These multiple narrators are like pieces of a cracked mirror, each shard reflecting a central fracture. At first, this shifting among characters feels disorienting, and the choice to include a cat’s point of view verges on silly, but as the novel builds momentum, the structure makes sense. These perspectives are then buttressed by a third-person narrative that follows Lulu’s sister as she attempts to hunt down the kidnapper. The novel is told by a chorus of characters who unspool their experiences in first person.

But as the story progresses, a far more startling and complicated plot emerges, one that has less to do with Lulu or the kidnapping, and more to do with how the human consciousness copes with the threat of violence. On the surface, the novel has a rather typical horror premise - a child, Lulu, goes missing at a lake, leaving an older sister desperate to find her. Horrors of the mind are at play in Catriona Ward’s brilliant new novel, THE LAST HOUSE ON NEEDLESS STREET (Tor Nightfire, 319 pp., $27.99), a terrifying exploration of human consciousness that excavates character like an ice pick chipping through an ancient glacier: The deeper one goes, the chillier it gets. It may be as ancient as our ancestors telling stories around a fire, or as modern as a night alone with a horror novel, but the experience of imagining that which frightens us is a deeply human defense for life’s pageant of horrors.

Whether it be pestilence or zombies, ravenous phantoms or vengeful witches, killers or psychos or ghouls from the beyond - the dramatic experience of being afraid, and the exhilaration of living through what we fear, bolster our will to survive.

Overcoming dark times is the point of every scary story ever told.

Tor horror books