books Burn Down, Rise Up (2022), We Don't Swim Here (2023), and We Came to Welcome You (2024). You Should Have Been Nicer to My Mom (2026) is their sophomore adult novel. When they’re not writing new spine-chilling horrors, they can be found making another pot of coffee and harassing their cat, Bugsy.
At CrimeReads Tirado tagged "five Big Apple horror novels to get a taste of what expansive terrors you can find in just one city." One title on the list:
Victor LaValle, The ChangelingRead about the other entries on the list at CrimeReads.
Though this novel tells the tale of first-time father Apollo Kagwa–starting from his own childhood and all the way to the birth of his very own son–the story doesn’t really start there. It starts on a sloop, carrying fearful immigrants across an unforgivable sea to a new world. That new world later becomes New York City. This is the start of many people. Their history, culture, hopes anddreams intertwines, imbuing the city with a magic that is as unfathomable as it is transformative.
But as the Brothers Grimm are apt to tell you, not all magic is good. When tragedy strikes Apollo’s household, robbing him of both his wife and child, he comes to know the city’s sinister enchantments intimately. He travels all over, from Manhattan to Queens and even North Brother Island.
He meets both suspicious allies and honest enemies and learns how that little sloop did not just carry immigrants. It carried something powerful. Something that promised safe passage over an impossible ocean. Something that would come to collect its bloody due, time and time again.
Apollo’s story doesn’t really start from himself–it starts from those who came before him, a long chain of people who have laid the foundations he walks upon. It takes him time to dig deep inside and find his own great power, and when he does, it’s a reckoning that was always a long time coming. Beware–this gothic horror is one that would rival any Grimm’ fairytale.
The Changeling is among Andrew DeYoung's eight top sketchy-spouse domestic thrillers, Lucy Foley's six stunning tales of folk horror, Brittany Bunzey's twenty-five "must-read, truly bone-chilling" horror books, Nat Cassidy's eight top unconventional coming-of-age horror novels, Benjamin Percy's top five novels about dangerous plants, James Han Mattson's five top dark and disturbing reads, A.K. Larkwood's five tense books that blend sci-fi and horror, Leah Schnelbach's ten sci-fi and fantasy must-reads from the 2010s, T. Marie Vandelly's top ten suspenseful horror novels featuring domestic terrors and C.J. Tudor's six thrillers featuring missing, mistaken, or "changed" children.
--Marshal Zeringue
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