Christmas – a season of goodwill given to all mankind, and of snowbound winter wonderlands; a time for the gathering of families and friends to share in a bounteous harvest of good cheer, of sparkling decorations and roaring fires lighting up the parlour; and of glittering presents strewn beneath the glorious fir tree, and of excited children full of boundless joy in their hearts. And the time when the ghosts of those long gone, of the restless, the unhappy and the bitter are closest to the living, walking abroad in the frozen landscape outside the cosy living-room window. Here are thirteen seasonal tales of those lonely, wandering spirits, guaranteed to bring delicious thrills to all aficionados of the ghostly and the supernatural. Inside these pages you will find, amongst others, stories of eerie urban myths, age-old rituals, lost invaders from history, haunted weather phenomena, strange spirits, and creatures of myth and legend, told by some of the finest and most exciting writers working in the field today.  So, this Christmas, stoke the fire in the grate, pour yourself a glass of fine port, dim the lights and settle down in your favourite armchair, then sit back and relax, and prepare…

Please note that The President’s Vampire is a direct sequel to Blood Oath and that this review may contain some minor spoilers. Got it? Good, now on with the show… For 140 years, Nathaniel Cade has been the President’s Vampire, sworn by a blood oath to protect the President and America from their supernatural enemies. Cade’s existence is the most closely guarded of White House secrets: a superhuman covert agent who is the last line of defense against nightmare scenarios that ordinary citizens can only dream of. When a new outbreak of an ancient evil – one that Cade has seen before – comes to light, he and his human handler, Zach Barrows, must track down its source. To ‘protect and serve’ often means settling old scores and confronting new betrayals . . . as only a century-old predator can. A couple of weeks ago I happily devoured Blood Oath by Christopher Farnsworth. Politics, vampires and the seriously-deranged mad scientist proved to be a real winner. I enjoyed the novel a great deal, so much in fact that I decided that I needed to read the sequel as soon as my schedule would allow. Events pick up about a year after the…

Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit who enjoys a comfortable, unambitious life, rarely travelling further than the pantry of his hobbit-hole in Bag End. But his contentment is disturbed when the wizard, Gandalf, and a company of thirteen dwarves arrive on his doorstep one day to whisk him away on an unexpected journey ‘there and back again’. They have a plot to raid the treasure hoard of Smaug the Magnificent, a large and very dangerous dragon… With the forthcoming release of the first part of The Hobbit it seems only right and proper that I get around to finally reading the book for the first time. Yes, I know I’m thirty-eight and I should probably should have read it years ago but I’ll let you in on a secret. I’m more than a little intimidated by what you would probably term classic fiction. There I’ve said it. I’ve finally admitted my secret shame. Why am I so overwhelmed? Well, The Hobbit is the perfect example to help illustrate my problem. The book was first published way back in 1937. Since then, many people, the vast majority of whom (probably all) are far cleverer than I, have read it and produced an in-depth…

Ecko is an unlikely saviour: a savage, gleefully cynical rebel/assassin, he operates out of hi-tech London, making his own rules in a repressed and subdued society. When the biggest job of his life goes horribly wrong, Ecko awakes in a world he doesn’t recognise: a world without tech, weapons, cams, cables – anything that makes sense to him. Can this be his own creation, a virtual Rorschach designed just for him, or is it something much more? Ecko finds himself immersed in a world just as troubled as his own, striving to conquer his deepest fears and save it from extinction. If Ecko can win through, he might just learn to care – or break the program and get home. Imagine taking a character from a cyber-punk thriller and transplanting them wholesale into a fully fleshed out fantasy novel. Danie Ware’s debut novel, Ecko Rising, does just that. Ecko is terrifically smart, more than a little inquisitive and great at what he does. So good in fact, that he is a trifle cocky about it. Does this make him a bit irritating/smug at times? Perhaps, but that’s all part of his quirky charm. Ecko’s journey is the core of this novel and it’s a…

