Here’s a small selection of the horror and genre news that caught our eye during the last week …
Coming 1 March from Tor Nightfire and writer Catriona Ward, Sundial
You can’t escape what’s in your blood… All Rob wanted was a normal life. She almost got it, too: a husband, two kids, a nice house in the suburbs. But Rob fears for her oldest daughter, Callie, who collects tiny bones and whispers to imaginary friends. Rob sees a darkness in Callie, one that reminds her too much of the family she left behind. She decides to take Callie back to her childhood home, to Sundial, deep in the Mojave Desert. And there she will have to make a terrible choice. Callie is worried about her mother. Rob has begun to look at her strangely, and speaks of past secrets. And Callie fears that only one of them will leave Sundial alive… The mother and daughter embark on a dark, desert journey to the past in the hopes of redeeming their future. Available for pre-order now in eBook and hardcover editions, you can guarantee your copy here.
All The White Spaces, the new novel by Ally Wilkes, coming 29 March from Atria/Emily Bestler Books
In the wake of the First World War, Jonathan Morgan stows away on an Antarctic expedition, determined to find his rightful place in the world of men. Aboard the expeditionary ship of his hero, the world-famous explorer James “Australis” Randall, Jonathan may live as his true self—and true gender—and have the adventures he has always been denied. But not all is smooth sailing: the war casts its long shadow over them all, and grief, guilt, and mistrust skulk among the explorers. When disaster strikes in Antarctica’s frozen Weddell Sea, the men must take to the land and overwinter somewhere which immediately seems both eerie and wrong; a place not marked on any of their part-drawn maps of the vast white continent. Now completely isolated, Randall’s expedition has no ability to contact the outside world. And no one is coming to rescue them. In the freezing darkness of the Polar night, where the aurora creeps across the sky, something terrible has been waiting to lure them out into its deadly landscape… As the harsh Antarctic winter descends, this supernatural force will prey on their deepest desires and deepest fears to pick them off one by one. It is up to Jonathan to overcome his own ghosts before he and the expedition are utterly destroyed. Available to pre-order now in hardcover and audiobook formats, you can make sure of your copy here.
Antifa Splatterpunk, the new anthology edited by Eric Raglin, out now from Cursed Morsels Press
Fascism didn’t die in 1945. Its grave was only temporary. Rising again, this undead ideology shambles into the present, gathering power and spreading destruction wherever it goes. This monster stalks the pages of Antifa Splatterpunk, in which sixteen horror writers explore fascism’s many terrors: police wielding strange bioweapons against the public, white supremacists annihilating their enemies through dark magic, and TV personalities vilifying all who defy the rising fascist tide. But these stories are resistance: Nazi-killing demons, Confederate-slaying witches, and everyday people punching fascists in the teeth. Among the gore is a glimmer of hope that one day this monster will return to its grave and never rise again. Featuring a foreword by horror legend Kathe Koja, you can buy your copy in eBook or paperback now, here.
Arriving 18 January from Kristi DeMeester and St. Martin’s Press, Such a Pretty Smile
2019: Thirteen-year-old Lila Sawyer has secrets she can’t share with anyone. Not the school psychologist she’s seeing. Not her father, who has a new wife, and a new baby. And not her mother―the infamous Caroline Sawyer, a unique artist whose eerie sculptures, made from bent twigs and crimped leaves, have made her a local celebrity. But soon Lila feels haunted from within, terrorized by a delicious evil that shows her how to find her voice―until she is punished for using it. 2004: Caroline Sawyer hears dogs everywhere. Snarling, barking, teeth snapping that no one else seems to notice. At first, she blames the phantom sounds on her insomnia and her acute stress in caring for her ailing father. But then the delusions begin to take shape―both in her waking hours, and in the violent, visceral sculptures she creates while in a trance-like state. Her fiancé is convinced she needs help. Her new psychiatrist waives her “problem” away with pills. But Caroline’s past is a dark cellar, filled with repressed memories and a lurking horror that the men around her can’t understand. As past demons become a present threat, both Caroline and Lila must chase the source of this unrelenting, oppressive power to its malignant core. Brilliantly paced, unsettling to the bone, and unapologetically fierce, Such a Pretty Smile is a powerful allegory for what it can mean to be a woman, and an untamed rallying cry for anyone ever told to sit down, shut up, and smile pretty. Available for pre-order in eBook, hardcover and audiobook editions, you can guarantee your copy here.
Available now from TK Pulp, Circles of Hell, an anthology of stories inspired by Dante’s Inferno, edited by Dean M. Drinkel
Abandon all hope ye who enter the Inferno as Dean M. Drinkel and TK Pulp take you on an unforgettable journey into the darkest recesses of the 9 Circles of Hell first imagined by Dante . . . Featuring stories by authors such as Barbie Wilde, Trevor Kennedy, Allison Weir, among others, and a foreword by Peter Atkins, you can pick up your copy in paperback here, now.
KEV HARRISON
