Look Out For… Breaking Point by Kit Power

“Fans of Jack Ketchum, Jasper Bark or Clive Barker will find much to admire here.”

A Cyclist is knocked unconscious on his way home and wakes up in a nightmare… A devoted husband begins to suspect all is not well with his marriage…  A desperate family man, running out of time and options, turns to an old schoolmate from the wrong side of the tracks – looking for work – any work… A young man’s world is thrown into chaos as his father is abducted…

Four tales of people pushed to Breaking Point.

Why We’re Excited About This Book: Breaking Point is a collection of four previously published stories by UK author Kit Power. It features The Lifeline Trilogy (‘The Loving Husband and the Faithful Wife’, ‘The Debt’ and ‘Lifeline’) and ‘Genesis’, a prequel to the author’s 2015 novel Godbomb.

The central story, ‘Lifeline’, starts with call-centre worker Frank, abducted on his way home from work one day and subject to brutal torture, the reasons for which only gradually become clear. It’s the kind of plot that in lesser hands is often cheap and derivative. But Power focuses his present tense narrative on the thoughts and feelings of his protagonist, making this a story as much about the psychology of someone under duress as torture porn. Fans of Jack Ketchum, Jasper Bark or the more brutal stories of Clive Barker will find much to admire here.

Dramatic, visceral yet controlled, these are stories written by an author who knows just what he’s doing.

Breaking Point is out on 16 July 2016 from The Sinister Horror Company.

Look Out For… In The Shadow Of Frankenstein

“A superb selection of short stories.”

Frankenstein… His very name conjures up images of plundered graves, secret laboratories, electrical experiments, and reviving the dead. Within these pages, the maddest doctor of them all and his demented disciples once again delve into the Secrets of Life, as science fiction meets horror when the world’s most famous creature lives again.

Here are collected together for the first time twenty-four electrifying tales of cursed creation that are guaranteed to spark your interest with classics from the pulp magazines by Robert Bloch and Manly Wade Wellman, modern masterpieces from Ramsey Campbell, Dennis Etchison, Karl Edward Wagner, David J. Schow, and R. Chetwynd-Hayes, and new contributions from Graham Masterson, Basil Copper, John Brunner, Guy N. Smith, Kim Newman, Paul J. McAuley, Roberta Lannes, Michael Marshall Smith, Daniel Fox, Adrian Cole, Nancy Kilpatrick, Brian Mooney and Lisa Morton.

As an electrical storm rages overhead, the generators are charged up, and beneath the sheet a cold form awaits its miraculous rebirth. Now it’s time to throw that switch and discover all that Man Was Never Meant to Know. “

Why We’re Excited About This Book: There’s few books that can claim to have had as big an influence on horror as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. Mad doctors; reanimated corpses; misunderstood monsters–as the title of this anthology suggests, horror movies and fiction have been in the shadow of Shelley’s creation ever since.

The stories Stephen Jones has selected for In The Shadow Of Frankenstein: Tales Of The Modern Prometheus examines this legacy, sometimes directly, sometimes obliquely. There’s  the revenge fantasy of Michael Marshall Smith’s ‘To Receive Is Better’, the satire of modern fame in Stephen Volk’s ‘Celebrity Frankenstein’, and a clever take on the Universal studio’s monsters in David J. Schow’s ‘Last Call For The Sons Of Shock’. Other authors featured include Ramsey Campbell, Jo Fletcher, Roberta Lannes and Manly Wade Wellman.

As if the superb selection of short stories wasn’t enough, the volume also includes three complete novels: The Hound of Frankenstein by Peter Tremayne, The Dead End by David Case, and of course, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley.

In The Shadow Of Frankenstein is out now from Pegasus Books.

JAMES EVERINGTON