Sometimes a story perfectly reifies a specific feeling I have about moving through life. Fiction at its best, an art that gives form to something nebulous inside you and makes it feel solid. "Please Turn on Your Magic Beam" by Orrin Grey was that for me. Sad, beautiful, deeply profound horror.

Uni, where did your ears go?

An (incomplete) wishlist in the last few weeks leading up to subs closing: 🧙 gay wizards 🧷 punk warlocks 📖 musty libraries filled with arcane secrets 🌀 unfathomable magics beyond our ken 😱 horrific sorcerous mishaps 🔮 adventures through psychedelic otherworlds

Carnyx Press@carnyxpress.co.uk · last mo.

Our second anthology is open for submissions! We're after short stories on the theme of sorcery, from writers living in the North of England. Take a look, send us a tale - and if you could help spread the word, that would be magical 🪄 🔮 carnyxpress.co.uk/submissions/

Congratulations to everyone on the shortlist & a shout-out to fellow Indian @tashanmehta.bsky.social, whose MAD SISTERS OF ESI is the only one I've read so far (it's beautiful, a Calvino-esque uncategorisable meta galactic fantasy). Very eager to get to the rest!

Ursula K. Le Guin@ursulakleguin.com · last mo.

We're thrilled to present the shortlist for the 2026 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction:

Gollum to Bilbo:

Benjamin Dreyer@bcdreyer.social · last mo.

Puzzles shouldn't make sense only to the person who's devising them. That's not what a puzzle is.

This means you can get a cheap copy of The Skull & Laurel #3, that has Josh Pearce’s “Witches in Cold Mountain Halls” in it. One of the best short stories I’ve read in years that’s a sort of New Weird dark fantasy dungeon crawl told in postmodern epic prose poetry. It’s fucking sick.

Tenebrous Press@tenebrouspress.bsky.social · last mo.

🔥SALE🔥 Prime Day is now thru the 26th? COMPLETELY COINCIDENTALLY, ALL OUR E-BOOKS & MAGAZINES ARE 50% OFF THRU THE 26TH. Buy from our webstore, get your books & mags delivered INSTANTLY, + you own them outright! (Sorry, not applicable to preorders) 🖤☠️ store.tenebrouspress.com/collections/...

Free shipping for @bookshop.org's Anti-Prime-Days! If you want to support ARB a little bit while you snag some books, click on any of the links in our reviews and essays, or check out our shop here:

ARB's Coverage

Checkout out this list on Bookshop

bookshop.org

The internet, 2026:

Bookshop.org is having an anti-amazon-prime sale, & you can get THE DEVOURERS slightly discounted there. A mythic realist, queer dark fantasy about love, sex, violence, & shapeshifting set in contemporary India & the Mughal Empire. It won a Lambda Award.

The Devourers: A Novel

A Novel

bookshop.org

Pals! @tenebrouspress.bsky.social have an eBook and eMag sale on at the moment! ✨️🖤 Go and grab some horror gems! Also, includes Split Scream Vol 5 and my novelette paired with @bitterkarella.bsky.social - just £2! Tell your weird horror loving friends! ✨️🖤 store.tenebrouspress.com/products/spl...

🔥SALE🔥 Prime Day is now thru the 26th? COMPLETELY COINCIDENTALLY, ALL OUR E-BOOKS & MAGAZINES ARE 50% OFF THRU THE 26TH. Buy from our webstore, get your books & mags delivered INSTANTLY, + you own them outright! (Sorry, not applicable to preorders) 🖤☠️ store.tenebrouspress.com/collections/...

e-Books

Independent, award-winning publisher of Horror/Sci-Fi/speculative books, magazines and merchandise. Hail the Tenebrous Cult.

store.tenebrouspress.com

Sale's active as of this morning! It'll auto-apply on the website at checkout 🫡 Hope we can help you find a damn fine new summer read

Evening House Books@eveninghouse.bsky.social · last mo.

We’re running an Anti-Prime Day sale tomorrow through Friday 🫡 10% off everything in-store and online! You can’t own the damn river Shop indie Read widely Live freely

Samir has such a way with their writing of picking at the scabs of complicated relationships and "Starspeaker" really digs into a parental relationship that encompasses pain, resentment, duty, love, and all the contradictions that having all those feelings at the same time involves. Love this story.

Carnyx Press@carnyxpress.co.uk · 2mo ago

I keep coming back to this story @seizethepress.bsky.social put out by Samir Sirk Morató about communing with comets. It's filled with magic, grief, rage, and the trauma passed on from our parents. An astonishing, powerful work of speculative fiction. www.seizethepress.com/2026/01/30/s...

I was so excited to get to write a story and celebrate Katherine Dunn! She is probably at the top of my list of favorite writers. My story "Safety Features in Fabulon" pulls from Toad and Geek Love, exploring body modification, toxic friendships and isolation, all while set in a theme park ride!

Weirdpunk Books@weirdpunkbooks.bsky.social · 2mo ago

The next book we have coming out is Shrieks in Cups of Gold - edited by Sam Richard. This is a love-letter to Katherine Dunn and her body of work all written by weird horror authors. So excited for folks to finally read this. weirdpunkbooks.square.site/product/shri...

