooooo0o]

uttara bhadrapada is all about honing that cool crystal center within. ppl will find that in association with these natives “most” is the word you will often see next to their name and not always in a socially acceptable way. These natives leave behind gifts to humanity transcending the boundaries of good and evil.

‧₊˚✩彡 🙀

-losing people close to you

-inhumanism

-aliens

-synth

-being non pc

-extreme wealth and 💸💸💸💸💸

-reptilian beings (dragons, snakes,…)

-aquatic beings (mermaids)

-cold, frigid, aloofness, indifference, apathy

-loneliness, disconnect

-underworld

-fantasy

-collateral damage

-humanity

-secret societies

-control & restriction

-preservation

-creation

-evolution

-mysticism

-combat

-self-mastery/sovereign

-warrior

-reluctant leader

-burden

-deep space, the unknown

-twins

-blue/iridescent/chromatic/purple

-eccentricity

-cyberpunk

-conspiracy

-high technology

-destiny & fate

-neptune

-pluto

-Lakshmi

-ketu

-jupiter

-funeral

-inertia

-legacy

-skeletons in the closet

-boundless

-in plain sight

-contradiction

-transformation

-war

-cosmic rain

-drugs/psychedelics

-healers

-ouroboros

-fertility

-treasure

-stoners

-female cow

-plastic surgery

-victimhood

-delusion

-manipulation

-laziness

-the end

-transcendence

-the chosen one

-apex saturnino

-being ahead of your time/creating something timeless

-aristocracy

-anger

-doomsday

-out of touch

-dreams

-dissolution

-destruction

-innocence

-cunning

-isolation

-limitless

-the infinite one

-endless

-boundless

-apotheosis

-ascension

-kundalini awakening

-Pegasus

-Andromeda

-evil

-genius

-tamasic

-gatekeeping

-perversion

-fujoshi

-cold blooded

-ethereal essence

-false ego

-ignorance

-enlightenment

-uncanny valley

-alienation

-alternative sexuality

-abandoning humanity

-fixed

-void

-darkness

-space-time

-being the brain/face of capitalism ngl

-prophecy

-elongation

-escapism

-what remains

-liberation

-the ocean

-for the greater good

-tying together future/present/past

-being afforded a greater, more terrible purpose

Grimes sun & moon in uttara bhadrapada

OTHER NOTABLE NATIVES:🦄

-rihanna (i think asc tbh)

-hillary clinton

-kim kardashian

-anya taylor joy

-antonio banderas

-rose

-taeyeon

-H.E.R.

-rooney mara

-gemma ward

-rick owens

-jin

-felix

-tyra banks

-salma hayek

-daniel radcliffe

-joaquin phoenix

-rebecca ferguson

-lil kim

-Luca Guadagnino

-sujan stevens

-janet jackson

-steve jobs

-bill gates

-catherine zeta-jones

-andré leon talley

-anna wintour

-eugenia cooney

-ash stymest

-blac chyna

-travis barker

-Diane von furstenberg

-jane lynch

-IU

-tupac

-jason statham

-riley keough

-wiz khalfia

- jay park

-timothee chalamet

-samantha morton

-Josh McDermitt

-anton riize

-belle kiss of life

-muammar al gaddafi

-ni-ki

-sullyoon

-king krule

-aidan gillen

-josh o’connor

-salvador dalí

-sophie turner

-hayao miyazaki

-john galliano

-ed sheeran

-kendall jenner

-jessica white

-choi woo-shik

-tom brady

-anne rice

-russel brand

-Satoru Gojo

-Shri Ramanujan

-novak djokovic

-alek wek

-charles dance

-anna gunn

-nick offerman

-steve-o

-song kang-ho

-debbie harry

-lucy lawless

-cheng xiao

-enya umanzor

-jenny slate

-nicholas hoult

-isabelle huppert

-soobin

-bladee

-dev patel

-Roselyn Sánchez

-james cameron

-george soros

-city of los angeles

-harry potter

-wanda maximoff

-iron man/tony stark

❌

-jeffrey e*stein

////(disclaimer, lowkey i’m pretty good at guessing between naks but i can’t say for sure that they r ubp moon some of these r just my own intuition/pattern recognition/symbolism unless their birth time is confirmed and i can flat out get their placements wrong but also ppl lie even about their birthday so it is what it is)

///*I will keep updating this list

UBP SUN:🦄

yuji itadori

lykke li

irene

alexander mcqueen (ubp sun+rahu)

lisa (ubp sun+venus+ketu) +saturn*mercury in revati

quentin tarantino (sun+mercury+jupiter)

cha eunwoo (sun+venus+ketu+saturn)

lady gaga

mina

lee pace

ethel cain

gary oldman

celine dion

diana ross

yasmeen ghauri ubp sun c mercury revati

mariah carey ubp sun c rahu *mercury pisces pbp

eren yeager

keira knightly

steven tyler

MOON RULED BY UBP:🦄

karina (revati sun c ubp mercury+venus gemini moon ruler ubp mercury)

jamie campbell bower (bharani moon ruled by ubp mars)

madison beer (virgo chitra moon ruled by ubp mercury)

lisa (libra moon ruled by ubp venus)

UBP ASC:🦄

lucy lawless (sun+moon+asc)

brie larson

che guevara

billie eilish

shakira+venus

nikki reed

KETU IN UBP:🦄

zoe saldana

bella hadid +ubp saturn

jaehyun +ubp saturn lagnesh saturn in ubp

fernanda ly

RAHU IN UBP:🦄

abbey lee kershaw

ASC RULER IN UBP:🦄

zendaya (cap asc ruled by ketu+saturn in ubp)

[bracketsoffear]

Spiral Leitner Reading List

The full list of submissions for the Spiral Leitner bracket. Bold titles are ones which were accepted to appear in the bracket. Synopses and propaganda can be found below the cut. Be warned, however, that these may contain spoilers!

Abbott, Edwin Abbott: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions Amato, Mary: The Word Eater

Barker, Clive: Abarat Basye, Dale E.: Fibble Borges, Jorge Luis: Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

Calvino, Italo: If on a winter’s night a traveler Carroll, Emily: A Guest in the House Carroll, Lewis: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland/ Through the Looking Glass and what Alice found there Chambers, Robert W.: The King in Yellow Coltrane, John: Giant Steps Cortázar, Julio: Rayuela (Hopscotch) Cutter, Nick: The Deep

Dahl, Roald: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Danielewski, Mark Z.: House of Leaves de Cervantes, Miguel: Don Quixote DeLaney, Samuel R.: Babel-17

Eliot, T.S.: The Waste Land Ewing, Frederick R.: I, Libertine

Gaiman, Neil: Neverwhere Gilman, Charlotte Perkins: The Yellow Wallpaper

Hall, Steven: The Raw Shark Texts Hamilton, Patrick: Angel Street/Gas Light Hawke, Marcus: Grey Noise Hodgson, William Hope: The House on the Borderlands Hunter, Erin: Warriors

Ito, Junji: Uzumaki

Joyce, James: Finnegans Wake Juster, Norton: The Phantom Tollbooth

Kte'pi, Bill: The Cheshire

Lovecraft, H.P.: The Color Out of Space Lyons, Steve: The Stealers of Dreams

Mathers, Edward Powys: Cain’s Jawbone Mearns, William Hughes: Antigonish Miles, Lawrence et. al.: The Book of the War Morrison, Grant: Doom Patrol Moore, Christopher: Sacré Bleu: A Comedy d’Art Muir, Tamsyn: Harrow the Ninth

National Governors Association and Council of Chief State School Officers: Common Core Math Textbook Nikolson, Adam: Life between the tides

O’Brien, Flann: The Third Policeman Ogawa, Yoko: The Memory Police Orwell, George: Nineteen Eighty-Four

Pelevin, Victor: The Helmet of Horror Pratchett, Terry: Moving Pictures Pynchon, Thomas: The Crying of Lot 49

Ryukishi07: higurashi no naku koro ni (When The Evening Cicadas Cry)

Sachar, Louis: Wayside School Is Falling Down Schwartz, Alvin: "Maybe You Will Remember" (short story from Scary Stories 3: More Tales To Chill Your Bones) Serafini, Luigi: Codex Seraphinianus Shakespeare, William: A Midsummer Night's Dream Shakespeare, William: King Lear Shakespeare, William: The Winter's Tale Silberescher: SCP-1425: Star Signals Stine, R.L.: Don't Go to Sleep!

Unknown, Voynich Manuscript

Wells, H.G.: The Door in the Wall West, A.J.: The Spirit Engineer Whorf, Benjamin Lee: Relation of Habitual Thought and Behavior to Language Wyspiański, Stanisław: The Wedding

Abbott, Edwin Abbott: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions

Both a satire on Victorian hierarchies and a mathematical examination of lower and higher dimensions, Flatland's narrator has strange dreams of a one-dimensional Lineland where he can only be seen as a series of points on a line. Following this, he meets A. Sphere, whom he in turn can only see as a circle, and is exposed to the three-dimensional space of Spaceland. When he returns home to try and explain what he has seen, he is thrown into an insane asylum.

Amato, Mary: The Word Eater

The titular Word Eater is a worm born with eyes and the magical ability to eat words instead of dirt, named Fip. Whenever Fip eats a word, the object or subject that word was referring to vanishes, at one point accidentally erasing a recently discovered star. When used on a subject, erasure removes any ontological effects, as when used on a torturous dog training method the dogs it was used on all suddenly become docile instead of vicious. The conflict of the story comes in the fact that words are the only thing Fip can eat, so keeping anything else from being erased becomes a matter of starving him. There's also some disgruntled students who almost use him to erase their school, with the protagonist worrying that the effect could abstractly extend to the staff and students, necessitating their thwarting.

Barker, Clive: Abarat

Candy lives in Chickentown USA: the most boring place in the world, her heart bursting for some clue as to what her future may hold. She is soon to find out: swept out of our world by a giant wave, she finds herself in another place entirely...

The Abarat: a vast archipelago where every island is a different hour of the day, from the sunlit wonders of Three in the Afternoon, where dragons roam, to the dark terrors of the island of Midnight, ruled by Christopher Carrion. (...)

Abarat is an extremely Spiral coded place working so differently from the real world and being extremely nonsensical that I think this book deserves to be the Spiral Leitner.

Basye, Dale E.: Fibble

"When Marlo Fauster claims she has switched souls with her brother, she gets sent straight to Fibble, the circle of Heck reserved for liars. But it’s true—Milton and Marlo have switched places, and Marlo finds herself trapped in Milton’s gross, gangly body. She also finds herself trapped in Fibble, a three-ring media circus run by none other than P. T. Barnum, an insane ringmaster with grandiose plans and giant, flaming pants. Meanwhile Milton, as Marlo, is working at the devil’s new television network, T.H.E.E.N.D. But there’s something strange about these new shows. Why do they all air at the same time? And are they really broadcasting to the Surface? Soon Milton and Marlo realize that they need each other to sort through the lies and possibly prevent the end of the world—if Bea “Elsa” Bubb doesn’t catch them first."

