All the things the delighted me in January, 2026.
My yen for Westerns carried over from December into the New Year. Luckily, first season of The Abandons was there for me in my time of need. The Abandons is set in the Washington Territory and centers on the conflict between two powerful matriarchs, the wealthy mine owner Constance Van Ness (played by Gillian Anderson) and rancher Fiona Nolan (played by Lena Headey). The first episode was truly great; it's pedal to the metal right from the get-go. The episodes that follow slow the pace a little, but it's all just "pot coming to a boil" as a confrontation between the two central families becomes inevitable. My only complaint is that the cliffhanger ending of this first season felt a little cheap.
Imagine if Frankenstein's monster was working at a Wild West show and his wife was hunting him down to end his unnatural life. That's the starting premise of Josh Rountree's The Unkillable Frank Lightning, but this is a a novel where the situation definitely...evolves into something else. Said wife discovers that her reanimated husband is not the same person he was the last time they met, and the hired guns she's brought with her have their own unheralded issues to deal with. Strangely, and somewhat surprisingly, I think this is actually a book about learning to navigate regret.
I've had my copy of Stephen Graham Jones's The Buffalo Hunter Hunter for a long while now, but I was waiting for a weekend where I could read it straight through without interruption. I gotta tell you--it completely lives up to all the hype it got in 2025. Plus, it has one of my favorite fictional conventions--a frame narrative! A dissatisfied academic learns that one of her ancestors, a Lutheran priest, wrote his memoir of meeting a vampiric Native out to kill the men responsible for crimes against his people and for the decimation of the buffalo population. Man, Stephen Graham Jones has done it again. Essential reading.
Will Maclean, The Apparition Phase
In Will Maclean's The Apparition Phase, two weirdo twins obsessed with faking ghost photographs show their work to the wrong classmate; all hell breaks lose from there. Especially when one of the twin's therapists suggests he visit a remote grand house where a ghost investigation is already underway. Fans of classic British ghost stories and the 1970s spectral revival will love this; it reminded me, in places, of M. R. James, William Hope Hodgson, and Andrew Michael Hurley, but it very much stands on its own noteworthy merits.
Eyes of Fire is an incredibly strange American folk horror movie from 1983. A heretical preacher and his flock abscond from their community to settle a commune (read: cult) deep into the "unknown" frontier, but they encounter a "devil witch" and her clay-smeared minions in the territory. I really enjoyed how unapologetically weird it was--it feels like a made-for-tv movie that never would have been aired and the witch looked suitably freaky.
I knew Netflix's adaptation of The Seven Dials Mystery was coming, so I got myself a second-hand copy of the novel to read first. There is a mystery in the novel, but this is a particularly madcap Agatha Christie book in which a plucky young heroine is encouraged by the police to stick her nose into a case of conspiracy and murder. Very fun. The Netflix adaptation is also pretty fun, but be aware that they put in some effort toward hammering it into a more conventional narrative structure with the expected plot beats. If possible, I recommend reading the book first because it's much weirder and more idiosyncratic.
I'd been meaning to read this book for years, as it is always noted as being one of the best in its class, but with a prequel coming soon I decided it was time to get on with it. I read a lot of this sort of neo-Victorian Gothic novel, and you always want to find in them some special spice that allows the book you're reading to stand out among the other fiction in that genre. In Laura Purcell's The Silent Companion, that spice is the presence of "companions" in the haunted house: wooden cut-outs painted so cleverly that they can be mistaken for real people. (These are real things that exist; check it out.) Of course, these companions crop up where they're least expected, and no one will admit to moving them around the household. Excellent book, now I'm really looking forward to the new one!
Based on the classic occult nonsense book by Dennis Wheatley, with a screenplay adapted by Richard Matheson and directed by Terrence Fischer, it's hard not to love The Devil Rides Out. Christopher Lee is great as a priggish man out to foil a devil-worshiping cult's machinations, and the plot throws in everything from damsels in distress, occult rituals, psychic connections, spirit possession, the Angel of Death, and even...time travel? Okay, so maybe it's a trifle too "Christian" in its morality to satisfy in the long term, but consider the story's source. And just look at that movie poster! Isn't that one of the all-time greats?
The Initiation of Sarah is one of the crop of "bullied teens with supernatural powers" made-for-tv flicks that sprang up in the wake of Carrie's success. This one skews slightly older than the usual, with its adopted protagonist heading off to college with her non-biological sister. You see, the sister is poised for success--all her life she has been primed to follow in her mother's footsteps and pledge to the "powerful" sorority. The bookish, classical music-loving adopted sister? Not so much; she only finds a place in the misfits sorority, which happens to be bullied by the popular sorority on campus. How will they push back against the mean girls? Psychic powers, baby. I thought this was pretty good for a made-for-tv movie, with a strong cast and some interesting turns. Honestly--I keep thinking about it.
Poppy's evolution into screaming metal valkyrie has been fascinating to watch. On previous outings, the mix between the heavy parts and the pop hasn't always felt balanced; sometimes it was even prone to give the listener whiplash from track to track. However, Empty Hands is Poppy's most seamless release to date--yes, the electropop elements are still present, but they're woven into the fabric of the heavy songs on offer. There's also some surprisingly crushing songs on this one; Poppy is convincingly unhinged.
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