Twenty years ago, 18-year-old Joanne Neilson, local celebrity for her feats on the swim team, left the house to take the family dog on a walk through the woods. The dog came home; Joanne did not. Now, the remaining Neilson siblings - loner Aggie, family man Alex, and Bailey - estranged from the others due to his plans for a true crime docuseries about the disappearance - are led back to those same woods by a videotape showing an impossible recording of the day their family was broken apart. Keating imbues this novella with a fantastic sense of place. This is a region Keating knows well, and she blends that knowledge with a clear love of nature and an inventive streak. The weird woods of Cannon Park - so named for the regular booming of the tide in the caverns beneath - are realised with enough grounding and clarity that the emergence of clearly unnatural phenomena becomes truly unsettling. Mixing in real-world strange landmarks, like magnetic hills, is inspired, blurring the distincti
Discussion of horror and whatever else takes my fancy.