The Fauster twins are caught up in yet another apocalyptic scheme as hellish figures plot to stoke a ratings war into a holy war, using elaborate lies and propaganda to provoke the end of humanity itself.

Borges, Jorge Luis: Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

A short story concerning the author and his friend stumbling upon a mention of the Uqbar region in an encyclopedia, a place which is found in no other literature. One of the myths of Uqbar concerns Tlön, a fantastical place where people do not believe in the reality of the material world, and only the most outre scholars would dare suggest that objects have permanence. Objects there "grow vague or sketchy and lose detail" when they begin to be forgotten, culminating in their disappearance when they are completely forgotten. One year later, Tlönian objects begin to appear in the real world. Then a complete encyclopedia of the world turns up, transforming the human understanding of science and philosophy. As the author writes his postscript, the world is transforming entirely into Tlön.

Calvino, Italo: If on a winter’s night a traveler

The postmodernist narrative, in the form of a frame story, is about the reader trying to read a book called If on a winter's night a traveler. Each chapter is divided into two sections. The first section of each chapter is in second person, and describes the process the reader goes through to attempt to read the next chapter of the book they are reading. The second half is the first part of a new book that the reader ("you") finds. The second half is always about something different from the previous ones.

Carroll, Emily: A Guest in the House

"After many lonely years, Abby’s just gotten married. She met her new husband—a recently widowed dentist—when he arrived in town with his young daughter, seeking a new start. Although it’s strange living in the shadow of her predecessor, Abby does her best to be a good wife and mother. But the more she learns about her new husband’s first wife, the more things don’t add up. And Abby starts to wonder . . . was Sheila’s death really by natural causes? As Abby sinks deeper into confusion, Sheila’s memory seems to become a force all its own, ensnaring Abby in a mystery that leaves her obsessed, fascinated, and desperately in love for the first time in her life"

While most riffs on the Bluebeard story are probably slaughter, buried, or eye aligned, much of the horror in this story is the uncertainty and loss of a clear sense of reality. Also the art of Sheila feels very spiral.

Carroll, Lewis: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland/ Through the Looking Glass and what Alice found there

Both books have a similar structure and are spiral for the same reasons: little Victorian child Alice founds herself in a strange world with rules vastly different from hers (for example, there’s no real geography and the scenery changes suddenly from one place to another very much like in a dream). The characters she crosses constantly defy her understanding of the world and applies logics she struggles to understand. Even though she ends up going with the flow most of the time she never ceases to question whether she’s experiencing real life or a dream; sanity is brought up a few times, and there’s also the popular quote "We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad", delivered by the grinning cat that appears and disappears like a slippery distortion. Lastly I may add that the TMA episode whose title references the book (Mag 177, Wonderland) is a spiral episode.

Chambers, Robert W.: The King in Yellow

A collection of short stories, most of which revolve around a fictional two-act play of the same title: The King in Yellow. Although the play is never described in any great detail, anyone who reads it is driven to madness.

Coltrane, John: Giant Steps

At first a reader simply sees the rapid changes, seemingly random and discordant. Further investigation will begin to reveal patterns, the chords begin to outline other chords, that in turn outline further chords, only to loop back to the beginning. A master or his craft, the creator can seemingly effortlessly navigate this fractal of potential sound. You, can only hope to keep up as the endless, rapidly twisting patterns give you no time to comprehend the page in front of you.

This is specifically against tournament rules, but I still wanted to at least give it a submission.

Cortázar, Julio: Rayuela (Hopscotch)

The story of two young writers whose lives are playing themselves out in Buenos Aires and Paris to the sounds of jazz and brilliant talk, Hopscotch, written in 1963, was the first hypertext novel. Anticipating the age of the web with a non-structure that allows readers to take the chapters in any order they wish, Hopscotch invites them to be the architects of the novel themselves.

Cutter, Nick: The Deep

A strange plague called the ‘Gets is decimating humanity on a global scale. It causes people to forget— Small things at first and eventually their bodies forget how to function involuntarily. There is no cure.

But far below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, a universal healer hailed as “ambrosia” has been discovered. In order to study this phenomenon, a special research lab has been built eight miles under the sea’s surface. But when the station goes incommunicado, a brave few descend through the lightless fathoms in hopes of unraveling the mysteries lurking at those crushing depths."

At first glance you might think this book is much more aligned to The Buried than The Spiral and while it does have a lot of claustrophobic elements, the true horror the protagonist (Luke) faces, comes from slowly losing your perception of reality. The relatively small laboratory soon becomes a labyrinth, as he moves from room to room he also moves through memories that become more and more vivid as time goes by. He has hallucinations, falls asleep and dreams of being awake while sleepwalks, he is chased by monsters that are very real and some that are just his own demons.

(spoilers) At the end we find out he and all the other people in the laboratory were lured by two ancient creatures trapped both at the bottom of the sea and another dimension and needed Luke's body to be free. The Figmen are tricksters, they enjoy doing "experiments" seeing how much a body can twist and what it takes to break a mind. The people inside the laboratory were little more that mice they wanted to see run around for their amusement before being freed

Dahl, Roald: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

I want off Mr. Wonka's wild ride. Why the fuck is this man dragging children through his acid trip pun-tastical Saw movie. OSHA get his ass

Danielewski, Mark Z.: House of Leaves

The novel is written as a work of epistolary fiction and metafiction focusing on a fictional documentary film titled the Navidson Record, presented as a story within a story discussed in a handwritten monograph recovered by the primary narrator, Johnny Truant. The narrative makes heavy use of multiperspectivity as Truant's footnotes chronicle his efforts to transcribe the manuscript, which itself reveals the Navidson Record's supposed narrative through transcriptions and analysis depicting a story of a family who discovers a larger-on-the-inside labyrinth in their house.

***

Come on, its the book that gaslights you. Some pages are literally typed in spirals. Its about a beautiful new house that breaks the laws of physics and also eats some people- Helen Richardson would be PROUD. Its a story in a story IN A STORY. The introduction of the book is about how the man annotating the manuscript of the documentary and his friend used to pick up girls by telling fantastical and false stories about their lives. Everyone in the books universe thinks the documentary was faked. What can i say that hasn't been said before? The “M” in Mark Z. Danielowki stands for “Mr. Michael Distortion”

***

I mean, look at the book. Look at it. I feel like I'm going mad every time I see its pages.

de Cervantes, Miguel: Don Quixote

After reading too many courtly romances, Quixote's perception of reality is warped, and he seeks to become a knight and restore the courtly chivalric graces. Also he thinks windmills are evil giants.

DeLaney, Samuel R.: Babel-17

Rydra Wong is a top linguist, acclaimed poet, and former military cryptologist. When the Alliance military come across a new code used by the enemy, which is beyond their ability to crack, they come to her for help. She informs them that it is not a mere code, but an actual language, and agrees to accept the challenge.

Quickly assembling a crew, Wong heads to the Alliance War Yards to study the raw data on this new language, which the military calls Babel-17. However, shortly after she arrives, an enemy attack forces her to flee in disarray, and she falls in with a privateer, who is, fortunately, on the Alliance side.

Or mostly so. On board the privateer's ship, she begins to learn more about Babel-17, and the surprising benefits and dangers it offers to someone who learns to speak it. The language literally twists the thought pattern of its speakers, making it easier to conceptualize certain ideas, but more difficult to translate your thoughts into anything others can understand.

Eliot, T.S.: The Waste Land

Here's a link to the text if anyone is curious

The Waste Land is a poem that describes a...place? state of mind? an arc of history?...in a series of fragments. It weaves together fractured dialogue, mythology, language, and popular culture of its day into a bizarre but beautiful landscape that defies easy explanation.

Ewing, Frederick R.: I, Libertine

New York Times Best Selling novel by acclaimed author, Frederick R. Ewing, “I, Libertine” tells the story of a social climber who styles himself as Lance Courtney.

I highly recommend those voting seek out the book to read for themselves, as it is truly one of the great works of modern American literature.

Gaiman, Neil: Neverwhere

"Under the streets of London there's a world most people could never even dream of. A city of monsters and saints, murderers and angels, knights in armour and pale girls in black velvet. "Neverwhere" is the London of the people who have fallen between the cracks. Strange destinies lie in wait in London below - a world that seems eerily familiar. But a world that is utterly bizarre, peopled by unearthly characters such as the Angel called Islington, the girl named Door, and the Earl who holds Court on a tube train. (...)"

Extremely weird world that unsuspecting civilian can be stuck in, and there is a door motive. This is a Spiral Leitner if I ever saw one.

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins: The Yellow Wallpaper

Link

From Wikipedia: "The story is written as a collection of journal entries narrated in the first person. The journal was written by a woman whose physician husband has rented an old mansion for the summer. Forgoing other rooms in the house, the couple moves into the upstairs nursery. As a form of treatment, the husband forbids the journal writer from working or writing, and encourages her to eat well and get plenty of air so that she can recuperate from what he calls a "temporary nervous depression – a slight hysterical tendency", a common diagnosis in women at the time. As the reader continues through the journal entries, they experience the writer's gradual descent into madness with nothing better to do than observe the peeling yellow wallpaper in her room.”

***

Epistolary novel about a woman who's being made to live in a single room to treat her post-partum depression. Over the course of the story, she becomes increasingly obsessed with the patterns of the room's wallpaper, spending hours gazing at it and trying to make sense of it. By the end of the story, she believes that there's a woman trapped in the wallpaper, or perhaps that she is the women trapped in the wallpaper. Throughout the story, she's also gaslit by her husband.

***

It's a short story and I highly recommend that you read it. Spoilers (of course) are ahead, so if you want an unspoiled experience, skip past.

This story follows the narrator, as she is locked up by her husband who cares for her and ultimately makes all decisions for her. He makes her doubt her state of mind as she suffers from a nervious disorder. As she stays in the ex-nursery attic, she writes of the horrendous yellow wallpaper. She becomes obsessive of it, watching it night and day amd watching as the colours change with the lighting of the room. She begins seeing a woman locked behind the twisting patterns, and in the end she becomes it - or it becomes her, and she has a hysteric breakdown.

Hall, Steven: The Raw Shark Texts

Eric Sanderson wakes up with no memory of who he is or any past experiences. He is told by a psychologist that he has a dissociative condition known as fugue but a trail of written clues purporting to be from his pre-amnesiac self describe a more fantastic and sinister explanation for his lack of memories. According to these, he has activated a conceptual shark called a Ludovician which "feeds on human memories and the intrinsic sense of self" and is relentlessly pursuing him and will eventually erase his personality completely.

Also at one point there's about 30 pages of an ASCII shark moving towards the reader. Could easily be interpreted as the Ludovician actually approaching the reader in a Leitner-ized version.

[SPOILERS] When the Ludovician attacks Eric, he decides to go in search of a doctor named Trey Fidorous, identified by the letters from his previous self, in the hope he may be able to help to explain what happened to him and how to defeat the shark. Eric travels through Britain in search of clues and is contacted by a mysterious figure called Mr. Nobody, who is part of a megalomaniac network intelligence called Mycroft Ward. Mr. Nobody attempts to subdue and control Eric but Eric manages to escape with the help of an associate of Fidorous named Scout. Scout takes Eric to meet Fidorous, travelling through un-space (an underground network of empty warehouses and unused cellars). They begin a romantic relationship during the journey but Eric feels betrayed when he discovers that Scout has brought him to Fidorous to use him as bait for the shark in the hope of destroying Ward.

