Uncomfortably Dark Horror Presents… Baker’s Dozen! | review by Douglas J. Ogurek

Resentment-fuelled pretzels, corrupted pies and disgusting cakes: baking-themed anthology serves up diverse treats to mostly satisfy horror fans’ appetites.

This anthology of baking-related horror stories is better than most within the extreme horror genre. While the stories are a bit heavy on the revenge angle, most of them are original and entertaining. Some are light and uproarious; others are more serious and consequential. 

Most selections lean toward negative themes like envy, opportunism, and deceit, but Candace Nola’s “County Contest” offers a rare departure in which an outcast is treated with kindness. Unsurprisingly, several tales are reminiscent of Sweeney Todd, and common horror figures (e.g. golem, witch, aliens, the Grim Reaper) make appearances. There are, however, a few fresh faces, such as a creepy baking girl with some visionary desserts (“Just a Local Thing” by Kenzie Jennings) and a man who steals his wife’s cupcakes and goes fishing (“My Lil’ Cupcake” by Lee Franklin).

Problematic entries suffer from a variety of ailments: sloppy points of view, predictable outcomes, slow pacing, unfulfilling payoffs, and overindulgent technical explanations. In one story, I felt like I was in a classroom with a pontificating professor. In another, the author seemed to sprinkle in a baking reference just to fit the anthology’s theme. Fortunately, though, the best stories are so good that they compensate for the few that are average or subpar.

Many extreme horror anthologies contain at least one semen-related story – Carver Pike’s “Blueberry Hill” does the job here. After a heavyset girl with an unpopular YouTube baking show gets violated by several boys, she enlists the help of a witch to take vengeance on her assailants. The witch agrees, provided that the girl collects something from everyone she targets. The story, which climaxes in a disgusting, genital-heavy death fest, manages to be funny, gross and sad.

In the fairy tale-like “Piebird”, author Ruthann Jagge creates a partnership with the reader by immediately showing that young protagonist Flora Corolla is in trouble, then slowly revealing how she got there. Flora, the only daughter of a couple known for their incredible baking abilities, is concerned that she will never find a husband because of the scar on her face… a scar stemming from a childhood accident that she blames on her parents. We call that resentment. But Flora has a plan to win the heart of a man at the next village pie-tasting competition. A black cat comes to her family’s shop and offers to help Flora bake the perfect pie, but there’s a steep cost. The story explores the depths to which people are willing to sink to get what they want. Its jaw-dropping conclusion, particularly its strong use of sound, is clearly inspired by a classic Poe tale. 

Plotting rules the day in Chris Miller’s “Apple Pies & Diamond Eyes”, which builds to a catastrophic event by flipping between a trio planning to rob a jewellery store and an enraged, entitled woman named Karen – ha ha – with a carful of teenage cheerleaders. The woman, embittered by a divorce and something happening at her PTA, looks forward to taking out some of her frustrations on a baker (who did nothing wrong). The story has issues with perspective and backstory, but overall, it’s a highly entertaining and at times humorous work that shows that time waits for no one. 

“Pretzels of Gods” by Christine Morgan steps back in time – the elevated language makes sense in this context – to illustrate the destructive power of envy. Resentful of fellow monk Brother Jehan for his ability to create superior pretzels every Sunday morning, the first-person narrator endeavours to find out something bad about Jehan. Initially, this seems to have little to do with horror, but once a confrontation occurs, that changes dramatically. The pretzels become a symbol for the narrator’s fixation – he is tied up in knots – and a couple of twists within the story reinforce the pretzels’ symbolic significance.

As expected, “Next Best Baker” by Jeff Strand, the Mozart of contemporary comedy horror, is brilliant from start to finish. It slathers a thick layer of violence and hilarity over the typical competitive baking show. The first challenge, for instance, is to include four ingredients, one of which is dog excrement, in the baking of a cake. What makes the story so funny is the way participants and judges take the outrageous contests so seriously. The contests cause the participants a significant amount of emotional turmoil, while the judges feel nothing. Scandalous, shocking, inventive, and hysterical. 

