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Books Reading the Weird

Don’t Put That Thing in Your Mouth: Nghi Vo’s “What the Dead Know”

A woman posing as a medium who can channel the spirit world comes face to face with the truth…

By Ruthanna Emrys, Anne M. Pillsworth

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Published on July 2, 2025

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Welcome back to Reading the Weird, in which we get girl cooties all over weird fiction, cosmic horror, and Lovecraftiana—from its historical roots through its most recent branches. This week, we cover Nghi Vo’s “What the Dead Know,” first published in 2022 as an Amazon Original. Spoilers ahead!

Fogg River, Illinois, 1899:

A train pulls into the station ahead of a winter storm, unceremoniously disgorging two passengers. Vasyl Janiv denies he won enough to have been booted as the cardsharp he is. Maryse Ly supposes she was the problem. This far north, people see few Vietnamese, but she certainly doesn’t pass as a white woman.

The town’s main street is unpaved. From the station platform, the pair can see the river itself, swollen and furious. Maryse grew up by the Mississippi, hearing the murmurs of its drowned. Fogg River hosts its own dead, one of whom briefly flings an arm above the waves. There are water women everywhere.

A buggy arrives, driven by a sharp-faced woman: Miss Nina Parley, from the Fogg River Seminary for Young Ladies, where they’ve been hired to perform as occultists. Snow starts falling as they enter the drive. Maryse gasps at “hearts snagged in the branches, red and dripping.” But they’re merely salt-dough holiday ornaments. Maryse fights her unease. If she and Vasyl bailed on every job that spooked her, she’d be back to selling dances.

The Seminary is a dignified edifice. Well-dressed guests and servants crowd its foyer. Girls answer guests’ questions, like circus animals. Their heads are crowned by charmed fireflies. A man with a bristling mustache seizes Maryse’s elbow and speculates about her origins. She plays dumb, as she supposedly speaks no English. Vasyl rescues her.

The headmistress, Nina’s mother, gives a speech: for fifty years the Seminary has formed girls into “diligent young women” fit to serve their husbands and communities. Not only do they learn household magic, they’re also taught to tend posthouses and send telegrams!

Maryse and Vasyl prepare the school library for their performance. Maryse checks for traps planted to catch fakes, but no listening imps lurk. She changes into her costume: an extravagantly draped dress made from stolen bordello curtains. She tucks the contents of a chamois bag into her cheek, then lies corpse-like on a table. Guests gather as Vasyl warns that his companion, the priestess of a forbidden religion whom he purchased out of a Saigon market, “lies on the border between life and death.” They must be quiet, or she may slip away forever!

Vasyl proves she’s in “the trance of her ancestors” by fake-needling her cheek while bursting a blood-red ink capsule. Now she can listen for the dead, and pass on their answers to the guests’ questions. Maryse works the audience, responding gutturally to some, ignoring others with moans and head-tosses. The mustached man asks how Hell looks, at which Maryse enacts a fit. “Ask anything else,” Vasyl cries. Headmistress Parley speaks up: “Where’s my daughter gone?”

Maryse tenses her body, so she looks like she’s floating. The spirits are bringing her back, Vasyl explains, cueing Maryse to sit bolt upright, clutch her throat, then spit out the three amber stones from her cheek. On them, the pair have carved vague spirit-reassurances: Heaven, love, mercy. But a fourth stone sticks in Maryse’s throat, nearly suffocating her before she chokes it out.

The next minute, Nina’s giving her sherry. Mrs. Parley reads the stones aloud: “Here. Here. Here.” As Maryse stares, the electric lights explode. Already-unnerved guests scream.

The storm has caused the electrical failure. High snowdrifts cut off travel. Dorm rooms are found for married couples and Maryse, while the single men bed down in classrooms. A handful of fireflies serve for a night-light.

Maryse is roused when someone tries her doorknob. The lock holds, the would-be intruder leaves, but Maryse knows she won’t be able to sleep again. She gathers the fireflies and searches out Vasyl. He’s not surprised when she crawls onto his pallet-bed. He says that earlier the town doctor shared whiskey and local gossip: Mrs. Parley’s older daughter, the telegraph teacher, ran off with some man that summer, hence the question from the performance.

On her way back to her room, Maryse sees the mustached man slip into the corridor, a paper packet in his hands. He orders her to “Come here.” Maryse immediately flees. The man pursues. She gets out a window, but the drop to the snowy ground wrenches her knee, and she can only hobble to a building at the edge of the woods. She ducks inside and finds the school’s telegraph office. Its machine begins to clack without a visible operator. Her pursuer breaks in. The telegraph distracts him. In the light of a dozen fireflies, Maryse now sees a woman at the machine, her hair and dress soaked, smelling of rotting fish and mud.

When the woman seizes the man by the throat, Maryse recognizes her from the library. It wasn’t Nina but Nina’s dead sister Emma, who twists the man’s head violently. As Emma drags the man’s corpse outside, Nina appears. “My sister,” she confirms numbly.

Nina clutches the final stone that choked Maryse. The word on it is “Adley.” He was Emma’s faithless lover and murderer, come to this gathering to recover letters he’d written her. Nina gathers the telegraph tape and translates Emma’s message: “Here. Hate. Hate. Dead. Always dead. Dead forever. Pain. Cold. Cold. River. Cold. Hate. Hate. Hate you. Die. Die. Hate you.”

