Horror/Ghost story Archives

Seven Empty Houses by Samanta Schweblin, translated by Megan McDowell [in Booklist]

18 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Argentinian, Audio, Fiction, South American, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Each member of this fabulous cast is identified twice – with every story title and at audiobook’s end – in a rare (but super easy-to-do!) instance of responsible recognition. Literary darling Samanta Schweblin’s 2015 collection, fluidly translated by favored Megan McDowell, features seven unsettling stories about...

The Liminal Zone by Junji Ito, translated by Jocelyne Allen [in Booklist]

22 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Repost, Short Stories, Translation

Beyond the countless corpses, Japanese manga auteur Junji Ito’s latest import deftly – and, of course, ever so gruesomely – highlights the liminal spaces between life and death, good and evil, waking and sleep. An engaged couple’s innocent decision to “stop somewhere on a whim” during...

Black Paradox by Junji Ito, translated by Jocelyne Allen [in Booklist]

18 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Repost, Translation

Four strangers – Taburo, Pii-tan, Baracchi, Maruso – gather for the first time and embark on their “journey to paradise”: “We met on the suicide site Black Paradox, and now we’re each other’s final companions.” The quartet’s reasons for seeking death suggest strange parallels: “So the...

Before Your Memory Fades [Before the Coffee Gets Cold, Book 3] by Toshikazu Kawaguchi, translated by Geoffrey Trousselot [in Booklist]

12 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Short Stories, Translation

In the third installment of the internationally best-selling Before the Coffee Gets Cold series, some of the familiar crew from Tokyo’s Café Funiculi Funicula move to Hakodate’s Café Donna Donna on Hokkaido after its proprietor, Yukari Tokita, leaves indefinitely for the U.S. to help a young...

Shutter by Ramona Emerson [in Booklist]

31 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Native American/First Nations/Indigenous Peoples, Repost

Emmy-nominated Navajo/Diné filmmaker Ramona Emerson jumps genres with her fiction debut, a chilling mystery starring Rita Todacheene (who just might be getting a bookish series of her own). Charley Flyte, with a similar Native/Indigenous background (Oglala Lakota and Mohawk), empathically ciphers a considerable cast –...

A Thousand Steps into Night by Traci Chee [in School Library Journal]

19 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Fiction, Japanese American, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Grace Rolek, who was part of the audio cast for Traci Chee’s We Are Not Free, makes her solo debut with this rousing Japanese-inspired epic. In fictional Awara, where demons, spirits, magical beings, oh – and humans – all coexist, 17-year-old Miuko is deemed “average...

The Fervor by Alma Katsu [in Booklist]

24 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Japanese American, Repost

Historical horror master Alma Katsu augments an already terrifying occurrence – the U.S. imprisonment of 120,000 Americans of Japanese descent during WWII – by crafting this intricately plotted supernatural-tinged thriller. To underscore the reality, Katsu’s dedication points to her mother “for her stories of childhood...

After Lambana: Myth and Magic in Manila by Eliza Victoria, illustrated by Mervin Malonzo [in Booklist]

19 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Filipina/o, Filipina/o American, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Repost

Conrad needs help. He’s suffering from a fatal disease, and mitigating the excruciating agony is all he can do. Ignacio seems to be his only hope, navigating him through the Manila streets where humans – and other beings – pass between worlds. Beyond the last...

Self-Portrait with Ghost by Meng Jin [in Booklist]

28 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese American, Fiction, Repost, Short Stories

*STARRED REVIEW Following her extraordinary novel Little Gods (2020), Meng Jin presents a fascinating 10-story collection divided into four sections. One-line drawings of profiles interrupt, switching directions as if cleverly reminding readers to shift perspectives. Death haunts the first three titles. In “Philip Is Dead,” the narrator insistently...

Nuclear Family by Joseph Han [in Booklist]

16 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean American, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Grace, 21, and Jacob, 25, are Korean Hawaiian on their father’s side (three Cho generations are currently islanders); maternally, they are both South and North Korean, with their closest Jeong relatives in Seoul. College senior Grace lives at home and works at their parents’ Cho’s...