With their help Fidorous builds a conceptual shark-hunting boat and they sail out on a conceptual ocean. After a battle with the shark they throw a laptop hooked up to the Mycroft Ward database into its mouth, destroying both Ward and the shark. Eric and Scout remain in the conceptual universe while Eric's dead body is discovered back in the real world.

Hamilton, Patrick: Angel Street/Gas Light

Under the guise of kindness, Jack Manningham is slowly torturing his fragile wife Bella into insanity in his efforts to cover his search for treasure from his diabolical past. He makes her think she is forgetting things and rattles her nerves with the flickering gaslight, which he controls from another room. One day, when Jack is out, Bella has an unexpected caller: kindly Inspector Rough from Scotland Yard. Rough is convinced that Jack is a homicidal maniac wanted for a murder committed fifteen years earlier in this very house. Gradually the Inspector restores Bella's confidence in herself and as the evidence against Jack unfolds.

The play that inspired the movie 1994 "Gaslight" which brought the term "gaslighting" into the public eye.

***

The literal origins of the term "gaslighting," the play follows the recently-married protagonist as her husband tries to convince her that she's going mad.

Hawke, Marcus: Grey Noise

Evan is just trying to get his store, REWIND VIDEO, up and running. Fate, unfortunately, often has other plans. Then he finds something that would be the perfect touch, an old vacuum tube TV. One that keeps turning to static. And it too has other plans. It follows you. Drives you. It’s already inside you. Lose yourself in...GREY NOISE.

Hodgson, William Hope: The House on the Borderlands

Fishing buddies Tonnison and Berreggnog didn't bargain for what they found while on holiday near the remote Irish village of Kraighten. While walking along the riverbank, they're astonished to see that the river abruptly ends. It reappears as a surge from a chasm some 100 feet below the edge of an abyss, where also stand the remains of an oddly shaped house, half-swallowed by the pit.

Exploring the ruins, the friends discover the moldering journal of an unidentified man--the Recluse--who had lived in the house with his sister and faithful dog years ago. Its pages reveal the man's apparent descent into madness--how else to account for his chronicles of otherworldly visions, trips to other dimensions, and attacks by swine-like humanoid creatures that seem to have followed him home? After one particular vision in which he witnesses the end of the earth and time itself, the Recluse awakens in his study to find nothing has changed--except that his dog Pepper is dead, dissolved into a pile of dust. And then the "swine things" return...

Hunter, Erin: Warriors

Can you keep track of who the fuck is related to who and who died when and what these cats look like and what they're named? No you fucking can't, there's four writers all sharing a pen name and metric shit ton of books in the main series alone, let alone the spinoffs. Continuity is dead and these cats murdered it.

Ito, Junji: Uzumaki

Uzumaki follows a high-school teenager, Kirie Goshima (五島桐絵); her boyfriend, Shuichi Saito (斎藤秀一); and the citizens of the small, quiet Japanese town of Kurouzu-cho (黒渦町, Black Vortex Town), which is enveloped by supernatural events involving spirals.

As the story progresses, Kirie and Shuichi witness how the spiral curse affects the people around them, causing the citizens to become either obsessed or paranoid about spirals. Shuichi becomes reclusive after both of his parents die from the horrific psychological and physical powers of the spirals, but also gains the ability to detect when the spiral curse is taking place, although he is often dismissed until the next paranormal effects of the curse become obvious. Eventually, Kirie is affected by the curse as well, when her hair begins to curl into an unnatural spiral pattern, drains her life energy to hypnotize the citizens, and chokes her whenever she attempts to cut it off. Shuichi is able to cut her hair and save her. The curse continues to plague the town until a series of typhoons conjured by the curse destroys most of its structures. The only remaining buildings are ancient abandoned terraced houses, which the citizens are forced first to move into, and then begin expanding as they grow more and more crowded.

As a series of increasingly powerful earthquakes and additional destruction from delinquents able to utilize strong winds strike the town, Kirie and Shuichi devise a plan to escape Kurouzu-cho, but when they attempt to escape, their efforts are unsuccessful. After returning to the town, they discover that several years have passed since they left, as time speeds up away from the spiral. The other citizens have expanded the terraced houses until they connected into a single structure forming a labyrinthine spiral pattern, but have become mutated as a consequence of overcrowding, their limbs twisting and warping into spirals. Kirie and Shuichi decide to search for Kirie's parents, which brings them to the center after many days of walking through the labyrinth.

At the center, Shuichi is hurled down a pit leading deep beneath the earth by a mutated citizen, with Kirie herself descending via a colossal spiral staircase to find him. She falls but is saved by countless bodies making up the ground of a vast, ancient city consisting entirely of spiral patterns in various arrangements. As Kirie looks for Shuichi, she finds her parents twisted and petrified, resembling stone statues, along with many other citizens of Kurouzu-cho who have met the same fate. Then, she hears Shuichi call for her and goes to him. Both are overwhelmed by the ancient spirals surrounding them and Shuichi points out how it seems as though the spiral ruins have a will of their own. Noticing that the petrified citizens of Kurouzu-cho are all facing the spiral city, Shuichi theorizes that this is the source of the curse; the city expands on its own periodically and has cursed the land above out of jealousy from having no one to view it.

Shuichi urges Kirie to leave without him as he can no longer walk, and that the curse should be over soon, but she replies that she does not have the strength and wishes to stay with him. The two embrace with their bodies twisting and intertwining together, signifying their acceptance into the never-ending curse. At the same time, a stone tower in the shape of a drill bit rises out of the city, and breaches the surface, forming the centerpiece of the abandoned town. As Shuichi and Kirie lie together, Kirie notes that the curse ended at the same time it began, for just as time speeds up away from the center, it freezes at the center. The spiral's curse is eternal, and all the events will repeat when a new Kurouzu-cho is built where the previous one lay.

***

I was debating if I should just do the first volume but three in one horrors sounded great to me. So Uzumaki is largely about spirals, to put the most obvious reasoning first. That's that Uzumaki translates to, after all. Spirals begin enveloping this small town, causing supernatural events. But the madness side of things comes as quickly as the spirals are there. You see it first in completely opposite ways with Shuichi's father and mother, with one becoming obsessed with spirals to the point of madness and eventually becoming one himself and the other being so terrified of spirals that it turns into its own psychological torment as she tries to remove spirals from her life and eventually realizes that those spirals are part of her naturally, causing her to try to take apart those aspects of her as well. Over chapters, characters become warped and characters succumb to the madness of spirals. Some fear the spirals, while others embrace them. Escaping the spirals is proven futile, and through that, it is also proven how out of sync the town is from reality as a whole, with time being sped up. Also, it has a labyrinth at this point, built by those suffering from the curse, so I think the Spiral would love that. In the end, the spirals are proven inescapable, and the two main characters warp together into a spiral of their own. The curse seems to end here, but really, it's a never ending cycle, and a curse which will never go away. The curse and the madness it brings won't fade.

***

Kurouzu-cho, a small fogbound town on the coast of Japan, is cursed. According to Shuichi Saito, the withdrawn boyfriend of teenager Kirie Goshima, their town is haunted not by a person or being but a pattern: UZUMAKI, the spiral—the hypnotic secret shape of the world.

***

Plot is about a town cursed by spirals which make you go insane

Joyce, James: Finnegans Wake

Considered to be one of the great literary mindscrews. The plot is covered in about a tenth of the chapters in the book. The rest tell a series of unconnected vignettes, describe minor characters in excessive detail, give allegories for the main plot, and teach you geometry. One chapter was described by Joyce as "A chattering dialogue across a river by two washerwomen who, as night falls, become a tree and stone." Some chapters feature random doodles in the margins. The first sentence is the ending part of the last sentence, making the book circular. Finally, it's written in a combination of five dozen or so different languages, random puns that you need a doctorate in ancient mythology and the aforementioned languages to understand, and general stream of consciousness. In short, it makes no sense. Which is awesome. Joyce stated that it was supposed to be a dream-like "night book" in comparison to his "day-book", Ulysses, which described a day in the life of some ordinary Dubliners but whose style and construction was almost as weird.

***

Finnegan's Wake is one of the most experimental novels of the twentieth century. Rather than write using conventions of novels--or of the English language--Joyce structured his book on language itself. The result is surreal, dense, and famously difficult. To get a sense of just how strange and dreamlike the whole thing is, even its Wikipedia page compares it to Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky" before pointing out the the book begins with the second half of a sentence, which it gives the first half of at its end. Tl;dr Finnegan's Wake is so unsettlingly experimental that Joyce had to break the English language down to its components to get his vision down on the page.

Juster, Norton: The Phantom Tollbooth

Milo receives a package one day, from an unknown source. The package takes him on a journey where he meets the judge jury and executioner, the princesses rhyme and reason, and more

Kte'pi, Bill: The Cheshire

If you don't want to read this whole summary, here's a song based on the story

Alice Little came out of a showing of Disney's Alice in Wonderland sixteen years ago with nothing but a blue gingham dress, a faded daguerrotype of cats, and jumbled memories of being Alice Liddell. Specifically the fictional character: "she'd never thought of herself as the 'real' Alice, the one Charles Dodgson wrote Alice's Adventures in Wonderland for - she had no memories of that Alice's life, only of the life chronicled by Lewis Carroll - madness and tea parties and talking animals. Worse, her memories conflicted, as she remembered Alice's Adventures Underground, Wonderland's first draft, as vividly as she did the two published novels." After years of attempting to return to Wonderland failed--she'd "tried every drug she could, hallucinogenic and otherwise [...] meditation, trances, pain rituals, sweat lodges, prayers and madness and hypnosis and psychotherapy"--Alice tells herself that her memories are merely symptomatic of a dissociative disorder and tries to go clean. But she puts an ad in the paper asking "Why is a raven like a writing desk?" (which includes a coded message saying "SAVE ME"), searching for answers despite herself, and eventually gets an answer. She meets a grinning man "in a purple-striped turtleneck, with odd-shaped nails and a tattoo of a mushroom on one of his knuckles" at a bar and they talk about her struggles, with him eventually getting her to ask what she really wants to know--if he can take her back. The man replies, "'There's no back to take you. You never left [...] Maybe we recognise each other because you're Alice and I'm the Cheshire Cat. Maybe we're descendents of the originals. Maybe we're brother and sister, separated after our parents' deaths and so traumatised we sought refuge in the books Father read to us as children. Maybe we're simply mad.'" After giving her LSD, the man tells her that a raven isn't like a writing desk at all, "And he faded away, leaving nothing but a grinnnnnnnnnn."

Lovecraft, H.P.: The Color Out of Space

An indescribable color leaches the life out of a patch of farmland and everyone on it.

Lyons, Steve: The Stealers of Dreams

Synopsis: "In the far future, the Doctor, Rose and Captain Jack find a world on which fiction has been outlawed. A world where it's a crime to tell stories, a crime to lie, a crime to hope, and a crime to dream.