When Nina wonders why Adley killed Emma, Maryse says there are as many reasons as there are women in the water.

At the train station, Maryse thinks she sees a white hand waving again from the river. After five years as a medium, Maryse finally knows what the dead speak of.

What’s Cyclopean: The Fogg river “bowed to the Mississippi, but it did not understand the sovereignty of bridges or trains.”

The Degenerate Dutch: Maryse passes as an exotic priestess from an unnamed country that echoes “with the roars of man-eating lions.” This invites leers with varying levels of hazard, but no one seriously questions the story.

Weirdbuilding: Harry Houdini, in our world, was a stage magician and skeptic who tried to disprove mediums because he so desperately wanted them to be real. In Maryse’s world, he may or may not be “descended from eighteen generations of Jewish magicians.” Note that Kabballah does not, generally speaking, have a ton of applications in escape artistry. 

Ruthanna’s Commentary

An effective con hinges on telling people what they want to believe. You’re smarter than everyone else. Here’s an easy way to make tons of money. Your beloved dead are safe and well in the afterlife, and want you to know that everything is okay.

The danger of running a con is getting convinced that you’re smarter than everyone else, that you’ve found an easy way to make tons of money—and that the dead are never going to contradict you.

Like poor Alison in Beyond Black, Maryse walks the line between comforting con and discomfiting actual mediumship. The similarity ends there, however. Maryse has a better balance with Vasyl than Alison with Colette, and thought—until this story—that she was entirely and safely on the “con” side of the line. This despite living in a world with drowned “water women” haunting every river, dinner guests who’ve sold their souls, and enchanted fireflies haloing the heads of schoolgirls.

These details tantalize: what does it mean that a common etiquette quandary involves seating assignments for a clergyman and a servant of the devil? Why did you invite them both in the first place?

I have a sneaking suspicion that the murderer-harasser who asks for intel on Hell… may have a personal interest in the answer. So perhaps you invited the soul-seller because you didn’t know his peccadillos. Why one would reveal such things at the dinner table remains a mystery to be answered by a very different sort of story. Which Vo, who’s elsewhere riffed on The Great Gatsby and stuck a storytelling archivist in a room with man-eating tigers (not lions), would also be well-qualified to write.

The fireflies, too, are intriguing. The spell ultimately kills them, either by draining their energy or just keeping them from eating all night. It’s a piece of quiet cruelty masquerading as innocent charm. That seems appropriate, and fits well with a seminary school that would draw funders not only with its students’ domestic party tricks, but with imported table-knockers.

Or perhaps the séance also had an ulterior motive: perhaps Mrs. Parley’s suspected Emma’s fate.

The answer, like so many provided by the actual dead, is not comforting. Not only because Emma is dead, but because the dead know so little. No mercy preserved in this amber, only the hate and pain of a girl’s last moments. Only vengeance, and an answer—at least for one murderer—to the question about hell.

Which leaves the water women, and their sister victims in other elements, no dramatically moral afterlife of their own. Only the thing that killed them, forever.

Anne’s Commentary

My search results for Vietnamese immigration to Louisiana prior to 1900 were mainly productive of redirection to the significant influx that followed the Vietnam War. However, in An Ethnic Geography of New Orleans, Richard Campanella provides these observations by nineteenth-century travelers:

“No city perhaps on the globe,” wrote one visitor in 1816, “presents a greater contrast of national manners, language, and complexion, than does New Orleans.” Marveled another in 1835, “Truly does New-Orleans represent every other city and nation upon earth. I know of none where is congregated so great a variety of the human species.” “What a hubbub!” gushed another visitor, “what an assemblage of strange faces [and] distinct people!”

So why couldn’t Maryse’s family have been part of the “assemblage”? Perhaps the Mississippi River’s Delta reminded them of the Mekong’s, only with alligators instead of Estuarine and Siamese crocodiles. A delta without crocodilians is like a day without orange juice, or something like that. A river without water women, likewise, would be no fun at all for lovers of weird tales.

In Vietnamese folklore, the Mekong River is strongly associated with the ma da, the ghosts of people who have drowned in its waters, but as Maryse tells Vasyl, ma da can be found everywhere, in any body of water deep enough to claim victims. Drowning due to some act of violence may create especially angry and vengeful ma da. All are apparently trapped in the waters where they died; some lore has it that a ma da is enslaved to the lord or god of those waters, unable to pass on to the next plane of existence until it can lure another person to his or her drowning, thus “tagging” that fresh victim to take its place.

Mrs. Parley needs a spirit medium in order to find her daughter, Emma. Emma needs a spirit medium to communicate with her family. Maryse has five years of experience to offer them. Too bad that experience is as a fake medium, working with a fake spiritualist. Maryse and Vasyl have polished their act to a highly convincing shine and learned how to avoid the skeptics’ traps, damn that Houdini, but the pair are still fakes. Or are they? Specifically, is Maryse a fake? It seems she needn’t be a fraud in Vo’s subtly tweaked world where ghosts are real, a seminary for young ladies can teach household magic without visitors raising their well-groomed eyebrows, and enchanted fireflies make both festive headwear and useful flashlights.

Maryse may just need the right situation, the complementary need, to bloom her latent psi gift. Abused-by-men medium, meet man-murdered ghost: Now, channel Emma the energy to manifest on dry land and make payback hell for her killer. Emma’s faithless lover gets to die; you, Maryse, get to live on a wiser woman, if a sadder one—one who knows what the dead have to say.

