Demons in Manhattan sewers. Enchanted gateways deep within the Bowery. Zombies in Harlem. Old World vampires haunting New Rochelle. Hidden Templar treasures and a hunt for the Grail across the length of a continent. Quasi-immortal Damian Paladin and adventuress Leigh Oswin pit their wits, guns and flying skills against the magical and mundane in 1930s America – and worlds beyond. Sometimes there is nothing better than a bit of good old-fashioned action adventure. Personally, I’ve always found the 1930s to be a wonderfully evocative time period. Without creations like Doc Savage, The Shadow, Flash Gordon and Dick Tracy, we wouldn’t have characters like Indiana Jones, The Rocketeer, Rick O’Connell or Buckaroo Banzai. Walkers in Shadow from Mike Chinn dives deep into the realms of pulpy goodness to give us a new hero to stand beside his fictional forebears. Damian Paladin is an investigator with a particular interest in the supernatural. Though he has achieved a certain amount of fame through his exploits there is still something mysterious about him. His origins are hinted at on a number of points during the book but never revealed in their entirety. All we know is he is long lived and has been battling…

Leon and his younger sister Grace have just moved to London from New York when news of an unidentified plague begins to fill the news. Within a week the virus hits London. People in the streets turn to liquid before their eyes, and what follows is a frantic hunt for a safety which may no longer exist. For the Alex Scarrow fans amongst you, a quick internet search reveals that Plague Land was previously published under the title ReMade. Just thought you should know before you decide if you want to read any further. Leon and Grace are in a difficult place in their lives. They’ve moved from one side of the planet to the other after their parents’divorce. A new country and a new beginning is going to be hard whatever age you are, but especially so if you are still a teen. Everything is just so different from what both of them are used to. Britain isn’t America, and Leon is finding it particularly hard to adjust. Any chance of starting again disappears with a frantic transatlantic phone call from their father. Leon and Grace are at either end of the teenage spectrum. Leon is nearly, but not…

“Snapshot” is the disturbing story of a Silicon Valley adolescent who finds himself threatened by “The Phoenician,” a tattooed thug who possesses a Polaroid Instant Camera that erases memories, snap by snap. A young man takes to the skies to experience his first parachute jump. . . and winds up a castaway on an impossibly solid cloud, a Prospero’s island of roiling vapor that seems animated by a mind of its own in “Aloft.” On a seemingly ordinary day in Boulder, Colorado, the clouds open up in a downpour of nails—splinters of bright crystal that shred the skin of anyone not safely under cover. “Rain” explores this escalating apocalyptic event, as the deluge of nails spreads out across the country and around the world. In “Loaded,” a mall security guard in a coastal Florida town courageously stops a mass shooting and becomes a hero to the modern gun rights movement. But under the glare of the spotlights, his story begins to unravel, taking his sanity with it. When an out-of-control summer blaze approaches the town, he will reach for the gun again and embark on one last day of reckoning. I’ve become a real admirer of Joe Hill’s work over…

These selected terrors range from the speculative to supernatural horror, encompass the infernal and the occult, and include stories inspired by H. P. Lovecraft, Robert Aickman and Ramsey Campbell. Hasty for the Dark is the second short story collection from the award-winning and widely appreciated British writer of horror fiction, Adam L. G. Nevill. The author’s best horror stories from 2009 to 2015 are collected here for the first time. As a little treat, seeing as it’s Halloween, I thought I might just squeeze in an extra review this week. We began October with an Adam Nevill review, and in a weird twist of fate we’re ending October with one. Towards the tail end of 2016 I read Some Will Not Sleep, a self-published collection of Adam’s short stories from the beginning of his career. A year later and a second collection has materialised, Hasty for The Dark. So, without further ado, on with the show… On All London Underground Lines – I’m really not a fan of underground trains. As a rule, tube stations make me feel claustrophobic and uncomfortable. Just imagine you were stuck underground constantly reliving the same mind-numbing, brain-smothering horror again and again. The first story…

