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We Sold Our Souls by Grady HendrixThe night manager of a Best Western, Kris Pulaski is washed up and unhappy. Few know of her past as guitarist of 90's Heavy Metal band Dürt Würk – a band once tipped for greatness, but destined to obscurity after lead singer Terry Hunt embarked on a solo career, rocketing to stardom as Koffin. When a shocking act of violence turns Kris's life upside down – she is forced to look back to a past she has tried to forget – and to a deal Hunt made that may have sabotaged more than just the band. In a journey that will take Kris from a dusty hotel to a hellish music festival, she's determined to face the man who ruined her life. But with dark forces rising and threatening everything Kris holds dear, will Kris be able to defeat the odds? Or will Hell truly be unleashed on the Earth…? Full Review |
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Even The Dead Will Bleed: Book 3 of Tell Me When I'm Dead by Steven RamirezIn the third and final part of the Tell Me When I'm Dead series, Dave Pulaski is headed to Los Angeles – seeking revenge and retribution. With the events of book two still weighing heavily on Dave, he struggles against the rage burning inside him and saves Sasha – a young escapee from the secret testing facility. As events come to a climax, and Dave finds himself pursued by both an ex-military sociopath and a group of scientifically engineered humans who flay their victims alive, the stakes are higher than ever before – will Dave make it out of this alive? And what kind of world will he have left? Full Review |
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Dead Is All You Get: Book Two of Tell Me When I'm Dead by Steven RamirezStill battling the zombie hordes who first appeared in Tell Me When I'm Dead, Dave Pulaski thinks his prayers have been answered when the Black Dragon Security team show up to rescue him and his wife Holly. But things only get worse – with the virus mutating, and the infected getting smarter. When Dave discovers the truth behind the contagion it will drive him past all limits of faith or reason – but will he able to manage dealing with this knowledge whilst protecting Holly and those closest to him? Full Review |
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Tell Me When I'm Dead: Book One of Tell Me When I'm Dead by Steven RamirezA recovering alcoholic, Dave Pulaski has had a long road to recovery, but finally feels like he's getting his life back. Then - a plague hits the town, turning the majority of the population into flesh-hungry monsters who crave the taste of humans. Fighting to survive - Dave's urge to hide away and drink is strong - will he fight to live when the chances of survival are so slim? With the hordes of the undead growing and the security forces outnumbered, it seems that hell has arrived for Dave... Full Review |
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The Monsters We Deserve by Marcus SedgwickTwo hundred years ago, bad weather, bad company (well, the kind that is also mad, and dangerous to know), a spooky reading list and a few chance topics of discussion all led a young woman to start writing her first, and definitely her most famous ever, book. The narrator of this novel has brought himself to a remote Alpine building, in the centre of that first novel's world, to revisit it in honour of its bicentenary. He hates it, for he sees it as badly written and with some unwelcome biases. He seems to only be there and doing this for the publisher to whom he addresses a lot of the script we read. But what if some greater force wanted him there too? Full Review |
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The Coffin Path by Katherine Clements
Maybe you've heard about Scarcross Hall? Hidden on the old coffin path that winds from the village to the moor top, the villagers only speak of it in hushed tones - of how it's a foreboding place filled with evil. Mercy Booth has lived there since birth, and she's always loved the grand house and its isolation, but a recurrence of strange events begins to unsettle her. From objects disappearing through to a shadowy presence sensed in the house, mysteries come to light that can only be solved by Mercy unearthing long-buried secrets. And will a dark stranger help Mercy protect everything she has come to love or tear it from her grasp? Full Review |
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The Chalk Man by C J TudorThe Chalk Man follows a group of friends haunted by an eerily terrifying spectre, conjured during one fateful summer. By the time the new term begins, friendships will be fractured, and a girl will be dead. But who is the killer; is it The Chalk Man, whose dusty white grip squeezes ever tighter, or someone much closer to home? Thirty years later, Ed has tried to forget about that summer, about all the poisoned, sinister memories of The Chalk Man. However, someone seems determined not to let him and when the letters start to arrive, the past follows, plaguing him and dredging up the fever dream nightmare of the summer of 1986, populated by fairs, ra-ra skirts and death. Driven deeper into the mysterious events surrounding Ed's sleepy suburban life, the reader cannot help but wonder; who is The Chalk Man, and will he ever let Ed go? Full Review |
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Strange Weather by Joe Hill
Strange Weather is a collection of four short novels all linked by, unsurprisingly, strange and cataclysmic weather. Each novel is distinct and showcases Hill's restrained yet vivid style which takes everyday events and makes them bitingly, acerbically macabre or blindingly beautiful, often switching from one sentence to the next. As Hill himself says the beauty of the world and the horror of the world were twined together, never is this truer than in Strange Weather where moments of abject horror are coupled with raw beauty. Full Review |
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Forever After: a dark comedy by David JesterMichael Holland is a cocky and brash young man who dies and gets made the offer of his lifetime; immortality. We follow Michael, a grim reaper and his friends Chip (a stoner tooth fairy) and Naff (a stoner in the records department) as they grapple with their long lives and finding a clean surface to sit on in their flat. Full Review |
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Paperbacks from Hell: A History of Horror Fiction from the '70s and '80s by Grady HendrixDemonic possession, murderous babies, man-eating moths… for these books, no plot was too ludicrous, no cover art too appalling, no evil too despicable. Now horror author Grady Hendrix risks his soul and his sanity (not to mention the reader's!) to relate the true, untold story of a fascinating and often forgotten era in publishing. Read the synapse-shattering story summaries! |
