You are invited to look after the Kendall Reviews Cemetary, and to choose eight books, preferably horror/dark genre, to take with you to cover your shift; here you can discuss why you chose the books.
As well as the books, wardens are allowed one song/album to listen to. Again, an explanation for this choice is required.
You must also discuss one luxury item you can bring, which must be inanimate and not allow communication.
If you’d like to take part in The Graveyard Shift then please submit an application to gavin@kendallreviews.com
A new shift is about to begin. The warden for the week’s #GraveyardShift is…
Drew Starling
A monster. A missing boy. And nowhere to run.
Something is lurking in the woods just beyond Aaron and Ellen Dreyer’s new country home, and an evil that has been hiding in plain sight is about to emerge. A neighbor is brutally murdered, their 4-year old son goes missing in broad daylight, and the local town of Bensalem devolves into a cesspool of finger-pointing and chaos. With nowhere left to turn, Aaron and Ellen are forced to venture into the woods to find their son… and the truth. But in the process, they uncover a force larger and more sinister than they ever could have imagined.
Books
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
The Bloodbath.
Oh, this is one immense and terrible story. I’ve been known to cite McCarthy as my favorite author and Blood Meridian as my favorite of his works. So by power of deduction, that would make this my favorite book of all time, innit? People might want to call it LitFic, and you certainly wouldn’t be wrong if you did, but this story is more depraved, more gruesome, more hopeless, more barbaric, and more downright horrible than any other I have read. Full stop. I first consumed it as an audiobook on a long drive and had to pull over to vomit at one point. Seriously. But I couldn’t stop consuming it because McCarthy has such an uncanny gift with words, effortlessly morphing the most mundane actions into cosmic commentaries on the state of the world itself. And how could you forget the setting? The scorching hot southwestern desert is practically a character itself, roasting and sizzling and maniacally cackling at the doomed mercenaries as they spin in circles across the sand. This book is a bloodbath. It’s the guy who showed up to a knife fight with a bazooka. It’s a horror novel, GOSHDARNIT, and it’s the first one I’m bringing to my graveyard shift.
Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke by Eric LaRocca
The Razorblade.
Like dragging a dull razor blade up the over the course stubble coating your delicate little neck, this story will cut you if you’re not careful. It’s short, sharp, intense, severe. This is 21st-century horror, folks, a sub-100 page novella composed of emails and Instant Messenger conversations. You want to experience a new horror sensation? Try reading these digital conversations and let yourself contemplate what the characters are doing during the conversation breaks, when they’re NOT sitting at the computer. “Oh shit”, you’ll tell yourself, “She’s been gone for ten minutes. Twenty. Oh God. Thirty. She didn’t really do it, did she? Did she?” Oh. She did it alright…
Dear Laura by Gemma Amor
The Heartbreaker.
I’m bringing this book with me but only if I can bring along an entire box of tissues. It’s been a while since a book actually made me cry, but Dear Laura got me. It got me good. It ripped my heart out and stomped it into pulpy liquid on the pavement. Not that this book is necessarily a “tear-jerker”; it’s not, but it is a short, emotional roller coaster of pain, loss, horror, and revenge. Dear Laura will take you less than two hours to read, but trust me, you’ll spend more than that thinking about it afterwards. That’s the sign of a good story, is it not? One you can’t seem to shake or stop turning over in your head? To be clear, this is a horror story — it’s sick, painful, bloody, grotesque, and terrifying — it’s just a lot more than that, too.
The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin
The Storm.
In this first of three series, Jemisin tells the story of a world ravaged by both environmental and political ruin. It’s a story about our relationship to our planet, about racism and class struggle, about parenthood and loss — my God, is it about loss — and it’s written by a woman so clearly in the zone with her writing that every single page itself feels like its very own story. As you follow the protagonists across this broken earth, you feel increasingly as if you’re heading towards those black clouds up ahead, into the breach, into the eye of the storm. It’s intense and it’s tough and it does not let up. The world is lush and filled with unforgettable characters (that SERIOUSLY need to be portrayed on screen — like yesterday), and the political commentary isn’t so heavy-handed that you feel like you’re reading non-fiction. Oh, and one other thing. I’ve never in my life come across such a massive story that’s written entirely in second person present tense! The creativity and the beauty that just gushes out of the story is breathtaking. You’ll know you’re reading something special.
Devil’s Creek by Todd Keisling
The Cannonball.
