“A compelling story of a family torn apart by events beyond their control.”
Reeling from the loss of their only child, Stephen and Shelley Morrison learn that her killer has been found dead. What they don’t know is that his agenda goes far deeper than the grave. Beyond the storm, beyond the crack in the sky—where their daughter lies trapped with The Lost Ones—something is using Stephen and Shelley’s agony to fulfil its goals: Terrorize. Consume. Destroy.
Why We’re Excited About This Book: Omnium Gatherum are a small press slowly building up a reputation for well-written genre fiction; their latest release is Cracked Sky, a novella from American writer Ben Eads. It takes as its starting point every parent’s worst nightmare – the loss of a child. Cracked Sky poses the terrible question: what would you be prepared do to reverse such a tragedy? It’s fertile horror territory, stretching back through Pet Sematary to ‘The Monkey’s Paw’. Taking some inspiration from King but very much his own writer, Eads brings the reader a compelling story of a family torn apart by events beyond their control. With advance praise from the likes of Joe Mynhardt and Kealan Patrick Burke, Cracked Sky certainly looks intriguing.
Cracked Sky is out on 12 January 2015 from Omnium Gatherum.
“Merges the spirits of Shirley Jackson and the kind of fairy tale where strange things happen in the woods”
Alexander waits in his yellow-gray house in a yellow wood for his namesake daughter, the one who “of all my children … has always stirred me most, with love, with rage and fear, with envy and disappointment.” He has summoned her. She is his prodigal child, and she is his scion, and it’s time.
Alexandra left as soon as she turned eighteen, the only way she could keep from being swallowed up by her father, her only chance of having a life of her own. Alexandra grew up with her father’s voice in her head, his will on her in one form or another. Now, though she vowed she never would, she is going back. Because his voice came into her head, ordering her home.
The longer Alexandra stays with her father in her childhood home, the stronger her suspicions that his control over her is more insidious than she knew. Her siblings are all oddly under his control, exactly what he made them, and she discovers evidence of what he has planned for her.
“She fled to live her own life,” Alexander observes. “As if there ever were such a thing.”
Why We’re Excited About This Book: Melanie Tem will be a name familiar to many horror readers, both for her solo work and her collaborations with her husband, Steve Rasnic Tem. An accomplished playwright and poet as well as fiction writer, Tem returns with a new novel from Chizine next year. The Yellow Woods is about a young woman struggling to free herself from the influence of her father, who she believes to have some kind of supernatural powers. Merging the spirits of Shirley Jackson and the kind of fairy tale where strange things happen in the woods, this book is a magical-realism family saga about a very strange family. Tem’s writing is always multi-layered and perfectly controlled, and The Yellow Woods promises to be another gem.
The Yellow Wood is out on 20 January 2015 from Chizine.
JAMES EVERINGTON