If Emma were a ma da of legend, she’d be free to move on now that she’s provided the river with a substitute haunt in Adley. Is the wave she gives Maryse from the flooding Fogg one of grateful farewell? Is it any salute at all, or just a random flail from a spirit still condemned to hate, pain, cold, dead, dead forever, only now with company in her misery?

I don’t know the answer to that question. I do know this:

Mediums! Do NOT put any objects in your mouth when you’re about to go into a trance and grunt-gabble answers to audience requests. This precaution goes double if you’re likely to do a lot of showy (or authentic) writhing and head-tossing! Those objects are DYING to pop out of your cheek pouch and lodge in your windpipe! Or if you insist on risking dry-land asphyxiation, make sure your partner has the Heimlich maneuver down pat.

Don’t worry about ghost-provided mouth-projectiles. They’ll always pop out at the most dramatic moment.

Next week, we explore just how much can be learned from a one-sentence chapter in Chapters 36-46 of The Night Guest.[end-mark]

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Books ghost stories

Six Haunting Stories About the Things Ghosts Long For

What keeps us tethered to life and the living, even after death?

By Ratika Deshpande

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Published on July 2, 2025

Illustration by Frank Dadd (1916)

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Illustration by Frank Dadd (1916)

Much has been written about greed and want and human desire, mainly that we’re always in the pursuit of more, our wishes endless. Perhaps that intensity carries into the afterlife, or into the in-between, or wherever it is that souls sometimes get stuck, relegated to a ghostly existence, lingering around the living longing for what we never had, or no longer possess. Sometimes, becoming a ghost can change the kind of things we desire, or make us act unexpectedly, as in the following stories:

“Paperclips and Memories and Things That Won’t Be Missed” by Caroline M. Yoachim

Not all ghosts mean harm. Some want to do good, except that their intentions don’t always lead to desirable outcomes. Margie was one such ghost, an old woman who stole baby Gavin and now holds him close. He is one of the things she’s collected. Our narrator, another ghost, is a collector too—of things that the living won’t miss, for they lose the thing when a ghost gets it for their collection. In such a case, it can be very tempting to steal what one can’t have. Where does one draw the line, then?

“A Cure for Ghosts” by Eden Royce

It’s best to avoid entering rooms that have a “Do Not Enter” warning on their doors. But, well, your daughter and her boyfriend were up to no good and decided to go in and unstopper bottles with spirits inside them. Now you’re terrified and angry that one of the ghosts has made your daughter its host. You might want to sue—but first, you might want to hear what the narrator has to tell you, even though it’s not exactly a cure.

“My Country Is a Ghost” by Eugenia Triantafyllou

Niovi had to leave her mother’s ghost behind when she entered the new country; they couldn’t take in those who had died elsewhere. All she is able to keep is her mother’s necklace and her memories, which would slowly start fading. She tries to remember all that she can, but there’s only so much one can hold onto when working full-time and always being aware that you are one of the people who do not have a ghost following you. Others look at you weirdly, or ignore you completely. The Saturday of Souls offers some hope, but will Niovi’s memories of her mother last long enough for her to attempt to bring her into this country?

“All These Ghosts Are Playing to Win” by Lindsey Godfrey Eccles

When Theo followed Dora into death, they found themselves in a casino. The ghouls lead the bets and ghosts stake trinkets, tied to memories, summoned from their lives, losing said memory in the process if they’re unsuccessful. Those who lose are pushed down the slopes into the DARK. Everyone wants to win; the rare victor is sent up a spiral staircase. Theo is playing to win, too, in the hopes that whatever is up there will help him get his Dora back—for she is starting to slip away, becoming insubstantial. But the rules of the game seem rigged, until an unexpected arrival in the casino gives him an idea. But this idea too, is a gamble. Can Theo actually pay this price to win his wife back?

“Nneamaka’s Ghost” by Walter Dinjos

The ghost of Nneamaka comes to our exiled guard who formerly worked at the palace. She has bonded herself to him and is now asking him to fetch her corpse, offering him a chance at salvation and getting his life back. The ghost of the Princess’s betrothed, Nnanna, informs him that it’s a fool’s errand to do what Nneamaka asks. Which ghost should our guard believe? Between the two, will he even make it out alive, let alone get another chance at life?

“Radio Static” by Carolin Jansen

Most of us probably don’t get to prepare for death; we don’t know when the end will come. When the inevitable happens unexpectedly, will there be a way to tie up any loose ends, speak any last words that we need our loved ones to hear? As the living, we don’t know, but the dead might have an answer…

[end-mark]

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Books new releases

All the New Fantasy Books Arriving in July 2025

A detective/apprentice wizard, a botanist, and a historian all appear in July’s new fantasy releases…

By Reactor

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Published on July 1, 2025

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Here’s the full list of fantasy titles heading your way in July!

Keep track of all the new SFF releases here. All title summaries are taken and/or summarized from copy provided by the publisher. Release dates are subject to change.

