If you’re looking for your next great read, how do you find it?
Armed with A Book asks indie authors to suggest their favourite indie reads. Dale Stromberg is the author of Melancholic Parables, a collection of short stories exploring the questions, “Are we the same person we were last year? Or last week? Or last story?”.
His 5 recommended reads includes Night Beats’ own Query, plus 4 other amazing books. Check it out here!
by Sabitha F.
I adore everything Silvia Moreno-Garcia writes, so I’ll hit the buy button or place a library hold on every new book she produces before I’ve even read the plot summary. That said, Silver Nitrate couldn’t be more catered to my tastes if she sawed open my brain and splashed it across the page. Mexico City in the 1990s, evil Nazi occultists, and cinematic alchemy clash in this weird, compelling story of a childhood friendship, a curse, and a cult.
Nothing has gone right for Montserrat, a sound editor who can barely make ends meet thanks to industry sexism, or for her best friend Tristán, a soap opera star whose career failed after a drunken car accident. They encounter Abel, a washed-up horror director who tells them about a lost film, cut short by the murder of its funder. Woven into its film stock is a spell that could reverse all of their fortunes—but as with silver screen success, magic too has its cost.
This book is more difficult and aloof than the author’s better-known work, but it showcases what to me are some of her greatest strengths—flawed, complicated women, supernatural elements that are deeply entwined with the story’s themes and milieu, and inventive subversions of genre tropes. It’s a love letter to horror and a perfect spooky season read.
If you’re looking for your next great read, how do you find it?
Rachel A. Rosen is the author of Cascade, a fantasy ecofiction about trying to do the right thing at the end of the world. Check out her top reads in 2023 here!
If you’re looking for your next great read, how do you find it?
Dale Stromberg is the author of Melancholic Parables, a collection of short stories exploring the questions, “Are we the same person we were last year? Or last week? Or last story?”.
His top 3 reads in 2023 includes Night Beats’ own Cascade, plus 2 other amazing books. Check it out here!
by Anarchist Review of Books
Yes, the literal Anarchist Review of Books did a feature on The Sad Bastard Cookbook. I’m not screaming with excitement, you’re screaming with excitement. We’re both screaming.
We’re in Issue 6 (not yet available online but keep checking here!) or read the interview/review below.
by Zilla N.
The first thing you have to understand is that Vita Nostra is perfect. When something is its own ideal, fully encapsulated, how can there be a sequel?
The answer is Assassin of Reality.
Sasha is older now, more aware. They are all. They know what is being done to them, and they know why. They cannot become a concept without deconstructing their humanity; they cannot grow without retaining it, at least a little. Without love, and therefore fear, to trap them. They will trade freedom for harmony. They will become the trap.
Except there are always possibilities. A world where the ice fell on neither mother nor baby carriage, where you bought the fire extinguisher, where you swerved away from the bus. A world where love exists without fear.
Be brave, Sasha tells us.
Bellatrix Sakakino has lived many lives. She dampens electricity. She’s radioactive. She longs for a fruit that went extinct before she was born. She’s not above committing a massacre for the sake of a perfect omelet.
Are we the same person we were last year? Or last week? Or last story? Whimsical and dolorous, ironic and absurd, this slippery assortment of stories dances around these questions with ambiguous aplomb.
Melancholic Parables costs money, but Dale’s made his follow-up chapbook, The Galoofus, free here. Enhance your summer confusion with this delightful read.
Night Beats Extended Universe 