In the tiny English village of Alder, dreams and nightmares are beginning to come true. Creatures from local legend, science fiction and the dark side of the human mind prowl the town. Paul, a young academic composing a thesis about the end of the world, and his girlfriend Hazel, a potter, have come to stay in Alder for the summer. Their idea of a rural retreat gradually sours as the laws of nature begin to breakdown around them. Paul and Hazel are drawn into a vortex of fear as violent chaos engulfs the community and the village prepares to reap a harvest of horror. Alder is just like any other village, everyone knows everyone else’s business and some of the families have lived there for countless generations. To an outsider, life would appear wonderful in this rural idyll, but bubbling just beneath the surface lies a whole host of repressed emotions, violent tendencies and age-old lusts. Right at the centre of all this pent up frustration and angst is the local manor house, Agapemone, home to Anthony William Jago and his followers. Jago is, as you might expect from the leader of a religious cult, suitably enigmatic. His presence is…

It is 1888 and Queen Victoria has remarried, taking as her new consort the Wallachian Prince infamously known as Count Dracula. His polluted bloodline spreads through London as its citizens increasingly choose to be vampires. In the grim backstreets of Whitechapel, a killer known as ‘Silver Knife’ is cutting down vampire girls. The eternally young Genevieve Dieudonne and Charles Beauregard of the Diogenes Club are drawn together as they both hunt the sadistic killer, bringing them ever closer to England’s most bloodthirsty ruler yet. Anno Dracula is a novel that has been on my ‘to read’ list for years. Mrs Cheesecake has mentioned it in passing many times. She read the short story version when it was first published as Red Reign, in the collection the Mammoth Book of Vampires in 1992.  Her enjoyment of this prompted her to seek out the novel when it was released later that year. Mrs Cheesecake suggested that I give this a whirl when the re-release appeared again recently. I read Bram Stoker’s Dracula many moons ago, what self respecting horror fan hasn’t?  Anno Dracula is pitched as a direct sequel based on the premise that Van Helsing and his group failed. Dracula has…