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A Novella
by M. L. Rio
Book Reviewed by:The author of sales sensation If We Were Villains returns with a story about a ragtag group of night shift workers who meet in the local cemetery to unearth the secrets lurking in an open grave.
Every night, in the college's ancient cemetery, five people cross paths as they work the late shift: a bartender, a rideshare driver, a hotel receptionist, the steward of the derelict church that looms over them, and the editor-in-chief of the college paper, always in search of a story.
One dark October evening in the defunct churchyard, they find a hole that wasn't there before. A fresh, open grave where no grave should be. But who dug it, and for whom?
Before they go their separate ways, the gravedigger returns. As they trail him through the night, they realize he may be the key to a string of strange happenings around town that have made headlines for the last few weeks―and that they may be closer to the mystery than they thought.
Atmospheric and eerie, with the ensemble cast her fans love and a delightfully familiar academic backdrop, Graveyard Shift is a modern Gothic tale in If We Were Villains author M. L. Rio's inimitable style.
12:00 AM Edie
Most of the names on most of the gravestones had been scrubbed out by time or teenage vandals; the church itself had been boarded up and was so overgrown with vines and moss and mold that the DANGER, KEEP OUT sign nailed across the doors was decidedly redundant. Since its designation as a local historic landmark, it was protected from the bulldozers and wrecking balls that had razed everything else south of Azalea Street to make way for more patients, more parking, more gift shops and dining halls. While the medical school constructed, Saint Anthony the Anchorite deconstructed—one brick, one beam at a time. Nobody in their right mind would loiter in its long shadow in the middle of the night, but nobody in their right mind still smoked these days anyway.
So Edie Wu told herself as she trudged across campus from the offices of the Belltower Times. She was always the last to clock out—her grim duty as editor-in-chief to lash herself to the masthead, go down with ...
As each character remains awake all night, Rio explores the debilitating psychological impact of sleep deprivation... For all its dark elements, however, much of the novella has a charming and nostalgic quality. The setting of a historic church; the macabre goings on; the charismatic amateur sleuths—this is classic cozy crime. And its structure—a motley crew of likeable characters that stumble into a creepy situation, then split up to hunt down clues before reuniting to solve the mystery—is basically an adult spin on Scooby-Doo...continued
Full Review
(850 words)
(Reviewed by Callum McLaughlin).
Catriona Ward, bestselling author of The Last House on Needless Street
Graveyard Shift is wonderful - dark, strange and hair-raisingly tense - it spills over with atmosphere, full of flawed, fascinating characters. I raced through it. Chuck Wendig, bestselling author of Black River Orchard and The Book of Accidents
This place has everything―rats, fungus, thrills, chills, mysteries, hostile incidents―and M.L. Rio deftly weaves it all together into a short, sweet (okay maybe not that sweet) story. A rad, crisp, creepy read. Olivie Blake, bestselling author of Atlas Six
Like all M. L. Rio's work, Graveyard Shift is shot through with cool, heavily dosed with ennui, and dense with people-pleasures. Within this tangled skein of complicated characters (ranging from sweetly unhinged to truly problematic), Rio presents a world of nihilistic macabre only to strip it back, painting the gruesome with a softer brush and her singular gift for portraiture.Each of the five protagonists in M. L. Rio's novella Graveyard Shift struggles, in some form, with lack of sleep. Insomnia, which is a persistent difficulty in getting adequate quality sleep, can have a significant negative impact on both our physical and mental health, with effects including anxiety, depression, memory problems, a weakened immune system, and chronic pain. It is also linked to conditions like heart disease and diabetes.
The number of people dealing with insomnia and other sleep disorders is on the rise around the world. Researchers have identified a number of causes of this increase. Unsurprisingly, COVID-19 is a major contributing factor; for many people, the pandemic generated and continues to generate significant...
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