But now somebody is challenging the status quo. A pirate TV station urges people to fight back. And the Doctor wants to help -- until he sees how easily dreams can turn into nightmares.

With one of his companions stalked by shadows and the other committed to an asylum, the Doctor is forced to admit that fiction can be dangerous after all. Though perhaps it is not as deadly as the truth... "

Why it's Spiral: A society where lies and fictions are forbidden is, evidently, a society that will fall for anything. The repression of any untruth -- by threat of violence and by invasive brain surgery to paralyze the region that dreams -- means that people are more desperate than ever to believe in anything. Fiction has consequences on this planet. And what could be a more obvious lie than the time-traveling man in his blue box...?

Mathers, Edward Powys: Cain’s Jawbone

I'm just going to quote an article from The Independent: "Cain’s Jawbone, originally published in 1934, is a murder mystery puzzle composed of 100 pages – all assembled in the wrong order. The only way to solve all six murders in the prose narrative is to reorder the pages and correctly identify the crimes, their victims, and who perpetrated them."

Here's the link to the article

Mearns, William Hughes: Antigonish

It's all pretty much all in the TMA episode (Upon the stairs). The little man who "wasn't there" in the stairs.

Miles, Lawrence et. al.: The Book of the War

Synopsis: "The Great Houses: Immovable. Implacable. Unchanging. Old enough to pass themselves off as immortal, arrogant enough to claim ultimate authority over the Spiral Politic.

The Enemy: Not so much an army as a hostile new kind of history. So ambitious it can re-write worlds, so complex that even calling it by its name seems to underestimate it.

Faction Paradox: Renegades, ritualists, saboteurs and subterfugers, the criminal-cult to end all criminal-cults, happy to be caught in the crossfire and ready to take whatever's needed from the wreckage… assuming the other powers leave behind a universe that's habitable.

The War: A fifty-year-old dispute over the two most valuable territories in existence: "cause" and "effect."

Marking the first five decades of the conflict, THE BOOK OF THE WAR is an A to Z of a self-contained continuum and a complete guide to the Spiral Politic, from the beginning of recordable time to the fall of humanity. Part story, part history and part puzzle-box, this is a chronicle of protocol and paranoia in a War where the historians win as many battles as the soldiers and the greatest victory of all is to hold on to your own past."

Propaganda: A text which purports to be a constantly shifting and updating guide to The War, a conflict so overarching and complete that every other conflict is but a pale shadow thereof; the Time War. Of course, since it would shift retroactively with the changing timelines, there is no way to prove or disprove this claim. Notable entries include cities built from days stolen from shifting calendars, the secrets of removing yourself from history while still leaving yourself free to interfere, Grandfather Paradox, the location of the exact centre of history, how to weaponize banality, and Parablox.

Oh, and there's something else in there. Something that seems to be talking to you...

Morrison, Grant: Doom Patrol

The series in general could easily fit in the Spiral, but I'll focus on a certain arc. A great new evil emerges! The Brotherhood of Dada! Its members: a woman that has super strength when she's asleep, a man that is made of fog and swallows his victims(and then has to put up with their voices inside his brain forever), a woman that has every super power you haven't thought of and is deathly afraid of dirt and an illiterate man that can turn into a hurricane. And their intrepid leader! Mr Nobody! He used to be a boring, average man. With the help of a very criminal doctor he tried to turn into a new man...but he went so insane he's always slightly left of reality and 2D. He doesn't mind though, he rather enjoys the meaninglessness of it all, which is a bit Vast of him. He also calls cops fascists.

The bad guys steal a painting that swallows everything and anything and they put Paris inside it. One of the funniest panels ever is various super heroes sitting around a painting wandering what they're supposed to do. Thankfully, Doom Patrol knows how to deal with the weird stuff. They go into the painting, get separated in different artstyles and beaten up.

But the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse is coming, so they cooperate and put him in the dadaist section, making him lose all meaning and turning into a wooden horse.

A big part of the arc is also narrated by the illiterate hurricane guy, which makes it harder to understand since he writes phonetically.

The whole thing is absurdity, the first bad guys are absurd and the second bad guy gets beaten by the absurd. After a few more arcs Mr Nobody runs for president(with some members of the Doom Patrol endorsing him) and gets killed by the CIA in a similar manner to Jesus. For his campaign he drove a bus that made everyone behind it feel like they've taken lsd.

Moore, Christopher: Sacré Bleu: A Comedy d’Art

The story surrounds the mysterious suicide of Vincent van Gogh, who famously shot himself in a French wheat field only to walk a mile to a doctor’s house. The mystery, which is slowly but cleverly revealed through the course of the book, is blue: specifically the exclusive ultramarine pigment that accents pictures created by the likes of Michelangelo and van Gogh. To find the origin of the hue, Moore brings on Lucien Lessard, a baker, aspiring artist and lover of Juliette, the brunette beauty who breaks his heart. After van Gogh’s death, Lucien joins up with the diminutive force of nature Henri Toulouse-Lautrec to track down the inspiration behind the Sacré Bleu. In the shadows, lurking for centuries, is a perverse paint dealer dubbed The Colorman, who tempts the world’s great artists with his unique hues and a mysterious female companion who brings revelation—and often syphilis (it is Moore, after all). Into the palette, Moore throws a dizzying array of characters, all expertly portrayed, from the oft-drunk “little gentleman” to a host of artists including Édouard Manet, Paul Gauguin, Georges Seurat, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro and Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

Muir, Tamsyn: Harrow the Ninth

Harrow the Ninth is, above all, really fucking confusing. Roughly every third chapter is actively gaslighting the reader about what happened in the last book. The main character is fucking struggling to maintain any sort of grip on reality all throughout the story, and more often than not, she fails miserably. This is due to several factors, including, but not limited to - sleep deprivation, latent schizophrenia, ruthless emotional manipulation from everyone around her, being full of a frankly alarming number of ghosts from several entirely unrelated sources, childhood parental and religious trauma, and a self-inflicted amateur lobotomy.

***

Takes place post(sometimes pre) DIY lobotomy; leaving our protag, who already struggles identifying between reality and hallucination, a paranoid, constantly questioning wreck. It's written in second person and does not follow events chronologically, leaving the reader questioning everything almost as much as the protag.

National Governors Association and Council of Chief State School Officers: Common Core Math Textbook

Drives me up the damn wall insane. This is mostly a joke suggestion but also I think there’s something to be said about fractals’ place in mathematics, and the widespread range of common core math’s influence. To be honest, submitting this is a gut feeling of dread to me.

Nikolson, Adam: Life between the tides

Look this probably shouldn’t even make it into the bracket and this is mostly a very dull book about shoreline ecosystems but there’s this one chapter where the dude gets positively poetic about I think?? winkles?? (a kind of snail) and it absolutely reads like a statement like we are talking fractal winkles-all-the-way-down insanity. I need to tell someone about it bc it was like suddenly reading another book. A better and also worse book. I’m pretty sure he quoted philosophers in it. I wish I had taken notes. He would get along with Ivo Lensik’s dad.

O’Brien, Flann: The Third Policeman

Synopsis from Goodreads: "The Third Policeman is Flann O'Brien's brilliantly dark comic novel about the nature of time, death, and existence. Told by a narrator who has committed a botched robbery and brutal murder, the novel follows him and his adventures in a two-dimensional police station where, through the theories of the scientist/philosopher de Selby, he is introduced to "Atomic Theory" and its relation to bicycles, the existence of eternity (which turns out to be just down the road), and de Selby's view that the earth is not round but "sausage-shaped." With the help of his newly found soul named "Joe," he grapples with the riddles and contradictions that three eccentric policeman present to him."

Ogawa, Yoko: The Memory Police

The story is set in an alternate Japan where people's memories of certain things and concepts (e.g. birds, hats, winter, books, seasons, even their sense of self) are slowly taken away from their collective minds for 'their safety' by the titular Memory Police, a government force of sorts. This forced forgetting goes to the point where they can't physically perceive that concept; birds are weird creatures because no one remembers what a bird is like, and it's always winter because no one remembers what spring is. The story even ends with the unnamed protagonist (along with several others) eventually fading away from existence (read: forgetting) as memories of certain body parts and finally the concept of the human body is taken away by the Memory Police. It's like if the vase from MAG 38 formed and entire task force to do its job.

This one has narrative potential too; imagine a statement where someone slowly lose memories of certain things after reading this Leitner, gradually becoming an unreliable narrator as reality slips away from their conscious.

Orwell, George: Nineteen Eighty-Four

Pelevin, Victor: The Helmet of Horror

Eight people find themselves in eight different rooms with a labyrinth behind them and a computer in front of them. They try to communicate via the computer that allows them to chat with one another, but has nicknames set for them(IsoldA, UGLI 666, Ariane...) and blocks their personal information. They(and us) can't know if they are lying. When two of them try to see each other by visiting a spot in the labyrinths that should be the same they each then recount a completely different experience and accuse each other of lying. Another character claims they all must be figments of his imagination, he must be very drunk. And they're all afraid of the minotaur. It is a book where no one, even the reader knows what's real, everyone is afraid of what might appear if they turn a corner and no one knows what's going on.

Pratchett, Terry: Moving Pictures

"‘HOLY WOOD IS A DIFFERENT SORT OF PLACE . . . HERE, THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IS TO BE IMPORTANT.’

A new phenomenon is taking over the Discworld: moving pictures. Created by the alchemists of Ankh-Morpork, the growing ‘clicks’ industry moves to the sandy land of Holy Wood, attracted by the light of the sun and some strange calling no one can quite put their finger on…

Also drawn to Holy Wood are aspiring young stars Victor Tugelbend, a wizarding student dropout, and Theda ‘Ginger’ Withel, a small-town girl with big dreams. But behind the glitz and glamour of the clicks, a sinister presence lurks. Because belief is powerful in the Discworld, and sometimes downright dangerous…

The magic of movies might just unravel reality itself."

Pynchon, Thomas: The Crying of Lot 49

Oedipa Maas spends the whole book trying to figure out if the conspiracy she’s trying to unravel about the US postal service and a conter-postal service via plays, signs/images, and history is real or if she’s being gaslit by her ex, who just died and made her executor of his will.

Ryukishi07: higurashi no naku koro ni (When The Evening Cicadas Cry)

The series explores paranoia and deceit among friends. It uses its POVs incredibly well, limiting your view of the situation so much that it is genuinely incredibly hard to figure out what happened or why (until you read the answer arcs ofc). Several key plot points involve characters getting so consumed by their own madness that they cannot see reality for what it is and wildly assume false things. This madness repeats and repeats and repeats, consuming the friends group over and over and over, leading them to do horrific things to each other. Many a character become so consumed by suspicion and fear that the world distorts and details change in their mind to match what they think is happening. I am desperately trying to describe the series without spoilers rn

Sachar, Louis: Wayside School Is Falling Down

Obviously all of Wayside School is a little Spirally -- the weird architecture, the cow invasions, occasional hypnosis, and more -- but this one tells a story of the nineteenth floor. Wayside School has no nineteenth floor. There is one teacher on the nineteenth floor, and only one class, who learn about how to alphabetize every number. Sometimes, new students arrive...

