Horror Reviews

The Chalk Man by C J Tudor

I picked up The Chalk Man purely as a result of Stephen King recommending it on twitter after he said If you like my stuff, you'll like this. He isn't wrong. While it has a voice all it's own, The Chalk Man is a perfect accompliment to Kings' work.

It begins in 1986, 12 year old Eddie and his friends meet up as the travelling fair arrives in their town. On this fateful day, during a horrific fair accident, Eddie meets Mr Halloran - the Chalk Man. He gave Eddie...

Terror is our business: Dana Roberts casebook of horrors by Joe R Lansdale & Kasey Lansdale

Joe R Lansdale, a prolific writer, has written in a variety of genres from westerns to graphic novels and horror stories. He's won ten Bram Stoker awards, the Edgar award, the American Horror award and the British fantasy award. Apart from his horror stories he is perhaps best known for his crime novels featuring the amateur detectives Hap & Leonard (which have recently been turned into a TV series).

He's also written some stand-out tales of the "supernormal", featuring ...

Final Girls by Riley Sager

Final Girls asks the question what happens after the horror film has ended. How does the fastest and smartest girl cope after the horror ends?

Quincy Carpenter went on vacation with her student friends 10 years ago. She was the only one to return, surviving a horror film level massacre. On doing so she automatically became a member of an exclusive club, the Final Girls. She joins Lisa - survivor of a knife weilding maniac who killed 9 of her soriority sister, and Sam the only person...

Salems Lot by Stephen King

Salem's Lot was Kings second published novel, following on from his success with Carrie. Written shortly after King moved to Maine (the bulk of the story was actually written before Carrie), it follows the writer Ben Mears as he moves back to the small town of Jerusalem's Lot (known locally as Salem's Lot, a fictional small town in Maine). Ben spent part of his Childhood in Salem's Lot and from the outside, little seems to have changed.

That includes the derelict pro...

Strange Weather by Joe Hill

Strange Weather contains four stories that are subtly linked; each different in theme and style. They are tied together, as you might expect from the title, by some pretty unusual weather.

The book begins in 1988 with "Snapshot" which describes 13 year old Michael Figlione living in the Silicon Valley area. He discovers a character known as "The Phoenician", an odd, creepy, tattoo'ed guy taking polaroids of people with a very strange camera. Set in the 80's, for anyone wh...

Body in the Woods by Sarah Lotz

Newcon Press’ second novella series continues with Body in the Woods by Sarah Lotz.

This book is perhaps the least fantastical of the set. The story is in first person, our narrator is Claire, a single mother who has recently moved into a remote house that backs on to a swathe of woodland. One night, there’s a knock at the door. She answers, to find Dean, an old family friend, standing there and asking for her help.  Together, they bury a body in the woods and Dean disappears.<...

The Valancourt Book of Horror Stories: Volume 2 by James D Jenkins & Ryan Cagle

Valancourt Books is an American, independent small imprint especially devoted, among other things, to unearth and reprint forgotten and rare gems of gothic fiction from the past, as well as samples of classy, long gone out of print horror fiction.

Thus, after the successful Valancourt Book of Horror Stories, a second volume is now available, collecting fourteen tales spanning almost two hundred years, penned both by masters of the genre and by mainstream authors who tried their hand...

Crow Shine by Alan Baxter

A well respected novelist, Australian writer Alan Baxter is also the author of many short stories, appeared in various venues, but never before assembled in a single volume.

Crow Shine is a massive collection of Baxter's dark tales which will pleasantly surprise the reader not yet acquainted with this excellent author.

The large majority of the stories included therein are original,well crafted pieces of disturbing fiction.

"TIny Lives" is a beautiful tale fu...

The Passage by Justin Cronin

I've been aware of The Passage for years but never had chance to pick it up - even though I have family connections to the Cronin surname (although doubtfully any connection to the author!). Recently the final novel in the series was released which prompted me to begin reading.

The book describes a highly contagious pandemic that sweeps the United States, turning people into savage, vampiric beasts (known colloquially as Virals). This outbreak is caused, as is often the case, by...

The Winter Hunt and Other Stories by Steve Lockley & Paul Lewis

Steve Lockley and Paul Lewis form a British writing duo ( although they also publish individually) whose work has been appearing in various  genre anthologies during the years.

Fifteen of their tales of horror and terror are now assembled in an enjoyable collection from Parallel Universe. The overall quality of the stories is uncommonly high and quite remarkable.

Particularly worth mentioning are the following.

"Never Go Back" is a nightmarish piece showing how ...

Nightmares Realm: New Tales of The Weird and Fantastic by ST Joshi

"Life is but a dream" wrote Calderon De La Barca and "All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream" confirmed Edgard Allan Poe. Dreams and nightmares constitute part of our nightly life, but they usually vanish as soon as we wake up. Sometimes, however, they stay with us and haunt also our normal, daily existence.

The present collection assembles seventeen new tales by contemporary authors addessing that fascinating issue. The list of the distinguished contributors includes...

The Disciple by Stephen Lloyd Jones

Given that today is Halloween, I thought it only right that we review a horror novel. It's also a damn good one - The Disciple by Stephen Lloyd Jones.

It all starts on a stormy night as Edward Schwinn navigates the country roads at the edge of Devil's Kitchen, Snowdonia. On a dark road in the middle of a forest he finds a scene of devastation. Cars wrecked and on fire, bodies everywhere, but in one a heavily pregnant woman still alive.

The woman gives birth to a gi...