Daniel Faint is on the run with a stolen time machine. As the house-sitter of a remote Cumbrian mansion, he hopes to hide and experiment with the machine. But is the Manor being watched by locals, his twin brother or himself from the future? Daniel is terrified about what the future may hold but, as he discovers, there can be no going back. If you were given the opportunity to escape all your past mistakes would you seriously be able to resist? You could start afresh, with a new life, and a clean slate. The only tiny stumbling block? A time machine that you don’t really understand how to control. I ask you, what could possibly go wrong? Daniel Faint is an intriguing character. You very quickly realise he is barely holding his life together. He has dug himself into a hole and you can almost guarantee that each action he takes is going to be the wrong one, and only ends up making things worse. Watching him come apart at the seams is captivating stuff. I quickly found myself pitying him. I genuinely believe Daniel is not an evil person but each choice he makes takes him one step…

The dream never changes: a moonless, starless night without end. The road she walks is black, bordered with round, white pebbles or nubs of polished bone; she can’t tell which but they’re the only white in the darkness, marking her way through the night. In dreams and nightmares, Helen walks the Black Road. It leads her back from the grave, back from madness, back towards the man who caused the deaths of her family: Tereus Winterborn, Regional Commander for the Reapers, who rule the ruins of a devastated Britain. On her journey, she gathers her allies: her old mentor Darrow, the cocky young fighter Danny, emotionally-scarred intelligence officer Alannah and Gevaudan Shoal, last of the genetically-engineered Grendelwolves. Winterborn will stop at nothing to become the Reapers’ Supreme Commander; more than anything he seeks the advantage that will help him achieve that goal. And in the experiments of the obsessed scientist Dr Mordake, he thinks he has found it. To Winterborn, Project Tindalos is a means to ultimate power; to Mordake, it’s a means to roll back the devastation of the War and restore his beloved wife to the living. But neither Winterborn nor Mordake understand the true nature of the…

SHARKPUNK: an anthology of killer shark stories. Sharks – the ultimate predators, masters of their watery domain, a world that is entirely alien and inhospitable to man. So many aspects of the shark are associated with humankind’s most primal fears. The tell-tale dorsal fin slicing through the water, the dead eyed-stare, the gaping jaws full to unforgiving teeth, the remorseless drive to kill and feed…Inspired by such classic pulp movies as Jaws and Deep Blue Sea – as well as such ludicrous delights as Sharknado and Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus – the stories contained within are rip-roaring page-turners and slow-build chillers that celebrate all things savage, pulp and selachian. Covering the whole range of speculative fiction genres, from horror and Steampunk, through to SF and WTF, these are stories with bite! Come on in. The water’s fine… Dur duh… dur duh…dur duh, dur duh, dur duh, dur duh, duh duh dah!  I’m so sorry, I couldn’t resist, I just had to get that out of my system before I could even begin to start discussing this new anthology from Snowbooks. Sharks have always fascinated me. Ever since I first saw a certain movie as a child, I have been…

In a break from tradition what follows is not a standard review but rather an open letter to Professor Elemental on the occasion of the publication of his Letters Between Gentlemen. But first a little background… Professor Elemental: Misunderstood and benevolent genius, evil killer; or slightly deluded idiot? Private investigator Algernon Spoon really isn’t sure, but as the bodies mount up, it looks like someone is bent on slaughter: But who? And Why? And is there going to be Battenburg? Dear Professor Please excuse this intrusion but I felt compelled to voice my congratulations on the recent publication of your wonderful book Letters Between Gentlemen. I have long since been an enthusiastic fan of your fighting trousers and have endeavoured to spread the word of your musical stylings whenever possible. I am sure you have no difficulty imagining my unrestrained glee when I discovered you had written a book. The prospect of gaining invaluable insight into your scientific working methods and unique mind were a dream come true. Any man who is able to successfully bridge the gap between steampunk rapper, cutting edge inventor and author I consider to be well worthy of my time. Reading through the various correspondences…

Nineteenth century London is the centre of a vast British Empire. Airships ply the skies and Queen Victoria presides over three-quarters of the known world – including the East Coast of America, following the failed revolution of 1775. London might as well be a world away from Sandsend, a tiny village on the Yorkshire coast. Gideon Smith dreams of the adventure promised him by the lurid tales of Captain Lucian Trigger, the Hero of the Empire, told in Gideon’s favourite “penny dreadful.” When Gideon’s father is lost at sea in highly mysterious circumstances Gideon is convinced that supernatural forces are at work. Deciding only Captain Lucian Trigger himself can aid him, Gideon sets off for London. On the way he rescues the mysterious mechanical girl Maria from a tumbledown house of shadows and iniquities. Together they make for London, where Gideon finally meets Captain Trigger. But Trigger is little more than an aging fraud, providing cover for the covert activities of his lover, Dr. John Reed, a privateer and sometime agent of the British Crown. Looking for heroes but finding only frauds and crooks, it falls to Gideon to step up to the plate and attempt to save the day…

On Leo’s sixteenth birthday. something bad happened. Something so traumatic his mind fractured, and darkness filled the crack. Twenty years on and the crack is a canyon. The schizophrenic hallucination that offered sympathy has taken to mocking him, and the memory of that long-ago birthday claws at his darkest fears, overshadowing even the murder of his younger brother Davey. But just when Leo thinks life can’t get and worse… Leo dies.  A demon returns after twenty years. An Angel follows close behind.  Leo is caught in an age-old conflict, his past lying at the dark heart of it all.  Leo Stamp is not a happy man. He has beautiful home, a thriving business and a car to die for but he is haunted by the ghosts of his childhood. The death of his sibling weighs heavy on his shoulders and has stayed with him for decades. Alone at night he voices his anxieties to a poster of James Bond on his wall. He is seeking answers to the horrors have plagued his life. His mental state continues to deteriorate and by page fifty Leo is dead. When he is given the opportunity at a second chance at life that is…