Schwartz, Alvin: "Maybe You Will Remember" (short story from Scary Stories 3: More Tales To Chill Your Bones)

A girl, Rosemary, and her mother are on vacation in Paris. Rosemary's mother is ill, so Rosemary is sent to get medicine, but ultimately has her time wasted by the driver on the way back, and when she returns to the hotel, nobody recognizes her, telling her she has the wrong place. Her mother is gone, too, and when Rosemary asks to see the room they stayed in as proof they were there, the clerk shows her a completely unfamiliar setup, making Rosemary wonder what happened to her.

In the appendix of the book, the scenario is explained. Rosemary's mother was sick with the plague, and the doctor, recognizing it, knew she would be dead very quickly. Rosemary was put on a wild goose chase for the medicine and given a driver who would delay her, with the doctor and hotel staff working to dispose of her mother's body and re-decorate the hotel room while Rosemary was away. With Rosemary unable to verify that she was in the hotel, and unknowing that her mother died of plague, the hotel avoided any negative publicity that would have occurred if anyone were to find out a guest had the plague. The hotel's PR was saved, but Rosemary was left doubting her sanity.

Serafini, Luigi: Codex Seraphinianus

The Codex is an encyclopedia in manuscript with copious hand-drawn, colored-pencil illustrations of bizarre and fantastical flora, fauna, anatomies, fashions, and foods. The illustrations are often surreal parodies of things in the real world, such as a bleeding fruit, a plant that grows into roughly the shape of a chair and is subsequently made into one, and a copulating couple who metamorphose into an alligator. Others depict odd, apparently senseless machines, often with delicate appearances and bound by tiny filaments. Some illustrations are recognizable as maps or human faces, while others (especially in the "physics" chapter) are mostly or totally abstract. Nearly all of the illustrations are brightly coloured and highly detailed

***

It's an encyclopedia for a universe that doesn't exist, treated as if it does exist in another universe while being written in a nonsense, impossible to understand language. The things it depict doesn't make sense either, ranging from swimming trees and eye-shaped fishes to absolutely bizarre creatures and technology, like a rainbow-making cloud shaped like Da Vinci's aerial screw. The entire thing comes off as surreal nonsense because it's meant to symbolise the feeling of trying to understand something that you can't understand, but finds cool because of the visuals. It's a book that you aren't meant to read understand, but simply look at, because trying to understand it just... doesn't work.

***

The Codex is an encyclopedia in manuscript with copious hand-drawn, colored-pencil illustrations of bizarre and fantastical flora, fauna, anatomies, fashions, and foods. It has been compared to the still undeciphered Voynich manuscript, the story "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" by Jorge Luis Borges, and the artwork of M. C. Escher and Hieronymus Bosch. The illustrations are often surreal parodies of things in the real world, such as a bleeding fruit, a plant that grows into roughly the shape of a chair and is subsequently made into one, and a copulating couple who metamorphose into an alligator. Others depict odd, apparently senseless machines, often with delicate appearances and bound by tiny filaments. Some illustrations are recognizable as maps or human faces, while others (especially in the "physics" chapter) are mostly or totally abstract. Nearly all of the illustrations are brightly coloured and highly detailed.

The false writing system appears modeled on Western writing systems, with left-to-right writing in rows and an alphabet with uppercase and lowercase letters, some of which double as numerals. Some letters appear only at the beginning or end of words, similar to Semitic writing systems. The curvilinear letters are rope- or thread-like, with loops and even knots, and are somewhat reminiscent of Sinhala script. In a talk at the Oxford University Society of Bibliophiles [...] Serafini stated that there is no meaning behind the Codex's script, which is asemic; that his experience in writing it was similar to automatic writing; and that what he wanted his alphabet to convey was the sensation children feel with books they cannot yet understand, although they see that the writing makes sense for adults. Take a look for yourself:

Shakespeare, William: A Midsummer Night's Dream

The way the fey play with the perceptions and emotions of the wandering youths in the woods is peak Spiral, as their loves and disdains change with the machinations of Oberon and Puck.

Shakespeare, William: King Lear

The play has everything: real descents into madness, fake descents into madness, betrayal by trusted loved ones, loyalty from betrayed loved ones, and would-be wise men who turn out to be fools.

Shakespeare, William: The Winter's Tale

Imagine that you are absolutely, completely, 100 percent certain that your wife is cheating on you with your best friend. Now imagine you're the king, and your best friend is the king of a far-off kingdom. Now imagine that the consequences of your actions spiral outward: your wife and son die, one of your trusted advisors has disappeared with daughter on your orders to kill her.

This first half of this deeply underappreciated play explores the consequences of one man's fear of betrayal. Coincidentally, it is one Shakespeare's more surreal works. It's the origin of the infamous "Exit pursued by a bear," a stage direction that concludes a scene set on the coast of a kingdom that in real life was landlocked. And--spoiler alert--the play concludes with a statute coming back to life.

Anyway, it's a surprisingly Spiral-like play with a dream-like atmosphere, fairy-tale logic, and a Distortion-esque look at the fear of betrayal.

Silberescher: SCP-1425: Star Signals

Stine, R.L.: Don't Go to Sleep!

"Matt hates his tiny bedroom. It's so small it's practically a closet! Still, Matt's mom refuses to let him sleep in the guest room. After all, they might have guests. Some day. Or year. Then Matt does it. Late one night. When everyone's in bed. He sneaks into the guest room and falls asleep. Poor Matt. He should have listened to his mom. Because when Matt wakes up, his whole life has changed. For the worse. And every time he falls asleep, he wakes up in a new nightmare... "

Inception, for kids! Whenever Matt falls asleep, he changes reality -- and a group of special agents want to stop him by putting him to sleep, permanently.

Unknown, Voynich Manuscript

Many call the fifteenth-century codex, commonly known as the “Voynich Manuscript,” the world’s most mysterious book. Written in an unknown script by an unknown author, the manuscript has no clearer purpose now than when it was rediscovered in 1912 by rare books dealer Wilfrid Voynich. It's a strange code describing alchemical formulae and unknown life forms, and no one understands it. It's a mystery waiting for you to lose yourself in its pages.

Wells, H.G.: The Door in the Wall

This short story is about Lionel Wallace, who at the age of 5 encountered and entered a weird door. Behind it he found a beautiful and peaceful garden and felt such happiness and bliss, that when he was transported back on the street and escorted back to his home, he was very upset. He would see the door again many times later in life, but every time he will refuse to enter it due to his responsibilities (for example, to not be late to class, to catch a train, to be on time for an appointment). He grew up and became a successful politician, but the perfect world behind the door haunted him, and his success felt dull and boring. The book ends with people finding his lifeless body at the bottom of a pit, and that he had in poor light walked through a small doorway that led onto it. The narrator then speculates that maybe Lionel saw the perfect garden behind the doorway and was finally able to find happiness.

West, A.J.: The Spirit Engineer

Based on a real story about a guy who was convinced that one particular medium was the real deal. He completely upended his career for it, and wrote a paper on the science of the ghostly plane.

He did several shows, and got relatively famous. Eventually, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle [someone who wanted to believe] and Harry Houdini [An avid non-believer] invite him over to convince them that séances were real. In the process, Houdini completely disproves him, and outs the medium he thought was real as a fraud.

It turns out his wife and coworker had convinced the 'medium' and their family to run a prank on him. In his fury, he kills everyone involved, and then drinks Poison to try - one final time - to proove his theory.

Tldr: A real story who unknowingly changed his life and ruined his reputation because of the lies of the ones he trusted. When he realises, he looses his sanity and kills everyone around him, including himself.

 Whorf, Benjamin Lee: Relation of Habitual Thought and Behavior to Language

The famous text about language as a symbol that can never truly reflect reality can kinda fuck with your perceptions about how our language serves to construct our own realities. We're programmed to experience the world in different ways according to the way we interpret language.

Wyspiański, Stanisław: The Wedding

Relevant parts from Wikipedia

"The play's action takes place at the wedding of a member of the Kraków intelligentsia (the Bridegroom) and his peasant Bride. Their crossclass union follows a then fashionable trend of chłopomaństwo ("peasant-mania") among some Polish intelligentsia, who were often scions of the historic Polish szlachta (nobility). (...) Among the live guests are ghosts of personae from Polish history and culture, representing the guilty consciences of the living. The two groups engage in dialogues. The wedding guests are hypnotized by a rosebush straw-wrap (Chochoł) from the garden which comes to life and joins the party. (Offending a chochoł, according to folk beliefs, could provoke the thing to play tricks).The "Poet" is visited successively by the "Black Knight" (a symbol of the nation's past military glory); the "Journalist"; the court jester Stańczyk, a conservative political sage; and the "Ghost of Wernyhora" (a paradigm of leadership for Poland). (...)Thus the wedding guests, symbolizing the nation, waste their chance at national freedom. They keep on dancing a "chocholi taniec" (a "straw-wrap's dance") "the way it's played for them" (a Polish folk saying), failing in their mission." This play is as if patriotically motivated Spiral avatars crashed somebody's wedding, and I think it deserves consideration as Spiral Leitner.

[thedisabilitybookarchive]

Update: December 2024

Added:

"Oligoarthritis" category and tag

"Unspecified Depressive Disorder" category and tag

"Panic Attacks" category and tag

"Panic Disorder" category and tag

"Unidentified Panic Disorder" category and tag

"Double Amputee" category and tag

"Leg Brace User" category

"Vascular Conditions" category and tag

"Thoracic Outlet Syndrome" category and tag

"Allergies" category and tag

"Ovarian Cancer" category and tag

"Ataxia" category and tag

"Pernicious Anemia" category and tag

"Ostomy" category and tag

"Unidentified Seizure Disorder" category and tag

"Trauma" category and tag

"Osteogenesis Imperfecta" category and tag

"WLW" category and tag

"MLM" category and tag

"Transgender Author" tag

"Clean Romance" tag

"Welsh MC" tag

"Chinese-British SC" tag

"Sri-Lankan-Canadian MC" tag

"Clean Romance" to "Themes & Tropes" page

"Brothers Best Friend" to "Themes & Tropes" page

"Only One Bed" to "Themes & Tropes" page

"M/F/M" to "Themes & Tropes" page

"Christmas" to "Themes & Tropes" page

"Dinosaurs" to "Themes & Tropes" page

"Roller Derby" to "Themes & Tropes" page

"Robin Gow" to "Disabled Authors" page

"Mattie Bukowski" to "Disabled Authors" page

"Johanna Hedva" to "Disabled Authors" page

"Lizzie Huxley-Jones" to "Disabled Authors" page

"Natalie Lloyd" to "Disabled Authors" page

"1930s" to "Settings" page

"The Virgin Islands" to "Settings" page

Entries:

'The Undaunted'- Hart, Alan L.