In the last SSR I had occasion to talk about some old faves including Margaret St Clair, @ivygrimes.bsky.social @thomasha.bsky.social and yes, funkmaster flex buttondown.com/shortstoryre...

SHORT STORY REX May 2025

SHORT STORY REX May 2025 1. “Solander’s Radio Tomb”, Ellis Parker Butler Seems less like a short story title and more like the name of some magical D&D spell...

buttondown.com

I’m gonna be dusting off my reviewing hat over the next few weeks in the Seize The Press newsletter. I’ve read some great stuff recently and the first books I’ll be reviewing are OLYOKE by Vincent Endwell, PERSONA by Aoife Josie Clements, and THE CELLAR BELOW THE CELLAR by Ivy Grimes.

Let me tell you something. I’ve got four books nobody has heard of that would make great movies. You want Hell Pigs? You want Kelpies? You want a Historical Fiction about a weird little guy who is psycho sexually obsessed with chopping down trees? I’m your man. Ball is in your court.

Culture Crave 🍿@culturecrave.co · 2mo ago

Hollywood agencies are searching Reddit for short stories and ideas that could be turned into movies following the success of 'Backrooms' (via THR)

The New Weird

My Imaginary Brooklyn@myimaginarybrklyn.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Domenico Gnoli, 1956. “Imaginary City” #illustration #1950s #DomenicoGnoli

I’m so happy to share that my Weird West story, “Twin Pistons”, is included in this anthology. This project was an interesting push of my creative boundaries and I’m so glad my work is sharing in this reimagining of what Western stories can do.

KC Grifant, Author@kcgrifant.bsky.social · 2mo ago

It is publication day for Women of the Weird West!! 🥳 What a journey! This anthology published by Brigids Gate Press and edited by me is near and dear to my heart. I am grateful to the authors for their fascinating tales spanning far-flung galaxies to classic Old West settings.

I genuinely love A Game of Thrones but using the word ‘bunghole’ in a fantasy setting inspired by Wars of the Roses era medieval Europe is a crime against literature.

Chicken Finger is NM Whitley at it again. He writes with a specific level of off-kilter surreality that unbalances you just enough to make you wobble before you realise you’ve fell flat on the ground.

nm whitley@nmwhitley.bsky.social · 3mo ago

i haven't posted about the new story yet sohere goes: my latest, "Chicken Finger", is in this month's issue of The Dark! It's not really about chicken or fingers, per se www.thedarkmagazine.com/chicken-fing...

Today is my 46th birthday. It's also publishing day for INHALATION. If it's alright with you guys, I'd like to talk about why this book exists, as well as spend some time thanking the folks who made this possible

Big shout out to the STP team James, Rebecca, and Karlo by the way. I started this thing solo four years ago with no expectation it would go anywhere and it somehow found an audience. Now there are four of us keeping the ship steady and I'm so grateful for everything they do to keep the mag going ❤️

Seize The Press Magazine@seizethepress.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Our latest newsletter went out yesterday. Bit of a chilled one this time round, where the STP team take some time to talk about some of our favourite books. That's it, no frills. Enjoy 📚

I'm looking for richly imagined tales of strange, wondrous, and dangerous magic for our next anthology! Subs open until the end of July!

Carnyx Press@carnyxpress.co.uk · 2mo ago

Submissions are open! We're looking for short stories from writers living in the North of England for our second anthology, on the theme of sorcery. Find out more and submit: carnyxpress.co.uk/submissions/

I do not fully trust critics who are not both lovers and haters. All I want is for you to have some kind of taste, some kind of ethic, and I want you to argue in favor of it, which should inevitably mean that you greatly admire some works in your chosen field and definitely don’t admire others.

I love reviews where the critic is openly grappling with their reading of a book. Too often it seems reviewers feel compelled to have formed an opinion set in stone, but one of the benefits of the critical review is the space to ask more questions. Rabbit, Fox, Tar sounds like a fascinating book.

Conjuring Toni: Review of P.C. Verrone’s Rabbit, Fox, Tar

Sullivan Summer Under Review:Rabbit, Fox, Tar. P.C. Verrone. Catapult, June 2026. “To call Original Hill a place alone,” writes P.C. Verrone in his debut novel, Rabbit, Fox, Tar, “would have done i…

ancillaryreviewofbooks.org

was just reading an interview with a writer who said, in essence, that they have a 2nd book idea but don't know if they'll write it bc they don't know if they'll make any money on it. and this made me blisteringly sad. everyone needs to eat & pay rent but I want to read the books ppl WANT to write!

It particularly caught my attention as I read it immediately after listening to the most recent Meal of Thorns, where @casella.bsky.social mentioned how Adrian Tchaikovsky's Pretenders to the Throne of God has so many disparate plot threads and yet it's specifically one of the novels strengths.

jonny@misterbloat.bsky.social · 2mo ago

I found this review interesting because of its assertion that a weakness of Radiant Star was its 'unfocussed plot'. That CAN absolutely be a weakness, but it can also be something interesting and engaging. Got me wondering what the deeper qualities are that make an unfocussed plot a weakness.