Horror World Book Reviews
August, 2008

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BOOK OF SOULS by Jack Ketchum
By Norm Rubenstein

Sometimes a book will surprise you. It can be more than mere escapism or enjoyment; it can be a wondrous, educational and even truly moving experience for the lucky reader. That is why I hope that all of you who are reading this will, at least this once, take me seriously enough to heed my advice and purchase a copy of Jack Ketchum’s latest title, the Bloodletting Press Chapbook, Book Of Souls.

Published by Larry Roberts and the crew at Bloodletting Press, Book of Souls was recently released and is available both as an inexpensive 500 copy signed and numbered limited edition at $11.95, and as a deluxe 52 copy lettered hardcover edition. This seventy-five page chapbook sports yet another masterfully rendered cover by artist Harry O. Morris, whose work continues to impress with his evocative and stunningly rendered artwork. Morris’ art always seriously relates to the written content found between the covers, as if the artist has been able to commune directly with the author’s mind to cull the raison d'être for the story being published.

However, the real “stars” here are the four essays written by author Jack Ketchum that comprise the chapbook’s content. These are not “mere” pieces of short fiction, which if written by the wonderfully talented Ketchum, would have certainly been very entertaining. No, these are four true-life reminiscences and reflections by the author. The author is actually opening up and baring his soul to the reader and informing the reader as to important events and people who have affected his life and writing.

It bears noting that the person doing the reminiscing, telling us his true-life stories, is none other than Jack Ketchum. Mr. Ketchum’s writing transcends any type of Genrefication (if it isn’t a word, it should be!); Ketchum’s writing is simply great literature. The four short pieces by Ketchum are extraordinary – they inform and educate the reader, but more importantly, they move the reader. Each true story as related by Ketchum generates a powerful emotional impact that stays with the reader, just as it was meant to by the author. The fact that all are true, and that these life occurrences have already impacted Mr. Ketchum, many times directly impacting the author’s writings as a result, make the stories both all the more fascinating and illuminating.

Jack Ketchum’s first essay in Book Of Souls is titled ”Henry Miller And The Push.” In this work we learn of Ketchum’s youth and his family. We learn why Henry Miller and his famous book Tropic Of Capricorn are of such importance to Ketchum. We learn of Ketchum’s early adult employment, and in particular, his job as a literary agent. We learn how this led to his finally meeting Henry Miller, the literary giant, in the flesh, and what occurred when they met. We even learn just why, when, and how Mr. Ketchum decided that he had to quit this job, and why he nearly tossed a lady under a cab in Manhattan. If this sounds less than riveting, that’s only because I am most definitely not Mr. Ketchum’s equal as a writer. I can assure you, that as with all four of the stories in this book that Mr. Ketchum relates, he does so masterfully and in such fashion that the reader will be unwilling to put the book down, once begun.

In the second essay titled “The Dust Of The Heavens,” author Ketchum relates a tragic and truly chilling tale involving a boy he met as a junior high school student, and how they became very close friends. However, a series of factors involving possible child abuse, drug abuse, mental illness, and even professional jealousy ultimately found the author being threatened and stalked by his former friend, now an apparently dangerous and violent psychotic. This true story is at least as terrifying as any of the author’s novels and perhaps more so, but is also ultimately sad, and at least as much a tale of friendship and loss.

The third essay, titled “Risky Living: A Memoir,” details the author’s first true love, a college romance with a young woman referred to as “Jen.” As it turns out, Jen chose to love crystal meth and other drugs over her relationship with the young Mr. Ketchum, and how, out of his love for her, he eventually had to make a terrible choice between destroying their romance or possibly watching the young woman die. It is a deeply moving tale of love and sacrifice, of drugs and their non-financial costs on not only the person taking them, but upon friends and loved ones.

The final essay in the book titled “Us Again,” is the author’s poignant reminiscence of where he was and what he was doing when the tragedy of September 11, 2001 occurred, and a reflection upon this catastrophic event. The author makes the event all the more real for the reader by revealing early on that the woman he loved and had been living with for the past thirty years, worked in the south Tower of the Twin Towers for an Investment Bank on one of the higher floors. Ketchum watched helplessly from a foreign country, as he observed on a television the second airplane smash directly into that tower. The author shares his feelings with the reader, and his later reflections upon the meaning of the day’s events. It is powerful and brilliant writing. Again, Jack Ketchum, both in his fiction and non-fictional writing, is able to prove to readers that not all horror need be supernatural in origin, and that there are terrors a plenty found in just trying to live ones life here in the very real world.

Book Of Souls is a very unique and powerful work of literature, and one that I guarantee you will find riveting and thought provoking as well as fascinating. This is one book that should be upon everyone’s “must read” list. Get yourselves a copy while they are still available.

