Nightfall by Jake Halpern and Peter Kujawinski
Sonia Grace
I tore through Nightfall by Jake Halpern and Peter Kujawinski in about two hours, which should give you an idea of its readability. The book drew me in right away,…
horror
The Scarlet Gospels by Clive Barker
Alister Davison
Time flies: It’s thirty years since Clive Barker’s first novel, The Damnation Game, was published. A tale of Faustian proportions, it – along with his short story collections The Books…
Killing Pretty by Richard Kadrey
Zachary A. Matzo
Seven books in, Richard Kadrey’s Sandman Slim series continues to have its hooks in me. Killing Pretty—the latest entry—was released at the end of July and I plowed through it…
Elements of Fantasy: Zombies
Janie Bill
The living dead. Zombies made their first documented appearance in 1929 when William Seabrook recorded his participation with Haitian voodoo ceremonies in The Magic Island. Seabrook had been interested in…
The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins
Charlie Hopkins
We open on an oddly dressed girl walking down a road and refusing a ride from a stranger because she does not want to have to kill them, reasoning that…
Swan Song by Robert McCammon
Back in the 1980s, when the Cold War was at its height, the spectre of nuclear war loomed large, and this was reflected in the fiction of the time. Some…
Monthly Short Story Winner: Joker Month
Xiagan
We had a lot great contest themes this year and I know that some people didn’t manage to finish their stories on time for some of the contests or didn’t…
Monthly Short Story Winner: Abandoned Places
We’ve been getting such good feedback for the short stories our members have submitted in our Monthly Short Story Competition that we have decided to post them on the main…
The Death House by Sarah Pinborough
With a title like The Death House, you’d be forgiven for thinking this was one of those gory shlock horrors written towards the end of the twentieth century. Unusually for…
The Book of the Dead edited by Jared Shurin
Rebekah Loper
Horror isn’t usually my cup of tea. However, Egyptian mythology and history is always fascinating, and one the more prominent aspects of ancient Egypt is, of course, the mummy. This…
Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances by Neil Gaiman
Richard Bray
In the introduction to Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances, Neil Gaiman tells us quite plainly that writers live in houses other people built. In this collection of short stories,…
Books we love: The books that stole our hearts and got us reading
Overlord
It was Valentines last week so I, as I often do, sent out a holiday themed tweet: What I didn’t expect when I sent that Tweet out was such a…