by Clive Barker “The sun rose like a stripper, keeping its glory well covered by cloud till it seemed there’d be no show at all, then casting off its rags one by one.” Boone, a possible serial killer undergoing intense therapy, has his world turned upside down as the crimes come to light and he... Continue Reading →
Black Evening
by David Morrell “The truth was, even if I had his promise in writing, the studio’s lawyers could have it nullified if Wes claimed he’d been misled. This town wouldn’t function if people kept their word.” Somewhere in 2013, steeped in short stories and novellas, I began to get a better grip on where my... Continue Reading →
Horns
by Joe Hill “Maybe all the schemes of the devil were nothing compared to what men could think up.” On the anniversary of his girlfriend’s sadistic murder, a young man finds himself growing horns which cause those around him to speak more candidly and act much closer to their base instincts than allowed in civilized... Continue Reading →
North American Lake Monsters
by Nathan Ballingrud "Mankind had acquired an appetite for dying; doctors were merely shephards to the process." Consisting of 9 short stories, North American Lake Monsters won the 2013 Shirley Jackson award for best collection in May 2014. Particularly notable is the fact it beat Michael Marshall Smith's Everything You Need for the award, a... Continue Reading →
Where the Summer Ends (The Best of Karl Edward Wagner Vol. 1)
by Karl Edward Wagner “I was your friend, Curtiss.” “Writer’s don’t’ have friends. Only deadlines.” This is an excellent, dark collection that comes at you from an unsuspected angle, often due to a sense of gravitas permeating the stories. A black and white picture early in the book reveals about 9,000 truths of the writer... Continue Reading →
The Angel’s Game
by Carlos Ruiz Zafon “Every book has a soul, the soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and dream about it.” A young writer who was introduced to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books through our favorite booksellers, ‘Sempere & Sons,’ is tasked to write a specific, dangerous book by... Continue Reading →
The Blade Itself (First Law book 1)
by Joe Abercrombie “I’ve settled a few scores in my time, but it only led to more.” The fantasy world of blood and decay on display here, populated by the downtrodden and the corrupt, could possibly be called Anti-Fantasy. You don’t look to this world like you might many others in the genre, with faces raised... Continue Reading →
Mass for Mixed Voices
by Charles Beaumont “I just lie awake at night and thank God that I’m bald.” Making your way through this gigantic book brings with it a revelation. You are not reading a book, you're staring directly into the imagination of one of our best speculative fiction writers, one of our best situational thinkers. As the... Continue Reading →
Summer Knight (Dresden Files #4)
by Jim Butcher The noise was deafening, and no one could have heard me anyway as I let out my own battle cry, which I figured was worth a shot. What the hell. “I don’t believe in faeries!” Book 4 of the Dresden Files, this one follows our wizard as he tries to uncover the... Continue Reading →