July 1

Grave Birds — Dana Elmendorf (MIRA)
Grave birds haunt the cemeteries of Hawthorne, South Carolina, where Spanish moss drips from the trees and Southern charm is imbued with lies. Hollis Sutherland never knew these unique birds existed, not until she died and was brought back to life. The ghostly birds are manifestations of the dead’s unfinished business, and they know Hollis and her uncanny gift can set them free. When a mysterious, charming bachelor wanders into the small town, bizarre events begin to plague its wealthiest citizens—blood drips from dogwood blossoms, flocks of birds crash into houses, fire tornadoes descend from the sky. Hollis knows these are the omens her grandfather warned about, announcing the devil’s return. But despite Cain Landry’s eerie presence and the plague that has followed him, his handsome face and wicked charm win over the townsfolk. Even Hollis falls under his spell as they grow closer. That is, until lies about the town’s past start to surface. The grave birds begin to show Hollis the dead’s ugly deeds from some twenty-five years ago and the horrible things some people did to gain their wealth. Hollis can’t decide if Cain is some immortal hand of God, there to expose their sins. Or if he’s a devil there to ruin them all. Either way, she’s determined to save her town and the people in it, whatever it takes.

Sycorax — Nydia Hetherington (Pegasus Books)
Born of the sun and moon, shaped by fire and malady, comes a young woman whose story has never been told… They call her Sycorax. Seer. Sage. Sorceress. Outcast by society and all alone in the world, Sycorax must find a way to understand her true nature. But as her powers begin to grow, so too do the suspicions of the local townspeople. For knowledge can be dangerous, and a woman’s knowledge is the most dangerous of all… With a great storm brewing on the horizon, Sycorax finds herself in increasing peril—but will her powers save her, or will they spell the end for them all? Find out in this gripping and vivid narrative exploration of one of literature’s most mysterious figures.

July 8

Stone and Sky (Rivers of London #10) — Ben Aaronovitch (DAW)
All Detective Sergeant Peter Grant wanted was a nice holiday up in Scotland. He’ll need one once this is over…

Sea: check.

Sand: some.

Sun: sort of—but that’s not the only thing in the sky…

The Secret Market of the Dead — Giovanni De Feo (Saga)
Just beyond the waking edges of Lucerìa, an 18th-century town in the kingdom of Naples, lies the Night: an enigmatic fiefdom governed by seven immortals and fueled by Moira, the power to reshape one’s destiny. On this porous border separating Day from Night, Oriana spends her time fantasizing about becoming a smith in her father’s forge and eavesdropping on whispered tales of beasts and men who roam the nocturnal realm. But in the Night, these stories come alive, as Oriana saw for herself after she inadvertently trespassed into the Secret Market of the Dead, where vendors hawk Moira to those desperate enough to accept its immeasurably steep price. Years later, when her father chooses her twin brother to succeed him, Oriana challenges her sibling to a series of trials to determine the forge’s true heir. But as the twins’ fierce competition escalates, with the town and her own family set firmly against her, Oriana realizes that to break free from the stifling confines of Day, she must once again embrace the Night—and, as always, everything comes with a cost.

Ascension (Summoner’s Circle #2) — S.T. Gibson (Angry Robot)
Ever since Rhys McGowan was a boy, he’s only wanted two things: power and love. Now, as High Priest of Boston’s premiere Secret Society, husband to his adoring witch wife Moira, and partner to David – his psychic rival-turned-boyfriend, Rhys is finally at peace. But when a strange ritual rocks Boston’s occult community, and opens the Society up to sabotage, Rhys delves even deeper into the dark world of demon-summoning. He’s used to carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders, but the strain of managing so many spirits (not to mention the stress of his loved ones exploring other people) will push him to the brink. As heaven and hell play tug of war for Rhys’ soul, he’ll have to face the greatest demon of all: his own insatiable ambition.

The Bloodless Queen — Joshua Phillip Johnson (DAW)
On the autumnal equinox of 1987, after fencing off half of the Earth’s land for huge nature reserves called Harbors, the leaders of the world called on their peoples to celebrate. Then began the horror and the magic. Everyone who died that day—all 132,329 of them—instead of going cold and still, turned odd and fae. They became mischievous and murderous, before disappearing into their nearest Harbor, never seen again. And each year after that on the autumnal equinox, the same terrible transformations would occur: the wretched dead not dying, but instead riddling and whispering of a faerie queen—bloodless and powerful—while fleeing into the wild confines of the Harbors. In the present day, Evangeline and Calidore are working as fencers, government-employed protectors whose magical powers come from mysterious tattoos of prime numbers. When they aren’t fixing the fences of the Midwest Harbor that separates the human world from Faerie or patrolling on the equinox, they are parents of an almost-seven-year-old daughter named Winnie. But as the new year’s autumnal equinox approaches, Evangeline and Calidore find themselves thrust into a vast conspiracy that stretches across governments, religions, and fencers worldwide. As they race to untangle this web of power and intrigue, they will need to confront the questions that have haunted the world since the fences were built: What lies at the heart of the Harbors? Who waits there?

Red Tempest Brother (Winter Sea #3) — H.M. Long (Titan)
In the wake of the events of Black Tide Son, Hart flees into pirate-infested waters to shelter on the island where former rogue James Demery and the Fleetbreaker, Anne Firth, now rule. Reeling from their discoveries about the truths of the Mereish-Aeadine war, Mary and Samuel hover on the precipice of a terrible, world-altering choice—they can stay silent and maintain their good names, or they can speak out and risk igniting total war across the Winter Sea. Meanwhile, Benedict captains The Red Tempest, a lawless ship of deserters and corrupted mages in search of an Usti spy with incendiary stolen documents. Benedict is determined to make the truth known, consequences be damned. As rumours spread of a new Ghistwold sprouting in the Mereish South Isles, Mary and Samuel sail once more into intrigue, espionage and an ocean on the brink of exploding into conflict. They must chart a course toward lasting, final peace, at the heart of the age-old battle for power upon the Winter Sea.