'The Year My Life Went Down the Toilet"- Arlow, Jake Maia

'The Christmasaurus'- Fletcher, Tom. Devries, Shane

'A Not-So Holiday Paradise'- Mitchell, Gracie Ruth

'Make You Mine This Christmas'- Huxley-Jones, Lizzie

'7 Days for Fae'- Eisen, Lior

'Bruised'- Boteju, Tanya

'Dear Mothman'- Gow, Robin

'Hummingbird'- Lloyd, Natalie

Fixed:

Updated:

Categories and tags on 'Connection Error'- Albert, Annabeth

Categories on 'Back in the Saddle'- Kincaid, Beth

Categories and tags on ‘City of Strife’- Arseneault, Claudie

Categories and tags on ‘City of Betrayal’- Arseneault, Claudie

Categories and tags on ‘Icebreaker’- Graziadei, A. L.

Tags on ‘A Quick & Easy Guide to Sex & Disability’- Andrews, A

Tags on ‘The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Disability’- Barker, Clare. Murray, Stuart

Tags on ‘A Game of Thrones’- Martin, George R. R.

Tags on ‘A Spindle Splintered’- Harrow, Alix E.

Tags on ‘Beasts of Prey’- Gray, Ayana

Tags on ‘The Bedlam Stacks’- Pulley, Natasha

Tags on ‘Blood Price’- Huff, Tanya

Tags on ‘Borderline’- Baker, Mishell

Tags on ‘Bound to the Monarchs’- Winters, Brooke

Tags on ‘The Broken Kingdoms’- Jemisin, N. K.

Tags on ‘Carry the Ocean’- Cullinan, Heidi

Title and tags on ‘Growing Up Disabled in Australia’- Findlay, Carly

Tags on ‘Cinder’- Meyer, Marissa

Tags on ‘Conventionally Yours’- Albert, Annabeth

Tags on ‘Counterpoint’- Zabo, Anna

Tags on ‘Crooked Kingdom’- Bardugo, Leigh

Tags on ‘Daniel Cabot Puts Down Roots’- Sebastian, Cat

Tags on ‘Dead in the Garden’- Donovan, Dahlia

Tags on ‘The Right to Maim’- Puar, Jasbir K.

Tags on ‘Deathless Divide’- Ireland, Justina

Tags on ‘Earth Girl’- Edwards, Janet

Tags on ‘Uncanny Bodies’- Smith, Scott, T., Alaniz, José

Tags on ‘The Extraordinaries’- Klune, T. J.

Tags on ‘The Extraordinary Education of Nicholas Benedict’- Stewart, Trenton Lee

Tags on ‘The Faithless’- Clark, C. L.

Tags on ‘We’ve Got This’- Hull, Eliza

Tags on ‘The Outside’- Hoffman, Ada

Tags on 'Iron Widow'- Zhao, Xiran Jay

Added:

"Spotlight Index" button to "Xan West" Author Spotlight entry

"Spotlight Index" button to "Elsa Sjunneson" Author Spotlight entry

"Spotlight Index" button to "James & Lucy Catchpole" Author Spotlight entry

"Spotlight Index" button to "Lillie Lainoff" Author Spotlight entry

"Spotlight Index" button to "Eliza Hull" Author Spotlight entry

"Spotlight Index" button to "J R Moon" Author Spotlight entry

"Spotlight Index" button to "Shayla Lawson" Author Spotlight entry

Aesthetic:

Other:

[thenightling]

Queer Horror

It's pride month so here is a (NOT complete) list of horror icons real and fictional who are of the LGBTQAI+ community. Writers / directors / Actors Oscar Wilde Clive Barker Caitlin R. Kiernan William Joseph Martin James Whale (director of Frankenstein) Ernest Thesiger (Doctor Pretorius in Bride of Frankenstein) Anthony Perkins Vincent Price David Geffen (producer of Interview with the vampire movie and Beetlejuice) Jonathan Frid (Dark Shadows) Louis Edmonds (Dark Shadows) Ed Wood Elvira (Casandra Peterson) Amanda Beares (Fright Night, 1985) Merritt Butrick (Fright Night Part 2) Roddy McDowall (Hell House, Fright Night, Fright Night: Part 2, and Carmilla) _________________________ Characters Mephisto (Faust, 1922) Countess Zeleska (Dracula's Daughter) Carmilla (The Vampire Lovers, 1970 and all film adapations of Carmilla) Louis, Lestat, Daniel Malloy, Armand (Interview with the vampire movie and show and The Vampire Chronicles book series) Claudia, Madeleine, Nicolas (Interview with the vampire TV series) Jerry Dandridge, Billy Cole, Peter Vincent, Evil Ed, and possibly Amy (Fright Night, original 1985 version) Regine and Belle (Fright Night part 2, 1988) Miriam Blaylock (The Hunger movie and novel by Whitley Streiber, along with its sequels) Marius (Queen of the damned movie and novels) Glen / Glenda (Seed of Chucky) Dracula (Marvel comics, Dario Argento's Dracula, Steven Moffat's Dracula, Frank Wildhorn's Dracula The musical) Alucard, Striga, Morana, (Castlevania) The Corinthian, Hal Carter, Wanda, Judy, Donna (Foxglove), Hazel, Alexander Burgess, Paul McGuire, Cluracaun, Mazikeen, Lucifer, Loki, Desire, Johanna Constantine, John Constantine, Rachel, Chantel, Zelda, Aristaeus the Satyr, Jim / Peggy, (Neil Gaiman's The Sandman) Echo, Ruin, Heather After (From Sandman spin-off comics) April Spink and Miriam Forcible (Coraline) Angela and Sera (Marvel comics) Sam Black Crow (American Gods) EVERYONE! - Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles EVERYONE! - Lost Girl (TV series)

Snow White (Sleeper and the Spindle by Neil Gaiman) Dorian Gray, Lord Henry Wotton, and Basil Hallward (The Picture of Dorian Gray) Captain Shaekespeare (Stardust) Loki (all incarantions) John Constantine (All versions) Aziraphale and Crowley (Good Omens) Renfield (Original Dracula novel, speculated by scholars) Mephistopheles, Faust, and Satan - Dr. Faustus by Christopher Marlowe and Faust by Goethe. Carmilla and Laura (All versions of Carmilla) Eli and Oskar (Let the Right One In) Lily and The mermaid Queen (She-Creature, 2001 version) Radu (Dark Prince: The True Story of Dracula) Lexington (Disney's Gargoyles, not canon until the comics) Dorothy and Ruby AAK Red (Once Upon a Tme) Tara and Willow (Buffy The Vampire Slayer TV series) Lorne (Angel) Ethan, Dorian Gray, Angelique, and Professor Lyle (Penny Dreadful) Thelma Bates (Hex) Joe (Midnight Texas) Skully (Scary Godmother) Mitch (ParaNorman) Henry Fitzroy (Blood Ties) Thomas Jerome Newton (The Man who fell to Earth) Any Clive Barker character NOT confirmed to be straight is presumed LGBTQAI+. There are many, many more but my fingers are starting to ache and these are the ones I could think of off the top of my head.

[emitheesimmer]

Thread: BHMCAS Challenge

Days 15-27

Day 15 // Black Sitcom - Living Single: (l to r) Kyle Barker, Maxine Shaw "Attorney at Law," Khadijah James, Regine Hunter, Synclaire James-Jones, and Overton Wakefield Jones

Day 16 // 90s: Shawn Stockman (forgot to write down his info smh 🤦🏽‍♀️ but he was inspired by Shawn Stockman of Boyz II Men)

Day 17 // Coquette: Renni Ridley / Perfectly Pristine / Good, Neat, Proper

Day 18 // Royalty: Grand Duchess Miliani / Successful Lineage / Proper, Loyal, Family-oriented

Day 19 // City Girl: Kelsie Ruffin / City Native / Materialistic, Non-committal, Out-going

Day 20 // Old Hollywood: Dottie Bryant / Master Actress / Overachiever, Romantic, Ambitious

Day 21 // Mystical: Amina Giles (Spellcaster) / Spellcraft & Sorcery / Creative, Hot-headed, Perfectionist

Day 22 // Black Icon: Sade Adu / Musical Genius / Creative, Music Lover, Art Lover

Day 23 // Church Fashion: Deborah Riggs / Neighborhood Confidante / Generous, Proper, Cheerful

Day 24 // Model/Runway: Sloane Samuels / World Celebrity / Self-assured, Ambitious, Insider

Day 25 // Carnival: Sonya StJohn / The Curator / Dance Machine, Child of the Islands, Party Animal

Day 26 // Black Occult: Nathaneal Owens (Vampire) / Master Chef / Foodie, Hot-headed, Non-committal

Day 27 // Old Money/Vintage: Harper Humphries and Mochi / Fabulously Wealthy / Old Money, Snob, Kleptomaniac

[briankeene]

2025 Splatterpunk Award Nominees

For Immediate Release:

In 2017, bestselling authors Wrath James White and Brian Keene founded the Splatterpunk Awards. The awards honor superior achievement in the literary sub-genres of Splatterpunk and Extreme Horror fiction, and are presented for the categories of Novel, Novella, Short Story, Collection, and Anthology. In addition, White and Keene also created the J. F. Gonzalez Lifetime Achievement Award, honoring individuals who, like Gonzalez, have made a significant impact on the Splatterpunk and Extreme Horror fields.

We are pleased to announce the 2025 Splatterpunk Award nominees, for works published in 2024. The winners will be announced, and the awards will be presented at KillerCon 2025, taking place August 1st through August 3rd in Austin, Texas. The nominees are as follows:

BEST NOVEL

-- Benjamin by Aron Beauregard and Shane McKenzie (Bad Dream Books)

-- This Wretched Valley by Jenny Kiefer (Quirk Books)

-- American Rapture by C. J. Leede (Tor Nightfire)

-- The Home by Judith Sonnet (Madness Heart Press)

-- The Old Lady by Kristopher Triana (Bad Dream Books)

BEST NOVELLA

-- A Life of Crime by Aron Beauregard (Bad Dream Books)

-- Master of Bodies by Robert Essig (Infected Voices Publishing)

-- Living Death Race: Beauty & the Brains by John Everson (The Evil Cookie Publishing)

-- Nipping Them In the Bud by Edward Lee (Deadite Press)

-- For The Better by Daniel J. Volpe (Bad Dream Books)

BEST SHORT STORY

-- “The Old College” by Aron Beauregard (from Fear of Clowns) (Kangas Kahn Publishing)

-- “Genital Grinder 2.5” by Ryan Harding (from Y’all Ain’t Right) (The Evil Cookie Publishing)

-- “Together Forever” by C.V. Hunt (from The Obituaries #6: Red Romance) (Bad Dream Books)

-- “Fulfillment” by Sidney Shiv (from Where Devils Dance) (Independently Published)

-- “Baby, I’d Die 4 U” by Kristopher Triana (from The Obituaries #6: Red Romance) (Bad Dream Books)

BEST COLLECTION

-- This Skin Was Once Mine and Other Disturbances by Eric LaRocca (Titan Books)

-- Gold and Gore by Candace Nola (Uncomfortably Dark)

-- Every Night In The Bone Orchard by Judith Sonnet (Independently Published)

-- Sucking Chest Wound and Other Horrors by Daniel J. Volpe (Bad Dream Books)

-- Wrecks & Violets by Mehitobel Wilson (Cimarron Street Books)

BEST ANTHOLOGY

-- Dethfest Confessions: The Devil’s Playlist edited by Mark Tullius and Lyndsey Smith (Vincere Press)

-- The Obituaries #6: Red Romance (Bad Dream Books)

-- Shocking Sojourns edited by Sidney Shiv (Independently published)

-- Splatology 2.0 edited by Sidney Shiv and Chisto Healy (Unveiling Nightmares)

-- Y’all Ain’t Right edited by K Trap Jones (The Evil Cookie Publishing)

J. F. GONZALEZ LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD*

-- Joe R. Lansdale

-- Lucy Taylor

* The previous J. F. Gonzalez Lifetime Achievement Award recipients are (in order) David J. Schow, David G. Barnett, Edward Lee, John Skipp, Clive Barker, Monica J. O’Rourke, Brian Keene, Wrath James White, Craig Spector, and Ray Garton.

