In this scary story for fans of Neil Gaiman, The Last Kids on Earth, and Goosebumps, the only way out is krazier than you could ever imagine…
KRAZYLAND
by Mar Romasco-Moore
Delacorte, September 2022
(via Dystel, Goderich & Bourret)
Nathan used to be terrified of Krazyland when he was a young kid. Now that he’s 12, the spooky-themed arcade games aren’t that bad. He even enjoys stomping on plastic spiders and battling a creepy doll with big plastic eyes. But things become scarier again when kids start to go missing from the entertainment park…
There’s another world exists beneath Kraztown’s ball pit. A world where the entertainment park’s games come to life. And if he isn’t careful, Nathan is going to be the next one sucked under!
Mar Romasco Moore is the author of the novels I Am the Ghost in Your House and Some Kind of Animal, as well as Ghostographs, an interconnected collection of flash fiction inspired by vintage photographs. Her stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Lightspeed, Fireside, DIAGRAM, Hobart, Interfictions, Kaleidotrope, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, and the anthology Women Destroy Science Fiction. She is a graduate of the Clarion West Writer’s Workshop and has an MFA from Southern Illinois University. She teaches writing at Columbus College of Art and Design.
Hannah is having a bad day. A bad month. A bad year? That feels terrible to admit, since her son Jack was born just eight months ago, and she loves him more than anything. But ever since his harrowing birth, she can’t shake the feeling that it could have gone the other way. That her baby might not have made it. Terrifying visions from different paths her life could have taken begin to disrupt her cozy, claustrophobic days with Jack, destablizing her marriage, and making her husband concerned for her mental health. Are the strange things Hannah is seeing just new mom anxiety, or is something truly weird and sinister afoot? What if Hannah really did unlock something she wasn’t supposed to during childbirth? When Hannah’s worst nightmare comes true and Jack disappears from his crib, she discovers that her reeling mind has extraordinary powers that she must tap into in order to save her child: She has the ability to enter the multiverse—and she must visit different versions of her life while holding onto what is most important to her in this one to bring her child back home. From the intimate joys of parenthood to the cosmic awe of the multiverse, THE POSSIBILITIES is an ingenious and wildly suspenseful novel that dares to stare down into the dizzying depths of maternal love, vulnerability, and strength.
In DEATH VALLEY, an unnamed woman arrives in the California desert seeking respite. Holding herself at bay and temporarily deserting her own life seems preferable to being filled by the anticipatory grief chasing her — both for a father attempting to recover from a near-fatal accident and a husband whose chronic illness is worsening. What the desert provides, however, is not inner peace but a path: a receptionist-recommended nearby hike. On this desert trail, the narrator encounters a towering cactus whose size and shape mean it should not exist in California. Yet the cactus is there. It is wounded. Its gaping injury beckons like a familiar door. So, she enters it. What this woman finds inside this mystical succulent is enough to make her believe her load can lighten. When she returns to the trail, however, the cactus is gone and in seeking it, she suddenly is more lost than ever before. Whether she can survive, and be reunited with all she found to live for while inside her cactus is up to what she is able to seek within herself. With no phone battery left to tell her where she is, whether her father is still alive, or whether her husband will be waiting if she returns, what’s written on her heart alone is her only map out.
Heniek and Andrzeij live in a small town in Poland. One is a mechanic, the other a carpenter, and both are about to retire. They have never had the urge to see the world, but one day they leave their home town of Gajerudki and head west down the A2, the « Motorway to Freedom ». They’re trying to track down Beatka, who has left Heniek after 36 years of marriage to start a new life in the Netherlands. They’ve taken the Mercedes they were meant to fix for a customer, and when they don’t have enough money to fill it with proper fuel, they use cooking oil instead. After an accident involving a herd of deer, the two friends continue their journey on foot. Along the way, they find out things they never knew about each other, including some dark secrets – and when they encounter a European bison, they face a reckoning with their past.