Curandera — Irenosen Okojie (Soft Skull)
In Gethsemane, Cape Verde, the appearance of a mysterious new arrival, Zulmira, coincides with a series of strange events. Zulmira is a shamanic disciple of Oni, an omnipotent and loving yet vengeful deity. In contemporary London, botanist Therese lives with Haitian musician Azacca, Peruvian drifter Emilien, and daring Finn. These four kindred spirits, bound together by their shared descent from Oni, travel to another realm to complete a secret, sacred task at Oni’s behest. But a disruptive object returns with them from the other plane: a bleeding ribcage, flowering with intoxicating fruit. As Zulmira grows close to a fisherman, Domingos, and his wife and daughter, the increasingly disturbing occurrences in Gethsemane disrupt forms, time, and place. In London, Therese and her housemates, growing ever more powerful on the otherworldly fruit, discover the disturbing costs of their service to Oni. As the stage is set for the collision of two dimensions, the esoteric workings of shamanism intersect with powerful forces of friendship, love, and jealousy.

The Gryphon King (The Chaos Constellation) — Sara Omer (Titan)
Bataar was only a child when he killed a gryphon, making him a legend across the red steppe. Now he is the formidable Bataar Rhah, ruling over the continent that once scorned his people. After a string of improbable victories, he turns his sights on the wealthy, powerful kingdom of Dumakra and their vicious pegasus-mounted warriors. Nohra Zultama has no fear of the infamous warlord who marches on her country. She and her sisters are Harpy Knights, goddess-blessed and lethal. But as deceit and betrayal swirl through her father’s court, she soon learns the price of complacency. With Dumakra under Bataar’s rule, Nohra vows to take revenge—yet her growing closeness to the rhah’s wife, Qaira, threatens to undo her resolve. When rioting breaks out and strange beasts incite panic, Nohra must fight alongside Bataar to keep order, her mixed feelings toward the man she’s sworn to kill becoming ever more complicated. Old evils are rising. Only together will Nohra and Bataar stand a chance against the djinn, ghouls, and monsters that threaten to overrun their world.

July 15

The Jasad Crown (Scorched Throne #2) — Sara Hashem (Orbit)
Held deep in a mountain refuge, Sylvia has been captured by the Urabi, who believe the Jasad Heir can return their homeland to its former power. But after years of denying her legacy and a forbidden alliance with Jasad’s greatest enemy, Sylvia must win the Urabi’s trust while struggling to hide the dangerous side effects her magic is having on her mind. In a rival kingdom, Arin must maneuver carefully between his father’s desire to put down the brewing rebellion and the sacred edicts Arin is sworn to uphold. He is determined to find Sylvia before it’s too late, but Arin’s search unravels secrets that threaten the very core of his beliefs about his family and the destruction of Jasad.  War is inevitable, but Sylvia cannot abandon her people again. The Urabi plan to raise the Jasadi fortress, and it will either kill Sylvia or destroy the humanity she’s fought so hard to protect. For the first time in her life Sylvia doesn’t just want to survive. She wants to win. The fugitive queen is ready to reign.

A Resistance of Witches — Morgan Ryan (Viking)
Stubborn, plain-spoken and from an unimpressive family, Lydia Polk never expected to be accepted into the Royal Academy of Witches. Now, with Hitler’s army rampaging across Europe, the witches of Britain have joined the war effort, and Lydia is key to the cause: she must use her magic to track down magical relics before Hitler and his sycophants can. When a Nazi witch infiltrates the Academy with heart-breaking consequences, the coven is left shaken, exposed and divided. The elder British witches have no interest in further loss of coven life in service of a government that has forced them into hiding for decades, no matter the consequences to the world. But with the discovery of the Grimorium Bellum, an ancient book that leaves a trail of death and destruction wherever it goes, Lydia knows her mission has never been more urgent. Alone and woefully outnumbered, Lydia makes her way to the heart of occupied France, where she finds allies in Rebecca Gagne—a fierce French resistance fighter chockful of secrets—and Henry Boudreaux—a handsome Haitian-American art historian with a little magic of his own. Together, they traverse the country, stalked by the natural and supernatural alike, in search of the grimoire. But, as Lydia soon discovers, finding the book is only half the battle—the Grimorium Bellum has a dark agenda all its own. Lydia must subdue it before the Witches of the Third Reich can use it—but she’ll have to survive the book herself, first.

The Memory of the Ogisi (Forever Desert #3) — Moses Ose Utomi (Tordotcom Publishing)
The City of a Thousand Stories stands resolute on the edge of the Forever Desert. It is a lush metropolis, where water flows into every mouth that thirsts and knowledge sprouts in every mind that craves it. Yet despite their prosperity, no one can remember how the city began. It is a dire state of affairs: a people who do not learn their past cannot chart their future. Ethike is an Ogisi, one of the City’s many historians, who has devoted his life to studying a little-known figure named Osi. He believes Osi to be the key to the city’s origins, but his years of research have only raised more questions about Osi’s identity. Until, one day, he believes he has found the answer. Spurred by his love for his city and his family, Ethike ventures into the Forever Desert in search of the Lost Tomb of Osi. If he can find it, he will finally be able to prove his worth to the City’s Elders and cement Osi’s role in history. But history is a story told by the powerful. What Ethike uncovers beneath the sand is a power far beyond anything he could have expected… and it wants vengeance.

