Australia was a wild, raw and dangerous place back in the late 19th century. It was a young settler society that lacked urbanization and infrastructure; a land prone to floods and bushfires, and fi…

Monsters from space are awesome because they embody the ultimate unknown. Here on Earth, we Earthicans have a pretty good idea of what lurks in the shadows. But in outer space, the possibilities ar…

Lagoe, Texas, was classified as a disappearing community; a ghost town in the making. Main Street was lined with buildings that had been empty for 40+ years. Like a lot of rural towns in the U.S., …

I can totally understand why Aron Beauregard chose a horsefly to be the monster in his latest creature feature book. Not only are they big and ugly and gross, but the bite of a female horsefly real…

Author Ian Gielen dedicates his latest novel Savage Waters to “all those who desperately want cryptids to be real,” and then proceeds to unleash a cryptid so ferocious that it makes you grateful th…

Unlike Harold and his famous purple crayon, 15-year-old Baylor Jenkins needed help from a magical spellbook to bring her scribbles to life.  Being a morose kid, Baylor wasn’t drawing flowers, …

Here’s a personal request for all writers walking the thin line between pulp fiction and comic books: At the very beginning of the process, when rendering the main characters of the story, please g…

Back in 1936, H.P. Lovecraft wrote a creepy novella titled The Shadow Over Innsmouth, about a seaport village inhabited by grotesque, fish-like hybrids. Robert Olmstead, the story’s protagonist, kn…

They’re the Furies—Black Venus, the Cat, Miss Espionage and Miss Victory. Four costumed heroines from the Golden Age of comic books who have been united and reintroduced to a new generation of read…

It was just two months ago that Dr. Mark Hudson and his cryptid investigation team saved Los Angeles from being destroyed by a group of quarreling giant monsters (read my review of Gore vs. the Cry…

“I’m a vampire,” said James Sugré, the protagonist of Michael J. Seidlinger’s latest book Brokeula. “And like all vampires, I have forever and a day to spare.”  But living forever wasn’t cheap…

Apparently, editor Annie Knox is committed to compiling an entire shelf of anthologies based on abominable creatures. Last year she helmed a terrific collection of werewolf stories (read my review …

This wasn’t the first time Maxwell McTavish and Erin Johansson tangled with monsters. While they were bumpin’ uglies on Paradise Island (not Themyscira), giant centipedes invaded their posh French …

Without question, my favorite novel from last year was written by Nora B. Peevy (read my review here). As I said at the time, Flesh-Eating Turtles! was an outrageous and sharply satirical critique …

There are 43 stories in Of Beasts & Bones, the latest creature horror anthology from editor Robin Knabel. The volume’s introduction promises all sorts of beasts imaginable from science, nature,…

You could easily create a Venn diagram from the core beliefs of Christianity and vampirism. Think about it: The longevity of life, the countless followers willing to die for their worship, rising f…

In our solar system, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are considered dead planets. They’re all geographically inactive and unable to support life as we know it. Not countin…

The surf surrounding Savanua island was full of sea corpses—gathered at the water’s edge, lurking like Nile crocodiles waiting for unsuspecting antelopes to drink at their waterhole.  If you w…

Marine biologists, comparative psychologists, neuroscientists and cognitive experts all agree that octopuses are smart. Yet their intelligence is so alien—so fundamentally different from our own—th…

In the 2011 movie Rise of the Planet of the Apes, a scientist develops a drug that boosts brain function in chimpanzees. As a result, the test subject gains self-awareness and human-like intelligen…

Author Jonathan Janz has a lot to say about Southern Gothic literature in his introduction to a new anthology entitled Screams from the Bayou. The subgenre blends dark and eerie (often grotesque) e…

To be clear, I’ve read a handful of novels by Michael Cole and they’ve all been pretty good. If you’re looking for straightforward, fast-paced monster action (dinosaur, cryptid, alien or otherwise)…

Deep down we all know the truth. Of all the monsters—big or small, Terran or otherworldly—humans are the worst. Our capacity for cruelty, violence and moral corruption far exceeds that of any fanta…

The latest novel by author Edward J. McFadden III begins with a compelling quote from the Egyptian Book of the Dead—“Your roar shakes the earth, but I am steadfast. O Lizard-Headed One, I call upon…

It all started one midsummer’s night when Martin O’Donnell tried to freeze a small pond so that he and his girlfriend could go ice-skating. Even though he was a wizard with a college degree in magi…