A lot of these stories leave you with a bad taste in your mouth, and that is just what the horror reader craves. Douglas J. Ogurek ****

Theaker's Week (w/c 1 September 2026)

On Tuesday, September 1, I finished off Red Sonja and Vampirella Meet Betty and Veronica, which may sound interesting but felt more like the early Buffy comics than any of their own titles. Amy Cho and Maria Sanapo are the principal writer and artist, but all their work is outshone by half a dozen alternate covers by Dan Parent in the traditional Archie style that give a glimpse of the project this could have been. That another 40 or so alternate covers are also included feels like overkill. The story? Red Sonja and Vampirella go undercover as students at Riverdale High to investigate some murders. ***, and that’s being generous.

On Wednesday, September 2, I read Justice League Dark, Vol. 5: Paradise Lost. *** Seeing that this was mostly written by J.M. DeMatteis led me to expect amorphous, intangible enemies and that’s exactly what I got, as the supernatural friends and their spooky house get stuck in the Between. Andreas Guinaldo’s art is very pretty, reminding me of Phil Jimenez. There are some nice character interactions and I’ll never totally hate any comic that features John Constantine, but it’s weird to see him flying around like a particularly dowdy superhero. Len Wein co-writes the final story in the book, which frustratingly turns out to be the only one not featuring his creation Swamp Thing.

On Thursday, September 3, I read Blood Squad Seven, Vol. 1: Perilous Relaunch *** by Joe Casey and Paul Fry. It’s a curious book: it’s a continuity implant, plugging the hole left when Rob Liefeld and his characters left Image Comics. So we see a new version of an old team getting together in the present, and flashbacks to when they (instead of Liefeld’s Youngblood cast, as previously seen) encountered characters like Spawn and the (Savage) Dragon. It feels a bit redundant, given that Image continuity was never the tightest, but we’re only four issues in at this point and it sounds like the creators have ambitious plans, so I’ll certainly read more – especially since volumes 2 and 3 are in the same Humble Bundle.

On Friday, September 4, I read Hollow Girl, Vol. 14: Blunt by Luke Cooper. *** I got this entire series in a Fanatical bundle and they have been my emergency ripcord this year whenever it’s got too close to midnight without me finishing a book or audiobook yet – I have to keep the run going! They are short, quick reads with lots of violence and a more-or-less self- contained story in each book. I don’t know how Cooper produces the art, but it got me thinking about ways I could use 3D modelling software to produce artwork for TQF, and you may see the results of that in future issues. In this book the original hollow girl comes back in spirit to protect her successor and the guilt-ridden librarian who looks after her comatose body when vengeful ghosts aren’t taking it out for a spin.

On Saturday, September 5 I was informed that we needed the ingredients for making home-made pizzas, so I took the tram and rode it back and forth a bit first, reading a nice little Penguin 70, Mirror of Ink ***** by Jorge Luis Borges. It’s a collection of seven short stories, some of which, like “The Library of Babel”, I have read before, and more than once. The story that grabbed my attention this time was “Blue Tigers”, about a man who ignores instructions to go up a sacred hill in India and comes back down with a selection of self-replicating pebbles. It’s more of a traditional horror story than the others I’ve read by Borges, and I loved it. I should really read more by him.

On Sunday, September 6 I read The Witcher, Vol. 7: The Ballad of Two Wolves by Bartosz Sztybor and Miki Montlló. *** I’ve quite enjoyed this series from Dark Horse Comics, although the fact they are licensed from the company that makes the videogame rather than the author seems ethically dodgy, even if it is legally sound. This volume is a bit better than the last couple. Geralt is travelling with his pet bard, Dandelion, and looking for work, and something for his pal to sing about. But no one in the village agrees on who or what he should be killing – the werewolf tearing up the town at night, the three sisters buying up cheap property, or something else entirely? The exaggerated art style works quite well for a story that has a humorous tone, despite some very dark and unpleasant incidents.

Theaker’s Week(s) (August 2026)

I didn’t get around to writing a bit about every book and audiobook I finished last month, but here are a few.

On August 3 I finished Kasane, Vol. 2 by Daruuma Matsuura, tranlated by Jennifer Ward. *** It’s a manga book about a young woman whose face inspires horror in others, but who has, with the help of some special lipstick, the ability to steal faces with a kiss. After twelve hours the faces return to their rightful owners. In this volume she has developed a peculiar relationship with a beautiful but ordinary actress who suffers from an extreme form of narcolopsy. So she is keen for Kasane, who is a superb actress, to take her place for shows. In theory, Kasane gets to act, and Neena Tanzawa gets to be famous. But everyone has complicated feelings so it’s not that simple.

