This story comes at a perfect time. As I posted earlier today, my current book is Naked City: Tales of Urban Fantasy, full of stories about fae and other wildfolk, most of them taking place in urban environments. In the Dunes, a story/novella by John Leahy, runs along similar lines. Two good friends, on a golfing vacation in Ireland, find… Read more
The news reports talk about riots, civil unrest, perhaps some sort of viral epidemic. They have to say that — who would take them seriously if they started talking about vampires? In The Fall, the second book in Guillermo del Toro’s The Strain trilogy, nothing less than the future of mankind is at stake. The people massing in the lowest… Read more
The prologue will give you nightmares. (Do you know what sort of sound human vertebrae make when they give way under pressure?) Other sections of the book made me want to cover my eyes and read through my fingers. The killer in Thomas White’s The Book of Matthew would give Hannibal Lecter a run for his money. This is not… Read more
Ignatius Perrish spent the night drunk and doing terrible things. He woke up the next morning with a thunderous hangover, a raging headache…and a pair of horns growing from his temples. It’s a great beginning to a promising story: part thriller, part horror, part treatise on the nature of the devil. While Horns occasionally gets bogged down in reminiscence, it’s… Read more
I saw the movie, Let the Right One In, last year and was immediately drawn in by it. The stark settings and minimal dialogue gave the film a sense of isolation and dread. Nothing good could happen in these surroundings. As soon as I found out the film was based on a book, I had to have it. It just… Read more
If you’re tired of the current glut of wimpy, sparkly-shiny vampires, this book is the perfect antidote. Del Toro’s vampires are brutal, disgusting, ravenous monsters. No romance here, folks. Ephraim Goodweather heads up the Canary Project, a “rapid-response team of field epidemiologists organized to detect and identify incipient biological threats.” These could be biological weapons, man-made outbreaks or naturally occurring… Read more
I hate the cold. I really, really, really hate to be cold. Still, I have always loved tales of exploration and adventure, and I have several books about the exploration of the Arctic Circle in my library. The Terror combines a bit of history and a bit of mystery with excellent descriptions of the frozen north and a little Eskimo… Read more
This is the best thing I’ve read from Stephen King in years. Nothing he’s written since The Green Mile kept me as consistently interested and engaged. (Cell was close, but possibly because I liked the idea of all those folks walking along, jabbering on their phones, being slaughtered in one fell swoop; I’m mean that way.) The early King books… Read more
I love Angela Carter’s writing. The stories in this collection are full of atmosphere – dark and moody, sensual, sometimes playful. Here, she takes an assortment of fairy tales and reworks them with a ‘sexier’ and more ‘feminist’ slant. If you know your fairy tales, that might be very effective. Personally, I thought her retelling of Puss-in-Boots was adorable, but… Read more
In the introduction to this book, Christopher Golden says of the author: Joe Hill is one stealthy bastard. Indeed he is. This is a nice assortment of stories – some obviously horror, some strange and disturbing, some rather sweet. The title piece read more like a love story than a ghost story. “Best New Horror” makes me think a bit… Read more