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Stay the hell out of the swamp — the backwater town of Lower Congaree recites it like an eleventh commandment. Lower Congaree is a backwater of a backwater, a poverty-stricken South Carolina town where nail salons come and go, but the Marine recruitment center never closes. Swamp surrounds it, and strangeness stretches back as far as anyone can remember. For the first time, Undertaker Books has collected Elizabeth Broadbent’s intertwined Southern Gothic stories, including her linked novella, Ink Vine. Swamp witches and standing stones, battered mansions and shoeless patriarchs, strip clubs and roadside diners—Lower Congaree blossoms with the otherworldly, the bizarre, the outcast and the outside of time. These are stories where the prose is as lush as the canopy beneath which Lower Congaree’s inhabitants walk. But the descriptions do not detract from the power of the stories. Empathy and affection is clear for those who are poor and ignored, for those who are othered. — The Horror Tree Read the full review here Broadbent's world lures you in with gentle tendrils of growth and fragrant flowers and only when you are in its viney grasp do you realize you are trapped in its thrall as the swamp burbles up its ghastly tales. --Kate Maruyama, author of Alterations, The Collective , and Bleak Houses With lyrical prose and haunting imagery that will chill you to your bones, Broadbent’s new collection weaves hypnotic tales of home and heartache, of family secrets and small town angst, where echoes of the past swirl seductively within the sinister clutches of the swamp itself, where all things here take root. Ink Vine & Other Swamp Stories is an excellent display of Southern gothic at its finest. —Candace Nola, author of Shadow Manor Ink Vine When exotic dancer Emmy Joiner escapes to the swamp, she meets beautiful, long-legged Zara, the first girl she dares to kiss. But the small-town South hates a woman who dares to dance instead of plucking chickens for minimum wage. As Emmy’s life falls apart, her relationship with Zara grows more tangled and bizarre. Zara’s offering something beautiful. Its price may be more than Emmy’s willing to pay. A stunning debut with a narrative voice so strong, you’ll feel the swamp breathing down your neck. Eerie and very moving. —Tim McGregor, author of Eynhallow and Wasps in the Ice Cream March 2026 from Undertaker Books Click image to preorder

Purchase at Raw Dog Screaming Press Purchase on Amazon Purchase at Barnes and Noble No one cares when Lila Carson’s ten-year-old brother Beau disappears. He can’t speak. He throws tantrums. He’s a useless Carson, one of those kids in a broken-shuttered house that lost its glory when his father died. When the sheriff and his good ol’ boy deputies show up to investigate, they eye up Lila and call her twin brother names. A closeted bisexual girl in the South, Lila's terrified. Lower Congaree recites it like an eleventh commandment: Don’t go in that swamp. But as the long night drags on, it’s clear Beau disappeared behind those ancient trees. The sheriff’s deputies refuse to go back there. Lila might not have a choice. Raw Dog Screaming Press, April 2025 "Can't Miss Indie Press Speculative Fiction ," Reactor, March 2025 "Genre-Stretching Works of Fiction ," Publishers Weekly, April 2025 Praise for Blood Cypress Named the #1 novella of the year by Happy Goat Horror "Blood Cypress (Elizabeth Broadbent) is the perfect storm of sapphic horror, mystery, a fantastically complicated but strong protagonist, small-town bigotry, and a compelling inciting incident that is impossible to not care about. I adore this story, and this author’s work in general, because it’s also so emotionally engaging and interesting. For those reasons, and more (like the imagery, oh lordy, the imagery!) this had to be my favourite novella of 2025." “Broadbent brings this warped novella to a close with a series of stunning final twists—including a devastating reveal about who is narrating the story. This is coming-of-age fiction at its creepiest.” Publishers Weekly Read the full review "Elizabeth Broadbent doesn’t just waltz up to trauma—she stomps in with a lit cigarette dangling from her lip, a box of gasoline-soaked matches in one hand, and a middle finger raised in the other. By the time she’s done with Blood Cypress, the seventh gut-punch in the Selected Papers from the Consortium for the Study of Anomalous Phenomena series, you’re either sobbing into your beer, reeling like you’ve been slapped by a wet gator, or sniffing your bathroom tiles wondering if that mildew’s hiding your grandma’s pissed-off ghost." The Blog without A Face Read the full review “With echoes of Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, Eliza Broadbent’s southern gothic, Blood Cypress, seethes with swamp-rot and small-town prejudice. Dark and lush and deeply, deeply disturbing, it’s an exquisite tale of grief and trauma, solidifying Broadbent’s place as a champion for the outsider. A revelation.” Lee Murray, five-time Bram Stoker Award®-winning author of Grotesque: Monster Stories “Broadbent’s storytelling is equal parts captivating and unnerving. Blood Cypress is a magnificently layered tale where gender and sexualty dynamics are intricately woven into a poignant southern gothic layered atop a devastating family tragedy. Her carefully crafted words grip you by the throat and squeeze.” L. Marie Wood, award-winning author of The Realm Trilogy and The Promise Keeper “Elizabeth Broadbent discovers a creek that connects directly to Michael McDowell’s Blackwater mythos, leading readers through this beautiful backwater novella. This missing child manhunt is steeped in so much southern gothic, it feels like Faulkner, O’Connor, and Sheperd have all joined the search party.” Clay McLeod Chapman, author of Wake Up and Open Your Eyes “Mesmerizing! Broadbent weaves a tale about the pain of growing up ‘different’ and the desperation of a failing family legacy. Much like the swamp at its center, this story is filled with southern heat, twists and turns, and insidious monsters waiting to swallow you whole.”—Aimee Hardy, author of Pocket Full of Teeth “Like the dark swamp at its heart, this book melds Southern Gothic with folk horror in a delightful way. A bold, assured narrative voice that will lure readers into its fetid darkness.” Tim McGregor, author of Eynhallow