Pearl City (Phoenix Hoard #3) — Julia Vee and Ken Bebelle (Tor Books)
Blade. Butcher. Thief. Worldbreaker. Emiko Soong has been called many things. But Worldbreaker is the worst. She unmasked the General and returned to San Francisco where her power is greatest. But the city, once her sanctuary from Jiaren intrigues, turns into her living nightmare. Clan wars erupt and Emiko’s life becomes a treacherous quicksand of friend and foe. Unsure of who to trust, Emiko finds herself more alone than ever. When an ancient power rips through the Realm to land in her city, the General will stop at nothing to take it for his own. Emiko must face her past, present, and future, as she races to stop the General. Is Emiko’s fate written to be the destroyer of worlds, or can she chart a new course to save her family?

July 22

Arcana Academy — Elise Kova (Del Rey)
Clara Graysword has survived the underworld of Eclipse City through thievery, luck, and a whole lot of illegal magic. After a job gone awry, Clara is sentenced to a lifetime in prison for inking tarot cards—a rare power reserved for practitioners at the elite Arcana Academy. Just when it seems her luck has run dry, the academy’s enigmatic headmaster, Prince Kaelis, offers her an escape—for a price. Kaelis believes that Clara is the perfect tool to help him steal a tarot card from the king and use it to re-create an all-powerful card long lost to time. In order to conceal her identity and keep her close, Kaelis brings Clara to Arcana Academy, introducing her as the newest first-year student and his bride-to-be. Thrust into a world of arcane magic and royal intrigue, where one misstep will send her back to prison or worse, Clara finds that the prince she swore to hate may not be what he seems. But can she risk giving him power over the world—and her heart? Or will she take it for herself?

July 29

Birth of a Dynasty — Chinaza Bado (Harper Voyager)
After witnessing the massacre of everyone he’s ever known and loved, M’Kuru Mukundi, the sole surviving member of the High Noble House Mukundi of Madada, vows revenge. M’kuru flees to a small village where he hides under the guise of farm boy Khalil Rausi… unaware that the real Khalil’s father is the bloodthirsty General of Zenzele army, and under the direction of the King’s scheming son, Prince Effiom, was responsible for the murder of M’kuru’s people. When an imposter claiming to be M’kuru shows up in the village, the real M’kuru—now Khalil—must bide his time amongst his enemies, pretending to be everything that he hates in order to get vengeance. In another part of the country where giants roam free, young Zikora Nnamani, the only daughter of Lord Nnamani, knows nothing of political intrigue—she wants little more than to be a fierce Seh Llinga warrior. But a well-known prophecy places too much potential power on her small shoulders, and—as far as Prince Effiom and the King know—she is the only living threat to their dynasty ruling forever. However, when a messenger arrives to “invite” Zikora to stay at the palace, her family is not in a position to refuse. Before she is taken away, she begins The Rite of Blessing, a magical inheritance that she will need to learn how to use, but that may also bring the world one step closer to the completion of the prophecy that Prince Effiom so fears. Between scheming ladies at court, backstabbing princes on the prowl, and paranoid kings, M’kuru and Zikora must do what they can, no matter how terrible, to save their people and claim vengeance for their families. But they are just two young people against an entire kingdom—and a prophecy destined to thwart their dreams—and the last thing they can do is trust anyone… even each other.

The Lighthouse at the Edge of the World — J. R. Dawson (Tor Books)
At the edge of Chicago, nestled on the shores of Lake Michigan, there is a waystation for the dead. Every night, the newly-departed travel through the city to the Station, guided by its lighthouse. There, they reckon with their lives, before stepping aboard a boat to go beyond. Nera has spent decades watching her father—the ferryman of the dead—sail across the lake, each night just like the last. But tonight, something is wrong. The Station’s lighthouse has started to flicker out. The terrifying, ghostly Haunts have multiplied in the city. And now a person—a living person—has found her way onto the boat. Her name is Charlie. She followed a song. And she is searching for someone she lost.

The Fallbacks: Dealing with Dragons (Dungeons & Dragons) — Jaleigh Johnson (Random House Worlds)
When the day is threatened by tyrannical foes or monstrous fiends, the people of Faerûn place their trust in the realm’s mighty heroes. When the mighty heroes don’t show up, they get the Fallbacks. The team: A flamboyant bard with a bandstand’s worth of secrets. A wizard whose thirst for knowledge leads her to triumph and trouble. A virtuous fighter with a family that’s anything but. A cunning rogue just trying to keep everyone together. And then there’s the party’s cleric. Baldric has always had an unorthodox approach to divinity. While other folk of faith hitch their wagons to one god or another, this cleric figures that if his magic and might can serve many gods and reap the rewards of the entire pantheon, everyone wins. But there’s a price to be paid for the power to protect Faerûn. And every debt must one day be collected. Baldric finds himself cut off from his connection to the divine when a mysterious and otherworldly entity starts to invade his negotiations. And this entity wants more than Baldric’s service—it wants his soul. The Fallbacks race to free their cleric from his shadowy debtholder, but the heat is on—in more ways than one—because the being trying to lay claim to Baldric isn’t exactly a god. Forget striking bargains with deities. To get out of this jam, the Fallbacks will have to deal with dragons.