The White Mountain’s Guardian begins with a handful of enthusiastic hikers preparing to scale the steep cliffs of Arizona’s Mount Greer. “The mountain peaks loomed above them like an ancient titan …

There’s no real shock here. You don’t have to be a card-carrying Porn Goblin to know that The Smegxorcist is a dirty book, brimming with sexy demons and genital secretions.  And it shouldn’t s…

What comes out at night? In my neighborhood you’ll see young couples pushing baby strollers, dog walkers, joggers and men smoking cigarettes on their front porches. Later, coyotes come down from th…

When choosing books to review, I favor preposterous stories about abominable creatures. For example, the things that interest me are gelatinous blobs (Beware the Blobs! edited by Raymond Johnson an…

Tooth and Claw features a giant shark (Tooth) and a giant crab (Claw). The book title borrows its nomenclature structure from old TV shows like Laverne and Shirley, Will and Grace and Mork and Mind…

Years ago, as an editor for a leading manga publisher in the U.S., I pushed to acquire the four out-of-print Godzilla novels by Marc Cerasini. The books probably didn’t sell well back in the 90s, b…

Two years ago, the movie Godzilla Minus One received an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects. Although I still enjoy watching Godzilla stomp miniature model sets, I admit the FX on Minus One were …

Creature Feature, a chilling new anthology from Raconteur Press, is filled with all sorts of monsters— werewolves, warlocks, dinosaurs, psychic dinosaurs, bog-bred things, cosmic gods, kaiju, Venus…

’Tis the season for another volume of Halloween Horrors, the perfect yuletide balm for fruit cake, tangled Christmas lights, airport delays and Mariah Carey.  Both Halloween and Christmas shar…

The name of the titular monster in V.S. Lawrence’s latest novel is obviously a cute portmanteau that immediately evokes images of puffy tacos and bloodsucking cryptids.  The novel’s title also…

In Frank Herbert’s 1966 novel The Green Brain, an alliance of insects unites and begins behaving in a frightening human-like manner. It’s what entomologists might call “swarm intelligence.”  T…

Hot on the heels of the latest volume of Attack of the Kaiju (see my review here) comes Reign of the Titans, Vol. 1: Ragnarok … Now!, another terrific collection of giant monster stories. It makes …

As a casual onlooker, you might be surprised to discover that there are numerous authors currently dedicated to writing kaiju prose fiction. Matthew Dennion, Neil Riebe, Dustin Dreyling, Jeremy Rob…

At night, a lawless posse of U.S. immigration agents aggressively patrolled the Arizona border. The lucky migrants they captured were sent back to Mexico naked and raped. The unlucky ones were left…

Not only is “Dracula Remains” by Varon Cook one of my favorite stories in Spawn of Nightmares: Meet the Monsters, but it also serves as a keystone to the anthology’s thematic structure.  “The …

The fish processing plant was the economic heart of Saltwick Bay. Its massive concrete bulk dominated the harbor like an industrial cathedral dedicated to the harvest of the sea.  The factory …

The seeds of this website were sown way back in the early 2000s when the three-volumes of Daikaiju! were first published. Each anthology—Giant Monster Tales, Revenge of the Giant Monsters and Giant…

Chickens genetically engineered into dinosaurs? That’s crazy! But that’s exactly what happens in “Cretaceous Carnivores,” a story written by Joel Austin in a new weekday-specific anthology called M…

Nightmare Reef starts with a pod of plesiosaurs cruising the Pacific Ocean as if nothing had changed since the Cretaceous Period. Obeying instincts passed down for 215 million years; they were on t…

All the beloved tropes of the mummy genre are present in the stories included in Modern Mummies: A Horror Anthology. But I applaud editor A.C. Bauer’s desire to expand the scope of what mummy horro…

When vampires found themselves in a pinch and needed some help, they’d call Alexandru Dragoi. Born in 699, he was one of the oldest beings alive. As a vampire, 13 centuries of debauchery had grante…

The sun and the Earth have always been inextricably linked. In literature and mythology, they’re symbolically connected through stories of life, death and rebirth. They are celestial giants that re…

Question: While reading a murder mystery (or any other type of novel), do you parse the clues, track the characters and second-guess the narrator in an attempt to figure out the resolution? Or do y…

The Turtlepocalypse begins when giant flesh-eating turtles escape from a biotech laboratory in Milwaukee. Even though these abominations eventually reach a height of 20-30 feet, they aren’t exempla…