The mountains of Appalachia could seem an unlikely science fiction setting, however Erin Okay. Wagner, for one, disagrees. She grew up in rural southeast Ohio, throughout the river from a clutch of West Virginia factories that belched smoke into the skies. “Appalachia is just a little behind by way of expertise and entry,” she says, making it the right backdrop for Mechanize My Fingers to Warfare (DAW, Feb. 2025), a narrative of androids despatched in to take human jobs.
Creator and Cemetery Dance writer Richard Chizmar, in the meantime, mined the isolation and “closed off existence” of deep Appalachia for the horror story Memorials (Gallery, Oct.). These and different forthcoming books use that sturdy sense of place to inform tales that might unfold nowhere else.
The Lavatory Spouse
Kay Chronister. Counterpoint, Oct.
For generations, the Haddesley household has made a grim alternate: the lifetime of the household patriarch for the supply of a lavatory spouse, a supernatural girl constructed of vegetation who will stick with it the household line. However when 5 dysfunctional siblings collect to ship their father to the ancestral West Virginia cranberry lavatory, they wait in useless for the spouse’s look. The damaged covenant sends the baffled, frightened household into additional disarray.
Mechanize My Fingers to Warfare
Erin Okay. Wagner. DAW, Feb. 2025
Within the late 2050s, anti–mechanized labor organizer Eli Whitaker has shaped a militia to combat using android employees, together with baby troopers in its ranks. In the meantime, Appalachian farmers Shay and Ernst, frantic after their GMO crop fails, depend upon androids to work the now-toxic fields. “Wagner displays a aptitude for sensible worldbuilding,” PW’s starred overview stated. “The result’s a sharply imagined and all too believable exploration of the way forward for AI.”
Memorials
Richard Chizmar. Gallery, Oct.
Chizmar’s latest horror providing, “an immersive and über-creepy novel,” in keeping with PW’s starred overview, follows three faculty college students on a 1983 street journey. Their American Research professor has despatched them to make a documentary on roadside memorials in Appalachian Pennsylvania. At first, the campfires and bonding are a welcome break from the tutorial 12 months. However a cryptic image carved into among the memorials warns them {that a} darkish drive is at work, and the roadside accidents could also be something however.
Motheater
Linda H. Codega. Erewhon, Jan. 2025
Kiron, Va., resident Bennie Mattox is on a quest to carry the White Rock mining firm answerable for a long time of disappearances from its Kire Mountain coal mines. In her seek for proof, she comes upon a lady mendacity half-drowned in a mine slough—Motheater, a witch sure to the area, who joins up with Bennie to guard each city and mountain. Per PW’s overview, “Codega weaves Appalachian magic and Southern crafty all through their protagonists’ campaign and brings in an exploration of what it’s to be queer within the South.”
A Spell for Change
Nicole Jarvis. Titan, Could 2025
In Jarvis’s newest, three outcasts with supernatural skills combat to search out their place in post-WWI Appalachia. Kate’s visions are all the time disturbing, and all the time come true. Oliver, just lately returned from the entrance, holds a brand new expertise in his damaged physique: a capability to talk to the lifeless. Nora Jo, the daughter and granddaughter of witches, has chosen a easy life as a schoolteacher; when she’s fired for her scandalous concepts, a mountain witch gives a magical apprenticeship. Collectively, the three sq. off in opposition to the malevolent entity that’s stalking their city.
You, from Beneath
Em J Parsley. Cut up Lip, Feb. 2025
This novella from writing professor and Kentucky resident Parsley tracks the lone survivor of an Appalachian holler city that disappears into the earth. Decided to search out solutions, the unnamed narrator heads up a close-by mountain, bearing an envelope they know they need to ship—however to whom? On their journey, they meet a beekeeper, an immortal girl, and a schoolteacher from a city left empty by the Rapture. Parsley’s Central Appalachia is trapped in a cycle of dying and rebirth, increase and bust, sorrow and pleasure.
Correction: A earlier model of this overview used the incorrect pronoun to check with the creator of Motheater.
A model of this text appeared within the 10/14/2024 problem of Publishers Weekly underneath the headline: Dynamic Vary
