Talking Scared

Leaning into absolute high geekery this week – with Kyle Winkler’s novel of how family game night can go badly wrong!



The Ship of Death is about a cursed (and I mean CURSED!) tabletop role-playing game and the unlucky couple who choose to play it. Or, as Kyle describes it “Dark Jumanji.”



It prompts a conversation about games in life and fiction. Epistolary structure and found-fiction. We discuss his relationship with the bizarre, his love for mysteries without answers, we consider who is really responsible for the world-building in a story, and we pay a lot of respect to cosmic horror influences beyond Lovecraft.



It’s was a delight to record. Hope you enjoy listening.



Other books mentioned:

Grasshands (2024), by Kyle Winkler

Boris Says the Words (2022), by Kyle Winkler

The Nothing That Is (2020), by Kyle Winkler

Borne (2017), by Jeff VanderMeer

Zothique (1970), by Clarke Ashton Smith

The Dying Earth (1950), by Jack Vance

Enduring Love (1997), by Ian McEwan

Negative Space (2020), by B.R. Yeager

True Crime (2020), by Samantha Kolesnik

The House Next Door (1978), by Anne River Siddons

My Dark Places (1996), by James Ellroy

Penpal (2012), by Dathan Auerbach

Mockingbird (1980), by Paul Tevis

The Blacktongue Thief (2021), by Christopher Buehlman



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This week’s episode shows what a good haunted house can do.



Deena Helm is a mixed American-Palestinian author, who’s
debut novel, Our Cut of Salt, puts all the power of the Gothic to use in
framing the occupation and oppression of Palestine. It takes place before the ongoing genocide, but offer a chance to consider how horror fiction can play its part in framing that obscenity.



That all sounds heavy, and it rightfully is – but this book also has a frightening, tragic and murderous house at its core… so there’s (our kind) of fun to be had as well.



This is an important episode for the show. I hope you listen and enjoy.



Other books mentioned:



White is for Witching (2009), by Helen Oyeyemi

Tell Me I’m Worthless (2021), by Alison Rumfitt

Frankenstein in Baghdad (2013), by Ahmed Saadawi

Mornings in Jenin (2006), by Susan Abulhawa

Behind You is the Sea (2024), by Susan Muaddi Darraj

Gentle Things (2026), by Danielle Giles

Hungerstone (2025), by Kat Dunn



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Home is where the horror is this week, with Chris Panatier and Worry Box!



This latest offering from Panatier’s uniquely strange mind is a complete revision of the haunted house as we know it. It’s a house that means well, but understands little. Couple that with a family in flux and a child suffering intrusive thoughts, and you have a recipe for terrible, no-good disaster.



In short, it’s 400 pages of slowly tightening dread!

I hope you enjoy.



Other books mentioned:

The Redemption of Morgan Bright (2024), by Chris Panatier

This House isn’t Haunted but We Are (2025), by Stephen Howard

Our Cut of Salt (2026), by Deena Helm

Pet Semetary (1983), by Stephen King

The Library at Mount Char (2015), by Scott Hawkins

Gideon the Ninth (2019), by Tamsyn Muir

Gormenghast (1950), by Mervyn Peak

Angel Down (2025), by Daniel Kraus

Chimera Skin (2026), by Johnny Compton

The Butcher of Nazareth (2026), by David Scott Hay



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There are big books and big books. This week we cover a HUGE book.

China Miéville is the guest. The award-winning author of Perdido Street Station, Embassytown, The City & the City, and other modern speculative classics – and he’s back with a book two decades in the making.



The Rouse is an epic of true proportions, a 1300-page saga of the twentieth century, rife with war, atrocity, tragedy, and a secret war fought with ghosts?? That’s the premise but it barely touches the sides of this ginormous undertaking.



This is not just a conversation, it’s a search for answers – in which we plumb the personal, political, and supernatural influences behind this story of shady military conspiracy and ghosts of many strange kinds.



I hope you enjoy, ‘cos I worked my ass off for this one!



Other books mentioned:

King Rat (1999), by China Miéville

The City & The City (2009), by China Miéville

Ducks, Newburyport (2019), by Lucy Ellman

Gravity’s Rainbow (1973), by Thomas Pyncheon

Against the Day (2006), by Thomas Pyncheon

House of Leaves (2000), by Mark Z. Danielewski

“The Ash Tree” (1904), by M.R. James

A Dark Corner (1971), by Celia Dale



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James Tynion IV is a modern master of the horror comic. He’s the maniac behind so many contemporary classic series, but perhaps none are such
pop-culture behemoths as Something is Killing the Children.

I mean… with a title like that, how could it fail?

With the new omnibus collection out right now, and an in-world novel (co-authored with Kiersten White) coming in October, I thought now was a good time to get James on the show and talk monsters, masks, mythology and the most baddass hero in graphic novels.



Enjoy!



Other books mentioned:

The Woods (2014-2017), by James Tynion IV

Memetic (2014-2015), by James Tynion IV

Hide (2022), by Kiersten White

At the Mountains of Madness (2019), by Gau Tenabe

Monster (1994-2001), by Naoki Urusawa



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Come talk books on Threads, Bluesky, and Instagram, or email direct to talkingscaredpod@gmail.com
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