Writer and Editor C.B. Calsing/ G.G. Royale

The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw is a strange book. In a pastiche of Frankenstein and The Little Mermaid and Lord of the Flies, we are given an odd, often gruesome travelogue that ends sooner than expected. After fleeing a plague—in fact, the mermaid’s children eating everyone in the kingdom—the silent mermaid and a cobbled-together plague doctor find themselves in a frozen village filled with children who regularly kill each other, only to be resurrected by a trio of masked doctors called the saints. These doctors are, in fact, the ones responsible for creating the plague doctor, and this gives our characters mixed feelings. When more information is revealed, and the purpose of the children uncovered, the mermaid must decide whether to flee or remain beside her loyal doctor as they do what they think is right. The set-up of this story had me thinking we’d be following these two characters for a while, but their travels come to an abrupt stop in the snowy woods when they witne...

I am a huge fan of vintage horror films of the sixties and seventies, so I was immediately drawn to Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. This is the third book of hers I have read, and I have yet to be disappointed. Montserrat is a sound editor in 1990s Mexico City who has grown tired and frustrated by her position at an old boys’ club studio. When her best friend, Tristan, moves into a new building and realizes one of his neighbors is horror director Abel Urueta, Montserrat takes it as a chance to diversify: researching a bit for television about Abel’s last, forgotten film. But the curious research project takes on a new tone when the film’s strange history and cast of characters come into play. Soon, Montserrat and Tristan find themselves embroiled in a decades-old plot involving the occult, flammable film, and possible immortality. I am hard to scare these days, having consumed a lot of horror fiction and film. But there was a scene in this book that got me. I won’t go into de...