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September/October 2024

In EQMM’s September/October 2024 issue, we usher in the spooky season with monsters real and metaphorical. In “Knock-Knock” by Sarah Hilary, a woodworking apprentice in Japan tries to escape an ancient ghost, and in a tale with Gothic atmosphere a man who travels to a remote island to find out what happened to an old classmate discovers that the line between life and death isn’t straightforward (see “Gannets and Ghouls” by Sue Parman”). In Robert L. Fish Memorial Award winner Kate Hohl’s “Rosabelle,” a scrappy WWII-era wannabe actress assists her grifter (or is she?) psychic landlady at a séance, and in Josh Pachter’s “Wind Phone,” there is communication with the dead—but also a more concrete task at hand.

Then again, “Not All Hauntings Are by Ghosts,” as Robin Kirman shows us in her twisty tale about deep psychology—and that’s also the case in “The Phantom of the Concourse Plaza” by Jerome Charyn (from the Black Mask department), which focuses on a young boy who lives (and works) in a Bronx hotel with mobsters, politicians, and Yankee players. Another kid, in “Head Start” by Kai Lovelace (from the Department of First Stories), is roped into a strange Halloween prank by his very odd neighbors.

Characters in other stories are stalked by very real demons, such as those of anti-Semitism (“The Jews on Elm Street” by Anna Stolley Persky, from the Department of First Stories), racism (“The Polar Bear Padre” by John F. Dobbyn, another Yukon tale in verse), and bare ambition at the cost of anything else (“The Gaslight Sonata” by Richard Helms, a case for Boatright and Crapster set at the symphony).

“Cadere ex Stellae” by Pat Black revolves around show-biz celestial scientists and scientific ethics and “[The Applause Dies.]” by Lori Rader-Day features a mystery writer with a notorious past. There’s a spirit of greed propelling the action in “Bad Hydrous” by Doug Crandell and in a new tale from National Book Award winner Joyce Carol Oates, “The Heiress. The Hireling,” in which a rich widow fears her late husband’s children. And perhaps we are all most haunted by the past; this is true for characters in “Hell-Bent for Leather” by Tom Andes, “Through Thick and Thin” by Andrew Welsh-Huggins, “The Lonely One” by Bill Pronzini, and “The Night Watch” by Marlen Visser (from the Passport to Crime Department).

Along with the tricky twists and turns of this issue’s fiction, you can treat yourself to new columns by our regular contributors Dean Jobb, Kristopher Zgorski, and Steve Steinbock!

Look for our September/October 2024 issue on sale at newsstands on August 13, 2024. Or subscribe to EQMM in print or in a wide variety of digital formats.