Look Out For… The Complete Double Dead by Chuck Wendig

“Double Dead and its sequel are irreverent, gory, and very humorous.”

A vampire in zombieland.

You wouldn’t like Coburn. People don’t, as a rule. And that’s okay, because he doesn’t like people much either. People are food.

Five years ago, Coburn went to sleep–wasn’t exactly planned–and he’s just woken up to find most everybody in the world dead. Not dead like him; he looks human, drinks blood. He’s smart. They’re… none of those things. They outnumber him by about a million to one, and their clotted blood cannot sustain him.

Now he’s starving, and on the run. He has to find blood, soon, and–like it or not–he’s gonna have to keep an eye on the frail flesh-bags he finds it in. Time for the wolf to turn shepherd.

No, Coburn doesn’t like people. But he’ll have to learn to.

Why We’re Excited About This Book: The Complete Double Dead is a real bargain, collecting together Chuck Wendig’s acclaimed debut novel Double Dead and the follow-up, Bad Blood. The two stories deal with a typically inventive and outlandish Wendig scenario: a vampire called Coburn wakes up from his slumbers to find that the world has succumbed to a zombie uprising. The first volume tells of Coburn’s realisation that he can’t drink zombie blood–he needs the blood of the living to sustain him–and of his quest to find and protect any living people who are left.  Which doesn’t come naturally to him, given Coburn’s attitude to his food… Bad Blood continues the story as Coburn discovers a group of humans who, in a neat reversal, eat zombie flesh to survive. What follows is as bloody, action packed and smart as anything Wendig has written.

Fans of the author’s work will already know his style: irreverent, gory, and very humorous. For newcomers, this double-volume represents a great place to dive into Wendig-world.

The Complete Double Dead is out now from Abaddon Books.

Look Out For… Interior Darkness: Selected Stories by Peter Straub

 “Peter Straub is a formidably talented short story writer.”

Celebrated author Peter Straub’s mastery of the short form shines in this wide-ranging collection of his most chilling, intense, and compelling tales from the past twenty-five years.

Peter Straub has spent forty years at the forefront of modern literary horror. The stories assembled here represent his astonishing range and his ability to terrify, transport, and hold a reader hostage.

‘Mr. Clubb and Mr. Cuff’ is a darkly comic masterpiece in which a stern estate lawyer known as the Deacon hires a pair of ‘Private Detectives Extraordinaire’ to investigate and seek revenge on his unfaithful wife. In ‘The Ballad of Ballard and Sandrine’ a man and his much younger lover explore their decadent and increasingly sinister fantasies on a luxurious yacht in the remotest stretch of the Amazon River. ‘Blue Rose’ finds violence and power in the hands of the most innocent among us, leading to a conclusion that is fully surprising and devastating.

Each story cracks the foundation of our reality and opens our eyes, taking us further and further into the darkness that normally remains deeply, and safely, hidden. Interior Darkness is the gold standard of literary horror.

Why We’re Excited About This Book: Peter Straub is one of the masters of literary horror. Perhaps best known for novels such as Ghost Story, Shadowland and his collaborations with Stephen King, he is also a formidably talented short story writer. His new collection, Interior Darkness, brings together some of his best from the past twenty-five years.

It’s especially apt that Straub should release a retrospective collection, as an abiding theme across his fiction has been the hold the past retains over the present. Straub’s ghosts, whether literal or metaphorical, are things that should be safely buried, but aren’t. It’s a theme reflected in several of the stories here. Both ‘The Juniper Tree’ and ‘Blue Rose’ (which features a young Harry Beavers from Straub’s novel Koko) are about traumatic childhood events and their effects years afterwards; ‘Ash Pie Hat’ is the tale of someone who won’t go out on Halloween after what happened to him the last time he went trick or treating as a child.

Interior Darkness is a must-have collection from one of the genre’s most enduring talents.

Interior Darkness: Selected Stories is out now from Doubleday Books.

JAMES EVERINGTON