Elizabeth Broadbent Southern Gothic Essays Science Fiction Journalism Click books to purchase, read, and more Latest Essays: Your Favorite Author's Favorite Author: Elizabeth Broadbent on William Faulkner , Shortwave So Much Blood in the Earth (NightTide Magazine) Review: Psychopomp and Circumstance (NightTide Magazine) Five Southern Gothic Books About Generational Trauma You Probably Haven't Read (Reactor) The Past is Never Dead: Southern Gothic and Child Abuse (NightTide Magazine) We Don't Want a Cure, We Want Understanding (ADDitude Magazine)

Elizabeth Broadbent's fiction, novels, and literary writing. Selected Horror Essays Upcoming: Snakes in the Kudzu. The H-Word, Nightmare Magazine Your Favorite Author's Favorite Author: Elizabeth Broadbent on William Faulkner Shortwave Magazine The Southerner might hate the face of his father, but he never forgets it ... I’m forced to figure my own literary inheritance like an adult groping through detritus of a ruined childhood. To discard those forebears is to refuse what makes me myself. How do you love your racist father? So Much Blood in This Earth: Southern Gothic and Generational Trauma NightTide Magazine Southern history is a blood-soaked horror of war and enslavement, death and despair. That horror leaked into our land. It remains, sure as soil and still inscribed upon it: in Richmond’s picturesque cobblestones, laid by the enslaved; and in Mississippi’s unfurling cotton fields, watered by sweat and grief. It lingers in postcard-pretty vistas of battlefield parks, their staid graves lined up like small, white teeth; in arrowheads plowed from fields or grubbed from muddy riverbanks. It glares from bronze monuments of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson and rises defiant in Kehinde Wiley’s Rumors of War . Amid our moss-draped trees and white-columned houses, horror accuses us from bombed churches, from rope-scarred oaks, from sacred rivers dammed to build world-swallowing bombs. We Southerners can no more deny history than we can defy gravity. (Big thank you to editor Mo Moshaty for her hard work and stellar suggestions!) Five Southern Gothic Books about Generational Trauma You Probably Haven't Read Reactor Social obligation and an ex-boyfriend once landed me at a lineage society dinner in Charleston, South Carolina. The exact association doesn’t matter; pick one, and you’re probably right. Beneath stern portraits of Confederate generals with epic facial hair, white people ate rubbery chicken and celebrated the fictions they willed into history. Anyone with money and connections enough to join that particular society owed both to the blood and sweat of enslaved people. No one acknowledged it. And as I scanned the dining room of that vaunted Charleston club, I realized that every member of the waitstaff was Black. I kept my mouth shut as a server took my plate. I’m sorry, I wanted to say. I hope y’all spit in our food. At the turn of the twenty-first century, a hundred and thirty-years after the War ended, that roomful of white people continued to enact the crimes of their ancestors. It’s no wonder Southern literature lends itself to narratives about generational trauma. The Past is Never Dead: Southern Gothic and Child Abuse NightTide Magazine In the South, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past." It remains inscribed on our landscape. When my husband and I were first together, we would tell people, “We live in the first house up from the nearest corner where Nancy got hit by that drunk driver.” We meant Nancy Thurmond, Strom’s daughter, who was struck while crossing the street and died in the arms of the Democratic Lieutenant Governor. That accident had happened more than twenty years before Chris and I moved in. Why We Need More Queer Female Southern Gothic Horror Ginger Nuts of Horror The paradigm of womanhood offers two options. We can be virtuous daughters, wives, and mothers, or we can be whores. In few places is that contradiction as stark as the American South. It derives, in part, through our unironic, twin literary obsessions with Alexander Dumas 1 and Walter Scott—our forebears made the crucial mistake of taking The Three Musketeers and Waverley as stellar life advice, and we haven’t been quite right since. Night Country: A Dark, Powerful Feminine Mirror Ginger Nuts of Horror While the stick-labyrinth Carcosa in True Detective’s first season carries a hint of perverse womb, one that harbors death rather than life, the ice caves in Night Country might as well be a frozen birth canal. They’re the true essence of Night Country, that unknowable realm that swallows men whole. It’s here that the Tsalaal scientists exact their enviro-sexual crimes; it’s here that the cradle of life lies waiting in the guise of frozen microorganisms. Recent Book Reviews: The Night Ship, Alex Woodroe , Cemetery Dance ITCH! , Gemma Amor , Cemetery Dance Psychopomp and Circumstance, Eden Royce , NightTide Magazine The Pulse Remains , Rob Grimoire , Cemetery Dance Moonflow, Bitter Karella , Cemetery Dance Fever Dreams of a Parasite, Pedro Iniguez , Cemetery Dance

