It’s the season for hair-raising stories. Use the discount code HAUNTING30 at checkout on our website, wvupress.com, for 30% off these five fiction and folklore titles that will leave you with the heebie-jeebies.

HAUNTED AND HUNTED: Novels

Like Light, Like Music by Lana W. K. Austin
A murder. Madness. Mountain myths, magic, and music come to life in Red River, Kentucky, where a haunted town must come to terms with its social issues.

“Austin has written a highly original and captivating novel filled with the mountain music and lore she loves so much—haints, broonies, banshees, shades, and revenants share the stage with all the memorable real characters of Red River, Kentucky. Contemporary issues merge with a developing romance in this spellbinding story, truly a ballad itself.”
—Lee Smith, author of The Last Girls and Guests on Earth

To the Bones by Valerie Nieman
A pit of bones. Disappearances. Attempted murder leads to psychic powers as the protagonists are hunted by a new kind of zombie amidst environmental devastation in Redbird, West Virginia.

“A storytelling feat: a pulse-pounding thriller that also manages to construct a whole terrifying, gorgeous mythology. To the Bones surprises and captivates at every turn.”
—Clare Beams, author of We Show What We Have Learned

CREEPY-CRAWLY: Short stories

Unruly Creatures by Jennifer Caloyeras
Taxidermy. Dolls. Pubic hair. Magical realism, surrealism, and humor blend to showcase human creatures who are at turns macabre, revolting, horrific, and utterly unruly.

“Caloyeras guides us through her characters’ states of mind, traversing the conscious and subconscious. Call it magical realism, or just refer to it as “weird stuff, dude.” Either way, all the unbelievable-yet-somehow-believable worlds that Caloyeras creates feel easy for readers to fall into in an Alice down-the-rabbit-hole kind of way.”
—Alicia Eler, Minneapolis Star Tribune

Monsters in Appalachia by Sheryl Monks
Inner and out demons. The horrors of adolescence. Misfortune and carnival magic. Wide-ranging stories from the mundane to the monstrous feature multidimensional characters against a harsh and unforgiving landscape.

“Monks knows her monsters, both literal and figurative. And she knows the territory of hills and hollers, where reality is sometimes heightened so sharply that it bleeds into myth. . . . These stories sparkle with dark, extreme humor.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

HAUNTED AND CREEPY: Folklore

Witches, Ghosts, and Signs by Patrick Ward Gainer
Ghost stories and superstitions. Witch lore and folk medicine. Revered West Virginian folklorist provides history and context alongside spine-tingling recountings of regional Appalachian tales as experienced by the tellers.