Try to NOT finish the first 40 pages of this book in one sitting. Go on, try it. You’ll fail because this story feels like it was fired out of friggin’ cannon. Keisling probably could have bundled the first “part” of this absolute beast of book as a standalone novella, made a few bucks, and called it a day. But what follows is the meticulous gathering of the scraps from the wake of a cannonball that rifled through the Bible-beatin’ town of Staufford, Kentucky, and a methodical, character-driven plan to exorcise Staufford’s demons once and for all. If you like Stephen King (and if you’re reading this, you probably do), you’ll love Devil’s Creek. It has all the small-town charm, character quirks, and skin-crawling horror you’ve come to love from the master himself, but Keisling has (in my opinion) a slightly elevated tone that doesn’t let you wallow in the folksiness for too long. The textbook definition of a modern-day classic.
It by Stephen King
The Freight Train.
The first horror novel I ever read and it scared the bejesus out of me. It still does. I loathe to think back to that beautiful day at summer camp (no, seriously, I know it’s a cliche, but it’s true) when I picked up this book at the mess hall library, and tucked it — all 1000+ pages of it — into my backpack for a five day trip in the wilderness. I did not sleep on that trip. I was too scared to turn off the little flashlight in my tent, so I just kept reading. I kept wolfing down this story. It’s sickness, its gut-wrenching terror, its quirky perversion (yes, I mean THAT scene), and its perfect ending ran like a freight train through my waking mind for weeks after I got back from that trip. The experience was so incredibly pure and raw. I had not built up ANY tolerance to horror whatsoever, and I went and read THIS thing. All these years later, I’m hesitant to pick it up again because I don’t want to taint that original experience, but if I’m taking a graveyard shift, I’ll still want this at least by my side.
Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James
The Hunter.
Sure hope I don’t have to walk very far during my shift because these 600+ page tomes are gonna break my back. This one’s long, it’s strong, it’s down to get the friction on. Some have called it “Game of Thrones” set in Africa, but I won’t do that because this is no soap opera. It’s an epic horror fantasy from start to finish, and I cannot WAIT for the sequel. Now, I’ll admit that this is a tough book to get through for two reasons. First, the author tells it in this incredibly dense and intricate African dialect, but once you strap in and let the story take over, the prose begins to feel like a second language. It makes you feel like you’re REALLY there, that these characters are standing in front of you yelling, laughing, waving their hands, and casting all kinds of weird spells. Second: it’s very violent and it’s very intense. A lot of people and animals die in truly disgusting and terrible ways. Parts of it are arguably worse than Blood Meridian, which is saying something, but to be totally honest that’s why I love it. You can try to run from this story, but you can’t hide. It’ll hunt you down and claw your face clean off your skull.
The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu
The Dreadnought.
Consider this: what’s the biggest problem you can conceive of? Getting hacked and slashed by a psychopath? Being trapped in a haunted house? How about… a wildly superior alien race finds Earth and camps out in our atmosphere while it drains our resources and waits for us all to die. Sounds like a pretty big problem to me, no? The Three-Body Problem is so big and complex that Amazon couldn’t justifiably make a live-action adaptation of this story with $1B USD. That’s actually what wanted me to read it in the first place. A story so epic, so long, and so expansive that Amazon and a billion bones couldn’t do it justice. If you’re up for a serious reading commitment, some pretty dense sci-fi, and what I can comfortably describe as the “biggest” story I’ve ever read, try the Three-Body Problem on for size.
Sentinel
A monster. A missing boy. And nowhere to run.
Something is lurking in the woods just beyond Aaron and Ellen Dreyer’s new country home, and an evil that has been hiding in plain sight is about to emerge. A neighbor is brutally murdered, their 4-year old son goes missing in broad daylight, and the local town of Bensalem devolves into a cesspool of finger-pointing and chaos. With nowhere left to turn, Aaron and Ellen are forced to venture into the woods to find their son… and the truth. But in the process, they uncover a force larger and more sinister than they ever could have imagined.
You can buy Sentinel from Amazon UK & Amazon US
Drew Starling
Drew Starling is a husband and dog dad who loves strong female leads, martial arts, and long walks in the woods with canine companions. He would like to think his plots are better than his prose, but strives to make his words sound both beautiful and terrifying at the same time. He listens to Beethoven, Megadeth, and Enya when he writes, and he’d be absolutely delighted if you’d consider reading his debut novel SENTINEL from Eerie River Publishing. His only rule of writing: the dog never dies.
You can follow Drew on Twitter @scarystarling
To find out more about Drew please visit his official website www.drewstarling.com
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