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You Should Have Left by Daniel Kehlmann and Ross Benjamin (translator)Our narrator is a screenwriter, tasked with coming up with a sequel to his hit movie Besties – a film which helped pay for a house, but which his actress wife keeps letting him know, isn't art. To concentrate, the family – he, the wife, and their four year old daughter – have rented a large, modern house at the end of a horrid, hairpin bend-filled road, in a charming alpine landscape. But things aren't right. The couple are at loggerheads too much, things keep unsettling our narrator, and the sole shopkeeper for miles around is ready with the Hammer Horror styled warnings of strange events. Quickly we see the book's title in all its galling clarity – but it isn't too late to get out… is it? And out of what, exactly? Full Review |
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Hekla's Children by James BrogdenNathan has a steady job as an outdoor pursuits instructor but that's not his first career. Ten years earlier he'd been a teacher when it all went dreadfully wrong during an orienteering event for his secondary school students. Four young people disappeared suddenly but only one was found. Malnourished and in shock, Olivia was never able to tell anyone what happened. A decade later a body is found, Nathan starts having hallucinations and Olivia crosses his path again. Whatever began that day isn't finished. Evil will find a way through. Full Review |
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The Apartment by S L GreySteph and Mark are in trouble. Mark is running from a grief he can't escape and Steph is anxiously juggling her joy at being a mother with her guilt at being a 'kept woman'. Add a brutal home invasion to the mix and you have a recipe for disaster. Desperate to save their once happy marriage the couple decide to take a romantic trip to Paris only to discover that some terror is inescapable and evil has a vice like grip. Full Review |
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Under A Watchful Eye by Adam NevillSeb Logan is being watched. He just doesn't know who by. When a dark figure appears and shatters Seb's idyllic life, he soon realizes that the murky past he thought he'd left behind has far from forgotten him. What's more unsettling is the strange atmosphere that engulfs him at every sighting, plunging his mind into a terrifying paranoia. To be a victim without knowing the tormentor. To be despised without knowing the offence caused. To be seen by what nobody else can see. These are the thoughts that plague his every waking moment. And once his investigation leads him to stray across the line and into mortal danger, he risks becoming another fatality in a long line of victims. Full Review |
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The Wraiths of War (Obsidian Heart book 3) by Mark MorrisAlthough not dead as he thought he was, Alex Locke feels no closer to finding his missing daughter across time or, indeed, unmasking the dark man. However, he knows what he has to do. Alex must use the obsidian heart to travel back and fight in World War I beside the ghostly soldier who visited him a century or so later. It's not as simple as it seems, as Alex keeps telling himself… or rather as Alexes (plural) keep telling himself. Full Review |
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A Head full of Ghosts by Paul TremblayI don't normally go in for horror stories, mainly because I usually can't take them seriously enough to suspend disbelief. But A Head full of Ghosts appealed to me, somehow - perhaps I was just curious to read the novel that scared the living hell out of Stephen King. Or maybe I was interested to see how Paul Tremblay dealt with the schizophrenic behaviour of his teenage protagonist. And I was certainly intrigued by the highly original storyline described in the blurb: when Marjorie, a teenage girl, starts behaving erratically, her family can't cope and call in the local priest and, ultimately, a TV crew who start to film a reality show about exorcisms. Full Review |
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Bodies of Water by V H LeslieBodies of Water is a concise novella featuring a dual narrative from the perspectives of Kirsten, a modern day woman on the mend from a broken heart, and Evelyn, a nineteenth century 'guest' of a water treatment centre for ailing women. Kirsten moves into the old Wakewater House, attempting to heal herself with the proximity of the water. Centuries ago, Evelyn was forced by her father to visit that same house in order to restore her old vigour, but the water cannot drown out the ghost that haunts her. In fact, the water itself is a powerful and supernatural force. As the water encroaches upon both of their lives, Kirsten and Evelyn search to unveil the mysteries of the house as well as the drenched dark-haired figure who appears before them. Full Review |
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The Last Days of Jack Sparks by Jason ArnoppThe great era of Lad Lit spanned from 1995-2005, but writers like Dave Gorman and Danny Wallace grew up, so in 2016 they are doing something a little more serious like writing fiction. Jack Sparks is an imaginary writer of this Lad Lit, but whilst his first book had him on a pogo stick bouncing from one end of Britain to the other, his later books tackled gangs and drugs. For his final book he chose to tackle the supernatural, a subject that could be the end of him. Full Review |
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When We Were Animals by Joshua GaylordI had made a determination many years ago that I still clung to as though it were a fierce religion. I wouldn't go breach. I wouldn't do it. For three nights every month when the moon is full, children living in a small isolated town who have reached puberty experience 'breaching'. On these nights, their actions are dictated by either passion or violence – they become feral and animalistic abandoning their human nature to run wild and naked in the streets. Beginning, typically at 15 the breach lasts for approximately a year and after, those children become adults. 'When We Were Animals' follows Lumen Fowler's life growing up in the town expressing her desire to be different and avoid the town's rite of passage into adulthood. Lumen is determined not to be overcome by the moon and control her own destiny, after all her mother didn't 'breach' so neither will she. But slowly one by one her peers breach and she's left behind struggling to grow up, becoming more and more aware of her dark wild side. Full Review |