ABOUT ME Elizabeth Broadbent (she/her) is the author of Ink Vine (Undertaker Books), Ninety-Eight Sabers (Undertaker Books), Blood Cypress (Raw Dog Screaming Press), Tigers of Greater Antarctica (Sley House Publications, 2026), and Breaking Neverland (Sley House Publications, 2026). Her speculative fiction has appeared with Hyphenpunk , Tales to Terrify , If There's Anyone Left , Penumbric , and The Cafe Irreal , among other places. During her long career as a journalist, her nonfiction appeared in places such as The Washington Post , Insider , Time, and ADDitude Magazine . She has appeared on MSNBC, CNN, BBC World News, NPR's All Things Considered , and Canadian National Public Radio. An exile from South Carolina swamp country, she lives in Richmond with her best friend/husband, her three sons, four cats, two dogs, and a flock of crows.

Promise : Christi Nogle Split Scream Volume Three: Patrick Barb & J.A.W. McCarthy

Purchase at Undertaker Books Purchase on Amazon or read on KU Purchase at Barnes and Noble Sometimes, you just pick your poison and pray. Stay the hell out of the swamp — the backwater town of Lower Congaree recites it like an eleventh commandment. But when exotic dancer Emmy Joiner sneaks under the dark tree-canopy behind her family trailer, she meets mysterious, tattooed Zara, the first girl she dares to kiss. But the small-town South hates a woman who dares to dance instead of plucking chickens for minimum wage, and as Emmy’s life falls apart, her relationship with Zara grows more tangled and bizarre. Zara’s offering something beautiful. But while Emmy’s slowly strangling, its price may be more than she’s willing to pay.Shifting between the green-bright cypress cathedral and the dreamland of a dance club, Broadbent’s unforgettably-voiced debut confronts the brutal realities of poverty in the South, with a sapphic tale both sultry and sinister, gritty and gothic. Undertaker Books, April 2024 Imadjinn Award Finalist, Best Horror Novel, 2025 Haunted Book Club Awards, Best Novella, 2024 Praise for Ink Vine "A stunning debut with a narrative voice so strong, you'll feel the swamp breathing down your neck. Eerie and very moving." Tim McGregor, author of Eynhallow and Wasps in the Ice Cream "Elizabeth Broadbent combines a steamy love story with important observations about desperation, fear, and acceptance. Ink Vine, with its elements of dark fantasy and botanical horror, reminded me of True Blood!" Christi Nogle, author of the Bram Stoker Award winning first novel Beulah "Ink Vine is a lush and deliciously queer Southern Gothic romance about desire and the things we will do to sate it. Broadbent's richly drawn characters and smart. evocative prose give new meaning to the phrase 'blossoming love.' Emerald's longing—for acceptance, for love, for something more—haunts every word and sets the stage for a beautiful narrative about acceptance, self-discovery, and the power of connection." Jolie Toomajin, editor of Aseptic and Faintly Sadistic " Ink Vine will draw you in and reward you with strange beauty, stark and gentle at once. Like a swamp. There are dangers here, but also great rewards, if one is brave enough. I, for one, am looking forward to reading more from Elizabeth Broadbent and warmly recommend this enthralling novella." Victoria Lilly, The Lesbian Review "Broadbent paints the words into a gorgeous setting where she places her broken characters within, a juxtaposition between a dying town and the vibrant but dangerous swamp she’s been warned about all her life. She knows this world well and the dark fantasy/horror that comes to life between the covers seethes with life, conflict, and dark threads that threaten to pull Emmy’s world into the depths. Recommended reading and a fine new author to watch." David Sims, Cemetery Dance

