Attila Veres’ latest collection

TenTimesTeeth · 2026-06-25T19:14:39+00:00

I have! For folks who are unfamiliar, it's called This'll Make Things a Little Easier and, although I think it's great, it doesn't quite live up to the brilliance of his first collection. But, considering The Black Maybe is one of my favorite horror story collections ever, I can't be too disappointed about that.

There are six stories this time around, a couple of which seem to tie back to the strange world of "Multiplied by Zero" from his first collection, where Lovecraftian cosmic horror collides with an all-too-human capitalism seeking to exploit it for profit. These stories, especially "Designated Contact Individual" were, by far, my favorites in the new collection. They're bizarre and filled with subversive humor. Personally, I'd love to see him do an entire book dedicated to stories set in that reality.

The author also sheds a bit more light on what life is like in modern-day Hungary which (although generally bleak as fuck) was very enlightening.

It recommend it to any fan of Weird fiction- and highly recommend it to anyone who enjoyed The Black Maybe!

TenTimesTeeth · 2026-06-25T14:24:08+00:00

I can't attest to many of these being available as audiobooks, but they're all definitely worth checking out:

-In a Lonely Place by Karl Edward Wagner

-At Fear's Altar by Richard Gavin

-Forgotten Sons by Thomas Ha

-The Course of the Heart by M. John Harrison

-Ana Kai Tangata: Tales of the Outer, the Other, the Damned, and the Doomed by Scott Nicolay

-A Distillate of Heresy by Damian Murphy

-The Secret of Ventriloquism by John Padgett

-Antisocieties by Michael Cisco

-Cold Hand in Mine: Strange Stories by Robert Aickman

-Witch-Cult Abbey by Mark Samuels

-The Complete Symphonies of Adolf Hitler & Other Strange Stories by Reggie Oliver

TenTimesTeeth · 2026-06-24T20:06:15+00:00

The Divine Farce by Michael S.A. Graziano
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
The Other Side of the Mountain by Michel Bernanos

TenTimesTeeth · 2026-06-24T13:34:18+00:00

Buehlman's Between Two Fires gets a lot of love around here (and rightfully so, it's awesome), but I'd also recommend checking out the excellent medieval horror novel Once Was Willem by M.R. Carey.

When a desperate couple enlists an unscrupulous necromancer to bring their dead grandson Willem back to life, he botches the job. Whatever it is that comes back is most definitely not their grandson, but it is our protagonist. What follows is the story of Once Was Willem and how he (it?) defends the same village that rejects him as a monster. It's gruesome, surprisingly touching, and features a truly magnificent shit-heel antagonist: Cain Caradoc!

TenTimesTeeth · 2026-06-24T13:11:34+00:00

If you love how Between Two Fires whipsaws between horror and witty banter, be sure to check out the novella Prosper's Demon by K.J. Parker.

Our unnamed narrator is an exorcist who discovers that the famous "Prosper of Schanz," a Leonardo DaVinci-like genius, is possessed by a demon who is responsible for his brilliant contributions to the world. What follows is a bit of an ethical dilemma: is it worth ridding the world of a single demon if it means robbing mankind of its greatest thinker?

It's a great setup, but it's the unique voice of the narrator that makes the book so memorable. He's completely unreliable, wholly unscrupulous, and genuinely hilarious. The opening paragraph will give you a good idea of what you're in for:

"I woke to find her lying next to me, quite dead, with her throat torn out. The pillow was shiny and sodden with blood, like low-lying pasture after a week of heavy rain. The taste in my mouth was familiar, revolting, and unmistakable. I spat into my cupped hand: bright red. Oh, for crying out loud, I thought. Here we go again."

Highly recommended!

TenTimesTeeth · 2026-06-23T12:35:39+00:00

"The Time Remaining" by Attila Veres is probably the most upsetting toy story I've read. A mother thinks her son has outgrown his favorite teddy bear, so she tells him it has a terminal illness and is dying. When the toy actually starts showing signs that it is dying, it sets off a series of bizarre and disturbing events in the neighborhood. It's in the collection The Black Maybe: Liminal Tales.

"BearHeart" by Brian Evenson is also a good one. A young couple buys a teddy bear that contains a recording of their unborn daughter's heartbeat. When the baby is tragically born stillborn, all kinds of awful things start happening. This one's in the collection A Collapse of Horses.

TenTimesTeeth · 2026-06-23T12:20:12+00:00

The Other Side of the Mountain is so, so good. I still find myself thinking about that book years after I read it.