Three hackers. A deadly plot. One chance to save humanity.  2153. Post-cataclysm. The last city exists beneath a dome where the mysterious benefactors ‘The Family’ tightly control the population with a death lottery and a semi-autonomous network. All is well until the day family man Gerry Cardle, head of the death lottery, inexplicably finds himself the no.1 target of a malicious Artificial Intelligence. Gerry’s numbers are up, and he has just 7 days to save himself, find the source of the AI, and keep the last stronghold of humanity safe. Gerry finds help in the shadows of the city from two rogue hackers: Petal – a teenage girl with a penchant for violence, hacking systems and general anarchy, and: Gabriel – a burnt-out programmer-turned-priest with highly augmented cybernetics. With his new team, Gerry discovers there is more beyond the dome than The Family had let on, and his journey to find the source of the AI leads him through a world of violence, danger, and startling revelations. Everything is not as it seems. Gerry is not who he thinks he is. Evil can be coded….  can Gerry and his friends stop it before it destroys humanity? There’s always something inherently intriguing…

Sharp and ambitious, Zach Barrows is on his way up. But when he gets a call from the White House, it’s not quite the promotion he expected. Zach is to be the new political liaison officer to America’s best kept secret: Nathaniel Cade. The President’s vampire. And Cade is the world’s only hope against a horrifying new terrorist threat advancing from the Middle East. The fight is deadlier than ever, and time is running out . . . Like partners in a mis-matched buddy cop movie, the relationship between Barrows and Cade is at the heart of this novel. Barrows starts the novel blissfully ignorant of the supernatural forces that exist in the world. After an unexpected promotion, the truth is revealed and his world view is completely turned on its head. Initially, Barrows is all cocky attitude and very sure of himself, glad to say that doesn’t last very long. Cade by contrast is aloof, and considers humans to be little more than cattle, exactly what you’d expect from a long lived vampire I suppose. The events this pair go through start to bring about a mutual respect and by the novel’s end there are hints of a bromance…

It is the second age of Space… In the seventeenth millennium, the New Commonality of Humankind is expanding, using newly discovered faster-than-light travel to discover lost worlds colonised in the distant past. It’s a time of turmoil, of clashing cultures, as civilisations shudder and collapse before the might of a benevolent empire ten millennia old. In the Solenine Cluster, things are going from bad to worse, as hyper-advanced technologies destabilise a world in chaos. Thaddeus Clay and his SCI Force special ops team are on the trail of the Transmigration Heresy. What they find is something beyond even their imagining – something which could tear the whole Commonality apart… Centuries have passed since a huge galactic diaspora that scattered the human race across the far flung reaches of the universe. In fact, so much time has passed that when the descendants of these civilizations begin to reconnect with one another they have diverged quite considerably.  The plot of Mindjammer uses this as a jumping off point to explore the problems that arise when conflicting ideals/philosophies meet their polar opposite. The four members of the SCI Force team are a veritable who’s who of sci-fi action hero archetypes. Their leader. Dr….

Reclusive outdoorsman, Jimmy Kerrigan, finds himself battling a vampiric plague which threatens to destroy Hobson’s Valley, the isolated mountain community he calls home. When his family, friends and neighbours fall prey to the ‘Fugue’, Kerrigan is the only one who can save them and prevent the disease spreading beyond the remote town’s boundaries. Kerrigan is uniquely equipped to deal with the outbreak. He carries a variant strain of Fugue enabling him to overcome and heal its victims. However, the nature of the illness ensures neither he nor those he hunts down are aware they’re infected. After feeding on humans, the diseased forget their behaviour. Even Kerrigan, having confronted or neutralised a Fugue, is unable to recall his actions as guardian of Hobson’s Valley. The illness and its effects have, like tetanus, survived in the earth around the mountain for countless generations. The lineage of Fugue Hunters has always been able to reverse an outbreak but not this time; someone wants the disease to spread and, in combination with a mutation of the virus, Kerrigan realises he may not be strong enough to contain it. Kerrigan is challenged beyond his limits when an innocent family of outsiders hikes straight into a…

Paris. City of lights. City of lovers. City of dreams. Yet if one man gets his way, its inhabitants will soon be forced to endure a nightmare such as they have never known. But Hero of the British Empire Ulysses Quicksilver is determined to get in his way… although he has problems of his own to deal with first, before he can try to rescue the French capital from its earth-shattering fate. Arriving at a murder scene, Ulysses is forced to go on the run, so that he might track down the real killer. His intention: to clear his good name, and get back to England in one piece and as quickly as possible; for the love of his life is about to take a most ill-advised trip to the Moon. But the terrorist known only as ‘Le Papillon’ is preparing to bring chaos to the capital. Let’s start with a little history lesson, seems only appropriate when this novel features time travel as a major component. Time’s Arrow was original published slightly differently than the previous Pax Britannia novels. It first saw the light of day as a three part episodic e-novel where the readers got to make a…