Social: Patrick Barb: Twitter*: @pbarb Instagram: @patrick_barb Bluesky: @patrickbarb.bsky.social TikTok: @Patrick_Barb J.A.W. McCarthy: Twitter: @JAWMcCarthy Instagram: @jawmccarthy Bluesky: @jawmcarthy.bluesky.social Dreadstone Press : Twitter: @DreadStonePress Instagram: @dreadstonepress *It'll always be Twitter to me. Split Scream Volume 3 Patrick Barb & J.A.W. McCarthy Dreadstone Press’s Split Scream series has a simple premise: put two thematically similar novellas together, like an old-school double feature. Split Scream volumes one and two were great—Volume Two, with M. Lopez da Silva’s What Ate the Angels might be my favorite. Split Scream Volume Three, with novelettes by indie standouts Patrick Bard and J.A.W. McCarthy, rocks as hard as the first two. Admittedly, I’m an easy mark for these books. As the world wakes up the hard-punching power of a good novella or shorter novelette, I’m cheering it on, though they’ve always been more accepted in the horror genre, probably thanks to the triune forces of magazines, serializations, and Stephen King. These bite-size books make a perfect afternoon read—I beach-read Volume Three. Though indie horror novellas tend toward the literary side, they don’t demand the hard braining and intellectual will I often need to summon when I sit down with a full-length work. Call me lazy, but I like it. That lessened investment, I think, gives the reader more incentive to work with concepts like narrative disorientation (a key point in Barb’s So Quiet, So White) and shifting timelines (part of McCarthy’s Image Expulsio: The Red Animal of Our Blood). With less space, we know the answer’s coming soon; we don’t have to spend sixty to a hundred pages wondering what the hell’s going on before we settle into the story. There’s a time and place for that, and I love those works, too. But sometimes, I want to nestle into world more quickly. Another reason I’m a sucker for Split Scream Volume Three: its theme is art and artists, specifically how we use it in community (check out Collage Macabre as well if the theme holds specific appeal). Barb’s atmospheric novella is a disorienting, creepy-vibed delight, with its dreary-dark-woods setting playing a major role. Barb’s a master at building tension and picking apart family dynamics; this novella lets those talents shine. McCarthy’s dual timelines build to a stunning conclusion. Both go in exactly the right directions. You won’t see the endings coming, but you’ll shut the book (Kindle) satisfied: Yes, I thought at the end of each. That’s what had to happen. It’s the only thing that could possibly happen. There’s a little glow that comes with that. You’re pleased with the story, pleased that its conclusion wrapped up so well, that it came together so neatly. I held back a grin at the end of each—yes, they were horrifying in the right ways. But they’re perfectly so. Both works ask what we’ll do for love and what we’re willing to give to others. Answer: probably more than we should, but we’ll give it willingly. While Barb shows it in a familial context, McCarthy delves into relationships. Despite their thematic similarities, the works are very different, not only in point of view (Barb’s is third person, McCarthy’s a terrifyingly immediate first), but also in gender and tone. Both serve up some fantastic dread—you know these won’t end well—and while Barb’s slow atmospheric dread draws the reader along, Image Expulsio’s dual timeline will keep you going with its sheer otherness. Both get weirder as they go along, and that’s a very, very good thing. Novellas are good. Weird novellas are even better. Pick this one up from Dreadstone so you don’t give bucks to to ‘Zon. Read it on the beach for a serious horror power move. Buy the book: https://dreadstonepress.com/split-scream/volume-three/ The 'Zon: https://www.amazon.com/Split-Scream-Three-Patrick-Barb-ebook/dp/B0C6TRF9GL/

