Look Out For… Day Four by Sarah Lotz

“A work of claustrophobic, nautical terror.”

The trip of their dreams becomes the holiday of their nightmares: Day Four is Sarah Lotz’s extraordinary, unmissable follow-up to the book that made headlines around the world, The Three–perfect for fans of The Shining Girls, The Passage and Lost.

Four days into a five day singles-cruise on the Gulf of Mexico, the ageing ship Beautiful Dreamer stops dead in the water. With no electricity and no cellular signals, the passengers and crew have no way to call for help. But everyone is certain that rescue teams will come looking for them soon. All they have to do is wait.

That is… until the toilets stop working and the food begins to run out. When the body of a woman is discovered in her cabin the passengers start to panic. There’s a murderer on board the Beautiful Dreamer… and maybe something worse.

Why We’re Excited About This Book:

Sarah Lotz returns with Day Four, a sequel to her bestseller The Three, although it can also be read as a stand-alone novel.

The Three combined high-concept thriller with a sense of world-wide horror with its story of four planes crashing simultaneously, with just one child surviving from each. By contrast Day Four seems to be a work of claustrophobic, nautical terror, set as it is on a cruise liner adrift with no way of communicating with the wider world. However given the link to The Three, we wouldn’t be surprised if the story ends up being more panoramic and wide-scale than its blurb might imply…

But whichever way Lotz takes this one, given her consummate skills as a storyteller, it’s bound to be riveting.

Day Four is out on 21 May 2015 from Hodder & Stoughton.

Look Out For … The Scarlet Gospels by Clive Barker

“The Scarlet Gospels is Clive Barker’s long awaited return.”

The gates to Hell are open and something beckons.

The last of Earth’s magicians are living in fear. A Cenobite Hell Priest known as Pinhead is killing them off, gorging on their knowledge to enhance his own magical powers as part of a quest to take over Hell. Meanwhile, Private Investigator Harry D’ Amour is fulfilling the final wishes of the dead, who communicate with his business associate, the blind medium Norma Paine. But while investigating one such case, Harry inadvertently opens up a portal between Hell and Earth.

When Harry’s nemesis Pinhead emerges through the portal, a vicious battle ensues. After failing to enlist Harry to pen his Scarlet Gospels – the epistles chronicling the Hell Priest’s grand coup – Pinhead instead captures Norma. Harry realizes he must go through Hell – literally – to save her.

Why We’re Excited About This Book:

Really? You really need us to tell you why we’re excited about a new Clive Barker novel, and one featuring Pinhead and Cenobites no less? Really?

Well, if you insist.

The Scarlet Gospels is Clive Barker’s long awaited return, and it seems almost a summation of his work to date, featuring as it does reoccurring characters Pinhead (from The Hellbound Heart) and Harry D’Amour (The Books of Blood; The Great And Secret Show; Everville). It also combines distinct styles Barker has used over the years, with the first half of the book echoing his earlier intense, claustrophobic horror before the second half opens out into the more expansive dark fantasy Barker has been producing more recently.

A crowd-pleaser for certain, if that’s the right word for a novel no doubt featuring Barker’s usual disturbing body horror and psycho-sexual undercurrents. But it’s bound to please his legions of fans.

The Scarlet Gospels is out on 21 May 2015 from Macmillan.