Monthly Short Story Winner: Abandoned Places
Xiagan
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…
horror
The Death House by Sarah Pinborough
Alister Davison
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…
The Year of the Ladybird by Graham Joyce
It is 1976, the hottest summer in England since records began, and a young man called David is about to start work at a holiday camp close to the seaside…
The Getaway God by Richard Kadrey – Spoiler Free Review
Zachary A. Matzo
The Getaway God, Richard Kadrey’s sixth novel in the Sandman Slim series, is a confounding—but ultimately entertaining—entry in the story of James Stark. Friends and enemies (both new and old)…
Murder by Sarah Pinborough
Aleksandra Kesek
Years after the horrors of Jack the Ripper and the Torso Killer which terrorised London, not everyone has forgotten about the Upir. Doctor Thomas Bond might have found some peace…
The Fear Institute by Jonathan L. Howard
Shambralyn Baker
“Why on Earth did you steal three dead popes?” asked Cabal. “First, to make the Vatican very cross. That was funny. Second reason, delicious.” It’s rare for Johannes Cabal to…
Class Warfare: Fantasy, Sci-Fi and Literary Fiction
The line drawn between so-called literary fiction and genre fiction has always irked me. As I embarked upon a re-read of the first two volumes of Lev Grossman’s frustrating Magicians…
What Makes a Great Bookstore?
Nicole Singer
Everyone has a favorite bookstore—whether it’s a big chain or the corner independent. It’s the place where we discover new books, maybe even wait in line for hours for the…
The Necromancer by Jonathan L. Howard
“Thrown out of the best universities, excommunicated from all the most popular religions and many of the obscure ones, fresh from his recent engagement in Hell, we present Johannes Cabal,…