On August 4 I listened to all of the Doctor Who: The First Doctor Box Set, ***** which features original cast members Carole Ann Ford (Susan) and William Russell (Ian Chesterton) performing adapted versions of two scripts Moris Farhi wrote in the 1960s. Nigel Robinson does a terrific job of turning full-cast television scripts into audio three-handers. “Farewell, Great Macedon” is a lost epic in the vein of “Marco Polo”, with the Doctor and his companions travelling with Alexander the Great. “The Fragile Yellow Arc of Fragrance” was written as a calling card rather than for production, but is still excellent, set on a world where everyone must fall in love -- or perish! Big Finish really have done some stunning work.

Skipping forward, on August 17 I read Jeremy, Vol. 1: Paradise Island, **** which is an English translation of volume 15 of a Flemish series, Jommeke, by Jef Nys. It was originally published in 1962, and that perhaps shows in some story elements, but it looks fabulous. A blonde-haired genius and his three friends go on a round-the-world cruise, but are put ashore by a vengeful criminal who presumably they had encountered in previous Flemish books. They spend six months colonising the island and exploiting the free labour of the local primates and parrots, but everyone has a lovely time.

On August 17 and 18 I read Jeremy, Vol. 2: Children in Charge **** and Jeremy, Vol. 3: Frankie’s Bride to Be, **** then on August 28 Jeremy, Vol. 4: The Soap King, **** another bonkers and brilliant adventure. This one is less fantastical than the others, but no less bizarre. Jeremy’s friend Frankie wants to win a competition which requires him to go three months without washing, but his mum doesn’t want that, so he runs away from home and she pursues him. There are over 300 books in this series in Flemish – the most recent of them featuring a dinosaur! I hope many more are translated into English.

On August 20 I finished The School Inspector Calls by Gervase Phinn, **** the shorter of the two books he has published under that title. This one is a Penguin 70: I paid one of my daughters to go through my Penguin 70 box set of them, cross-refer with Goodreads, and turn around all those I’ve read. Turns out there’s a lot of them! This was a funny and charming series of episodes in the life of a school inspector. Something about his style reminded me of my co-editor’s dad, which endeared the book to me.

On August 26 and 27 I listened to Cyberman, Part 1: Scorpius **** and Cyberman, Part 2: Fear, **** a pair of excellent short dramas produced by Big Finish and written by Nicholas Briggs, who also plays the cybermen and directs. A future Earth is at war with the androids it created, and in desperation turns to the Scorpius project, which turns humans into super-soldiers in silver suits… Not hard to guess where the story is going, but it creates a superb sense of dread.

I was a bit disappointed on Sunday, August 30, because I spent the day listening to an audiobook while typesetting a bunch of stuff (including the next collection of Roderick Langham adventures!), but as midnight approached I realised I wouldn’t finish the audiobook in time. Instead, I quickly finished off a Penguin 70, Summer in Algiers by Albert Camus. *** It’s basically a bit of travel writing, and feels a bit patronising, but it was interesting to get a glimpse of Algeria as it was back then. It’s one of those books where you suspect the sentences would sound grander and cooler in the original French.

On Monday, August 31, I finished off I Am Slaughter, **** a Warhammer 40k novel by Dan Abnett. It’s the first in a series of twelve short novels, The Beast Arises, that on Audible have been collected in four omnibuses, three of which are included in their current two-for-one sale. How could I resist? Although I did look up a few things (40K is not, as I had previously thought, the future of the Warhammer Fantasy world), the book goes out of its way to be a great starting point. There’s not much going on in the universe, except a few border skirmishes, and people start to wonder if a standing army is really needed. Then a routine bug hunt goes badly wrong... Read by Gareth Armstrong, whose work I have admired so much on the Maigret audiobooks.

I’ve now finished a book or an audiobook every day for 307 days running. If I don’t make it to a full year now I’ll be really annoyed with myself. That will be October 30, and then it’ll be time to stop reading and start writing a new novel…