The story is nothing that experienced readers of horror will not recognize and it is nothing that those who enjoy the reading of mythology will be shocked by – it’s pretty straightforward in this regard. However, what is fascinating is the almost anthropological approach with which Mellon has chosen to tell his story. The book is meticulously researched and beautifully rendered with arresting images and insights into the ever day and commonplace as well as the pageantry and circus-like atmosphere that could have drenched that ancient city.

Gallery of Horror is a very good short story collection that is wonderfully designed not only as a homage to the groundbreaking imagination of Rod Serling but as an interactive litmus for your tastes and concepts of horror in art.

“Eye Contact” is an absorbing, terrifying story of the personal nature of reality and a poignant, nerve-wracking exploration into whom or what is our most defining voice amidst the suspension of all sensory input. It reminded me in plan (but not in execution – more on that later) of the non-linear Aronofsky film “The Fountain”, wherein recurring visual motifs and similitude of action grounded us amidst the jump cuts of time, space and character though in “Eye Contact” we also have the singular “voice” of protagonist David Matson as a through line and the husband and wife team of David and Gina Matson maintain their present day relationship as well.

Raymond Did It is a slasher film in the tradition of Halloween and Prom Night. When twelve-year-old Bryce Rourke is accidentally killed in a playground scuffle, his friends decide to blame Bryce's developmentally delayed older brother for the accident. Raymond is taken to a state hospital while the true killer walks free. Six years later, Raymond escapes from the hospital to seek bloody revenge for his brother's death.

In "Burn Phone", Thomas Malafarina has a visual artist’s eye for detail and exuberance for the minutiae of his deceptively simple scenes. He writes with the same flourish for violence and tableaus of flesh as Clive Barker and yet he shares the same cosmic vision and torment of inner and outer space of H. P. Lovecraft, all the while working the clichés and conventions of the genre bravely and unabashedly. All in all, “Burn Phone” is one hell of a rollicking horror house ride.

The childhood friend of a troubled Hollywood man who brutally killed his mother last month says his novel may have been the inspiration for the murder. Beau Henri Bruneau, 29, sits in a Broward County jail, charged with premeditated murder for the Oct. 30 killing of Nancy Bruneau. Paramedics found Nancy Bruneau's body on the front yard of her Hollywood home, with the severe trauma to her head. Now, 28-year-old Patrick Quéré, who grew up with Bruneau, attending middle and high school with him in the '80s and '90s, fears his new book may have helped lead Bruneau down a dark path.

There is no getting around it; Grognard is a difficult novel to read in the extreme. It is a challenge not to dismiss it, put it down and perhaps even throw away. There are racial slurs, homophobic rants, obscene sexual cravings, disgusts and depravities, harsh and cruel social labeling and name-calling and general nihilistic inhumanity on a wholesale scale. But there are also moments of love and compassion (no matter how queer or alien to the “civilized” eye) and the search for worth amongst the self-loathing and blame. And there is pity to be felt. It is a well written novel of understated, psychological horror that gathers its power in an accumulating storm of words and ideas that beat you down like dark driving weather, and when the physical horror – the violence - finally arrives it is sudden and shocking, voyeuristic and ultimately (you realize) inevitable.

Ninety-Nine Souls is a terrific first novel, though, and a promising debut; it’s about small town conspiracies and the sins of our fathers, greed and corruption, supply and demand and the angst that accompanies them … and eventual comeuppance. It just so happens to be a very sinister horror novel as well.