The Off-Season

About This Audiobook

*The Off-Season* isn’t just another horror anthology—it’s a love letter to the eerie, half-drowned corners of the world where the sea whispers and the weird seeps in. Marissa van Uden curates 25 stories that twist coastal nostalgia into something unsettling: think crumbling piers hiding unspeakable things, fishermen who haul up more than nets, and towns where the tide dictates not just the hours, but the rules of reality. The "New Weird" label fits, but this collection leans harder into psychological unease than outright gore, trading jump scares for the slow creep of dread. Cheryl May’s narration is a masterclass in restraint—her voice, cool and measured, lets the strangeness of each tale unfold without overplaying the horror, making the moments of rupture hit even harder.

What sets this apart is its refusal to romanticize the coast. These aren’t quaint seaside ghost stories; they’re fables of erosion—of bodies, minds, and entire communities unraveling under the weight of something ancient and hungry. The anthology’s strength lies in its diversity of voices and settings: a lighthouse keeper’s log that shouldn’t exist, a beachcomber’s obsession with washed-up *things* that aren’t quite dead, a resort town where the guests never check out. The prose ranges from lyrical to brutally sparse, but every story shares a preoccupation with thresholds—the space between land and water, human and other, sanity and the deep. For listeners who crave horror that lingers like low tide’s stench, this is a treasure trove."

"review": "I’ll admit, I approached *The Off-Season* with skepticism—anthologies can feel uneven, and ‘New Weird’ sometimes leans too hard on ambiguity for its own good. But within the first hour, Cheryl May’s narration sold me. Her delivery is deceptively simple: a slight rasp in her voice, a pacing that mirrors the slow lap of waves against a hull, and an uncanny ability to make even the most bizarre premises feel grounded. She doesn’t *perform* the horror so much as let it seep in, which works brilliantly for stories like *The Drowned Library*—a standout where a scholar’s obsession with waterlogged books becomes a metaphor for drowning in knowledge itself.

The anthology’s highs are *very* high. *Salt Wife* (a folktale-tinged nightmare about marriage and the sea) and *The Last Tide Chart* (a cosmic horror story disguised as a bureaucratic tragedy) are worth the price alone. But not every story lands with equal force—*The Crab King’s Daughter* feels overly cryptic even by New Weird standards, and a few pieces rely too heavily on atmospheric mood without enough narrative payoff. The production is flawless, though; the audio levels are consistent, and May’s shifts between voices (subtle but distinct) keep each story from bleeding into the next. My biggest critique? At 11+ hours, the pacing drags in the middle third, where a cluster of mid-tempo stories could’ve been tightened. Still, the gems here—especially the closing trio—make it a must-listen for fans of Jeff VanderMeer or *The Fisherman* by John Langan. Just don’t start this one before a beach vacation."

"tags": [
"coastal horror anthology