I’m pleased to see that Read it Forward has declared “The Wilds” spellbinding (along with four terrific collections by other writers) in “Five Spellbinding Short Story Collections.”
Julia Elliott’s stories are creepy—but in a good way. A girl wearing a crown of bird bones is taken captive by a pack of wild boys; an old woman in a nursing home explores with her robotic legs; a spa in the Caribbean overs gruesome treatments. These works of short fiction vacillate between weird and wonderful and through them, Elliott redefines the “Southern Gothic” genre.