Through the Woods

Canadian graphic artist Carroll uses familiar horror motifs%E2%80%94the first wife's ghost, the monster that dwells in the forest%E2%80%94to create fresh and disturbing tales. Sure in her handling of line, color, and sequential art techniques, she revels in period settings, placing her five stories in identifiable historical eras that include colonial North America and the Roaring Twenties. Carefully drawn clothing and furnishings provide ironic backdrops for Lovecraftian revelations of parasitical possession and hideous evil. In the most explicitly gruesome story, a dowdy girl named Mabel is forced to stay with her prosperous brother and his perfect wife, who, Mabel begins to see, is a monster inhabiting the skin of a human: "I only wanted to wear her," the wife says dreamily of the housekeeper, whose bloodied wrist Mabel has spotted, "but when I tried her on, there was no stretch left." Instead of the gratifying defeat of evil, the gothic stories often leave off unsettlingly with a twist of the knife, just at the moment some fresh horror beckons. Ages 14%E2%80%93up. Agent: Jen Linnan, Linnan Literary Management. (July)