This is what happens when a small town shields its eyes from its own fetid reality: children grow up without parents, rivers are polluted, houses come alive, and beasts crawl out from the underworld to wreak havoc. But in a small town in Kentucky, an orphan who won’t run from danger and a boy who’s locked himself away from the world might be able to dig down to the mantle of the truth together. Full of romance and agonized heroes, the world Alix E. Harrow has conjured in Starling House is as palatial and overrun with Gorey-esque monsters as the titular house itself. Harrow weaves a blazing story of how we choose to keep or erase our histories, and how we care for our people and land. Throughout the book, perspectives shift to share variations on tales and footnotes qualify the truths we are told. But a quick Google search of the items in the bibliography will bring up real JSTOR articles; names may have been changed and imagined creatures may be injected into the narrative, but the stories of life in Appalachia are real. I’ve read so many modern Southern Gothics that suddenly pale in comparison to this lush new fantasy. Recommended by Wulfe