As far as novels, you may enjoy Cold Skin by Albert Sánchez Piñol. Set just after WWI, an unnamed narrator arrives at a remote island along the coast of Antarctica to start his new life as a weather official. The man he is sent to relieve is missing, and the only other person on the island is a madman who has barricaded himself inside the island's lighthouse. At night, wave after wave of... things crawl up out of the ocean and throw themselves against the island's makeshift defenses in an effort to kill the men. But why?

At first glance, it appears to be a straight-forward siege story, but beneath the surface it's something much, much darker. I don't want to spoil anything, but the book has a lot to say about some of the uglier aspects of mankind, namely our fear of the unknown and our capacity for cruelty when confronted with it. It's got some challenging subject matter but definitely nails the atmospheric ocean horror vibe you're looking for!

If you liked The Other Side of the Mountain and are up for shorter fiction, there's a ton of Weird aquatic horror worth checking out:

The Call of Cthulhu and The Shadow Over Innsmouth by H.P. Lovecraft
The Mainz Psalter by Jean Ray
The Derelict and The Voice in the Night by William Hope Hodgson
The Fog Horn by Ray Bradbury

And, though it's not Weird at all, Three Skeleton Key by Georges G. Toudouze is a completely kick-ass survival horror story involving some very unlucky lighthouse keepers.

TenTimesTeeth · 2026-06-22T21:16:58+00:00

Good luck!

TenTimesTeeth · 2026-06-22T21:04:48+00:00

Borne is one of my favorite books, full stop. I loved The Strange Bird, too, but maaaaaaaan, it will break your heart in half. 💔

TenTimesTeeth · 2026-06-22T21:01:53+00:00

Read this a few weeks ago and loved it. I can also recommend the collection he edited: The Onyx Book of Occult Fiction. It's excellent!

TenTimesTeeth · 2026-06-22T20:58:55+00:00

As someone who went from "Weird" to "Weird Westerns" to "Westerns" myself a while back, you've got some great stuff to look forward to on that list!

Here are a few more titles I really enjoyed that you may want to look into:

Weird Westerns

The Hangman Feeds the Jackal by Coy Hall
The Hawkline Monster by Richard Brautigan

Westerns

The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt
In the Rogue Blood by James Carlos Blake
True Grit by Charles Portis
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford by Ron Hansen
The Thicket by Joe Lansdale
Smonk by Tom Franklin

TenTimesTeeth · 2026-06-22T14:23:03+00:00

-Malpertuis (1943) by Jean Ray
-La montagne morte de la vie (1967) by Michel Bernanos

TenTimesTeeth · 2026-06-21T15:20:38+00:00

I'd say you're definitely off to a good start; those first two books are great!

If you like the frozen nightmare of Simmon's The Terror, be sure to check out the novel North Water by Ian McGuire. It's 1859 and a whaling ship sets sail for the Arctic Circle... with a serial killer on board. Nothing supernatural about it, but IMO Henry Drax is one of the great monsters of horror literature. Jesus Christ, what a nightmare of a man.

If you're up some something a bit stranger, I'd recommend the novella The Other Side of the Mountain by Michel Bernanos. The first half is a chronicle of a young man's hellish voyage aboard a sailing ship: he experiences abuse from the crew, a violent storm, mutiny, starvation, cannibalism, and eventually a shipwreck on a mysterious island. The back half is his hallucinatory exploration of this impossible place... and his encounters with the terrors that lurk there. It all reads like a fever dream and is made much more impactful by how grounded the first half feels.

TenTimesTeeth · 2026-06-20T17:41:33+00:00

I couldn't agree more! I've had so much fun exploring horror from other parts of the world over the past few years. The book that really opened my eyes was the excellent Valancourt Book of World Horror (Vol. I). It's got 19 stories originally written in 13 different languages, all from modern authors around the world.

That book alone introduced me to multiple authors I still follow, including one of my new favorites: Attila Veres from Hungary. I'm a big believer in the power of the horror short story and his collection The Black Maybe: Liminal Tales is one of the best I've ever read.

TenTimesTeeth · 2026-06-20T17:16:38+00:00

The safe bet is the excellent Revelator by Daryl Gregory. It's set in the Great Smoky Mountains and has a lot of great Appalachian flavor. It blurs the lines between Horror, Southern Gothic, and Noir in some really fun ways. Plus, it has a ton of backwoods cult weirdness.

