"An outstanding story in outstanding hands." - Josh Malerman A biting novel from an electrifying new voice, Such a Pretty Smile is a heart-stopping tour-de-force about powerful women, angry men, and all the ways in which girls fight against the forces that try to silence them. There's something out there that's killing. Known only as The Cur, he leaves no traces, save for the torn bodies of girls, on the verge of becoming women, who are known as trouble-makers; those who refuse to conform, to know their place. Girls who don't know when to shut up. 2019: Thirteen-year-old Lila Sawyer has secrets she can't share with anyone. Not the school psychologist she's seeing. Not her father, who has a new wife, and a new baby. And not her mother the infamous Caroline Sawyer, a unique artist whose eerie sculptures, made from bent twigs and crimped leaves, have made her a local celebrity. But soon Lila feels haunted from within, terrorized by a delicious evil that shows her how to find her voice until she is punished for using it. 2004: Caroline Sawyer hears dogs everywhere. Snarling, barking, teeth snapping that no one else seems to notice. At first, she blames the phantom sounds on her insomnia and her acute stress in caring for her ailing father. But then the delusions begin to take shape both in her waking hours, and in the violent, visceral sculptures she creates while in a trance-like state. Her fiance is convinced she needs help. Her new psychiatrist waives her "problem" away with pills. But Caroline's past is a dark cellar, filled with repressed memories and a lurking horror that the men around her can't understand. As past demons become a present threat, both Caroline and Lila must chase the source of this unrelenting, oppressive power to its malignant core. Brilliantly paced, unsettling to the bone, and unapologetically fierce, Such a Pretty Smile is a powerful allegory for what it can mean to be a woman, and an untamed rallying cry for anyone ever told to sit down, shut up, and smile pretty.

"Shock Totem" steamrolls ahead with its seventh issue, featuring tales of classic horror, creature features, heartbreak and loss
The legendary William F. Nolan offers up "The Horror That Et My Pap-and Other Swamp Stuff," a tale the likes of which you have never read before. S. Clayton Rhodes delivers "The Gates of Emile Plimpkin: The Gravedigger's Legacy," a novelette that veritably oozes horror borne of the 1800s. Damien Angelica Walters (formerly Damien Walters Grintalis) gives us the heartbreaking "Shall I Whisper to You of Moonlight, of Sorrow, of Pieces of Us?" And M. Bennardo supplies this issue's creature-feature with "Thing In a Bag."
Newcomers are front and center, beginning with the one-two punch of "Consumption" and "Among the Elephants," by Victoria Jakes and Amberle L. Husbands, respectively. In "The Long Road," Kristi DeMeester leads us to the water's dark edge and tempts us to drink deep, drink long, because we are so very thirsty. Rounding things out is Dominik Parisien's excellent poem, "Smoking, The Old Sergeant Remembers 30 Mins Past Ceasefire."
In addition to all the great fiction, you will find conversations with literary stalwart Laird Barron and Violet LeVoit. The early 70s are explored in the fifth installment of the horror-in-music serial, "Bloodstains & Blue Suede Shoes." Narrative nonfiction is handled by Kurt Newton, and with "The Hook, the Hole, and the Garden," John Boden delivers possibly the most heart-wrenching piece of nonfiction ever published in "Shock Totem."
Come see why "Shock Totem" is billed as ..".one of the strongest horror fiction magazines on the market today" (Hellnotes).