Bloodletting Press

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THE HOUSE OF SHADOWS: THE DREAMHOUSE KINGS BOOK 1
THE WATCHER IN THE WOODS: THE DREAMHOUSE KINGS BOOK 2
By Robert Liparulo
Review by Dave Simms

It seems like just about everyone is dipping into the well of YA these days, and why not? The teenage years do tend to be the scariest in one’s life. Okay, but with Harry Potter’s corpse not even cold yet, adult writers often see YA as a quick and easy cash cow (calf?) but getting the language, behavior, characters, and nuances of the ages between 12 and 18 correct enough to convince the reader that the author KNOWS them, and GETS them is far from easy. Thankfully, series such as Wicked Dead by Petrucha & Pendleton, Nancy Holder, Chris Golden, and now, this one, exist successfully.

Robert Liparulo, who wrote the gruesomely frightening Comes A Horseman, decided to try his hand in this realm and knows what he’s talking about. The characters – all between 12 and 15 years old – act, speak, and think like someone their age. The older folk aren’t always bad guys who don’t have a clue but this is the teens’ story.

Brothers Xander and David explore their new “old” house their family moves into – in the middle of nowhere. Seems very clichéd… but it turns out to be something very cool. Doors and rooms lead to strange different places, such as a locker in school or the Coliseum in Ancient Rome (during a gory gladiator fight). Their relationship with each other rings true and also with their family, which makes it more believable when things get scary. The stranger(s) who jaunt into and out of their home brings about true chills which just about anyone can relate to – the threat of being taken into a faraway land, or long ago time – written in sharp, clear prose by Liparulo, takes the reader away regardless of his or her wishes.

A great take on an old idea and an even better opening to a fresh new series. This is not just for teens – recommended for kids of all ages.

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MATHESON UNCOLLECTED: Volume One by Richard Matheson
Review by Norm Rubenstein

Barry Hoffman and his prestigious Gauntlet Publications are set to release this month a major new volume of heretofore-uncollected work by living legend and historic author Richard Matheson, not surprisingly titled Matheson Uncollected: Volume One. Richard Matheson, for those who have just arrived from a galaxy far, far away or have just recently learned to read, is at the very least a national treasure. Yet, even this description short-changes his true talent. His lasting effect upon world literature, cinema, and television is such that it would be more accurate to describe him as a world treasure.

The new book by Gauntlet Publications collects ten short stories written by the author, including his most recent, “Pride,” written in 2003. All ten are engaging and great reads, and are exemplifications of just how to write a high quality short story. However, the book, at almost three hundred pages, doesn’t stop with the collection of short fiction. The Publisher also includes the first six chapters of an unpublished novel by the author titled Colony Seven, and an outline of the remainder of the novel, as well as an introductory short essay by Tony Albarella.

Colony Seven is a rare, aborted science fiction effort by Matheson, originating back from the 1950’s. The novel introduces us to a young, newly married couple who have decided to leave their lives on Earth behind to volunteer for a long space journey in a large transport rocket, to join a colony of humans established on another planet far outside our home solar system. The majority of the novel deals with the long spaceflight, and many things that the couple finds out about themselves and their fellow passengers during the course of the flight. The novel touches upon a broad spectrum of human issues, from overpopulation and global warming to prejudice, love, and fear, all within the paradigm of a science fiction story. That author Matheson was able to comprehend the importance of some of these issues back over fifty years ago speaks to his prescience and great intelligence. The salved fragment is a most welcome addition to the author’s collection of now available published works.

However, the undeniable gem of the book’s collection of previously unpublished work by Richard Matheson is the inclusion of Matheson’s final shooting script for the justly famous first-season Star Trek (5 th) episode, The Enemy Within. The Gauntlet book includes an insightful introductory essay, again by Tony Albarella, titled Split Personality: The Evolution Of Richard Matheson’s “The Enemy Within .” This was author Matheson’s sole purchased and produced contribution to the original Star Trek television series, but it was, and remains, one of the most popular and well written episodes. The Enemy Within is author Matheson’s own unique take upon subject matter similar to that which was explored by Robert Louis Stevenson so famously in his The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, exactly eighty years previously. In The Enemy Within, a mysterious transporter malfunction splits Captain Kirk into two disparate physical entities. There’s the “good” Kirk, who retains only all the rational intellect, kindness, empathy, sensitivity and humanity of the original captain, and the “bad” Kirk, who retains only all of the base, animalistic instincts, appetites, and urges of the original captain – principally those of survival, violence, and sex. All the elements are there and have been provided by author Matheson for a serious, thoughtful examination and consideration of the issues of human behavior and their origins, and the split between human intellect and emotion. The teleplay flows well and makes for an easy and enjoyable read. The episode gave classically trained actor William Shatner, who portrayed the iconic Captain Kirk, a chance to display a both wider and deeper range of acting ability than normally afforded by the constraints of his role. Shatner took full advantage of the opportunity provided, and gave a very strong performance. This is at least due in part to Matheson’s script. Then again, author and actor actually knew one another, and Matheson’s understanding as to Shatner’s then largely untapped abilities as an actor, allowed him to pursue a storyline in his script that worked to the mutual advantage of both script and actor.

