Newest Paranormal Reviews
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When The Curtain Falls by Carrie Hope Fletcher
A thoroughly, magical and riveting story that hooks you in from the first page and takes you on a roller coaster ride towards the last. Fletcher weaves together a dash of Whodunit the thrill of romance, (the course of which never runs smoothly,) and an unpredictable ghost. The ghost appears once a year, the principal star of her very own show, to meet with the love of her life and re-enact her death. A tragic accident with the roots buried deep within the whole array of human nature. Love, joy, care, friendship, jealousy, possessiveness, selfishness, cold ambition, all laid bare on centre stage. |
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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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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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The Furthest Station by Ben AaronovitchWhen local police find something weird - spectres scaring commuters on a particular part of the Metropolitan Line, for example - they call for PC Peter Grant of the Special Assessment Unit, also known as The Folly. Stray river gods, missing Victorian children, fleeting 18th century dispatch riders, they are all in a day's (or a night's) work for The Folly team, even if the team only has two official members and the filing system dates back 2 centuries. He may spend time pursuing supernatural offenders, but Constable Grant is a nicely wry and recognisable copper; health and safety rules annoy him and he is inclined to trust his hunches and park outside Chinese take-aways in the hope of a free meal. Full Review |
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Strange Sight: An Essex Witch Museum Mystery (Essex Witches Mystery 2) by Syd MooreRosie Strange is back - recovering after her last escapade with curator Sam Stone, and figuring out what on earth to do with the Essex Witch Museum she's recently inherited. If Rosie had her way she'd be selling the museum and heading back to her flat in London - but when her Auntie Babs recommends Rosie and Sam to a local businessman, they find themselves embroiled in dark events once again. Something is wrong at Le Fleur Restaurant - blood leaking from chandeliers, scrawled messages in the rooms and apparitions walking through the walls. Before Rosie and Sam can start to look into these possibly supernatural occurrences though, events take an even darker turn when a very real body is found in the restaurant - and the owner's daughter swears that a ghost was to blame... Full Review |
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The Winter's Child by Cassandra ParkinA modern Gothic tale of twisted love, secrets and hauntings it says on the cover. I'll go along with that. Suzannah Harper doesn't believe in life after death or gypsies being able to tell the future, but that hasn't stopped her spending a fortune on psychics and fortune tellers in the desperate hunt for her son. Joel has been missing for five years. He skipped out of school one day after an argument at home and has not been seen since. Full Review |
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Silver Silence A Psy-Changling Trinity Novel by Nalini SinghJump straight into a rich and diverse universe at this designated jumping on point. Visit a world of humans, changelings and Psy. The world the books have set in has faced a dramatic change and a new world-order of peace has been declared. The peace is painful and not universally loved. Into this world a bear falls in love with an emotionless Psy – how'd ya reckon it'll turn out? Full Review |
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The Ghost of Helen Addison by Charles E McGarryLeo Moran is a gourmand, sleuth and seer of visions. Beset by ghoulish dreams and apparitions of a terrible crime he leaves the safety of his extravagantly furnished Glasgow apartment and sets out to Lock Dhonn to aid the police in their investigation of the murder of the eponymous Helen Addison. Along the way he is visited by the phantom form of Helen and is besieged by evil forces before tumbling into a rabbit hole of deceit, mystery and the dark forces of the occult. In a race to solve the case and stop the wrong man being accused of such a ghastly crime, Leo must draw on all his skills and convince the police that the killer is still at large and waiting to strike again. Full Review |
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Strange Practice: A Dr Greta Helsing Novel by Vivian ShawI don't suppose it's worth trying to convince you it's too dangerous? Meet Dr Greta Helsing, a highly talented, well respected physician with her own specialised medical practice, known and adored throughout London for her great work… well, at least amongst the supernatural community. Greta is in fact a descendent of the vampire hunter Professor Abraham Van Helsing, but family relations with the undead have improved since then and she now spends her days carrying on her father's legacy treating vampires, werewolves, mummies, ghouls and the like. So early morning emergency calls are not uncommon; what is uncommon however, is a vampire's stab wound that won't heal. Full Review |
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Warlock Holmes - The Hell-Hound of the Baskervilles by G S DenningSir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a lot of Sherlock Holmes stories, but not that many novels. Holmes adventures were mostly kept to a short story length that allowed a quick build up and reveal that would fit into an episodic telling. The best known novel is The Hound of the Baskervilles and anyone who parodies the great detective would eventually need to cover the tale of the cursed Baskerville family. They don't come more parodic than Warlock Holmes and although he may have died at the end of the last book, this won't stop him investigating one of his greatest cases. Full Review |