A Covenant of Ice (Crowns of Ishia #3) — Karin Lowachee (Solaris)
After years of separation, Havinger Lilley has finally reunited with his lover, Janan. He now hopes to heal from the experience that changed his life forever: being bonded to the soul of a king dragon and to the man Raka who died to save it. But this bond is consuming him, making his thoughts and feelings not his own. Compelled by this to return to the frozen north that was once Raka’s home, Lilley and his companions Janan and Meka make the arduous journey toward a confrontation with the power-hungry Kattakans that could result in another devastating war.

The Alchemy of Flowers — Laura Resau (Harper Muse)
Help Wanted: In search of a gardener for the ancient walled Jardins du Paradis in the South of France. Unique and rustic lodging provided. Off the grid in all ways. One must grow flowers from one’s merde… Exhausted by fruitless attempts to make a family, Eloise takes the chance of a lifetime to answer an ad in a French gardening magazine. To fly away from her life in the States and tend to both her shattered heart and the flowers of Paradise. And best of all for her… Absolutely no children allowed on the premises. Within the high garden walls, Eloise starts to learn the strange rules of the elusive estate owner. Living and working in isolation with her three companions, she finds her heart opening again to friendship—and realizes she’s drawn to the handyman, Raphael. The flowers whisper to her, enchanting, delighting, healing. But why are the workers forbidden from going out during dusk? Who is the “Goddess of the Garden”? Is her mind playing tricks on her, or does she see a woodsprite flitting through the trees? The giggles and glimpses of a little girl haunt her and make her question: What is real in Paradise and what is illusion? Eloise tries to rationalize her uneasy feelings and the darkness she uncovers beneath the garden’s lush beauty, but as she digs deeper into the mysteries of her sanctuary, she begins to suspect there’s a child on the grounds—who may be in danger. When Paradise becomes a deadly prison, she must risk everything to protect her newfound family and claim her second chance at happiness.

Beasts of Carnaval — Rosália Rodrigo (MIRA)
When night descends, el Carnaval de Bestias rises. Within the shores of Isla Bestia, guests from around the world discover a utopia of ever-changing performances, sumptuous feasts and beautiful monsters. Many enter, but few ever leave—the wine is simply too sweet, the music too fine and the revelry endless. Sofía, a freedwoman from a nearby colonized island, cares little for this revelry. Born an enslaved mestiza on a tobacco plantation, she has neither wealth nor title, only a scholarly pragmatism and a hunger for answers. She travels to el Carnaval de Bestias in search of her twin brother, who disappeared five years ago. There’s a world of wonder waiting for her on the shores of this legendary island, one wherein conquerors profit from Sofia’s ancestral lands and her people’s labor. But surrounded by her former enslavers, she finds something familiar in the performances—whispers of the island’s native tongue, music and stories from her Taike’ri ancestors… a culture long hidden in the shadows, thrust into the light. As the nights pass, her mind begins unraveling, drowning in the unnatural, almost sentient thrall of Carnaval. And the sense that someone is watching her grows. To find her brother and break free, Sofia must peel back the glamorous curtain and face those behind Carnaval, before she too loses herself to the island/

Silvercloak — L. K. Steven (Del Rey)
Two decades ago, the Bloodmoons ruthlessly murdered Saffron Killoran’s parents, destroying her idyllic childhood. Hell-bent on revenge, she lies her way into Silvercloak Academy—the training ground for her city’s elite order of detectives—with a single goal: to bring the Bloodmoons to justice. But when Saff’s deception is exposed, rather than being cast out, she’s given a rare opportunity: to go undercover and tear the Bloodmoons down from the inside. Descending into a world where pleasure and pain are the most powerful currencies, Saff must commit some truly heinous deeds to keep her cover—and her life. Not only are there rival gangs and sinister smuggling rings to contend with, but there’s also her growing feelings for the kingpin’s tortured son, with his vicious pet fallowwolf, his dark past, and the curious prophecy foretelling his death at Saffron’s hand. With each day testing her loyalties further, Saff finds her web of lies becoming harder to spin. And when one false step could destroy everything and everyone she’s ever loved… the detective who’s dedicated her life to vengeance just might die for it.

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Books Dissecting The Dark Descent

All the Pieces Matter: “Afterward” by Edith Wharton

By Sam Reader

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Published on July 1, 2025

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Welcome back to Dissecting The Dark Descent, where we lovingly delve into the guts of David Hartwell’s seminal 1987 anthology story by story, and in the process, explore the underpinnings of a genre we all love. For an in-depth introduction, here’s the intro post.

Edith Wharton is a name that deserves to be invoked far more often, especially in the gothic world. While many know her novella-length character portrait Ethan Frome and her classic novel The Age of Innocence, she was a lifelong fan of ghost stories, even writing several herself while incorporating her knowledge of shifting social mores, class issues, and complex studies of characters into the mix. “Afterward” is perhaps one of her more transfixing written works, a story that uses a more “realistic” approach to its gothic horror to add greater complexity and nuance to this tale of ghosts and karmic retribution. With its introduction of realism and deeper interest in the psychological landscape of its characters, it’s every bit as horrifying and strange as the other tales of the fantastic included in The Dark Descent, but contains enough emotional truth to linger long after its haunting final lines.