As Tony Albarella reveals in his essay, Richard Matheson’s original script concentrated solely upon this “A” story involving the Captain’s split form and personality, and thus gave additional time for Kirk to fully develop this plotline. However, the powers-that-be over at the Star Trek Series decided that the story “needed” a “B” or secondary plotline. So a secondary storyline was added involving Sulu and a ground party quickly facing freezing to death on a planet whose temperatures rapidly fall to unsurvivably cold temperatures after sunset, during the same time that the Enterprise’s transporter system is down as a result of what has happened to the captain. This took away from the time spent on Kirk’s split person storyline. Unfortunately, Matheson’s original teleplay hasn’t survived, so we will never know just what was removed from the script to make room for the “ freezing Landing Party” storyline.

Matheson Uncollected: Volume One, is being released in both a Limited/Numbered hardcover edition, for which there’s an optional slipcase, and a deluxe Lettered hardcover edition, both of which will include an Introduction by Matheson friend and fellow author George Clayton Johnson, and another stunning cover by eminent artist Harry O. Morris. The leather-bound Lettered edition comes with a traycase, is signed by both Richard Matheson and George Clayton Johnson, and also adds the script/teleplay adaptation of Matheson’s justly famous short story, “No Such Thing As A Vampire.” As with all Gauntlet Publication titles, the books are beautifully and richly put together, and are well worth their prices.

Matheson Uncollected: Volume One is filled with a nice collection of both “important” and extremely pleasurable writings by the brilliant author Richard Matheson, which run the gamut from short stories to lost novels to famous teleplays. Whether you are a knowledgeable and experienced Matheson aficionado or someone new to the works of this writing powerhouse, this is a book that you will enjoy reading, and will also act as a nice reference volume upon your bookshelf.

Gauntlet Press

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ORGY OF SOULS by Wrath James White & Maurice Broaddus
Review by JG Faherty

The professional fighter and the preacher. The avowed atheist and the man of God. Brute force and the power of the Word. When I first heard that Wrath James White and Maurice Broaddus, two good friends but two polar opposites when it comes to their lifestyles and their styles of writing, were collaborating on a book, I knew I had to have it.

Would it bring out the best of the two writers? Or would it fall on its face, victim of a forced tempering of violence, or of a forced emphasis on gore?

Well, I’m happy to say that this book packs a wallop while never straying over the line into the gray areas of preachiness or gratuitous sex and brutality.

In short, it’s one of the best things either of them have ever written.

Orgy of Souls is the tale of two brothers: Samson, the self-absorbed, gorgeous male model who’s addicted to the good life of sex, drugs, and money, and Samuel, the preacher who is dying of AIDS (from a contaminated blood transfusion), and whose alternately grows stronger and weaker as he contemplates his imminent death.

Samson refuses to believe his brother, the best part of their family in his eyes, will die, and so he decides to collect the souls of twenty sinners and blackmail God with them - twenty for one. He doesn’t care that he’s damning himself in the process.

On the other side of the coin, Samuel is appalled by Samson’s deeds, even as he feels moments of weakness where he wonders if it will work, if he can be saved.

Two things jump out immediately in this novella, the first of which is that the writers deftly avoid stereotyping their two protagonists. Samson is revealed to have more layers than the one he shows the public. He has real emotions, knows his limitations, and understands why he’s ended up the way he has. His love for his brother transcends his own superficiality, allowing this amoral, semi-bisexual hedonist to offer up the ultimate sacrifice - his own life.

And how easy would it be to make Samuel a hypocritical figure, a man who preaches about God and Heaven, but really is more concerned with the material world of money, gadgets, sex, and booze? Not to mention the temptation to grab stories from the headlines and make him a pedophile.

But nothing like this happens. Wrath allows his disdain for religion to come forth in Samson’s words and thoughts, and Maurice makes Samuel a real man, wracked with doubt but also filled with purpose and faith, all without either of them proselytizing.

The story moves quickly, and you’ll find yourself flipping page after page, eager to see what happens next. Wrath White has put some filters on his propensity for graphic depictions of death and sex, so that although Samson’s victims die some pretty horrible deaths, there is nothing here that you won’t find in a dozen other mainstream horror novels. Blood and guts and semen? They’re all there, just not in buckets.

For his part, Maurice Broaddus lives up to his nickname of the Sinister Minister, providing horrifyingly accurate depictions of AIDS victims and working with White to create some truly evil scenes involving demons and Satan.