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Strange Magic: An Essex Witch Museum Mystery (Essex Witches Mystery 1) by Syd MooreRosie Strange doesn't believe in ghosts or witches or magic. No, not at all. It's no surprise therefore when she inherits the ramshackle Essex Witch Museum, her first thought is to take the money and run. Still, the museum exerts a curious pull over Rosie. There's the eccentric academic who bustles in to demand she help in a hunt for old bones, those of the notorious Ursula Cadence, a witch long since put to death. And there's curator Sam Stone, a man about whom Rosie can't decide if he's tiresomely annoying or extremely captivating. It all adds up to looking like her plans to sell the museum might need to be delayed, just for a while. Finding herself and Sam embroiled in a most peculiar centuries-old mystery, Rosie is quickly expelled from her comfort zone, where to her horror, the secrets of the past come with their own real, and all too present, danger as a strange magic threatens to envelop them all. Full Review |
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Kill the Next One by Federico AxatAfter getting started with the opening chapters of Spanish writer, Federico Axat's Kill the Next One, you might be forgiven for thinking you are stuck with one of those machismo riddled tales where a middle-aged man with a mysterious past is forced to shoot or blunder his way through a by-the-numbers thriller. The spectre of Lee Child's successful Jack Reacher series creeping in around the edges of the page. The novel opens with Ted McKay and his Browning pointed to his temple. He has the perfect life, including a beautiful wife and two adoring children, but has discovered that he is also in possession of an untreatable tumour buried deep within his brain which is slowly killing him. However, right before he decides to take the shot and end his life, there is a knock on his door. Standing behind it is a man named Justin Lynch who tells Ted that he represents an all-knowing organisation that turns would-be suicides into opportunities to correct the imbalances of the law. Ted, instead of killing himself, could kill someone who really deserves it. Full Review |
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Otherworld Chills by Kelley ArmstrongI came to Armstrong's Otherworld quite late in its development and it seems that she's now wrapping it up to move on to other things. Billed as the 'final collection' of stories Chills allegedly completes several storylines of her best loved characters. I'd disagree. If Sherlock can survive Reichenbach then I'm sure Werewolves, Vampires and demi-demotic Angels can survive whatever state they may have been left in. Full Review |
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Betrayals by Kelley ArmstrongLiv Taylor-Jones has come a long way since she discovered her parents were not her biological parents – that her biological parents were in fact convicted serials killers. But while she's coming to an understanding about her fae heritage, the strange visions that are a part of that, she's not yet ready to make the choice that destiny would have her make. 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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Shadow Rider by Christine Feehan
Stefano Ferraro is the head of Italian family-run mega business. From hotels to racing cars, the Ferraros seem to have their fingers in many pies, and not all of them are legal. Splashed across the gossip columns of every newspaper and magazine in America the 4 brothers and their sister are a group of gorgeous beings to be reckoned with. The family have a secret though; they are Shadow Riders. They have supernatural powers which allow them to travel, unseen, through the shadows; a power which they use to serve justice when the legal system fails, allowing them to protect their neighbourhood from the criminal underworld. Full review...
Warlock Holmes: A Study in Brimstone by G S Denning
A wise fictional character once said that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. With this in mind – what is Sherlock Holmes? A genius eccentric whose mind works on a different plain, or perhaps the more obvious option is that he was a Warlock? Surely his ability to see what others cannot is more likely to be through magic, rather than intellect? Full review...
Book of Lies by Teri Terry
As teenage fiction Book of Lies has all the usual themes -- confused sense of identity, relationship troubles, difficult family backgrounds... But it also has another element: the supernatural. The story starts when identical twin girls (the charmingly named Piper and Quinn) are reunited as teenagers, having been separated at birth. We follow their journey as they discover each other and reveal the complexities of their shared family, their terrifying dreams and sinister non-human abilities. As with all good supernatural stories, there are hints of witchcraft, hounds of death and family curses. Full review...
The Visitors Book by Sophie Hannah
Sophie Hannah's The Visitors Book is a short anthology of modern stories with a supernatural twist. There is not a hammy gothic turret in sight as her characters experience their mundane, day-to-day, 21st century business -- a children's birthday party, a visit to a boyfriend, neck pain, the school run. Now, ghost stories based on ordinary people leading ordinary lives can be very unsettling indeed, making overly imaginative readers look over their shoulder at the bus stop, or giving them goosebumps for no apparent reason. So I was curious to see what Sophie Hannah, a writer I much admire, would make of this particular material. Full review...
