Look Out For… Point Hollow by Rio Youers

“Youers’s stories are always immaculately constructed, written with a sure sense of both character and setting.”

Point Hollow, NY. A town with secrets. To the tourists that visit each summer, it is quintessential America. They stroll through its picturesque streets and hike its stunning trails. No one sees the cracks in the town’s veneer. No one knows its terrible history…  a secret that has been buried–forgotten. But Abraham’s Faith, the mountain that overshadows Point Hollow, doesn’t forget so easily. It is wicked and controlling. It is filled with the bones of children. Oliver Wray is Point Hollow’s favourite son, its most generous benefactor, admired by all. But Oliver, like the town, has a secret: Abraham’s Faith speaks to him, and he has spent a lifetime serving its cruel needs. He believes his secret is safe, but one person has glimpsed the darkness in his heart… Matthew Bridge hasn’t set foot in Point Hollow for twenty-six years. Something horrifying happened to him there. Memories of an ordeal that flicker and taunt, but cannot be recalled. Now, trying to find the answers to his failed marriage and failing life, Matthew is coming home. Back to Point Hollow. Back to Abraham’s Faith.

 Why We’re Excited About This Book: Three years since his last novel, the stunning Westlake Soul, Rio Youers returns with a new tale of small town American horror, Point Hollow.

Sounding like a cross between classic Stephen King, Lovecraft and even True Detective, Point Hollow is also very much its own thing: a Rio Youers story. A writer who obviously takes his art seriously, his stories are always immaculately constructed, written with a sure sense of both character and setting. Of course, American small towns with secrets to hide are ten a penny in horror fiction, but Point Hollow, sitting in the shadow of the sinister mountain Abraham’s Faith, already sounds like a worthy addition to Castle Rock, Milburn, Oxrun Station and all the rest.

A new book from a writer as good as Youers is always reason to celebrate, and Point Hollow will no doubt be high on many reader’s favourite books of the year.

Point Hollow is out on 7 July 2015 from ChiZine.

Look Out For… The Dulwich Horror & Others by David Hambling

“This collection traces the dark history of Norwood, with each story being  part of a wider whole”

Inspired by the Cthulhu Mythos of H. P. Lovecraft, this stylish new collection of adventure stories fizzes with wit and invention. They can be enjoyed separately, but read them in one sitting and the pieces fit horribly together into a larger and more terrible nightmare.

Why We’re Excited About This Book:

David Hambling is a British journalist whose work appears in The Guardian among other places, but who also writes some of the most interesting Lovecraftian fiction around. The Dulwich Horror & Others, introduced by S.T. Joshi, collects together seven such stories, all set in the location of SE19–the London district of Norwood. And it’s certainly an odd coincidence that the area known as Dulwich–so close in spelling to Lovecraft’s famous ‘Dunwich’–is in the area. The story ‘The Dulwich Horror Of 1927’ included here has previously been released as a standalone novella. It is a tale of champagne quaffing London socialites in the 20s, whose encounter with the mysterious at a London church at first seems to them just a lark, but rapidly becomes something darker…

Hambling uses this collection to trace the dark history of Norwood from the late Nineteenth Century to our own, with each story being  part of a wider whole. The Dulwich Horror & Others is available in both a normal edition and a signed edition of just 100 copies.

The Dulwich Horror & Others is available to pre-order now from PS Publishing.

JAMES EVERINGTON