R.H. Ragona’s Circus of Magic is the greatest circus of Ellada. Nestled among the glowing blue Penglass – remnants of a mysterious civilisation long gone – are wonders beyond the wildest imagination. It’s a place where anything seems possible, where if you close your eyes you can believe that the magic and knowledge of the vanished Chimeras is still there. It’s a place where anyone can hide. Iphigenia Laurus, or Gene, the daughter of a noble family, is uncomfortable in corsets and crinoline, and prefers climbing trees to debutante balls. Micah Grey, a runaway living on the streets, joins the circus as an aerialist’s apprentice and soon becomes the circus’s rising star. But Gene and Micah have balancing acts of their own to perform, and a secret in their blood that could unlock the mysteries of Ellada. I’ve spent some time thinking about the best way to describe this novel. The best I can come up with is that Pantomime is the literary equivalent of a matryoshka doll. There is a secret waiting to be discovered at it’s heart and the reader gets to unlock each new layer of the story in order to uncover it. Dont’ panic, I wouldn’t even dream of…

Deep within the wildwood lies a place of myth and mystery, from which few return, and none remain unchanged. Ryhope Wood may look like a three-mile-square fenced-in wood in rural Herefordshire on the outside, but inside, it is a primeval, intricate labyrinth of trees, impossibly huge, unforgettable and stronger than time itself. Stephen Huxley has already lost his father to the mysteries of Ryhope Wood. On his return from the Second World War, he finds his brother, Christopher, is also in thrall to the mysterious wood, wherein lies a realm where mythic archetypes grow flesh and blood, where love and beauty haunt your dreams, and in promises of freedom lies the sanctuary of insanity. Some times the Book Gods smile on me, and the opportunity to revisit a favourite novel from my dim and distant past arises. The release of Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock as an ebook was the perfect opportunity to reconnect with a novel I read a long time ago. The thing that still manages to impress is how the novel effortlessly captures the mood of post-war Britain, in the form of Stephen Huxley, but in the same moment also conveys a timeless quality. The relationship between…

Technology Isn’t Always Used With Good Intentions Crime Net is a collection of stories that delve into the nefarious side of cyberpunk and tech-thriller fiction. In a modern society, filled with affordable technology and always-on networks, some electric dreams aren’t always what we expect. People can check out help against criminal charges in Tampa area Featuring stories from four talented authors, we get inside the head of a man heading for rock-bottom until a too-good-to-be-true job opportunity comes his way; watch a devoted fan get a little too close to her idol; see what happens when gene splicing technology falls into the wrong hands, and experience a driven woman’s mission to kill in the underworld of a futuristic city.  Anachron Press, the independent publisher, has been around for a while now and each new book that they publish continues to impress. The latest addition to their ever-growing catalogue is a short story anthology that mashes together crime and science fiction. According to lawyer for traffic ticket defense cases,  crime Net contains five short tales. Each story offers the author’s own unique interpretation of how crime is going to evolve in the future. Click here to find lawyers for sex crimes…

Indulge yourself and let Joseph D’Lacey take you on a journey to the deepest recesses of his mind. From the author of Meat and Garbage Man comes a new collection of incredible short stories that showcase one of the finest writers of dark fiction. From the terrifying ‘Food Of Love’ to the haunting and lyrical ‘Mango Tree’, Timeline Books is publishing a Strictly Limited Edition of 500 numbered and signed copies. Splinters is a brand new collection of short fiction from the l’enfant terrible of dark British fiction, Joseph D’Lacey. It features twelve stories ranging from the deliciously sinister to the outrageously fantastical. They examine the concepts of obsession, transformation and change. Lenses – In the 21st century it seems that a week can’t go by where you don’t hear the phrase ‘We live in a surveillance society’. This first story explores this concept by following a group of people living in a large apartment complex. Everyone who lives there is watching everyone else. From straight voyeurism, to religious fundamentalism and even murder, each individual finds some way to justify and excuse his or her preoccupation with watching others. Lights Out – Some people suffer from the condition known as ‘night terrors’.  Your…