[kcg69]

Rounding Whitefish Point... Southbound is the Michipicoten Northbound is James R. Barker.

[starry-eyed-ceaseless-watcher]

Character Tags (5/21/25)

Aka the massive tag breakdown to get super specific lol

The Mechanisms

Gunpowder Tim, Jonny D'ville, Nastya Rasputina, Ashes O'Reilly, Marius Von Raum, Ivy Alexandria, The Toy Soldier, Toy Soldier, Drumbot Brian, Raphaella La Cognizi, Doctor Carmilla

mordred hnoc, mordred, the pendragons, arthur pendragon, lancelot pendragon, guinevere pendragon, galahad hnoc, arthur hnoc, merlin hnoc, gawain hnoc, ulysses, hades udad, (several posts mention "the oracle of delphi" but are not tagged as such and left as drumbot brian), loki tbi, sigyn tbi, lyfrassir edda, bertie the mechanisms

timraph, hearteyes, two of hearts

mechs performance, ben below, ouatis, tbi, hnoc, udad, ttbt, jonny without the waistcoat

Falsettos

Whizzer Brown, Marvin Falsettos, Mendel Weisenbachfeld, Mendel Falsettos, Marvin Gardens, Jason Falsettos, Jason Gardens, Charlotte Falsettos, Cordelia Falsettos, Trina Falsettos

Whizzvin

Delicious in Dungeon

Laios Touden, Falin Touden, Chimera Falin, Chilchuck Tims, Chilchuck, Chilchuk Tims, Senshi, Senshi of Izganda, Itzusmi, Marcille, Marcille Donato, Thistle, Mithrun, Chilchuck's Wife, Whitbelle, Chilchuck Wife, Chilchucks Wife, Flertim Chils, Meijack Chils, Puckpatti Chils, Flertom, Meijack, Puckpatti, The Winged Lion, Kabru, Mayjack Chils, Mayjack, Itzusumi, Kabru of Utaya

Chilchuck's daughters

chilshi, pots n picks, chilchuck sandwich, labru, farcille

Full Metal Alchemist (Brotherhood)

Edward Elric, Alphonse Elric, Roy Mustang, Ling Yao, Greedling, Riza Hawkeye, FMA Greed, Trisha Elric

Severance

Helly R, Helena Eagan, Mark S, Harmony Cobel, Gemma Scout, Mark Scout, Irving Bailiff, Irving Severance

MDR Gang

Voltron

Pidge, Pidge Gunderson, Keith Kogane

South Park

Kenny McCormick, Karen McCormick

The Owl House

King Clawthorne

The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack

Flapjack

Supernatural/Spn

Sam Winchester, Dean Winchester, Gabriel

Gravity Falls

Dipper Pines, Mabel Pines, Waddles. Grunkle Stan, Stan Pines, Ford Pines, Standford Pines

The Book of Bill

Over The Garden Wall/OTGW

Wirt, OTGW Wirt, OTGW Greg, OTGW Beatrice, Greg, Beatrice

Arcane/Arcane League of Legends

Jayce Talis, Viktor, Viktor Arcane, Jinx, Ekko, Isha, Caitlyn Kiramman, Vi Arcane

Jayvik, Timebomb, Caitvi

Dorohedoro

kaiman, nikaido, noi, shin, shin dorohedoro

Soul Eater

Maka Albarn, Crona Gorgon, Soul Eater Evans,

The Magnus Archives

Jon Sims, Jonathan Sims, Martin Blackwood, Tim Stoker, Timothy Stoker, Sasha James, Elias Bouchard, Jonah Magnus, Peter Lukas, Simon Fairchild, Oliver Banks, Jared Hopworth, Michael Distortion, Helen Distortion, Michael Shelley, Helen Richardson, Agnes Montague, Jude Perry, Gertrude Robinson, Eric Delano, Mary Keay, Gerry Keay, Gerard Keay, Basira Hussain, Daisy Tonner, Daisy Toner, Alice Daisy Tonner, Nikola Orsinov, Georgie Barker, Jane Prentiss, The Admiral, Annabelle Cane, Melanie King, Not!Sasha, Mike Crew, Jack Barnabus, Lucia Wright, Robert Smirke, Desolation!Tim, Danny Stoker, Gerry Delano, Manuela Dominguez,

The Distortion, The Watcher, The Eye, The Spiral, The Stranger,

MAG 39, MAG 132, MAG 200, MAG 168, MAG 67, MAG 159, MAG 112, MAG 89, MAG 158, MAG 93, MAG 172, MAG 101, MAG 179, MAG 160, MAG 81, MAG 4, TMA S5, TMA S3, TMA S4, TMA Season 5,

teaholding, jmart, jonmartin, jontim, gerrymichael, timsasha, lonelyeyes, gerrytim, timgerry,

TMA AU

The Magnus Protocol

Alice Dyer, Gwen Bouchard, Gwendolyn Bouchard, Sam Khalid, Samama Khalid, Celia Ripley, Chester, Chester TMAGP, Gerard Keay, Gerry Keay, Mr Bonzo, Bonzo TMAGP, Bonzo, Georgie Barker, Jack TMAGP, Lady Mowbray, TMAGP Needles, Colin Becher, Norris, Norris TMAGP, Lena Kelley

(T)MAGP 15, (T)MAGP 12, TMAGP 10, (T)MAGP 8, (T)MAGP 7, MAGP 11, TMAGP 22, TMAGP 21, TMAGP 23

Just Roll With It

Chip JRWI, Gillion Tidestrider, Jay Ferin, Kian Stone, Timothy Rand, Rand JRWI, Lizzie Lafayette, Grefgor, JRWI Grefgor, Shilo Bathory, JRWI Shilo, William Wisp, Vyncent Sol, Dakota Cole, Queen JRWI, Caspian JRWI, Rolan Deep, Niklaus Hendrix, May Ferin, Peter Sqloint, JRWI Rumi, Rumi JRWI, JRWI Ollie, Ensa JRWI, Edyn Tidestrider, Goobleck, JRWI Goobleck, Runt JRWI, Uncle Threestrings, Troy Lougferd, Blink JRWI, Doppler JRWI, Pinch JRWI, Becky Jones, Becky JRWI, Old Man Earl, JRWI Doppelgilly, JRWI Igneous, Igneous JRWI

JRWI Riptide, JRWI Blood in the Bayou, JRWI BITB, JRWI The Suckening, JRWI PD, JRWI Prime Defenders, Just Roll With It Prime Defenders, BITB, JRWI Apotheosis, JRWI Wonderlust, Blood in the Bayou

The Suckening 6, The Suckening Ep 6

armored pheasant, ghostknife, angelstone

Malevolent

Arthur Lester, Kayne Malevolent, Oscar Malevolent, John Doe, John Malevolent, Detective Noel, Charlie Dowd, The Butcher Malevolent, Dennis Collins, Peter Yang

angeleyes, blind faith

All For The Game

Neil Josten, Andrew Minyard, Aaron Minyard, Nicky Hemmick, Matt Boyd, Dan Wilds, Allison Reynolds, Renee Walker, Kevin Day, Jeremy Knox, Jean Moreau

The Foxhole Court, TFC

andreil

The Locked Tomb

Gideon Nav, Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Harrow Nonagesimus, Ianthe Tridentarius, Coronabeth Tridentarius, Alecto the Ninth, Ortus Nigenad, Camilla Hect, Palamedes Sextus, Naberius Tern, Ianthe the First, Kiriona Gaia, Cytherea the First, Cytherea Loveday, Jeannemary Chatur, Issac Tettares, Abigail Pent, Magnus Quinn, Colum Asht, Silas Octakiseron, Dulcinea Septimus, Protesilaus Ebdoma, Marta Dyas, Judith Deuteros, Harrow Nova, Aiglamene, Marshal Crux, Pelleamena Novenarius, Priamhark Noniusvianus

Gideon The Ninth, GTN, Harrow The Ninth, HTN, Nona The Ninth, NTN, The Unwanted Guest

The Sixth House, The Third House, The First House, The Second House, The Fourth House, The Fifth House, The Seventh House, The Eighth House, The Ninth House, Sixth House

griddlehark, harryanthe, harrianthe, campal

TLT AU, TLT Crossover, Harrow Nova AU,

one flesh one end, TLT text post

Tolkien Works

tolkien

The Hobbit

Bilbo Baggins, Gandalf, Gandalf the Grey, Thorin Oakenshield, Tauriel, Kili, Kili Durin, Kili the Dwarf, Fili, Fili Durin, Fili the Dwarf, Lady Dis, Dis, Dis Frisul, Dis Durin, Balin, Dwalin, Frerin Thrainul, Nori, Ori, Bifur, Oin, Dori, Gloin, Bofur, Bombur, Legolas, Legolas Greenleaf, Thranduil, Smaug

The Line of Durin, Reshirement Vibes, Parentshield, Thorin's Company, BOTFA, The Hobbit BTS

bagginshield, kiliel, thilbo

Everyone Lives AU, Wraith Kili AU, The Hobbit Role Swap, Vampire AU, Modern Hobbit AU

House of Feathers Hall of Night Fic

Lord of the Rings

Frodo Baggins, Samwise Gamgee, Merry Brandybuck, Pippin Took, Legolas, Legolas Greenleaf, Gimli, Gimli son of Gloin, Aragorn, Arwen, Galadriel, Elrond, Gandalf, Gandalf the Grey, Faramir, Boromir, Eowyn, Sam Gamgee, Nienna, Gandalf the White, Eomer, Eomer Eadig, Peregrin Took, Perigrin Took, Meridoc Brandybuck, Denethor II, Lothiriel, Dark Legolas, Arwen Undomiel

Viggo Mortensen

Fellowship of the Ring, FOTR, Return of the King, The Three Hunters, LOTR BTS, Two Towers

aragorn x arwen, gigolas, samfro, faramir x eowyn, farawyn

Boromir Lives AU

Silmarillion

Beren and Luthien

Homestuck

Dave Strider, Jade Harley, John Egbert, Rose Lalonde, Dirk Strider

Davekat

Hades

Zagreus, Achilles, Patroclus, Eurydice, Artemis

Hades II

Melinoe, Chaos, Chaos Hades, Apollo, Moros Hades, Odyessus Hades,

Baldur's Gate 3

Astarion, Shadowheart, Jenevelle Hallowleaf, Gale Dekarios, Gale of Waterdeep, Lae'zel, Halsin, Karlach, Wyll Ravengard, Minthara, The Emperor, Withers, Scratch, Owlbear Cub

bloodweave

Psychonauts

Razputin Aquato, Sasha Nein. Milla Vodello, Frazie, Lili Zanotto, Dogen Boole, Bobby Zilch, Benny Fideleo, Mr. Pokeylope