Relocating from the Midwest, Mary Boyne and her husband move to Dorsetshire, where they plan to live at an old house called Lyng. Cut off from modern conventions such as indoor plumbing and electricity (the Boynes were determined to live in a very old house), Lyng’s distinguishing feature is a ghost that “no one knows is there,” with previous inhabitants only realizing that they’d had a spiritual encounter “long, long afterward.” Despite this disappointing development, the nouveau riche Boynes happily move into Lyng and set about their new life of leisure, Ned Boyne writing a book while Mary paints and takes care of the household. When a strange young man shows up at Lyng and mysteriously vanishes (taking Mr. Boyne along with him), Mary’s hunt for her husband uncovers a series of unnerving secrets about both her husband’s business affairs and the ghost of Lyng, the full extent of which will not be fully revealed until “long, long afterward.”

In the moment, people don’t usually process all of what’s happening to them. They know, of course, if something strange is going on or if something feels off. It’s a warning sign that they should pay attention, but most of the time, we don’t piece together the full picture until we’ve had time to process, to genuinely reflect on what felt so weird. In this sort of situation, it’s not until someone starts putting all the pieces together that suddenly the unnerving truth of an odd encounter or a small, weird moment is revealed to them. It’s an effect that’s used frequently in horror—you can set your watch by how many stories or visual works will allow small, sinister details to pile up until the trap is finally sprung—but Wharton’s use here feels more realistic and true to life.

Throughout “Afterward,” Mary notices various unusual details, but as they’re small moments, she doesn’t chalk them up to anything in particular. Boyne’s strange behavior can be attributed to a thousand little anxieties—moving to England, starting his book, and at points perhaps even his awareness of Lyng’s mysterious ghost, which Boyne himself might have seen. Boyne always has a handy excuse to explain away everything, from insisting that there’s no merit to his former partner Elwell accusing him of “every crime in the calendar” to claiming the first time he and Mary see the ghost of Lyng, it’s merely the man he wanted to see about the gutters. It’s not stated outright, but the glimpses start to add up. While Mary has no real reason to suspect Boyne of anything, the reader has every reason to suspect, and the way Wharton calls attention to the small details Boyne and Mary dismiss only underlines their sense of wrongness, especially on repeat readings.           

It’s a common feature of toxic relationships. The person being harmed or manipulated will attempt to explain away the details that don’t jibe with their vision that everything is all right, because the truth is too psychologically devastating. Even if something is definitely wrong, even if there’s tension and quiet menace, the longer you believe everything is all right, the more likely it will be and the less likely there will be some kind of incident. You find yourself accepting any explanation for the strangeness solely in the hope that doing so will mean that things can go back to normal or return to how they were when they felt good. In Mary’s case, the more she accepts her husband’s rationalizations, the faster she can get back to enjoying life at Lyng, with its secret passages and ghosts.

The sense of small details Mary is either ignoring or doesn’t want to directly confront also applies to the oft-discussed ghost of Lyng. Mary’s friend Alida claims that no one knows they’ve seen the ghost until “afterward,” but in the few encounters Mary has with the ghost in the form of Elwell, she first explains away the figure’s indistinct appearance with her nearsightedness, and then when the ghost comes for her husband, notices that “he had an American intonation” but not the accent as well as an indistinct appearance. Mary registers that something weird is going on, but (much in the same way that her husband does with her questions) rationalizes it away as Boyne’s business and not hers. After Elwell’s eventual death, Boyne still keeps her in the dark and Mary internalizes his rationalizations, waking up the morning of his strange disappearance with a sense of “security.”

This is, in fact, the thing that ultimately proves Boyne’s undoing. Boyne, keeping his malfeasance secret from Mary and working hard to rationalize everything away, succeeds on making Mary complicit when the ghost finally comes to take him away. There’s something clearly weird about the whole thing, but it’s not until Boyne vanishes without a trace that the key details start to slam home. Wharton’s use of a more “realistic” style of haunting—most true ghost story accounts have the witness only realizing what happened after the person they were talking to walks through a wall or mysteriously vanishes—reinforces the horror, that somehow Mary let the ghost in and unwittingly played a role in dismantling what she (falsely) saw as an idyllic existence. Trying to avoid an incident led the incident directly to their door.

Modern readers, of course, know that she had nothing to do with any of this and that Boyne got what was coming to him—he was a shady businessman dragged to the netherworld because he manipulated everyone around him and refused to face the consequences of his actions. Knowing that Mary is better off and feeling that Mary is better off are, however, two different things entirely. It’s here where Wharton’s realism has its harshest sting—the hole torn in the world by the shady, manipulative Mr. Boyne still leaves horror and trauma behind, and even if karmic retribution is just, justice sometimes looks unfathomably cruel to those like Mary who don’t see the complete picture until long, long afterward.

And now to turn it over to you. Was your main experience with reading Edith Wharton Ethan Frome, or another work? Do you think Mary will recover from her terrible ordeal now that Boyne has vanished? Does Wharton’s attention to mirroring accounts of “authentic” hauntings heighten or lessen the horror?

Please join us in two weeks as we explore an area of singular loneliness with “The Willows,” by Algernon Blackwood.[end-mark]

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