Staff Pick
Since Benjamin Percy never writes the same book twice, I wasn't sure what to expect when I opened his latest. By the end of it, I still wasn't sure. Is it literature, horror, pointed social commentary, or some sort of hybrid? He defies expectations with and between his stories, which range from the grittily realistic to the highly supernatural, and together they form a powerfully affecting display of Percy's range. My personal favorite was "Suspect Zero," a murder mystery told backwards and forwards with a deeply satisfying ending. Skinnier than Slender Man and twice as creepy, Suicide Woods is a quick read that lingers like a nightmare. Recommended By Lauren P., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
A spine-tingling new collection of stories from the acclaimed author of Thrill Me and The Dark Net
Benjamin Percy is a versatile and propulsive storyteller whose genre-busting novels and story collections have ranged from literary to thriller to postapocalyptic. In his essay collection, Thrill Me, he laid bare for readers how and why he channels disparate influences in his work. Now, in his first story collection since the acclaimed Refresh, Refresh, Percy brings his page-turning skills to bear in Suicide Woods, a potent brew of horror, crime, and weird happenings in the woods.
A boy in his uncle's care falls through the ice on a pond and emerges in a frozen, uncanny state. A group of people in therapy for suicidal ideation undergoes a drastic session in the woods with fatal consequences. A body found on a train and a blood-soaked carpet in an empty house are clues to a puzzling crime in a small town. And in a pulse-quickening novella, thrill seekers on a mapping expedition into the "Bermuda Triangle" of remote Alaska are stranded on a sinister island that seems to want them dead.
In story after story, which have appeared in magazines ranging from the Virginia Quarterly Review and Orion Magazine to McSweeney's and Ploughshares, Percy delivers haunting and chilling narratives that will have readers hanging on every word. A master class in suspense and horror, Suicide Woods is a dark, inventive collection packed to the gills with eerie, can't-miss tales.
Review
"Fiction doesn't get more red in tooth and claw than this. Every page drips, every story leaves you bleeding." Stephen Graham Jones
Review
"Suicide Woods deals in a shivery fear, a dreamlike unease, a sense of eldritch hallucinations creeping toward us. I love this book." Luis Alberto Urrea
Review
"Percy's haunting, well-crafted prose frequently elevates the mundanity and isolation of being human into something otherworldly in his genre-bending collection [Suicide Woods]. . . . This gripping, often unnerving collection showcases Percy's talent as a skilled, versatile storyteller." Publishers Weekly
Review
"Like modern Grimm fairy tales, the stories in this volume are cautionary and haunting." Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)