Here’s a small selection of the horror and genre news that caught our eye during the last week …
Tim Lebbon’s new novel, The Last Storm, out now from Titan Books
With global warming out of control, large swathes of North America have been struck by famine and drought and are now known as the Desert. A young woman sets out across this dry, hostile landscape, gradually building an arcane apparatus she believes will bring rain to the parched earth. Jesse lives alone, far from civilization. Once, he too made rain, but he stopped when his abilities caused fatalities, bringing down not just rain but scorpions, strange snakes and spiders. When his daughter Ash inherited this tainted gift, Jesse did his best to stop her. His attempt went tragically wrong, and he believes himself responsible for her death. But now his estranged wife Karina brings news that Ash is still alive. And she’s rainmaking again. Terrified of what she might bring down upon the desperate communities of the Desert, they set out to find her. But Jesse and Karina are not the only ones looking for Ash. As the storms she conjures become more violent and deadly, some follow her seeking hope. And one is hungry for revenge. Available now in hardcover, paperback, eBook and audiobook formats, you can grab your copy here.
A family’s Halloween haunted house becomes a conduit to something ancient and uncanny; a young man’s effigy of a movie monster becomes instrumental in his defense against a bully; a family diminishes while visiting a seaside town, leaving only one to remember what changed; a father explores a mysterious tower, and the monster imprisoned within; a man mourning the death of his father travels to his father’s hometown, seeking closure, but finds himself beset by dreams of mythic bargains and a primeval, corpse-eating titan. John Langan, author of the Bram Stoker Award-winning novel The Fisherman, returns with ten new tales of cosmic horror in Corpsemouth and Other Autobiographies. In these stories, he continues to chart the course of 21st century weird fiction, from the unfamiliar to the familial, the unfathomably distant to the intimate. Available now in eBook and paperback editions, you can grab your copy here.
Beautiful Atrocities collects eighteen stories of literary dark fiction from the Bram Stoker Award-nominated author Ross Jeffery, who terrified us with the sensational Juniper Series. These chilling stories run the gamut of modern horror and will leave the reader entertained, breathless and horrified in equal measure but still wanting to turn the page. This is a masterful debut collection from one of horror’s bright shining lights. Available to pre-order in eBook, with a paperback edition coming on release day, you can guarantee your copy here.
It should have been perfect. Detective Nolan had found a beautiful woman to love him. The serial killer known as the Doll Maker was dead, and the court of law had served justice to corrupt police officers within his department. But still reeling from his encounter with the cult known as the Brethren, Nolan was anything but happy. The nails the Brethren had driven into his hands were daily reminders that one day they may return to finish what they started, and that the life he had built may soon crumble around him. So, when an Internet sleuth contacts him with news about the cult, Nolan’s need to understand who is truly controlling things pushes him down a rabbit hole, one inhabited with a new serial killer who is disembowelling their victims and fashioning their intestines into a noose, and where within the shadows lurks the ghosts of his past. In this final thrilling instalment, Tom Nolan will have to go against his boss, his girlfriend, and his better judgement to end the reign of the Brethren. But at what cost? Available now in hardcover, paperback and eBook editions, you can grab your copy here.
2037: Under the suffocating pall of global warming, residents of an inn specially equipped with state-of-the-art air systems are forced to fight for their shelter and their very lives against a bizarre cult of silver-clad marauders. Call it climate change, global warming, or the course of nature. In the near future, the world is hot as hell, and only getting hotter. Disease, flooding and heat madness have pushed civilization to the edge of collapse. Law and order are quaint ideals. The world is dying. Not everyone can, or will, make their way to the safety of the government’s refugee centers. Some, like itinerant war veteran West, are determined to make it on their own – or die trying. Stumbling upon an inn-turned-fortress, West seeks only shelter from the hottest day ever, till night falls. The distrustful, entitled residents have a different plan — ousting West to the unforgiving radiation. It all changes with the appearance of The Silvers — a band of cannibalistic marauders who have embraced the apocalypse, seeing it as a signal from their god Sol to eradicate the weak. To them the inn is an ideal headquarters. And its guests — mere food. The occupants of the inn, alive only by fortune of fate until now, will need a crash course in killing. Only West can teach them. Available now in eBook, with a paperback edition to follow, you can get your copy here.
KEV HARRISON