Available from Amazon I’m not the perfect wife. I’m not the perfect mother. But I didn’t do anything to harm my little boy.
Lizzie Fry is back with another tense crimey-thriller to follow-up on the equally dark and shocking, The Good Mother.
Little Boy Missing is told from the perspective of Jo, a tired and struggling mum of three boys. When her son Kyle goes missing playing hide and seek in the local park, fingers are pointed all over the place as Jo and the police try to figure out where Kyle is and whether someone took him. With Kyle’s special needs thrown into the mix, things become more fraught for Jo as she frantically searches for her boy, desperate to bring him home to where he feels safe.
Raising the Dead dives into the expansive, extraordinary body of work found in Romero’s archive, going beyond his iconic zombie movies into a deep and varied collection of writings that never made it to the big screen.
Raising the Dead: the work of George A. Romero is a definite recommendation for any fan, just as long as you are aware that this is a serious, academic endeavour and not a coffee table book full of glossy splatter and gore!
In the midst of a heat wave punctuated by frequent rainstorms, people are losing their heads. Literally. Not only that, but their bodies are still walking, and attacking others.(Amazon)
If you had asked David Cronenberg to write the episode of Doctor WHO where the little Adipose creatures appeared, HEADLESS is probably what you would have got.
Read the full review at Ginger Nuts of Horror HERE
Between the desire to create and the thing created, the model is a key, a stepping stone, a participant othered through the process of creation. These thirteen visions of modern horror dissect the relationship between artist and model, exposing the spaces the eye is tricked into missing where we witness the beautiful and monstrous intricacies of making and being made.
Featuring stories by Andrew Wilmot, M. Lopes da Silva, Gwendolyn Kiste, Hailey Piper, Roland Blackburn, Ira Rat, Donyae Coles, Matt Neil Hill, Brendan Vidito, LC von Hessen, Gary J. Shipley, and editors Joe Koch and Sam Richard.(AMAZON)
An excellent collection of disparate voices screaming out through the agony and the ecstasy of creation. While a couple of stories left me with notes that simply read “I don’t get it” that is the beauty of a collection that explores the nature of art, and everyone will have a different interpretation and a different favourite.
Read the full review at Ginger Nuts of Horror HERE
From Wonderland Award-Winning author Sam Richard comes twelve more uncomfortable tales of sorrow, ruination, and transformation.
A young widow joins a spousal loss support group with bizarre methods of healing. An aging punk is stalked by something ancient and familiar in the labyrinthian halls of an art complex. A couple renting out a small movie theatre are interrupted by a corrosive force of nature. Through these stories of weird horror and visceral sorrow, Richard shows us ways grief can be transcendent-but only if we know which rituals to practice.
Something for everyone, but it will be triggering for some, especially those with recent, or deep relationships with grief. So, proceed with caution but, dare I say it, as upsetting as some of these tales can be, there is opportunity for catharsis and peace within them as well.
Erin Goodman is the woman Cat wants to be when she’s older – smart, successful, and the best part? She’s earned it – nothing was ever handed to Erin on a plate, or to Cat.
But Erin doesn’t notice Cat. Not until something awful happens and Cat, finding herself in the right place at the right time, writes the article that goes viral. Now she’s got Erin’s attention.
The difference is, Cat knows Erin is onto her. And Cat is more than happy to toy with her colleague, especially if it gets her an even bigger story to report on.
In the game of cat and mouse, there can be only one winner.
Kill for It is a tight thriller that will keep you second-guessing Cat’s next move and, ultimately, ready for more from Lizzie.
The world, as we know it, is over. Sea level rise has all but finished off life on Earth.
Born with a gift for engineering and technology, Azlynn and her father Merrill spend their days running a small shop in the flotilla community of Coral Cove. They scavenge shipwrecks, sunken vessels, and what precious little remains of the world before the planet drowned. With her best friend Ellis, they do their best to support their community, while struggling to survive.
When a group of scouts sent by The Order, a mysterious and powerful northeastern cabal, goes missing in the nearby Bermuda Triangle, Merrill is tasked with finding them. Unbeknownst to him, Azlynn and Ellis have snuck aboard to join in on the mission to find out what lurks within The Triangle. The ancient, cosmic truths they discover may be more terrifying than they ever imagined.
The Triangle is a solid introduction to Azlynn and the world she survives in, and I am sure I will find myself back with her some time in the future.
Read the full review at Ginger Nuts of Horror HERE
Seven-year-old Wen and her parents, Eric and Andrew, are vacationing at a remote cabin on a quiet New Hampshire lake, with their closest neighbours more than two miles in either direction.
As Wen catches grasshoppers in the front yard, a stranger unexpectedly appears in the driveway. Leonard is the largest man Wen has ever seen but he is young and friendly. Leonard and Wen talk and play until Leonard abruptly apologises and tells Wen, “None of what’s going to happen is your fault”. Three more strangers arrive at the cabin carrying unidentifiable, menacing objects. As Wen sprints inside to warn her parents, Leonard calls out, “Your dads won’t want to let us in, Wen. But they have to. We need your help to save the world.”
So begins an unbearably tense, gripping tale of paranoia, sacrifice, apocalypse, and survival that escalates to a shattering conclusion, one in which the fate of a loving family and quite possibly all of humanity are intertwined.
This could be the shortest review I ever write, just by simply telling you that you need to go out and buy this book if you don’t already own it. And you certainly need to read it if it is languishing in your TBR pile. I know, I know, I am a bit late to the party, but hey, at least I arrived!
This forest isn’t charted on any map. Every car breaks down at its treeline. Mina’s is no different. Left stranded, she is forced into the dark woodland only to find a woman shouting, urging Mina to run to a concrete bunker. As the door slams behind her, the building is besieged by screams.
Mina finds herself in a room with a wall of glass, and an electric light that activates at nightfall, when the Watchers come above ground. These creatures emerge to observe their captive humans and terrible things happen to anyone who doesn’t reach the bunker in time.
Afraid and trapped among strangers, Mina is desperate for answers. Who are the Watchers and why are these creatures keeping them imprisoned, keen to watch their every move?
Shine’s debut novel, The Watchers throws a disparate group of unfortunates together in a mysterious woodland prison where they are watched at night by the mysterious, and clearly very dangerous, creatures that live in the tunnels beneath them. Hiding away during the day, the creatures leave the group in peace to complete their daily chores, collecting water and scavenging for food to keep themselves alive long enough to live in fear the next night.
Choices are like roads, taking us to destinations both planned and unexpected, but lofty thoughts like that are of no concern to young Kevin Ellison, who only cares about his dreams of basketball glory.
One day, however, while riding his bicycle to shoot baskets with his best friend, he comes across a side-road he doesn’t recognize, curving away into the woods. Intrigued, he rides down this unmarked road and encounters something both wonderful and quietly terrible, something that forever changes his understanding of the world…
A Night at Old Webb
Old Webb, an abandoned grammar school just outside Clifton Heights, is the place to be late summer nights in Webb County. A gathering place for friends to be themselves, away from grownups who have forgotten what it means to be young and free.
The summer of 1992, Kevin Ellison spent his Saturday nights there like everyone else. Everything was running according to plan: a college basketball scholarship, school, all the things everyone expected of him.
Then he met a girl named Michelle Titchner, and everything changed…
There is raw emotion at work here and both stories, despite their brevity, encompass feelings of wonder, confusion, love, and sadness all beautifully portrayed on the page. I can’t help but feel that Kevin Lucia has drawn heavily from his own past, and that lends credence and heft to the impact of these tales.
Read the full review at Ginger Nuts of Horror HERE
Dark Mark Writing 