Amaranthine and Other Stories serves up nine schlock horror slices, sprinkled with quirk and humour. Forget vampires. Forget werewolves. Forget ghosts. Humans are the ultimate grotesques. Variant flavours of woe sift through these pages. The results are sometimes hilarious, sometimes outright hair-raising! From time to time I like to dip my toes in the waters of short fiction. Horror always lends itself well to this particular format, so when the latest collection from Erik Hofstatter arrived Read more […]

In a change from the norm this post is a first for The Eloquent Page, a review written by two people. Thanks to Nadine for her invaluable insight. The Fireman has prompted much vigorous discussion and debate in our household.   No one knows exactly when it began or where it originated. A terrifying new plague is spreading like wildfire across the country, striking cities one by one: Boston, Detroit, Seattle. The doctors call it Draco Incendia Trychophyton. To everyone else it’s Dragonscale, Read more […]

For as long as anyone can remember, the Clowns and Humans of Blueville have co-existed peacefully. Sure, each species thinks the other is a little weird but that’s never been something to fight about. Until, that is, a series of freakish terrorist attacks – seemingly perpetrated by clowns – turn the two bloodlines against each other. When war breaks out, the future of both species hangs in the balance. It’s going to take a suicide mission to stop the carnage and only misfit circus trainee Colin Read more […]

On a remote Scottish island, five children are the only ones left. Since the Last Adult died, sensible Elizabeth has been the group leader, testing for a radio signal, playing teacher and keeping an eye on Alex, the littlest, whose insulin can only last so long. There is ‘shopping’ to do in the houses they haven’t yet searched and wrong smells to avoid. For eight-year-old Rona each day brings fresh hope that someone will come back for them, tempered by the reality of their dwindling supplies. With Read more […]

Whoever is born here, is doomed to stay until death. Whoever comes to stay, never leaves. Welcome to Black Spring, the seemingly picturesque Hudson Valley town haunted by the Black Rock Witch, a seventeenth-century woman whose eyes and mouth are sewn shut. Blind and silenced, she walks the streets and enters homes at will. She stands next to children’s beds for nights on end. So accustomed to her have the townsfolk become that they often forget she’s there. Or what a threat she poses. Because Read more […]

A young girl is brutally murdered. Two rival crime bosses fight for dominance on the streets of South Africa’s capital city. The city’s underground film industry is set ablaze. An angry spirit bent on revenge is on a murder spree. And Alice, a university student, is caught in the middle of a bloody battle for survival. Their fates all intertwine in this tale of vengeance and fury. All things considered, I think that sometimes people should be haunted by spirits hell-bent on dark malevolent Read more […]

Welcome to London, but not as you know it. Oxford Street burned for three weeks; Regent’s Park has been bombed; the British Museum is occupied by those with nowhere else to go. Lalla has grown up sheltered from the chaos, but now she’s sixteen, her father decides it’s time to use their escape route – a ship big enough to save five hundred people. Once on board, as day follows identical day, Lalla’s unease grows. Where are they going? What does her father really want? What is the price of salvation? Regular Read more […]

Please note Northwoods is a direct sequel to The Beast of Barcroft. It is entirely possible if you haven’t read that first then this review could contain some minor spoilery type elements and stuff. Don’t say I didn’t warn ya! Some borders should never be crossed. From the author of The Beast of Barcroft comes a waking nightmare of a horror novel that’s sure to thrill readers of Stephen King and Bentley Little. Ex–Delta Force Davis Holland, now an agent for the Customs and Border Read more […]

Rumours of the Drowned Woman are rife. She hunts down wanted men but never collects on the bounty. Some say she can’t be killed, not in the usual ways. The Drowned Woman is looking for one man in particular: he killed her husband and stole her daughter. Her family has been wronged. There will be a reckoning. I’ve made no secret about the fact that I’ve really enjoyed this series. I’ve been suffering from the terrible/wonderful situation where I long to read the last book, but know Read more […]

How far will he go to save his daughter? How far will he go to get revenge? It’s 2053 and climate change has left billions homeless and starving – easy prey for the pandemics that sweep across the globe, scything through the refugee populations. Easy prey, too, for the violent gangs and people-smugglers who thrive in the crumbling world where ‘King Death’ reigns supreme. The father’s world went to hell two years ago. His four-year-old daughter was snatched from his garden when he should have Read more […]

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 Read more […]

Kamil, a thirty-something medieval weapons trader resides in the notorious Red Light District in Prague. Despite his hatred for prostitutes, he accepts an offer from Ginny – a local sex worker. As their unusual friendship unfolds and Kamil witnesses several bizarre scenarios, he begins to suspect that Ginny might not be an ordinary prostitute… Having read Moribund Tales and The Pariahs, I jumped at the opportunity to take a look at Erik Hofstatter’s latest, Katerina. What begins as a Read more […]

Ben McKelvie believes he’s moving up in the world when he and his fiancée buy a house in the cushy Washington, D.C., suburb of Barcroft. Instead, he’s moving down—way down—thanks to Madeleine Roux, the crazy neighbor whose vermin-infested property is a permanent eyesore and looming hazard to public health. First, Ben’s fiancée leaves him; then, his dog dies, apparently killed by a predator drawn into Barcroft by Madeleine’s noxious menagerie. But the worst is yet to come for Ben, Read more […]