Four old university friends reunite for a hiking trip in the Scandinavian wilderness of the Arctic Circle. No longer young men, they have little left in common and tensions rise as they struggle to connect. Frustrated and tired they take a shortcut that turns their hike into a nightmare that could cost them their lives. Lost, hungry and surrounded by forest untouched for millennia, they stumble across an isolated old house. Inside, they find the macabre remains of old rites and pagan sacrifices; ancient artefacts and unidentifiable bones. A place of dark ritual and home to a bestial presence that is still present in the ancient forest, and now they’re the prey. As the four friends struggle toward salvation they discover that death doesn’t come easy among these ancient trees… This week I am taking a breather from new releases so I can review a horror novel that has been sat unread on my books shelves for far too long. Luke, Hutch, Phil and Dom are taking a break from the rat race. They are getting back to nature, and away from the trials of modern living. Though they have known one another for years, they have grown apart. Some…

Every dog has its day… And for Lineker, a happy go lucky mongrel from Peckham, the day the world ends is his: finally a chance to prove to his owner just how loyal he can be. Reg, an agoraphobic writer with an obsession for nineties football, plans to wait out the impending doom in his second floor flat, hiding himself away from the riots outside. But when an abandoned orphan shows up in the stairwell of their building, Reg and Lineker must brave the outside in order to save not only the child, but themselves… In a weird moment of book related synchronicity, I finished one book that has a dog as a character only to immediately start another that also features a dog front and centre. The Last Dog on Earth, the latest from Adrian J Walker, is exactly what it promises to be; the tale of one man, his dog and the end of the world. Lineker is most loyal mutt you are ever likely to meet. He will do anything for his human companion, Reg. He implicitly trusts the man he shares his life with. In fact, I’d go further, he idolises Reg. Lineker thinks humans are…

Molly wakes her mother to go to the toilet. The campsite is strangely blank. The toilet block has gone. Everything else has gone too. This is a place with no sun. No god. Just four families remain. Each has done something to bring them here – each denies they deserve it. Until they see what’s coming over the horizon, moving irrevocably towards them. Their worst mistake. Their darkest fear. And for just one of them, their homecoming. Imagine waking up one morning and everything you are familiar with is absent. Only a handful of other people remain. Like you, they have no idea what has happened. Is this change going to be permanent? What, if any, action should you take? How long would it be before that thin veneer of civility goes out the window and Darwinism kicks in? The latest novel from John Ajvide Lindqvist explores that premise. When there is nowhere else left to go, are you capable of confronting your innermost fears, accepting them and surviving? I Am Behind You is an ensemble piece. The cross section of people left on the campsite feels like a tiny microcosm of society. The actions and reactions to their predicament…

One foul night while her husband is away, an old friend turns up on Claire’s doorstep and begs for her help. She knows she should refuse, but she owes him. Despite her better judgement, Claire finds herself helping to bury something in the woods. The question is, will it stay buried, and can Claire live with the knowledge of what she has done? I’ll begin with an admission. I was late to the party when it came to The Three by Sarah Lotz. Once I read it though, I quickly realised I was going to be a fan of her work. I devoured Day Four, it was also superb. Since then, the prospect of a new title by this author has filled me with a near uncontrollable glee. Recently I was fortunate enough to receive a copy of Sarah Lotz’ latest novella from NewCon Press, and the good news is that it’s another masterclass in storytelling. There is something endlessly fascinating about watching a character unravel. Claire starts this story content with her life. After years of uncertainty she has settled down and is happy with her lot. When an old friend appears unexpectedly she quickly finds her life, and…

Hell on earth is only one click of a mouse away… The Dark Net is real. An anonymous and often criminal arena that exists in the secret far reaches of the Web, some use it to manage Bitcoins, pirate movies and music, or traffic in drugs and stolen goods. And now an ancient darkness is gathering there as well. This force is threatening to spread virally into the real world unless it can be stopped by members of a ragtag crew: Twelve-year-old Hannah — who has been fitted with the Mirage, a high-tech visual prosthetic to combat her blindness– wonders why she sees shadows surrounding some people. Lela, a technophobic journalist, has stumbled upon a story nobody wants her to uncover. Mike Juniper, a one-time child evangelist who suffers from personal and literal demons, has an arsenal of weapons stored in the basement of the homeless shelter he runs. And Derek, a hacker with a cause, believes himself a soldier of the Internet, part of a cyber army akin to Anonymous. They have no idea what the Dark Net really contains. Set in present-day Portland, The Dark Net is a cracked-mirror version of the digital nightmare we already live in,…

