Get the latest gossip
The Best Horror Books of 2024 (So Far)
Fiction that feels like a primal scream.
Standouts here include “Black Eyes,” about NGO employees serving food to the homeless who are haunted by two uncanny children; “Hyena Hymns,” in which a vacationing couple explore an abandoned building formerly used for torture and detention; and the title story, about an Argentinian journalist reporting on a cult that has grown up around the real-life disappearance and death of Elisa Lam at a Los Angeles hotel in 2013. But the thing that truly sets her writing apart is anger: Cuckoo is full of barely restrained rage at the world’s treatment of queer and trans youths, and at the unutterable betrayal of a parent sending their child to a place like Camp Resolution. King-Miller’s debut novel is firing on all cylinders: There’s heartbreak, laugh-out-loud moments, some very hot sex, and a couple truly devastating deaths (an interstitial chapter narrated by a peripheral character as they succumb to the infection moved me to tears).
Or read this on VULTURE