Here’s a small selection of the horror and genre news that caught our eye during the last week …
Curated by Deborah Sheldon, this second volume follows the multi-award-winning and multi-award-nominated anthology of Australian dread, Spawn: Weird Horror Tales About Pregnancy, Birth and Babies.Spawn 2 interprets and reinterprets pregnancy, birth and babies in a myriad of unexpected ways that will frighten, shock, disgust, horrify, surprise, and move you.Penned by established authors and fresh new voices, these stories range from the folkloric and phantasmagorical, through sci-fi and cybernetics, to historical and the occult.Prepare for an intimate, anxious, eviscerating read. Available now in eBook and paperback, you can grab your copy here.
Step into the shadows with Monsters in Masquerade, the first book in OwlCrate Press’s anthology series, The Darkset Chronicles. This haunting collection of 16 stories weaves together myth, horror, and romance, each tale designed to linger long after the last page.
Imagine Once Upon a Time meets Penny Dreadful–where legends from various cultures are reimagined by an extraordinary roster of bestselling, emerging, and brand-new authors, including Isabel Cañas, Angela Montoya, Sami Ellis, Gabi Burton, Robin Alvarez, Megan LaCroix, Amanda M. Helander, A.Y. Chao, Vanessa Molina, Ann K. Reeves, Fatima Taqvi, Carolyn Ivancic, Hayden Stone, Cat Rector, Sarah Mughal Rana, and Jordan Fleming.
So dim the lights, grab a drink, and step into our Masquerade. Available for pre-order now, direct from the publisher, you can guarantee your copy here.
Selina Dragavei wanders the northern wastes in fear of persecution from the Holy Roman Church. In Europe’s Dark Age, witchfinders scour the lands and traveller folk such as she are put to flame and suffering. On the ruthless steppes, she evades them but something far sinister will lay claim to her soul.
Returning to the world of men, a dark, transformed Selina has a thirst for blood and only the drift down through the centuries will quench it. But she won’t make that journey alone, as she determines to bring others to her. As a troupe of entertainers, they attend pageants, festivals, and even royal galas, where a family bound to darkness feed on unsuspecting mortals. Such debauchery, however, does not go unnoticed. Famed witchfinder, Desider von Brandenburg, becomes obsessed with bringing this band of vampire-devils to a righteous cleansing, and so a deadly game of cat and mouse ensues.
Will the holy man bring God’s wrath down upon them, or will Selina and her nightwalkers battle the might of Heaven and emerge unscathed? Only instinct, cunning, and a little luck under the watch of a wolf moon will tell … Available now in eBook and paperback editions, you can pick up yours here.
Arnold Masterson had always been a bit of a hypochondriac, so when he woke up one morning with a strange and unexplainable ringing in his right ear, the first thought that entered his mind was that he must have a brain tumor.
Why not? Everything else in his life had gone south. His wife paid little to no attention to him anymore (in fact, he had a sneaking suspicion she was having an affair), he had no real friends, and he absolutely hated his job. Tack on a more than slightly bulging gut and several randomly placed bald spots on his head that made him feel like a mangy dog, and the sound of a brain tumor didn’t really seem all that bad.
But, upon further investigation, Arnold quickly discovers that brain tumors aren’t the only thing that can cause this strange ringing in his ear…and in his case, the cause may just lead to a very unlikely friendship that turns out to be the solution to all of his other problems. Available now in eBook, paperback and hardcover editions, you can grab your copy here.
Next Saturday, 7 December, author Joseph Freeman will be teaming up with a host of talented horror writers for another edition of his Winter Tales reading event. Hosted on his YouTube channel, fans of dark tales for cold nights can tune in for free and listen to six writers read their stories. Further information is available on Freeman’s website, here.
KEV HARRISON