Scary Sounds | Horror Audio Stars

Eldritch horrors from beyond, plus the final pulse-pounding installment in a beloved but bloody trilogy.

Jones, Stephen Graham. The Angel of Indian Lake. S. & S. Audio. (Indian Lake Trilogy, Bk. 3). Mar. 2024. 16:30 hrs. ISBN 9781797170800. $29.99. HORROR

The final, pulse-pounding chapter in Jones’s “Indian Lake” trilogy picks up in October 2023, four years after the events of Don’t Fear the Reaper. After being released from prison, Jade Daniels, devoted student of the slasher genre, returns to her hometown of Proofrock, Idaho. Much like Jade, the townspeople are trying to heal, but the horrors beneath the lake’s surface are rising from the depths, and Jade must make her final stand to stop the evil once and for all. Jones has created a story that utilizes his encyclopedic knowledge of the slasher movie genre by dropping several bloody Easter eggs while digging deep into the effects of generational trauma most slashers avoid. Battle-tested through the last two books, Jade emerges as a woman who is brave but fearful and broken, although not yet shattered. A full cast of brilliant narrators portrays characters that listeners will perceive as real, making the wounds these characters receive, especially the fatal ones, cut deep. VERDICT If this book, and the trilogy, is Jones’s love letter to the slasher genre, it could just as easily make other readers fall in love with it, too.—James Gardner

Mohamed, Premee. No One Will Come Back For Us: And Other Stories. Tantor Media. Feb. 2024. 10:05 hrs. ISBN 9798350878462. $19.99. HORROR

Mohamed (The Void Ascendant) brings eldritch horrors from beyond space and time to the world’s oceans, down lonely back roads, and into the trees beyond the backyard. As she frightens listeners with unknowable intelligences, she demonstrates the breadth of her skill at horror by dressing it in fantasy and science fiction. Several stories approach war or environmental disaster through a speculative fiction lens. Narrator Soneela Nankani deftly employs different accents and tones, giving each story its own life and making each character a distinct individual. Though Nankani is the sole narrator, the audio often feels like a full-cast production in its own right. There are no one-note stories in the collection—while nearly all are tense and unnerving, they pair with a host of emotions ranging from tragic to wondrous. Amid these 17 stories exists a proud altruist paired with a cannibal cult, childhood wonder communing with an uncanny hive, and a jaded military man tempted toward deadly mercy. VERDICT Genius narration pairs with an excellent collection to create a must-listen audiobook, particularly for fans of John Hornor Jacobs’s A Lush and Seething Hell and Laird Barron’s The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All.—Matthew Galloway

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