The Monster She Wrote Podcast

In Margaret St. Clair's "Flowering Evil," Amy Dinsmore is quite the gardener. She loves tending to her collection of Martian and Venusian plants, flowers, and succulents. But one plant, in particular, is a little bit more than she bargained for. Originally published in Planet Stories vol 4 num 7, Summer 1950, this story can be found in audio format

in Pseudopod (825, August 2022) and in text via an archive.

Recommended in this episode: Cherie Dimaline's VenCo

UP NEXT: Daphne DuMaurier's My Cousin Rachel

Buy Toil and Trouble here!

Sadie Hartmann aka Mother Horror is the co-owner of the horror fiction subscription company, Night Worms and the Bram Stoker Awards® nominated editor of her own horror fiction imprint, Dark Hart. Her non-fiction book about horror books titled, 101 Horror Books to Read Before You're Murdered for Page Street Books is coming, August 2023.

She lives in the PNW with her husband of 20+ years where they stare at Mt Rainier, eat street tacos, and hang out with their 3 kids. They have a Frenchie named Owen.

Preorder Sadie's book here.

UP NEXT: "Flowering Evil" by Margaret St. Clair

Buy Toil and Trouble here!

In Nadia Bulkin's story "Wish You Were Here," Dimas is escorting American tourists on a city tour in Bali. He's only trying to do his job, but the tourists become much more than a simple annoyance when they begin to ask about Jelankung, an Indonesian way of contacting the spirits of the dead.

Read the story here and the interview with Nadia Bulkin here.

Recommended in this episode: Anne Serling's As I Knew Him: My Father, Rod Serling

UP NEXT: An interview with Sadie Hartmann

Buy Toil and Trouble here!

Dirk has lost his wife, Joan, and he is devastated by grief. Joan was a pilot who crashed during a routine flight, and he knows there isn't any hope of her survival because he was talking to her on the radio when she crashed. He knows she went down in the ocean with no land in sight, and he knows the search was futile. But, despite all evidence to the contrary, he still feels like there's a chance she's alive. He feels like there is a compass in his mind telling him precisely where to find her. He hires a plane and two pilots and begins a search of his own. What he finds, however, is beyond anything he could have imagined. There may have been an island near Joan's crash site, and it has a very mysterious reputation among travelers.

Margaret St. Clair's story "The Island of the Hands" was originally published in Weird Tales Magazine in 1952.

Recommended in this episode: Renfield and Star Trek: Picard

UP NEXT: Nadia Bulkin's "Wish You Were Here"

Buy Toil and Trouble here! And see the Valancourt selection of Monster, She Wrote books here.

Get to know Mel and Lisa: reader edition!

Recommended in this episode: Shirley Jackson's short stories

UP NEXT: Margaret St. Clair's "The Island of the Hands"

Buy Toil and Trouble here!

Author of the novella Corporate Body and the Shirley Jackson Award-winning story "Not the Man I Married," R.A. Busby spends her spare time running in the desert with her dog and finding weird things to write about.

Buy Corporate Body here (or anywhere books or sold).

Recommended in this episode: Queen of Teeth by Hailey Piper

UP NEXT: Get to know Mel and Lisa's reading styles!

Buy Toil and Trouble here!

TW: Domestic Violence/Abuse

The narrator of "Not the Man I Married" has a happy life. She lives in a big house with her husband, Charles, and their two children, Bella and baby Charlie. Everything seems wonderful…until one day a man comes home who looks like Charles, walks like Charles, and even talks like Charles. Only this isn't Charles at all. It's a monster wearing Charles's body like some kind of horrible wet suit. So begins the terrible and strange fight for her family's life.

Read the story here. Read the article mentioned in "Good News" segment here.

Recommended in this episode: Jane, Unlimited by Kristin Cashore and Jackal by Erin E. Adams

UP NEXT: Interview with R A Busby

Buy Toil and Trouble here!

Ghosts come in many forms. In Chesya Burke's story "Haint Me Too," this ghost is of the angry kind. She haunts the Myrtle House, a Southern plantation home, inhabited by "the Perfect Southern American Dream" ("father, mother, three boys and two girls"). Young Shea, the daughter of a Black sharecropping family living on the land, witnesses the haint that lives in Myrtle House. She sees its terror–and its power. And soon, events unfold that force Shea to seek out that exact power. Read Hex Life for this story.

Recommended in this episode: Showtime's Yellowjackets and Root Magic by Eden Royce

UP NEXT: R. A. Busby's "Not the Man I Married"

Mel and Lisa wrote a second book! Buy Toil and Trouble here!

In her short story "The Debt," Ania Ahlborn weaves a modern fairytale. Karolin is an 11 year old girl, supposedly visiting her grandmother in Poland for the first time, but her grandmother is nowhere to be found. She's traveled there with her father, both of them still reeling from the death of Karolin's mother one year earlier. Karolin is enchanted by the quaint town and the lush dark green forest that surrounds it. The forest is a magical place, but that magic turns dark when Karolin loses her way and can't find her way out. Can she survive the forest and the evil that lurks there?

Recommended in this episode: Swarm on Amazon Prime and Lockwood and Co. on Netflix

UP NEXT: Chesya Burke's "Haint Me Too" from the same anthology Hex Life

Read more about Mel's thoughts on fungal horror here. Or read more Baba Yaga stories here. To vote for 13 Minutes of Horror: Sci-Fi Horror (or see the Rondo award finalists), see this list here. Voting ends April 23, 2023.

Buy Toil and Trouble here!

Following the Mexican War of Independence, Beatriz finds her life in ruins: her father has been executed and she is left to take care of her family. Her only hope is a good marriage–so she marries the wealthy but mysterious Don Rodolpho, following the death of his first wife. Beatriz moves into Rodolpho's aging home, the Hacienda San Isidro. But that is only the start of Beatriz's troubles. There's something supernatural and evil in San Isidro, something that doesn't want Beatriz there. With the help of the local priest Andres, Beatriz begins a fight for her life.

Recommended in this episode: Daphne du Maurier's Don't Look Now

UP NEXT: Ania Ahlborn "The Debt" in Hex Life

Buy Toil and Trouble here!