Look Out For … Chills by Mary SanGiovanni
“The claustrophobic setting creates an atmosphere of mounting and nightmarish tension.”
True Detective meets H.P. Lovecraft in this chilling novel of murder, mystery, and slow-mounting dread from acclaimed author Mary SanGiovanni…
It begins with a freak snowstorm in May. Hit hardest is the rural town of Colby, Connecticut. Schools and businesses are closed, power-lines are down, and police detective Jack Glazier has found a body in the snow. It appears to be the victim of a bizarre ritual murder. It won’t be the last. As the snow piles up, so do the sacrifices. Cut off from the rest of the world, Glazier teams up with an occult crime specialist to uncover a secret society hiding in their midst.
The gods they worship are unthinkable. The powers they summon are unstoppable. And the things they will do to the good people of Colby are utterly, horribly unspeakable…
Why We’re Excited About This Book:
Mary SanGiovanni is the author of the Bram Stoker nominated novel The Hollower and its sequels, as well as multiple novellas and short stories. Her latest work, Chills, is a fast-paced, grisly horror novel about a small American town cut off from the world by snow. Stranded there with the townspeople are a police officer called in to investigating a bizarre murder and an occult crime expert who helps him.
The author combines elements of the police procedural with Lovecratian horror to produce a genuinely thrilling and scary novel. The claustrophobic setting allows no escape for the two protagonists, creating an atmosphere of mounting and nightmarish tension. As the bodies pile up it becomes clear there is a supernatural force at work and that failing to stop it will lead to nightmarish consequences for the town of Colby, and the wider world…
Any book by SanGiovanni is one to look out for and Chills is no exception. This is novel to enjoy as the nights grow darker.
Chills is out on 27 September 2016 from Lyrical Underground.
Look Out For … Ghost Highway
“Ghost Highway brings together some of the most talented names in horror fiction today.”
A unique journey along highways that will transport the reader to places–outside the comfort of home, of the cosy armchair–where demons in their many forms, hold sway.
Ghost Highway contains 12 previously unpublished stories and a further 3 reprinted stories, (one of which is a completely revised version), from some of the most exciting and proven masters of the genre, including Ramsey Campbell, Simon Clark, Ralph Robert Moore, Ray Cluley, Thana Niveau and many more. Paul Finch has written an introduction that sets the scene perfectly for what is to come.
The themes relate to ghost highways in the fullest, often oblique, sense. In his introduction, Paul Finch reflects that: “Roads aren’t just roads. They’re metaphors for journeys–journeys through life, journeys towards death, journeys we personally have made, journeys we’d like to make or dread making, journeys that others have made”.
But there is another aspect to these stories: that of the haunting residue; ghosts in all their various interpretations. The characters are haunted in some way, often in subtle ways. The nightmares that haunt them are often baleful, leaving the protagonists trapped within the fates they have invoked.
Each story has an illustrated introductory page that suggests the mood of what is to come, tempting the reader into whatever nightmarish world the author has created.
Why We’re Excited About This Book:
Ghost Highway is the second anthology from Midnight Street Press; the first was the fantastic Journeys Into Darkness released in 2014. Ghost Highway collects together stories using an archetypal horror location: the haunted road. It’s a setting that many horror authors have used before and with good reason: given how many people die on the roads, surely the spaces around them must be think with ghosts?
But if the theme is familiar, the roll-call of talent assembled by editor Trevor Denyer guarantees that the stories will be anything but. Ghost Highway brings together some of the most talented names in horror fiction today: Ramsey Campbell, Thana Niveau, Simon Clark, Ray Cluley and many more. With an emphasis on the ghostly, the mysterious and the haunted, this is one anthology you won’t want to miss. It officially launches at Fantasycon 2016.
Ghost Highway is out on 23 September 2016 from Midnight Street Press.
JAMES EVERINGTON
