Horror Research Paper
Review of the Amazon Original Kindle eBook released simultaneously with the Audible Original audiobook (February 24 2022).

Machado's Bloody Summer is more of a supernatural horror than the 'terror of nature' stories which are the overall theme of the Trespass collection. In a future year of 2064, the researcher is examining the tragic events of July 13, 1999 in the town of Never-Again, Pennsylvania. The adults of the town had been massacred by what was thought to be escaped tigers from a local wildlife farm. All of the town's children disappeared. There is a lone survivor who is interviewed who may hold the key to the mystery.

The tale is structured as a faux research paper, initially examining clues to the events by recording the lyrics of the local children's hand and clapping games which allude to the tragedy. There are copious footnotes (irritatingly not appearing on the same kindle e-page as they refer to). References to actual research such as History of the Lackawanna Valley by Horace Hollister and the fairy tale related works of Kate Bernheimer are effectively mixed in with fake research papers such as those by a Dr. Lucinda Oren.

Machado builds effective suspense and a dawning realization of horror in this rather uniquely structured short story.

I previously enjoyed Machado's short story collection Her Body and Other Parties (2018).

Bloody Summer is one of six Amazon Kindle eBooks released February 24, 2022 as part of their Amazon Original Trespass collection of short stories which "Take a walk on the wild side. When nature gets up close and personal, it isn’t always pretty. A fallen tree sparks a poisonous feud between neighbors. A child searches the darkness for the gleam of a tiger’s teeth. A woman holds off a colony of oddly relentless prairie dogs. In unsettling stories that range from horror to magical realism, award-winning authors lay bare the secrets hidden in the land." ( )