Cherie Priest writes the kind of smart scary stories that are exceedingly rare in the publishing world today. Her books are not horror - not in the great buckets of blood sense anyway. Rather, they are filled with hauntings and horrifying beasts (werewolves, zombies and very old people who should be long dead) but more than that, it is the atmosphere of possible scariness that permeates every page she writes which elevates her books and stories up a serious notch. Her ghosts don't just appear, they are troubled and bothered and bothersome. One is clearly insane and another has been driven mad by the nature of her death. Ghosts of war still haunt battlefields, asylums are home to disembodied screams and way in the swamp a homicidal maniac refuses to give up his nasty hold on life. In her Eden Moore trilogy, Cherie gifted us all with a major dose of southern gothic while her novella Dreadful Skin was somehow a combination of Mark Twain's worst nightmare and Clint Eastwood's finest cowboy moments.

You can read my full review of Dreadful Skin at Bookslut and I wrote about my love for the Eden Moore trilogy here at Chasing Ray and reviewed her latest, Not Flesh Nor Feathers, at Bookslut. Now on to Cherie's favorite reads this year:

Two titles stand out for me this past year:

World War Z, by Max Brooks (yes, a 2006 book -- but I didn't read it until a few months ago). I was inspired to ramble at length online about it, so much did I verily verily love this book. See more at Cherie's site.

and Ghostwalk by Rebecca Stott. I did a ChiZine review of that one here.

Otherwise, I've been tied up in forensic texts, historical stuff, books I've read a half dozen times already (mostly Dash Hammett), and research for books in progress.

***************************************************************

The subtitle for World War Z is "An Oral History of the Zombie World". Okay - pretty clear what you are getting on that one! ha! Here's a bit from Cherie's review of Ghostwalk: Despite its compact and elegant appearance, Ghostwalk is an astonishingly dense and dark piece of fiction that defies such a tidy synopsis. This tale asks difficult questions about the whisper-thin boundaries between magic and science; it demands that the reader form uncomfortable conclusions about the cycles of history—and how directly those old patterns intersect and interact with the modern world. This is not a book about dry post-graduate drama. It’s a story about the vengeful ghosts of wizards and madmen, and how far the limits of their power may extend.

Hmm - now that sounds like something worth seeking out (I love a vengeful ghost or two).

As for what she is working on now, here's Cherie's own description of the WIP: "the west coast steampunk Victoriana book with zombies, air ships, toxic gas clouds, mad scientists, dead folk heroes, secret criminal societies, and now Bonus! extended deleted scenes from the Civil War." Is it any wonder why she's one of my favorite authors?

Thanks for participating Cherie - back tomorrow with Kristopher Reisz.