Purchase at Undertaker Books Purchase on Amazon or read on KU Purchase at Barnes and Noble Family secrets. High strangeness. Reality TV. The Trenholm clan helped found Lower Congaree, South Carolina. Their land is cursed. Their abusive patriarch has croaked. Only heirs who attend the funeral will inherit. But when Truluck Trenholm suffered his eventually-fatal stroke, oldest son Ash turned the haunted plantation into an enormously successful reality show—with all the attendant ethical issues of profiting off its legacy. Forced to tolerate the intrusion of California producers, grip guys, and cameras, toting a ton of childhood trauma, Ash’s brother and cousins have plenty of animosity for each other, along with a strong aversion to the paranormal shenanigans of their childhood home. But when Truluck’s funeral goes pear-shaped and the cousins are cut out of his will, Hollywood producers offer the deal of a lifetime: they’ll turn the Trenholms into witchy Kardashians with a Southern drawl. If the cousins walk away, they’ll lose everything. But the farm’s high strangeness keeps getting stranger. Something’s happening on Cypress Bend. And filming might make it worse… Combining the literary tradition of William Faulkner, Michael McDowell, and Octavia Butler with the shimmered lunacy of John Berendt’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, Elizabeth Broadbent’s Ninety-Eight Sabers is a Southern Gothic novel about a family determined to stick together as history threatens to tear them apart. This is a book that asks how we live with the past—and how we accept our responsibility for it in the present. Undertaker Books, November 2024

Promise: Christi Nogle Socials: Christi Nogle: Twitter*:@christinogle Instagram:@christinogle Bluesky: @christinogle.bsky.social TikTok: @christinogle0 Flame Tree Press: Twitter*: @flametreepress Instagram: @flametreepress TikTok: @flametreepress *It’ll always be Twitter to me. I’ve rarely seen such an apt title as Christi Nogle’s Promise: A Collection of Weird Science Fiction Short Stories (Flame Tree Press): She promises a collection of weird, and holy hell does this book deliver. My review won’t do it justice; this book deserves a review as weird as it is, and I can’t figure out how to deliver. As often as I review short story collections, I usually only pick the ones I’ll like. In general, I’m ambivalent on anthologies as form. Sometimes they work well (see: Aseptic and Faintly Sadistic ), and sometimes they’re wildly uneven (no names here, sorry). There’s not a stinker in this one. Even my least-favorite story, “Laurel’s First Chase,” more horror than sci-fi, still stands as a solid short with a unique voice, lush prose, and a damn good plot. My “least-favorite” status comes from a simple reason: it’s horror rather than sci-fi, and I’m currently digging her stellar sci-fi. This collection is weird as hell. Nogle’s concepts are stratospheric; she combines beautiful writing with bizarre set-ups whose sheer whirl will send you reeling. “Substance”, originally published in Fusion Fragment , wins the prize as the weirdest story I’ve ever read. I can’t even begin to explain its concept. She wins weird. Other than “Substance,” I can’t pick a favorite. It’s that good. With her recent Stoker win for Beulah , Nogle’s star is on the rise. Promise shows she’s a master of the short story as well—both horror and sci-fi, usually both at once. That’s another of Promise ’s strengths: Nogle’s wizard at a combination of sci-fi and horror—a trick that often falls flat in the wrong hands. Score another for both Nogle and Flame Tree Press, and pick up Promise when it releases September 12th. Like Beulah, this one’s a must-read. Buy the book : https://www.amazon.com/Promise-Christi-Nogle-ebook/dp/B0BZ9J1BFN/

Elizabeth Broadbent's horror, sci-fi, and slipstream short stories. click to read Nixon Returns The Cafe Irreal George Washington's Teeth (Copperfield Review Quarterly) How to Birth a Billionaire, Antipodean SF The Canyon, Antipodean SF How to Become an Octopus , How to Become an Octopus Three Ways Elvis Didn't Die , Bewildering Stories The Woman, Antipodean SF The Statue of Liberty, Antipodean SF

Science Fiction click to buy or read Neon Bois and Dream Baes (three story arc published in Hyphen Punk) Blue Raspberry The Doctor's Boy Spaceboi In Case of Emergency A Map like Constellations Atop Dead Trees Until I Return to the Earth that Made Me, Penumbric Best of Penumbric Speculative Fiction Magazine vol vii: June 2k23 to April 2k24 An Incident in Concourse C , Your Flight Has Been Cancelled Southern Gothic click to buy or read A Mouthful of Roses , Ghostlight: The Magazine of Terror Folded in Light , Haven Spec Questions a Man Ought Not to Ask , Black Beacon Book of Horror Babylon Burning , Judicial Homicide: Tales of Executions A Living Pentecost , If There's Anyone Left, Vol. 4 For Thine is the Kingdom , Tales to Terrify, episode 538