Look Out For… Through A Mirror, Darkly by Kevin Lucia

“Suggestive and allusive, Through A Mirror, Darkly deserves a place on any discerning horror reader’s shelves.”

Arcane Delights. Clifton Heights’ premier rare and used bookstore. In it, new owner Kevin Ellison has inherited far more than a family legacy, for inside are tales that will amaze, astound, thrill…and terrify.

An ancient evil thirsty for lost souls. A very different kind of taxi service with destinations not on any known map. Three coins that grant the bearer’s fondest wish, and a father whose crippling grief gives birth to something dark and hungry.

Every town harbours secrets. Kevin Ellison is about to discover those that lurk in the shadows of Clifton Heights.

Through a Mirror, Darkly is a supernatural thriller collection masked as a novel. With elements of mystery, suspense, and otherworldly horror, Through A Mirror, Darkly successfully delves into the worlds of Lovecraft, Grant, and the mysterious Carcosa.

Why We’re Excited About This Book:

Through A Mirror, Darkly is a book of linked stories from Kevin Lucia. Looked at in one way it’s a short story collection; in another light it’s a novel. The book is set in Lucia’s fictional town of Clifton Heights, his very own Oxrun Station or Castle Rock. The stories in the book also take inspiration from both the Cthulhu mythos and The King In Yellow, but Lucia is too good a writer to let his influences overwhelm his own personal style. The sinister horrors of these stories are allowed to gradually reveal themselves, with an effect both disturbing and exhilarating.

Suggestive and allusive rather than relying on gore or cheap shocks , Through A Mirror, Darkly features superb cover art from Ben Baldwin and deserves a place on any discerning horror reader’s shelves.

Through A Mirror, Darkly is available to release 5 June 2015 from Crystal Lake Publishing.

Look Out For… Perdido: A Fragment by Peter Straub

“Straub’s elegant prose and skilful evocation of the uncanny is in evidence on every page.”

Perdido, a fragment from a never completed longer work, is a rare and unexpected gift for Peter Straub’s legion of fans. Even in this fragmentary form, it offers the sort of vivid, unexpected pleasures that only the finest imaginative fiction can provide.

On one level, Perdido tells the story of a troubled family: a discontented husband and wife and the teenaged son who was—but is no longer—a musical prodigy. On another, it is the story of the isolated Norwegian resort known as Perdido, and of the impossible, dreamlike things that happen there. Perdido is a place where the rules of ordinary life no longer apply, where reality is malleable and infinitely strange. It is a place where “you get what you didn’t know you wanted” and where lives are altered forever. For the unhappy couple invited to attend—and for the teenaged son awaiting their return—it is the place where a marriage ends and a life filled with alternate possibilities begins. Mysterious, evocative, and always superbly written, Perdido offers readers something genuinely special: a visit to an imaginary landscape that only Peter Straub could have created.

Why We’re Excited About This Book:

It’s an interesting question whether an unfinished story is worth reading – for some, the subtitle of Perdido: A Fragment will be enough to put them off. But if the best horror works by an accumulation of atmosphere, there’s no reason this tale (described as “stillborn” by its author) can’t conjure up a feeling of unease in the reader. And let’s face it, how many horror stories are ruined by a stupid reveal at the end anyway?

And anything by Peter Straub is worth reading. One of the most respected modern horror writers, his elegant prose and skilful evocation of the haunted and uncanny is in evidence on every page. As always, he writes with a strong sense of place, even if that place is as weird as Perdido.

The titular location is an out of the way Norwegian resort. The story begins with a couple arriving at Perdido and they find it a place where reality is blurred and ambiguous, a place shaped by imagination as much as geography. So maybe it’s particularly apt that the ending of the tale will only take place in the reader’s imagination.

Perdido: A Fragment is out now from Subterranean Press.