Here’s a small selection of the horror and genre news that caught our eye during the last week …
Arriving 12 May from authors Mark Allan Gunnells, Brandon Ford and Shane Nelson and publisher Crystal Lake Publishing, Against the Clock
Arriving 12 May from Crystal Lake Publishing’s Dark Tides range comes Against The Clock, a collection of three darkly suspenseful mystery novellas. Featuring ‘Septic’ by Mark Allan Gunnells, ‘Subscription Due’ by Shane Nelson and ‘Pixelated’ by Brandon Ford, This novella anthology is perfect for fans of mystery and suspense books, thrillers, small town mysteries, unsolved crimes, and a bit of horror. Available for pre-order now in eBook, with a paperback to follow, you can guarantee your copy here.
It’s just a book, right? To some, this is true. But what if an author’s work has made a tangible difference in a reader’s life? Steve Stred came from humble beginnings, born and raised in Burton, BC, Canada – population approx. 75. Through the years, he’s battled depression and the fight between his small-town boy fear of the larger world and his inner self desperately wanting more; to see more, do more, experience more. Over his life, Steve’s sought out challenges – being the first in his family to graduate from university. Pursuing weight-lifting, shotput and bobsled, all with the ultimate goal to make it to the Olympic Games.
But how does one pick themselves up when failure continuously rears its ugly head? A chance purchase in 2014 changed everything and set in motion a relationship between the books of his favorite author and key moments within his own life. Featuring a powerful foreword from Andrew Pyper, Steve Stred’s ‘The Color of Melancholy: An Examination of Andrew Pyper’s Novels as Intersected Through My Life,’ uses a mix of humor and seriousness to describe his upbringing, his challenges and how he fell back in love with writing, while also discussing how Andrew Pyper’s novels have woven their way into the fabric of his own history – and how a friendship was born. Available for pre-order now in eBook, with physical editions coming soon, you can guarantee your copy here.
Twelve years after a cataclysmic event ripped apart the state of South Australia, the Triplow family has finally found peace. Settling down in Corona, California, has ensured that the horrors and madness remain relegated to another time, another place.
On the morning of September 7th, 2022, that false perception is shattered when Bob Triplow is compelled to take his son on a journey back into the horrors of his childhood. To a place well beyond their old home in Hastings… well beyond South Australia… a place truly out of this world, where Bob will learn that the past always finds a way of catching up. While Bob Triplow struggles for his own sanity within this dark, boundless dimension, his son, a mere child of ten, will have to make decisions upon which six billion lives depend. Available now in eBook and paperback, you can grab your copy here.
Find Obsession. Find Madness. Find Worship. From the gothic imagination of Coy Hall comes A Pantheon of Thieves, a collection of eight horror tales that travel realms of the weird and uncanny. Here gods of memory, pain, and deceit hold a wicked blood court. Here gods open their eyes like a bright moon veiled in smoke. Here the gods of the dead, the gods of metamorphosis, and the gods of nightmare stand hopeful for unwary travelers. Available to pre-order now ahead of its 8 May release, you can guarantee your copy here.
Darkness comes in different forms: in the mischief of the supernatural, in the evil of demonic spirits, or in the greed and selfishness of humans themselves. Regardless of where it comes from, its proponents are all ‘devil kin’. From gothic to post-apocalyptic to vampiric folk horror, the kin are waiting in this collection of short stories from the author of The Five Turns of the Wheel, Paused and more. Available for pre-order now in eBook, with a paperback edition to follow soon, you can guarantee your copy here.
The stories in this book were inspired by real-life events. Some are loose interpretations of my nightmares and experiences, and others are dark memoirs. All were designed to evoke emotion. Longing, fear, remorse, desperation, and of course, anxiety, are a few of the horrors we all face and the ones from which there is often no escape. These stories were written during the most difficult periods in my life. Addiction, incarceration, and depression are the demons of which I speak. Creating this compilation became the tool I used to overcome these demons. This is the product of that struggle. This is Manx-iety. Available now in paperback and eBook editions, you can pick up your copy here.
A sinister being called Night and her panther-like Harriers stalk their quarry, a man known only as Arron. Arron seeks refuge within an office building, a place Night cannot go, for it’s part of the civilized world, and she’s a creature of the Wild. To flush Arron out, she creates Blight, a reality-warping field that slowly transforms the building and its occupants in horrible and deadly ways. But unknown to Night, while she waits for the Blight to do its work, a group of survivors from a previous attempt to capture Arron are coming for her. The hunter is now the hunted. Available to pre-order in paperback and eBook and with a hardcover edition still to come, you can guarantee your copy here.
The movement of the old woman’s hands is quick and youthful as she works the dough for tamales on Mars’ dusty, dry surface where their cohete broke apart and crash landed. She, her husband and their only son survive, and the old man curses the coyotes who took his money for a rocket not built to accommodate his family of eleven. A storm is coming, and he rails at his wife that she’s wasting her time. “We’ll be dead by the time you finish your goddamn tamales.” This riveting collection of horror stories–and four poems–contains a wide range of styles, themes and authors. Creepy creatures roam the pages, including La Llorona and the Chupacabras in fresh takes on Latin American lore, as well as ghosts, zombies and shadow selves. Migrants continue to pass through Rancho Altamira where Esteban’s family has lived for generations, but now there are two types: the living and the dead. A young man returns repeatedly to the scary portal down which his buddy disappeared. A woman is relieved to receive multiple calls from her cousin following Hurricane María in Puerto Rico, but she is stunned to later learn her prima died the first night of the storm! There’s plenty of blood and gore in some stories, while others are mysterious and suspenseful. Available for pre-order now in paperback, with other editions to follow, you can guarantee your copy here.
KEV HARRISON