“Mike Thorn’s Shelter for the Damned reads like a slice-of-life centered on a budding heroin user—a coming-of-age story with a downward slope.”
Vincent Potter Reviews Shelter for the Damned in Freefall Magazine
Audio Collaboration: Mike Thorn + Yosh Des
Former apartment neighbors Mike Thorn and Yosh Des bonded over their shared commitment to creative expression and a mutual interest in industrial and electronic music. For their first collaboration, Mike recorded a reading of his short story “Entropy Major” (included in his latest collection, Peel Back and See), and Josh composed immersive soundscape accompaniment.
Shelter for the Damned Included on Rich Duncan’s “Favorite Reads of 2021” List
“Shelter for the Damned is loaded with nightmarish scenes and if the idea of a dark coming-of-age story meeting Kathe Koja’s The Cipher intrigues you, this is definitely the book for you.”
Peel Back and See Reviewed on Howling Libraries
“Mike has a way of paying homage to his influences while creating something incredibly fresh and new, and combining very modern struggles with elements of fear that have plagued humanity for ages.”
Read by Dusk Includes Darkest Hours: Expanded Edition on Best Short Stories/Anthologies of 2021 List
Mike Thorn’s Favorite First Reads of 2021
Bleedthrough and Other Small Horrors, by Scarlett R. Algee (2020)
The Flowers of Evil, by Charles Baudelaire [edited by Marthiel and Jackson Mathews, multiple editors] (1857)
The Unnamable, by Samuel Beckett (1953)
Selling the Splat Pack: The DVD Revolution and the American Horror Film, by Mark Bernard (2014)
The Brigadier and the Golf Widow, by John Cheever (1964)
On the Heights of Despair, by E. M. Cioran [translated by Ilinca Zarifopol-Johnston] (1933)
The Trouble with Being Born, by E. M. Cioran [translated by Richard Howard] (1973)
Porno Valley, by Philip Elliott (2021)
Less Than Zero, by Bret Easton Ellis (1985)
The Rules of Attraction, by Bret Easton Ellis (1987)
American Psycho, by Bret Easton Ellis (1991)
The Informers, by Bret Easton Ellis (1994)
Glamorama, by Bret Easton Ellis (1998)
Lunar Park, by Bret Easton Ellis (2005)
Imperial Bedrooms, by Bret Easton Ellis (2010)
The Shards, by Bret Easton Ellis (2021)
Carmilla, by J. Sheridan Le Fanu (1872)
The Queer Art of Failure, by J. Jack Halberstam (2011)
In the Presence of Schopenhauer, by Michel Houellebecq [translated by Andrew Brown] (2017)
Humanimus, by David Huebert (2020)
The Damned, by J. K. Huysmans [translated by Terry Hale] (1891)
The Europeans, by Henry James (1878)
Washington Square, by Henry James (1880)
The Bostonians, by Henry James (1886)
Ghost Stories, by Henry James (1898)
Billy Summers, by Stephen King (2021)
The Wingspan of Severed Hands, by Joe Koch (2020)
Straydog, by Kathe Koja (2002)
The Blue Mirror, by Kathe Koja (2004)
Dark Factory, by Kathe Koja (2022; forthcoming)
I’m from Nowhere, by Lindsay Lerman (2019)
Shock!, by Richard Matheson (1961)
The Birds and Other Stories, by Daphne du Maurier (1952)
The Running Trees, by Amber McMillan (2021)
The Seventh Mansion, by Maryse Meijer (2020)
Circles, by Josiah Morgan (2020)
The Barrens, by Joyce Carol Oates (2001)
1984, by George Orwell (1949)
White is for Witching, by Helen Oyeyemi (2009)
The World as Will and Representation, Volume I, by Arthur Schopenhauer [translated by Judith
Norman and Alistair Welchman] (1818)
Wes Craven: Interviews, edited by Shannon Blake Skelton (2019)
Of One Pure Will, by Farah Rose Smith (2019)
The Secret History, by Donna Tartt (1992)
A History of Touch, by Erin Emily Ann Vance (2022; forthcoming)
Miss Lonelyhearts, by Nathanael West (1933)
The Ax, by Donald E. Westlake (1997)
Film International, “The Houses That Hooper Built – American Twilight: The Cinema of Tobe Hooper”
“This juxtaposition between some admittedly cheesy films and their serious thematic undercurrents can be jarring, and nowhere is this effect more evident than in Mike Thorn’s ‘Lizard Brain Ouroboros: Human Antiexceptionalism in Tobe Hooper’s Eaten Alive and Crocodile.’ These films are not the director’s best by a longshot (although the former, his 1976 follow-up to Texas Chain Saw, has enjoyed a cult following), but Thorn skillfully dissects how they illustrate ‘the [triune brain] theory…that human cognition’s roots can be traced to the nonhuman animal world’ (106). The boundary separating these worlds dissolves, and viewers may find themselves rooting more for the so-called ‘monsters’ than the oblivious humans exploiting them.”
Shelter for the Damned Included on Waylon Jordan’s Top Seven Horror Books of 2021 (iHorror)
“Mike Thorn likes to push his readers’ buttons in surprising ways. I’ve never read two stories by him that were really alike and yet there exists a quintessential Mike Thorn story. Shelter for the Damned is a prime example of his artistry.”
Peel Back and See Reviewed on Char’s Horror Corner
“I could probably sit here and write an essay on why I think Mike Thorn is an author to watch, why I think he takes a great deal of time and effort to make his tales accessible and relatable, and why I think his creative imagination is going to take the world by storm at some point.”
Mike Thorn 