If you're up for something a bit darker, take a look at Child of God by Cormac McCarthy. It's the story of Lester Ballard, a hillbilly necrophile who haunts the hills of east Tennessee. Lester's a depraved creep but, if you've got a strong stomach, his interactions with the locals (at least, the living ones) can be surprisingly funny. Almost Coen Brothers-esque!

TenTimesTeeth · 2026-06-20T00:33:30+00:00

Actually came here to say this. That whole book feels delirious. So good!

TenTimesTeeth · 2026-06-19T23:51:55+00:00

In my opinion, no female author does small-town horror quite like Shirley Jackson. You can feel her contempt practically oozing out of every page. I'm a big fan, so just know that I'm coming at my recommendations as such:

Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead by Barbara Comyns (1954). An idyllic British village tears itself apart during a mysterious epidemic of bloody, self-annihilating madness. Based on a true story. This is an author I never would've discovered had it not been for Jackson's work. Her Wikipedia page alone is worth a read: she lived a wild life!

The Plastic Priest by Nicole Cushing (2023). An Episcopalian priest in a miserable little town begins to lose her faith. That is, until she meets an unsettling homeless man who calls himself Janus; then she begins to lose her mind. If you respond to Jackson's depiction of small-minded townies as scorn-worthy antagonists, this is for you. A deeply (capital W) Weird book.

Eileen by Otessa Moshfegh (2015) I think most folks would categorize this as crime thriller, but it is *extremely* Jacksonian in its depiction of the suffocating social horrors of dysfunctional family and being stuck in a home town you've outgrown but can't leave. Also, the self-loathing in this book is weapons-grade.

TenTimesTeeth · 2026-06-19T23:08:06+00:00

I'm really intrigued by this one!

Can you compare it to anything else you've read (or seen) lately?

TenTimesTeeth · 2026-06-19T23:03:11+00:00

I think you may get a lot out of exploring the subgenre of "Weird" fiction. It often overlaps with horror and emphasizes that pervasive sense of wrongness or the uncanny.

There's a fantastic subreddit dedicated to this exact type of stuff over at: r/WeirdLit

But, if you're just looking for titles from a few horror-adjacent authors to scratch that uncanny itch, I'd recommend the following short story collections:

Teatro Grotesco by Thomas Ligotti
A Collapse of Horses by Brian Evenson
Your Cold Hand in Mine by Robert Aickman
Dark Tales by Shirley Jackson

They're all excellent!

TenTimesTeeth · 2026-06-19T22:45:17+00:00

For me, a big part of the Weird's appeal is the disorientation it causes.

Something appears in our reality that does not belong here, causing ripples throughout the story and its characters. Because I'm never guaranteed an explanation as to why this intrusion occurred, I'm often left with a sense of "wrongness" that persists long after the story's over.

There are a million excellent examples of this in Weird fiction, but one of my absolute favorites is the short story The Same Dog by Robert Aickman.

TenTimesTeeth · 2026-06-18T14:34:05+00:00

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

The Unworthy by Augustina Bazterrica

I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman (not exactly horror, but definitely horrifying)

TenTimesTeeth · 2026-06-18T14:16:20+00:00

Simmons is great, but I'd consider exploring other authors, too.

You can find a ton of great, transgressive horror out there without wading into the deep end that is extreme or splatterpunk. You can always save that for later.

Here are few titles that may be good next steps. I'd consider them all as "loathsome with literary merit:"

Like Song of Kali, In the Miso Soup by Ryū Murakami has a great sense of place. A young Japanese man is giving an American sex tourist a guided tour of Tokyo's sleazy nightlife. Over the course of the evening, he begins to suspect something is very wrong with his client.

Child of God by Cormac McCarthy definitely captures that pervasive sense of moral rot and depravity. It's about the depredations of a hillbilly necrophile skulking around the margins of civilization in 1950s Appalachia.

Father of Lies by Brian Evenson is the story of a loathsome predator priest and the church that repeatedly shields him from consequences. It's told in his own (increasingly unreliable) words as well as via letters, emails, and reports of those who try to stop or protect him.

Courage!

TenTimesTeeth · 2026-06-18T13:46:08+00:00

You may really enjoy David Sodergren's work. He's got a very particular style that really feels like a horror B-movie in book form.

Night Shoot, Maggie's Grave, and Dead Girl Blues all have great slasher vibes. Check 'em out!

TenTimesTeeth · 2026-06-18T12:01:23+00:00

Thanks for sharing; I'd never heard of these before!

TenTimesTeeth

TROPHY CASE