Buried in the Peruvian desert, sealed beneath a Greek-inscribed stone, lies a legendary relic which may hold the key to life itself, By extracting its DNA, Richard Ridley of Manifold Genetics hopes to bio-engineer the ultimate weapon – an army of soldiers who regenerate and continue to fight without stopping. The prefect killing machines… Enter Special Forces commander Jack “King” Sigler and his “Chess Te...
Occasionally I manage to convince Mrs Cheesecake to write a review for me. This is her latest review. I’d just like to take a moment to thank her for her work. The enduring love story of Anthony and Cleopatra has been retold many times throughout history. In Queen of Kings, Headley has given this famous tale a darker and more mythological twist. We join the lovers at the point in history when Octavian Caesar, great nephew of the l...
Renegade City. Futurist Gothika. Mecca of the damned. Where uber rock-band, Origin, is deified and the world’s dark sub-cultures coexist under the umbrella faith of ‘Belief’. But Roses, the great, Gothic messiah is dead, the tribes are in turmoil, and Renegade’s own home-bred rebels, the Drifters, are quickly becoming a law unto themselves. The last thing that Druid, Origin’s drummer and reclusive high lord...
Jordan Reyne, New Zealand’s premiere bloodthirsty Celtic rock and machine sounds superhero, has teamed up with Anarchy Books to bring you a dazzling short story writing competition! Jordan Reyne’s new album, Children of a Factory Nation, is being released September 2011 and follows a family who lived in Wales in the late 1800s during the Industrial Revolution. Like many alive in their time, they ...
The Beast is loose. After countless years trapped inside the World House, its sinister prisoner is loose and pure evil has been loosed upon the world. Now the motley band of explorers, treasure hunters and thrill seekers must unit to imprison it once more. Nothing to it… A little less than a month ago I was sat in the audience for the raffle at Alt.Fiction and Restoration by Guy Adams came up as one of the prizes. The affable ...
Imagine a place where all your nightmares become real. Dark urban streets where crime, debt and violence are not the only things to fear. Picture a housing project that is a gateway to somewhere else; a realm where ghosts and monsters stir hungrily in the shadows. Welcome to the Concrete Grove. This deprived area is Hailey’s new home, but when an ancient entity notices her, it becomes something much more threatening. She is the ...
His former CIA colleagues want him dead and Interpol want to arrest him, but all Hawker wants to do is find a way out. Government agent Danielle Laidlaw may be his only solution. She needs a pilot for her secret mission to find the lost Mayan city of Tulan Zuyu. In return for Hawker’s services, she promises a way home that doesn’t involve a body bag. But, as an unseen enemy stalks the rainforests, leaving battered corpses in...
Meet Stan Markowski of the Scranton PD’s Occult Crimes Unit “Like the rest of America, Scranton’s got an uneasy ‘live and let unlive’ relationship with the supernatural. But when a vamp puts the bite on an unwilling victim, or some witch casts the wrong kind of spell, that’s when they call me. My name’s Markowski. I carry a badge. Also, a crucifix, some wooden stakes, a big vial of holy water, a...
Regular visitors to the this site will know that I tend to stick to just book reviews and nothing else but last weekend I had the opportunity to spend a day at Alt.Fiction for the first time ever. As it is book related, I thought it would be fun to share some of my experiences. Now in its fifth year, this is the first time that the convention has been spread over an entire weekend. Like the huge coward that I am I decided I would just g...
Thomas Locke can find anything. You know the hurricane that hit a while back? Word is he found the butterfly that started it. So, when a desperate Veronica Drysdale hires Locke to find her missing husband, it makes perfect sense. Except the world of Thomas Locke doesn’t make sense. It puts monsters under the bed, makes stars fall from the sky and leads little children to worship the marvels of road-works. This world also hides fro...
I always like to try and expand my reading horizons so, when offered, I jumped at the opportunity to read another short story collection. As I have said in the past I think that horror lends itself particularly well to the confines of the short story setting so I was keen to get reading. Ill at Ease contains three new stories of the macabre, each by a different author. Waiting for Josh by Stephen Bacon – The first story follows ...
1062, a time many fear is the End of Days. With the English King Edward heirless and ailing, across the grey seas in Normandy the brutal William the Bastard waits for the moment when he can drown England in a tide of blood. The ravens of war are gathering. But as the king’s closest advisors scheme and squabble amongst themselves, hopes of resisting the naked ambition of the Norman duke come to rest with just one man: Hereward… T...
Once, Ig lived the life of the blessed: born into privilege, the second son of a renowned musician, the younger brother of a rising late-night TV star. Ig had security and wealth and a place in his community. Ig had it all, and more – he had the love of Merrin Williams, a love founded on shared daydreams, mutual daring, and unlikely midsummer magic. The beautiful, vivacious Merrin was gone – raped and murdered, under inexpli...