Here’s a small selection of the horror and genre news that caught our eye during the last week …
Out today from writer William Sterling and Crystal Lake Publishing, String Them Up
When Barker Davis stumbles into Hollow Hills one fateful day, drenched in blood from head to toe, the tight-knit community hastily points fingers at the reclusive toymaker dwelling deep within the ominous woods nearby. However, the arrest of the toymaker uncovers a tangle of questions rather than any concrete answers. As the bloodshed continues in this horror mystery, the town teeters on the brink of madness. Their nightmare has only just begun.
Now, it falls upon Sinclair Redman to navigate this tapestry of horror, pulling the strings of truth and deception to unearth the chilling secrets hidden within Hollow Hills. Only by unlocking these grim mysteries can he hope to put an end to the rising body count that threatens to spiral out of control. Available now in eBook, hardcover and paperback editions, you can grab your copy here.
Arriving 10 October from author E. M. Roy and Ghoulish Books, Let the Woods Keep our Bodies
Leo Bates knows what’s behind every corner in her hometown, where she’s lived her whole life. Some disjointed memories and grief for her late parents, sure, but nothing dangerous. Nothing unexplainable.
But the familiar becomes strange the longer you look at it. When Tate Mulder goes missing and Leo is pinned as the prime suspect, she can only watch as the town she thought she knew deteriorates around her. She is forced to confront the truth about her parents, Eston, and her relationship if she is to survive an onslaught of conspiracies, cryptic monstrosities, and whatever is hiding in the woods where Tate was last seen. Finding the girl she loves may be the only way to restore balance to Eston-if such a thing ever existed to begin with. Available for pre-order now in eBook and paperback, you can guarantee your copy here.
Out now from writer Richard Leise and Brigids Gate Press, Being Dead
The story of a girl begins with a boy. On Christmas morning, 1982, nine-year-old Jude Bendz survives the shocking and mysterious death of his twin sister, Mary. Bewildered by grief, he is comforted when, miraculously, Mary’s ghost appears, her spirit quickly informing a series of fantastic apparitions through which her life – and death – come into clearer focus. Problems soon arise, however, when his sister, promising salvation, places him at the center of a wide, yet narrowing plot that increasingly puts his life in mortal danger.
A novel that transcends its historical moment, Being Dead brilliantly subverts the conventions of the traditional Ghost story. Reconstructing her own death through a series of spooky visitations and cryptic clues that, in time, seem to assume the shape of formal challenges, Mary creates for Jude a blueprint that blurs the line between truth and revenge, love and hate, an account that threatens to shatter their family’s perfect image.
Luminous, evocative, and set amidst the decline of American exceptionalism and the nuclear family, this is at once an enthralling adventure, a stirring love story, and a work of striking power in the face of stark solitude. As Mary interweaves elements of a set past that portends a harrowing future, life rears up large and ripples against death’s certain pressures, generating mesmerizing suspense and surprising empathy. Yielding poignant insights into the nature of love and loss, savagery and splendor, Being Dead asserts itself as a new American gothic—hugely powerful, majestically unassuming, and keenly unsettling. Available now in eBook and paperback editions, you can grab your copy here.
Out now from author Lee Murray and PS Publishing, Despatches
Daily Star war correspondent Cassius Smythe is off to the Dardanelles to report on the Allied campaign. That is, if only the War Office will let him tell the truth. But after months in the trenches at Anzac Cove, Smythe learns that it isn’t just the Ottomans who wish to claim back the land, and the truth is as slippery as a serpent… Available now in a jacketed hardcover edition and a signed edition limited to one hundred copies, you can grab yours here.
KEV HARRISON
