Here’s a small selection of the horror and genre news that caught our eye during the last week …
Out today from writer Stephen Barnard, Ringrock
Four students, travelling back to university from a friend’s party, crash their car in a desolate part of the Yorkshire moors. They stumble across a village that has no right being there: it isn’t on any map and has no means of communication with the outside world. It also doesn’t take kindly to strangers.
Ruth Glover lives in Ringrock, but she wants out. She fears for the safety of her baby and the ritual that takes an offering from one of the village families each and every month. Four outsiders might just be the key to her escape.
Doctor Sebastian Wheelwright rules the village with an iron fist. Anything that upsets the delicate balance of how his community operates has to be removed, with extreme prejudice if necessary. Ethan, Odd, Noah and Kyle… they cannot be allowed to stay. But neither can they be allowed to leave, once they learn the secret of the Ringrock itself. Available now in eBook, with other editions to follow, you can grab your copy here.
Arriving 24 June from author Abigail F. Taylor and Wild Ink Publishing, Maryneal 1962
Warned by a soothsayer at a traveling fair that something evil is about to come to Maryneal, sixteen-year-old Delah Nix chalks it up to carnie theatrics and ignores the woman’s suggestion to leave before dark. But then her sister is savagely attacked on their way home, and her murder leaves the small farming community stunned. The authorities scramble to place the blame on a deranged man, the carnival workers, and even the nearby Indigenous community.
Delah, however, starts to suspect that something supernatural is afoot when a childhood friend, bitten in an attempt to save Delah’s sister, gains powers and a thirst for the county’s livestock. As much as he is enjoying his super speed and perfect hearing, Delah senses there will come a point of no return and begins to desperately search for a way to save her friend before he hurts himself or the girl they both love. With the full moon approaching and no salvation in sight, Delah is faced with an unconscionable decision: If she can’t find a cure, she’ll have to kill the boy next door. Available for pre-order now in eBook and paperback, you can guarantee your copy here.
Coming 10 June from writer Kyle Winkler and From Beyond Press, Enter the Peerless
Elpenor, a newly minted private investigator, finds his first case on Craigslist: twenty-nine people have entered an abandoned trailer in rural Indiana, and none of them have left. Unable to open the trailer’s doors or windows, Elpenor enlists two local accomplices, a knife grinder (Don the Knife) and a janitor (Hugh Gardener). When they finally gain access, they fall into a pocket universe ruled by a godlike being called Fiascoal.
Refugees of this world—a depopulated and exact copy of our world—congregate around a web of communities in St. Louis. Elpenor attempts to find the missing people but is instead forced to become the new host of Fiascoal as a communal ritual. His search for the missing in the netherworld and the needs of the hungry, petulant god conflict as Don the Knife raises a cult of personality, community leaders abuse their authority, and Elpenor must decide whether to save the few over the many. That is, if he can find a way out of the metaphysical prison he’s broken into. Told in a charged high-rhetorical, hard-boiled style, Enter the Peerless is a detective novel for the paranoiacs and heartsick rejects who know an angel in the dirt when they see one.
Available 24 June from author Christopher A. Micklos and Castle Bridge Media, Tick Town
Tomahawk Hollow has a huge problem. Slaughtered livestock. Disappearing townsfolk. And something in the woods hungry for blood. When a young reporter and her boss investigate, they discover a band of giant mutant ticks have made the rural Wisconsin tourist town their feeding ground.
Now, with the annual Harvest Moon Jubilee about to begin, Emmaline and Jackson must race to find the queen tick and her nest before a massive clutch of monster eggs hatch…and thousands more terrifying ticks are unleashed into the world!
Bursting with cinematic action, horror, fun, and suspense, Tick Town is an old-school, pulse-pounding pulp horror adventure. Available for pre-order now in eBook and paperback, you can guarantee your copy here.
For more articles like this, please follow @thisishorror on Twitter and Bluesky.
KEV HARRISON
