Look Out For … In the Light by S.P. Miskowski
While fleeing from neighbourhood bullies, a lonely girl uncovers a dark secret buried near the abandoned ruins of a house mired in local legend. Ruth hopes the charred remains that she unearths will bring a bit of magic to her life, but she’s no match for the force that dwells in this place, waiting for a chance to live again.
A displaced child neglected by affluent parents and a former preacher burdened by the tragic and scandalous circumstances of his mother’s death face a final reckoning at the hands of a woman with the power to summon good and evil.
In the Light is the final book of the Skillute Cycle, a chronicle of one fictional town and an abiding horror that lies just beneath the surface. In the woods. In the water. Beneath the ground. The time has arrived. Something evil has come home.
Why We’re Excited About This Book: S.P. Miskowski’s Skillute Cycle began with the novel Knock Knock in 2011, and continued with the novellas Delphine Dodd and Astoria. Each are standalone works and can be read separately, but together they build an overarching story of small town supernatural horror. The cycle is completed in the third and final novella, In The Light. As before, this novella takes a minor character or incident from Knock Knock and expands it into a full-length story.
Miskowski’s fiction has a strong focus on female characters and experiences – puberty, relationships, childbirth – and a chilly sense of dread across the decades, befitting the cold and bleak setting. There is no cosy escapism here, in Miskowski’s world ‘real-life’ can be as terrible and inescapable as the supernatural. Don’t miss out on this conclusion to what has been one of the finest series of horror stories in recent years.
This Book Will Appeal To: all discerning fans of intelligent, literate genre fiction.This Is Horror readers, basically.
In The Light is out on 2 September 2014 from Omnium Gatherum.
In the meantime, the other books in the Skillute Cycle are available on Amazon.
Look Out For… I Will Hold My Death Close by Stant Litore
Marked for sacrifice by her own father…
A young woman must rely on only her wits and troubled memories of her mother’s faith to survive. She flees to the hills, knowing her father and his stone blade may appear at any time to claim her—while the unburied dead of her people also hunt her in the low ravines.
But she remembers how her mother once stood bravely against the dead. And now, in her long flight in the dark, Jepthah’s daughter will hold her own death close so that no one can take it from her.
The centuries to come will not remember her name. But generations of young women will climb the hills to remember her.
Why We’re Excited About This Book: I Will Hold My Death Close is a story in Stant Litore’s ‘Zombie Bible’ series, which takes Biblical situations and imagines they occurred in a world with zombies – not much of a leap when you think about the story of Lazarus.
This tale takes its inspiration from Judges 11 which we’re not too familiar with, but in which a man rather rashly promises to sacrifice the first person he sees when he returns home from a victorious war. Unfortunately, the first person he sees is his own daughter. In Litore’s retelling, the daughter is left as a sacrifice to the shambling unburied dead and I Will Hold My Death Close tells her story.
The previous ‘Zombie Bible’ books have managed to make something fresh and new out of the mouldy old zombie genre, and I Will Hold My Death Close looks set to do the same.
This Book Will Appeal To: horror readers alone in a hotel room, who want something to read other than the Gideon’s Bible in the bedside drawer.
I Will Hold My Death Close is out on 28 August 2014 from Amazon Singles.
JAMES EVERINGTON