Please note, The Devil’s Colony is the final part of the Fatal Folklore Trilogy. It is entirely possible if you haven’t read books one and two then this review could contain some minor spoilery type elements and stuff. Don’t say I didn’t warn ya! Ben McKelvie had a good job, a nice house, a beautiful fiancée . . . until a bloodthirsty shapeshifter took everything away. Ever since, he’s been chasing supernatural phenomena all across the country, aided by dedicated zoologist Lindsay Clark and wealthy cryptozoologist Richard Severance. Now they face their deadliest challenge yet. In the New Jersey Pine Barrens, a man named Henry Drexler operates a private compound called Välkommen, which is Swedish for “welcome.” Indeed, Drexler welcomes all visitors—so long as they’re racists, neo-Nazis, or otherwise in cahoots with the alt-right. But Drexler is no mere Hitler wannabe. Once he was Severance’s mentor, and his research may well have summoned a monster to the Pine Barrens. To find out the truth, Ben and Lindsay must enter the camp incognito. There, under the watchful eyes of Drexler’s bodyguards and sociopathic son, they will learn that the most dangerous beasts lurk in the human heart. Back at the tail…

Kat Murphy is a private detective tortured by demons. Real ones. She is serving a death sentence in Lost Angeles, the dark and depraved city in Hell where a beast known as a Torment forces her to relive, night after night, the moment she killed her lover and put a bullet in her own skull. Kat longs to make amends for her sins. So when the city’s Chief Administrator hires her to retrieve a stolen box with a mysterious power, offering to call off her Torment in return, she gets the chance to do just that. But if Kat has learned one thing, it’s that every case has a wrinkle. As she trawls drug dens, casinos, and fighting pits in search of the thief, she discovers that both box and city contain secrets darker than she could ever have imagined. And with time running out, Kat must choose between her own desire for peace and the fate of the world above in Hell’s Detective, the electrifying new mystery from award-winning author Michael Logan. I’ve been a fan of Michael Logan’s writing for a while now, I can heartily recommend his magnum opus Apocalypse Cow and its sequel World War Moo….

When terrorists threaten to detonate a nuclear device outside RAF Lakenheath, Kelly Wells races for a nearby office block, frantic to find her sister in their last moments. At the same time, a handful of others do the same—all desperate to make it to loved ones before the bomb goes off barely fifty miles away. In the frozen second of the explosion, Kelly, her sister, and three strangers are trapped in that instant and trapped in the building. But they are not alone. A sleeping evil from the deepest pits of the earth has awoken. Stalked by a creature that knows their most private secrets and fears, the group are lost in a world of their individual Hells. Try and imagine looking out of a window and seeing the world end in a flash. One moment everything is trundling along as normal, and the next your entire world has irrevocably changed. Would you be immobilised by a crushing despair or driven into immediate action. In Ascent by Luke Walker a small group of people, Kelly, Simon, Rod, Dao and Alex experience that exact scenario. One of the things I particularly enjoyed about this novel is the internal journey that each…

For info – The Boy on The Bridge shares the same universe as The Girl with All the Gifts. If you haven’t already I would strongly advise reading that The Girl with All the Gifts first. It will undoubtedly enhance your enjoyment of The Boy on the Bridge.  It is also possible that if you haven’t read The Girl with All the Gifts that this review may contain minor spoilers. Once upon a time, in a land blighted by terror, there was a very clever boy. The people thought the boy could save them, so they opened their gates and sent him out into the world. To where the monsters lived. A virulent contagion has decimated the world’s population. Exposure to the “hungry plague” immediately leads to infection and metamorphosis into a carrier who craves human flesh. Those remaining, who have avoided being infected so far, cling to their humanity with a ferocious tenacity. What little is left of the British authorities attempt to maintain order in a stronghold known as Beacon. In a last-ditch attempt to save everyone, they send out a small group made up of a military escort and scientific experts. The team’s goal? To learn as…