The Sentence by Louise Erdrich [in Booklist]

14 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Native American/First Nations/Indigenous Peoples, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW In her fifth self-narration, acclaimed Indigenous author Louise Erdrich’s latest is delightfully enhanced with personal meta-references, insightfully balancing the narrative’s heavier events. Louise, the owner of Minneapolis’ Birchbark Books (as is the author herself), goes on a just-before-pandemic-shutdown book tour – clearly a nod...

Reprieve by James Han Mattson [in Booklist]

13 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Korean American, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW A multi-generational family home of horrors looms throughout James Han Mattson’s (The Lost Prayers of Ricky Graves) spellbinding latest. Ever-versatile narrator JD Jackson chills and thrills, underscoring the slyly literary, intensifying the social commentary, enhancing the utterly gory. John Forrester began his house of frights...

The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward [in Booklist]

04 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

Catriona Ward’s latest is quite the creepfest addition to psychological thrillers in which houses or buildings star as characters. Veteran Christopher Ragland sounds so appropriately trusting, even as listeners should be well aware: believe no one. The book’s characters couldn’t be more different, but Ragland proves...

Tales from the Café [Before the Coffee Gets Cold, Book 2] by Toshikazu Kawaguchi, translated by Geoffrey Trousselot [in Booklist]

22 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Short Stories, Translation

Expanding the insightful delights introduced in global bestseller Before the Coffee Gets Cold (2020), readers are welcomed back to Funiculi Funicula, Tokyo’s time-travel café. The rules haven’t changed, especially the two most urgent: the temporal seeker must wait for the woman-in-white to vacate her seat...

Sensor by Junji Ito, translated by Jocelyne Allen [in Booklist]

01 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Repost, Translation

Japan’s graphic-horror auteur Junji Ito has yet another U.S. edition with a serialized manga originally published as Travelogue of the Succubus, compiled here as Sensor, translated by Jocelyne Allen, who also brought Ito’s Eisner-winning Frankenstein to English-language readers. Mount Sengoku erupted decades ago by the time...

The Autumnal: The Complete Series by Daniel Kraus, illustrated by Chris Shehan, color by Jason Wordie, lettering by Jim Campbell [in Booklist]

28 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Kat Somerville will never win any mother-of-the-year awards. She shows up at the principal’s office black-eyed after her 7-year-old daughter, Sybil, bloodied another kid’s nose; rather than any admonishments, Kat brings Sybil a Stephen King novel. The rebellious pair abandon not only the school but...

Whisper by Chang Yu-Ko, translated by Roddy Flagg [in Booklist]

14 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Repost, Taiwanese, Translation

Once upon a time, Wu Shih-sheng had a happy home with his wife and daughter. But then his daughter ran away and he fell heavily into debt after an accident; lost their home; took to sporadically driving a taxi; forced his wife, Kuo Hsiang-ying, into...

Dangers of Smoking in Bed by Mariana Enriquez, translated by Megan McDowell [in Booklist]

14 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Argentinian, Audio, Fiction, Repost, Short Stories, South American, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Mariana Enriquez’s second collection, after 2017’s Things We Lost in the Fire, is insatiably addicting even as the dozen stories are gruesome, lurid, and utterly weird. As a Buenos Aires journalist, she witnessed true horror, the consequences of dictatorship, corruption, 30,000 disappeared; her literary...

Lovesickness by Junji Ito, translated by Jocelyne Allen [in Booklist]

21 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Repost, Short Stories, Translation, Young Adult Readers

In the almost-quarter-century since his manga debut, Junji Ito has undoubtedly ascended to world-renown for his prolific tales of horror. Translated into English by Jocelyne Allen, who also translated his Eisner-winning Frankenstein, Ito’s latest imported collection opens with the five-part titular “Lovesickness.” In relentlessly foggy Nazumi,...

Tono Monogatari by Shigeru Mizuki, translated by Zack Davisson [in Shelf Awareness]

05 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Repost, Short Stories, Translation, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW The late Shigeru Mizuki's most recent posthumous import, Tono Monogatari – in English, Tales of Tono – is as multi-layered as the eminent manga creator himself. Venerated for his magnificently detailed histories – Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths, for example – and cherished for his charming supernatural...

BookDragon Horror/Ghost story Tag