Nick Fallon knows failure all too well. His string of collapsed business ventures make for a resume from hell. This next one, however, will be different. The Chamberlain Theater (sic) itself is different. Nick has bought himself a theatre and renovated it into a state of the art 4-D experience, but there’s something wrong with... Continue Reading →
Zhiguai:Chinese True Tales of the Paranormal and Glitches in the Matrix
Translated by Yi Izzy Yu & John Yu Branscum ‘Zhiguai’ roughly translates as ‘true weird tales’ and that is exactly what you get in this book. Fifteen tales of real encounters with the unexplained – the titular ‘glitches in the matrix’. The stories contained here vary massively from spooky precognition dreams, strange visions and trips... Continue Reading →
Tuxedo Junction by Thom Carnell
The third short story collection from Fangoria/Dread Central veteran writer Thom Carnell. I have put off writing this review for a while now as I’m finding difficult to put my thoughts on this collection into words. I didn’t especially like the book, but I am sure there is a massive market out there – it... Continue Reading →
Your Turn To Suffer by Tim Waggoner
Lori is determined to confront the Cabal and get her life back…. Having not read much by Tim Waggoner before this, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. From the blurb, Lori Palumbo has to ‘confess and atone – or suffer’, so I was envisaging some kind of cult type thing, especially with the Cabal... Continue Reading →
Dark Missives by Dan Howarth
My pre-release review copy. Great cover! This is Dan Howarth’s first collection of short fiction and it’s a good one, filled with diverse stories that all successfully highlight Howarth’s abilities as a writer. There are eleven stories in total covering a range of topics, including wrong doings in a holiday park, the Liverpool blitz, stalkers, and a home that doesn’t want to be... Continue Reading →
The Apocalypse Strain by Jason Parent
A multi-national research team study an ancient pandoravirus in a remote Siberian research facility. Much calamity and death ensue. Okay, so the actual blurb for the book reads a lot longer than my synopsis, but that should be enough to give you the gist. I went into this assuming it would be a bad idea... Continue Reading →
There Goes Pretty by CC Adams
Cover ©Dark Minds Press Not all marriages are happy. But very few become this terrifying. CC Adams is turning into a prolific writer, with a solid body of work behind him. Novellas like Forfeit Tissue and But Worse Will Come marked him out as someone to keep an eye on. This, his latest, from Dark... Continue Reading →
Arcana by Paul Kane
Great cover! Paul Kane is a name that deserves far wider recognition. His imagination is all over the place and you are never sure what you’re going to get from him. So far he has covered a reimagination of the Robin Hood myth, the end of the world with a disease, Sherlock Holmes crossing paths... Continue Reading →
Prince of Nightmares by John McNee
Victor goes to spend a few nights in the most haunted hotel in the world. What could go wrong? That’s a very brief synopsis as I don’t really like going into details on a plot for fear of inadvertently giving away a spoiler. Even books that have ‘you won’t see the twist coming!’ give me... Continue Reading →
My best of a shit year
Compiling any ‘best of’ list is always tricky and usually scorn inducing; how can he put that on there as this is so much better? If that’s you when you finish reading this, well, you can always make your own damn list.
David Watkins 