Mouthwashing (Game)

Swansea Mouthwashing, Anya Mouthwashing, Jimmy Mouthwashing. Daisuke Mouthwashing, Curly Mouthwashing, Captain Curly

Five Nights at Freddy's

FNAF, FNAF 2

Rusty Lake

David Eilander, Dale Vandermeer

Cube Escape

Genshin Impact

Mualani, Furina, Tartaglia, Childe, Kachina, Kinich, Albedo, Venti

Disco Elysium/DE

Kim Kitsuragi, Jean Vicquemare

Marvel Rivals

Winter Soldier

(Bride of) Reanimator

Herbert West, Dan Cain, Dr Hill, Megan Halsey, Meg Halsey, Daniel Cain

Deleted Scene

danbert

Star Wars

Anakin Skywalker, Obi Wan Kenobi, Ahsoka Tano, Padme Amidala, Leia Organa, Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Kylo Ren, Ben Solo, Sith Obi Wan, Darth Vader, Qui Gon Jinn, Sith Ahsoka, Cassian Andor, KS2O, Sabe, Commander Cody, Captain Rex

Star Wars AU, Naberrie Skywalker Twins, Sith AU

Star Wars GIFS, Star Wars Fic, Star Wars Comics

anidala, skysolo, scoundress, hanleia

The Bad Guys

Diane Foxington

Who Framed Roger Rabbit

Jessica Rabbit

Dead Poets Society

Neil Perry, Charlie Dalton, Todd Anderson

Puss in Boots: The Last Wish

Puss in Boots, Puss in Boots Perro

Treasure Planet

Jim Hawkins, John Silver, Sarah Hawkins, Captain Amelia, Doctor Doppler

Scream (1996)

Billy Loomis, Stu Macher

stuilly

Superheros

Deadpool, Wolverine, Wade Wilson, Logan Howlett, Nightcrawler, Kurt Wagner, Bucky Barnes, Hawkeye, Jason Todd, Starfire

Poolverine, Dead Claws, Logurt, Nightwolves, Robstar, Dickkory

Xmen, X men, mcu, Teen Titans, DC, DC Comics,

Lisa Frankenstein

Lisa Swallows, The Creature, Taffy, Taffy Lisa Frankenstein

Alien (1979)

Xenomorph, Rain Carradine, Andy Carradine, Ellen Ripley, Jones the Cat

Alien Romulus

The Mummy (1999)/The Mummy Returns

Rick O'Connell, Evelyn Carnahan, Alex O'Connell, Jonathan Carnahan, Ardeth Bay

Beetlejuice (1988)

Barbara Maitland

The Craft

Nancy Downs

Studio Ghibli

Howl Pendragon, San Princess Mononoke, Ashitaka, Pazu, Sheeta,

Princess Mononoke, Castle in the Sky

Pirates of Penzance

The Pirate King, Frederic TPOP, Ruth TPOP

Transformers

Megatron, Bumblebee, Orion Pax, Elita One, Jazz Transformers, Ironhide, Starscream, D 16, Soundwave, Shockwave, Thundercracker, Skywarp, Blurr TF, Blurr, Mirage, Blaster, Tracks, Prowl, Bluestreak, Cosmos, Laserbeak, Arcee Transformers, Sideswipe Transformers, Red Alert TF, Optimus Prime

Transformers One, TFONE, Transformers Skybound, TF Earthspark, TFA, Transformers Animated,

Humanformers, Reverse Mecha AU, Decepticon!Prowl, Stowaways AU

Megaop, Jazzop, Prowljazz, Soundstar, Skystar, Jetstar, Jazzprowl, Starwavewave, Jazterwave, Thundersound, Soundcracker, Swerr

[cosmosrebellion]

Fantasy Recs:

The Book of Jhereg by Steven Brust (Dragaera) Black God's Kiss by C.L. Moore (Jirel of Joiry) Waylander by David Gemmell (Waylander) The Blacktongue Thief and Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman (Blacktongue) Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb (Realm of the Elderlings) The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie (The First Law) A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin (A Song of Ice and Fire) The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold (World of the Five Gods) The Dragonbone Chair by Tad Williams (Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn) Chronicles of the Black Company by Glen Cook (The Black Company) The Dragon’s Path by Daniel Abraham (The Dagger and the Coin) The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson (The Masquerade) Johannes Cabal the Necromancer by Jonathan L. Howard (Johannes Cabal) The Folding Knife by K.J. Parker The Devourers by Indra Das Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell and Piranesi by Susanna Clarke A Country of Ghosts by Margaret Killjoy The Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett (Discworld) City of Bones by Martha Wells The Alchemy of Stone by Ekaterina Sedia A Woman of the Sword by Anna Smith Spark Those Above by Daniel Polansky (The Empty Throne) The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez The Dragon Waiting by John M. Ford Books of Blood by Clive Barker Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay The Chatelaine by Kate Heartfield The Etched City by K.J. Bishop The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera Gormenghast by Meryn Peake Viriconium by M. John Harrison Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James (The Dark Star)

Horror Recs:

North American Lake Monsters by Nathan Ballingrud The Marigold by Andrew F. Sullivan The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All by Laird Barron The Wingspan of Severed Hands by Joe Koch A Collapse of Horses by Brian Evenson The Immeasurable Corpse of Nature by Christopher Slatsky Negative Space by B.R. Yeager A Natural History of Hell by Jeffrey Ford We Have Always Lived In The Castle by Shirley Jackson Furnace by Livia Llewelyn Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw Tell Me I'm Worthless by Alison Rumfitt Queen of Teeth by Hailey Piper Leech by Hiron Ennes

Sci-Fi Recs:

An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin Rosewater by Tade Thompson (Rosewater) Ammonite by Nicola Griffith Dawn by Octavia E. Butler (Xenogenesis) A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany Bang Bang Bodhisattva by Aubrey Wood

AHHHHH!!! THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! All go on The List!! Can't wait to check all of them out!

[thenighttrain]

books read in 2023

finally continuing my yearly tradition. all rated out of 5 stars. bolded are my faves!

The Daughters of Izdihar (The Alamaxa Duology, #1) by Hadeer Elsbai ★★★☆☆

A Taste of Gold and Iron by Alexandra Rowland ★★★☆☆

Last Violent Call (Secret Shanghai, #3.5) by Chloe Gong ★★★☆☆

The Magician's Daughter by H.G. Parry ★★★★☆

The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi (Amina al-Sirafi, #1) by Shannon Chakraborty ★★★☆☆

The Lies of the Ajungo (Forever Desert, #1) by Moses Ose Utomi ★★★☆☆

The Surviving Sky (Rages, #1) by Kritika H. Rao ★★★☆☆

The Will of the Many (Hierarchy, #1) by James Islington ★★★☆☆

Immortal Longings (Flesh and False Gods, #1) by Chloe Gong ★★☆☆☆

Gods of the Wyrdwood (Forsaken, #1) by R.J. Barker ★★★☆☆

To Shape a Dragon's Breath (Nampeshiweisit, #1) by Moniquill Blackgoose ★★★☆☆

Fourth Wing (The Empyrean, #1) by Rebecca Yarros ★★★☆☆

The Third Daughter by Adrienne Tooley ★★★☆☆

After the Dragons by Cynthia Zhang ★★★★☆

Blood Over Bright Haven by M.L. Wang ★★★★☆

White Trash Warlock (Adam Binder, #1) by David R. Slayton ★★★★☆

The River Has Teeth by Erica Waters ★★★☆☆

The Drowned Woods by Emily Lloyd-Jones ★★★☆☆

All That’s Left in the World by Erik J. Brown ★★★☆☆

Fury of the Dragon Goddess (Adventures of Sik Aziz #2) ★★★★☆

The Water Outlaws by S.L. Huang ★★★★☆

My Dear Henry: A Jekyll & Hyde Remix by Kalynn Bayron ★★★☆☆

Serwa Boateng's Guide to Vampire Hunting (Serwa Boateng, #1) by Roseanne A. Brown ★★★☆☆

Hamra and the Jungle of Memories by Hanna Alkaf ★★★★☆

Bonesmith (House of the Dead, #1) by Nicki Pau Preto ★★★☆☆

Garden of the Cursed (Garden of the Cursed, #1) by Katy Rose Pool ★★★★☆

Race to the Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse ★★★☆☆

Don't Want to Be Your Monster by Deke Moulton DNF

The Buried and the Bound (The Buried and the Bound, #1) by Rochelle Hassan ★★★★☆

The Meadows by Stephanie Oakes ★★★☆☆

If Found, Return to Hell by Em X. Liu ★★★☆☆

Amari and the Night Brothers (Supernatural Investigations, #1) by B.B. Alston ★★★★☆

Starter Villain by John Scalzi ★★★★☆

Amari and the Great Game (Supernatural Investigations, #2) by B.B. Alston ★★★☆☆

The Chalice of the Gods (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #6) by Rick Riordan ★★★★☆

The Fragile Threads of Power (Threads of Power, #1) by V.E. Schwab ★★★☆☆

The Hexologists (The Hexologists, #1) by Josiah Bancroft ★★★☆☆

Foul Heart Huntsman (Foul Lady Fortune, #2) by Chloe Gong ★★★☆☆

Darkhearts by James L. Sutter ★★☆☆☆

The City Beautiful by Aden Polydoros ★★★★☆

Séance Tea Party by Reimena Yee ★★★☆☆

The Prince's Poisoned Vow (Infernal War Saga, #1) by Hailey Turner ★★★☆☆

The Emperor's Bone Palace (Infernal War Saga #2) by Hailey Turner ★★★★☆

Beholder by Ryan La Sala ★★★★☆

Curious Tides by Pascale Lacelle ★★★★☆

The Forest Demands Its Due Kosoko Jackson ★★★☆☆

Reforged by Seth Haddon ★★★☆☆

The Scarlet Alchemist (The Scarlet Alchemist, #1) by Kylie Lee Baker ★★★★☆

Hell Followed With Us by Andrew Joseph White DNF

The Spirit Glass by Roshani Chokshi ★★★☆☆

Ink Blood Sister Scribe by Emma Törzs ★★★☆☆

All That Consumes Us by Erica Waters ★★☆☆☆

Frostheart (Frostheart, #1) by Jamie Littler ★★★★☆

The Vanquishers (The Vanquishers, #1) by Kalynn Bayron ★★★★☆

When You Trap a Tiger by Tae Keller ★★★☆☆

Dark Moon, Shallow Sea (The Gods of Night and Day #1) by David R. Slayton ★★★☆☆

Dark Heir (Dark Rise, #2) by C.S. Pacat ★★★★☆