Trope: Small Town Horror

  • Trashed

    Trashed

    Every week we pile our garbage on the curb and it disappears–like magic! The reality is anything but, of course. Trashed, Derf Backderf’s follow-up to the critically acclaimed, award-winning international bestseller My Friend Dahmer, is an ode to the crap job of all crap jobs–garbage collector. Anyone who has ever been trapped in a soul-sucking

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  • Black Sheep

    Black Sheep

    A cynical twentysomething must confront her unconventional family’s dark secrets in this fiery, irreverent horror novel from the author of Such Sharp Teeth and Cackle. Nobody has a “normal” family, but Vesper Wright’s is truly…something else. Vesper left home at eighteen and never looked back—mostly because she was told that leaving the staunchly religious community

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  • The One and Only Crystal Druid

    The One and Only Crystal Druid

    Ten years ago, I risked everything on a nameless boy. I came out the other side with a murder conviction, a prison sentence, and a minor case of amnesia. I forgot everything about that boy, and now I’m out on parole, just a nobody witch volunteering at an animal rescue and keeping a low profile.

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  • Hard-Boiled Cop and Dolphin Vol. 1

    Hard-Boiled Cop and Dolphin Vol. 1

    Meet hard-boiled cop Boyle Samejima. He’s just been assigned to the remote Ogasawara Islands. There he finds coworkers, a mysterious young girl and a dolphin for a partner?! Cop x girl x ocean! Welcome to the craziest hard-boiled cop story you’ll ever read! You know, what did I expect from the guy that did Beelzebub?

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  • Middle of the Night

    Middle of the Night

    In the latest jaw-dropping thriller from New York Times bestselling author Riley Sager, a man must contend with the long-ago disappearance of his childhood best friend—and the dark secrets lurking just beyond the safe confines of his picture-perfect neighborhood. The worst thing to ever happen on Hemlock Circle occurred in Ethan Marsh’s backyard. One July

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  • The September House

    The September House

    A woman is determined to stay in her dream home even after it becomes a haunted nightmare in this compulsively readable, twisty, and layered debut novel. When Margaret and her husband Hal bought the large Victorian house on Hawthorn Street—for sale at a surprisingly reasonable price—they couldn’t believe they finally had a home of their

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  • The Mistholme Museum of Mystery, Morbidity, and Mortality

    The Mistholme Museum of Mystery, Morbidity, and Mortality

    Hello, and welcome to the Mistholme Museum of Mystery, Morbidity, and Mortality. This Audio Tour Guide is aware that this is your first visit to the museum! On behalf of the Museum: Welcome! It’s a pleasure to have you with us here today. The Audio Tour Guide will be your window into the history of

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  • Rodney R Rodney

    Rodney R Rodney

    It’s finally happened. Rodney Rodney Rodney is over. I’ve been following it since its inception, collecting the volumes as they were released, I’m waiting for the Kickstarter omnibus to fulfill… my guy. Rodney R Rodney is just. Fucking fantastic. Quick summary: There’s this creepy neighbor who inexplicably shares a resemblance to the Wanted posters that

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  • Lovesickness

    Lovesickness

    An innocent love becomes a bloody hell in another superb collection by master of horror Junji Ito. Ryusuke returns to the town he once lived in because rumors are swirling about girls killing themselves after encountering a bewitchingly handsome young man. Harboring his own secret from time spent in this town, Ryusuke attempts to capture

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  • Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror

    Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror

    This one took me a long time to read. Not because it was bad, but because sometimes reading one story was like being hit by a bus, and then I needed a long break before I went back to it. Horror is a reflection of the writer’s struggles, a very open dialogue about the problems

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Welcome to the Menagerie.

Here is where M logs their media activity. Partly because Goodreads is forgettable and keeping physical logs is harder. Sometimes M writes a lot. Sometimes M doesn’t write enough. It doesn’t matter. This is just a for-fun little blog so that M can remember what they thought about whatever they watched or read or played or. Whatever.


What is M?

I read. Voraciously. I have subscriptions to those book things on digital retailers. I consume books at nearly all hours. The hours I don’t spend reading? I’m writing. I’m drawing. I have a problem. I have a problem in that I love to read things that are in the same vein repeatedly. Book journals don’t work and as much as I text my friends screenshots of book passages, it doesn’t scratch the itch. Now I’m going to be doing… tiny… tiny book reports.


Truck-Kun Kill Count:


Books & Light Novels Read in 2025: 19/50
38%
Comics Read in 2026: 39/200
19%
Physical Owned Books Read: 477/830
58%


Menagerie Categories


Tagged in the Menagerie

Absolute Asshole NPC (86) A Fetish For Suffering (45) Can't Say No (67) Chekov's Gun (42) Childhood Friends (50) Curiosity Fucks You Up (76) Cursed (58) Damsel in Distress (57) Damsel in Distress (subverted) (85) Dangerous Reputation (85) Doting Husband (64) Double Identity (41) Everyone Loves MC (87) Evil Eyes & Big Heart (49) Fan Service (92) Grumpy x Sunshine (52) Hypercompetent MC (72) If You Love Them, Set Them Free (49) I Know a Guy (46) Last Minute Hero (97) Loss of Humanity (50) Main Character Coloring (69) MC's Skewed Metrics (71) Mean Boy (118) Mean Boy Love Interest (47) Modern Morals (45) Nat 20s (89) Not Actually Dead (74) Nuclear Revenge (68) OP Protag (91) Petty Revenge (44) Power of Friendship (73) Power of Love (68) Self-Sacrifice (67) Shock Value (44) Sympathetic Evil (63) The Moral is Community (60) Tragic Backstory (76) Twist! (55) Uniquely Skilled (87) Unreliable Narrator (53) Weird and Wacky On Purpose (74) Western-Style Fantasy (83) Wrong Place Wrong Time (64) Zero to Hero (77)


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