Look Out For… Drive by Mark West
When David sees Nat alone, late at night, she accepts his offer of a lift home. But, the streets at night are also alive with a gang intent on hurt and mayhem.
A gritty crime novella from the acclaimed short horror fiction writer and author of The Mill, Conjure and In the Rain with the Dead.
Why we’re excited about this book: There’s something inherently satisfying about a good horror novella – the length of story gives the author room to manoeuvre but still allows for that rising, unrelenting tension that is the genre’s hallmark.
Mark West has pedigree in this area, having previous published the excellent What Gets Left Behind (Spectral Press) and The Mill (Greyhart Press). Drive is something of a departure, a non-supernatural novella set, like many of West’s tales, in the fictional town of Gaffney – his very own version of Stephen King’s Castle Rock. Despite this fictional setting Drive is infused with the tension and fear of late night, twenty-first century Britain – taking place over a single night it promises to be a fast paced, tense, and savage thriller.
This book will appeal to: readers who want to experience the danger of the late night streets, whilst being safely tucked up in bed.
Drive is out soon from Pendragon Press and will be launched at the Edge-Lit 3 convention.
In the meantime, why not check out Mark West’s other books on Amazon?
Look Out For… Broken Monsters by Lauren Beukes
In the city that’s become a symbol for the death of the American dream, a nightmare killer is unravelling reality. The new thriller from Lauren Beukes, author of The Shining Girls.
Detective Gabi Versado has hunted down many monsters during her eight years in Homicide. She’s seen stupidity, corruption and just plain badness. But she’s never seen anything like this.
Clayton Broom is a failed artist, and a broken man. Life destroyed his plans, so he’s found new dreams – of flesh and bone made disturbingly, beautifully real.
Detroit is the decaying corpse of the American Dream. Motor-city. Murder-city. And home to a killer opening doors into the dark heart of humanity.
A killer who wants to make you whole again…
Why we’re excited about this book: Hands up who thought Lauren Beukes’s The Shining Girls was one of the most exciting, original books they’d read for a long time? We thought so. After all, it was a gorgeously executed mashup of crime, time-travel, and serial killings. And her new one, Broken Monsters, looks set to continue the trend. It starts with a police detective in Detroit finding a body which is half boy, half deer, somehow fused together, and apparently gets weirder and more gruesome from there on in. And if that doesn’t appeal, there’s no hope for you.
Richard And Judy apparently had The Shining Girls in their book-club. Who knows what they’re going to make of this one!
This book will appeal to: discerning genre fans and/or mad taxidermists, by the sound of it.
Broken Monsters is out on the 31 July 2014 from HarperCollins.
JAMES EVERINGTON