Review\n"An exhilarating, sorrowful, and terrifying descent into retribution and possible madness." Starred Review, Kirkus\n"Shadowdays will have you walking a razor's edge between what's real and what's not. Either will break your heart. Schattel teaches you the meaning of guilt, and of grief, at a pace that leaves you breathless. This is pulp horror soaked in empathy, and it will cut you." Sarah Read, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Bone Weaver's Orchard.\n"Crime fiction meets psychological horror in Shadowdays. It's a page-turner full of twists and surprises, all of them connected by a series of betrayals so deeply personal they demand revenge. True to the novel's noir influences, our protagonist is a flawed individual seeking unlikely redemption, a nurse whose life and career have been scarred by a single, terrible mistake. Cruel reality and the ravages of mental illness entwine in the history of her family, and merge inextricably during the breathless final act, making her journey all the more harrowing and the outcome more uncertain. S.P. Miskowski, author of I Wish I Was LIke You.\n"Slide into the uncertain, murky world of Shadowdays. Schattel sings a dark song, where nothing's sure but the unrelenting forward motion of her characters and the terrible messes humans get themselves into." Emma J. Gibbon, author of Dark Blood Comes From the Feet.\n"Shadowdays has a gutpunch of an ending. You'll see it starting to move in that direction in the novel's climax, but it will hit you like a runaway freight train when it does. As dark as this one was—perhaps because of that—Shadowdays was a lot of fun. Recommended." Andrew Byers, Uncanny Books\n5.0 out of 5 stars. A road trip through a troubled mind.\nThe less said about Polly Schattel's novel SHADOWDAYS the better...and I mean that in the best possible way.\nI very much enjoyed the author's 2020 dark fantasy novel THE OCCULTISTS, so I knew I had to check this one out, too, but the two books couldn't be more different (which leaves me impressed with Schattel's versatility).\nSHADOWDAYS focuses on a nurse named Melissa Sweet, whose family has a history of mental illness and who appears to be slowly losing her grip on reality, herself. A monstrous act of violence sends Melissa on a mission of vengeance against an enemy or enemies apparently bent on destroying her and everything she cares about -- for reasons she can't at first comprehend, which makes for a sense of unsettling paranoia. Her quest ultimately takes the form of a road trip, paved with bloody carnage. In the course of this journey, we begin by cheering our protagonist along...but we gradually become afraid of Melissa herself. Is she a kind of avenging angel, or something darker? To say more would spoil the novel's surprises, and they are many...each coming like a hard slap in the face, even for this jaded reader. This novel is well-written, expertly paced, peopled with intriguing characters -- particularly our haunted, tormented protagonist -- and thoroughly dark and disturbing, its numerous scenes of violent action never seeming merely gratuitous no matter how shocking.\nSHADOWDAYS is a harrowing journey, to be sure, but it's what they mean when they talk about a "page turner," and is one of the finest thrillers I've read in years. Jeffrey Thomas, author of Punktown, The Unnamed Country and The American.\nOn the dark side of town, what's past is never really past. And what's buried is never really dead.\nMelissa Sweet is in a delicate state. She's a clinical nurse in a small southern town who, after a career-ending accident and the accusations of foul play that followed, is just now starting to put her life back together. She's got her mom, her troubled brother, and her fiancé Jack to keep her grounded, and right now she's taking life one uneasy day at a time. But tormented by a harrowing act of violence, she makes an impulsive move that changes her life-and the lives of those she loves-for

Shadowdays

Literature & Fiction

Schattel, Polly

Literary

JournalStone

When a disgruntled adjunct faculty teacher decides to get revenge on the head of her department, she begins a dark (and darkly comic) journey into the cracks between modern society and the secret depravity that lies underneath. She has to navigate the demons of technology, creativity, and Hell itself, but soon she must face the deepest, darkest horror of them all: her own personal failures. "Polly Schattel's 8:59:29 is an expertly rendered fable of moral conflict. Threaded into the high-velocity plot is a playful but exacting study of obsolete forces leaving residue on the contemporary world. It's a tale of demons and hexes, of class and education, and of technology's pernicious expansion as a governing social force. Wicked, sardonic, intelligent horror fiction." -Mike Thorn, author of Peel Back and See

8: 59:29

Genre Fiction

Trepidatio Publishing

Sssshhhhhhhh...For Edwardian-era spiritualists and illusionists, silence is more than a strategy; it's a way of life. And when Max Grahame, a bullied, small-town teen, discovers a secretive world of occultism and s ances right under his nose, he can hardly contain his excitement.But as Max begins his conjurer's lessons in earnest, his newfound knowledge exposes the group's dark and deeply sinister designs, leading a game of supernatural cat and mouse that takes him from the ancient hills of rural Georgia and the mystic plains of the Midwest to fin-de-si cle Manhattan...and beyond.Impeccably researched and wildly imaginative, The Occultists is a darkly riveting historical fantasy in which magic is terrifying, and annihilation is closer than Max could ever imagine.

The Occultists

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Schattel, Polly. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Schattel, Polly

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Schattel, Polly. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Shadowdays

8: 59:29

The Occultists