Does Orgy of Souls have some faults? Sure; most books do. In this case, I felt a little disbelief during some of Samson’s more public executions, especially the one scene in the upstairs of a club where no one seems to notice the giant man with the sword who’s covered in blood, or the dead bodies he leaves behind.

Perhaps the biggest problem with the book is that at 38 pages, it’s just too damn short. Parts of it felt too sparse; I think another 15 to 20 pages could have been added without hindering the speeding train pace of the story.

Almost as interesting as the story itself are the forward and afterward by Broaddus and White, respectively. They give some insight into the writing and thought processes of these two talented authors.

All in all, Orgy of Souls is a book any aficionado of horror, especially religious horror, will enjoy. Fans of Wrath White will appreciate the maturity of his writing, that he’s showing he doesn’t need to depend on the gore to hold our interest. And fans of Maurice Broaddus will enjoy seeing this harder side of him.

Buy Orgy of Souls when it comes out, and strap yourself in for an hour or two of damn good fun.

Apex Books

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CAIRNWOOD MANOR: KEEPERS OF THE DEAD By Bob Freeman
Review by Steven E. Wedel

I came to Bob’s new book afraid I’d be lost because I hadn’t read the first Cairnwood Manor novel. Turns out, it would have helped to read the first book, but it wasn’t necessary. Enough of the back story was mentioned to keep the reader grounded without rehashing too much.

So, how was the book? Very good! Bob sets a breakneck pace that you’d think he can’t maintain for the length of a novel, but he pulls it off very well. The story is about an epic battle in which the Wolves of Cairnwood Manor and the Circle of Nine Skulls join forces to defeat an ancient enemy.

Bob brings everything but the kitchen sink. We’re talking werewolves, vampires, witches, immortal warriors, and an army of the undead battling with claws, fangs, weapons, spells and anything else available. In the meantime, Bob gives us short breaks to catch our breath and learn what’s brought us to this pivotal time in the history of his richly imagined universe.

Keepers of the Dead is a fast read, but one filled with depth. You’ll come away entertained, but also knowing that you were in the hands of not only a master storyteller, but someone who knows the occult world he’s leading you through. I highly recommend this one!

Black Death Books

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THE JIGSAW MAN by Gord Rollo
Review by Cesar Puch

After losing his family to a traffic accident, Michael Fox has been in a constant downslide, sleeping inside a dumpster, surviving on the streets and haunted by the memory of his lost wife and child. Tired of it all, he decides to put an end to everything but his plans are cut short when a stranger makes him an offer too good to be true. Thus, Michael is introduced to Dr. Marshall, a multimillionaire scientist who offers to pay two million dollars for his right arm. The offer of course does turn out to be too good to be true and Michael not only learns that he is not the only one who has been drafted, but by the time he learns the fate of his predecessors, it is too late for him. As it turns out, Dr. Marshall is obsessed with building something and unfortunately for Michael, spare parts are required.

When you start reading The Jigsaw Man you will no doubt identify a number of clichés: the victim who is in way over his head, the mad scientist with a fortune that can guarantee the performance of any experiment he can imagine, the sadistic henchman who is big as a house and becomes more twisted and repulsive with every page, the secluded, creepy laboratory. Actually, when it comes to characters the author does fall in his own trap and so the evil players turn more and more caricaturesque as he adds details which really have no relevance to the story and appear to be there for mere effect. However, and despite the latter, Rollo makes these clichés work with a light prose that is strong on suspense. The story never stops moving forward and the chapters are nicely strung together, maintaining the interest with small cliffhangers (the prologue is among some of the most effective I’ve read).

But then there’s more to The Jigsaw Man, because as things turn more and more sour for our hero, no one is there to save him from doom, and this is where the story really kicks off. Rollo takes the character beyond torture to a point where he is literally reduced to almost nothing. At this point you might wonder if Rollo has painted himself into a corner but as far-fetched as the story can turn at times, the author manages to create a nice turn in the events and the final resolution turns out to be a satisfying one, lending a degree of poignancy to a story that could have been just another shock-fest.

Speaking of the shocker value, it was interesting to see that as disturbing as some of these scenes can be, the blood-spatter and gut-tossing is actually kept to a minimum, despite there being certain scenes which will very likely make more than one reader gag.

It could be argued that ‘The Jigsaw Man’ is a version of the Frankenstein story told from the point of view of the donor. The story is certainly enjoyable provided you are willing to give the clichés a chance. Pick it up for a fast entertaining read.

Leisure Press

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THE HARLEQUIN AND THE TRAIN by Paul G. Tremblay
By Norm Rubenstein

Prominent author and editor Jeffrey Thomas is the man behind Horror/Dark Fiction Publisher Necropolitan Press (NP), which he founded in 1993. However, this imprint has been dormant since 2001, and had not published any new titles since then. The announcement that Necropolitan Press was once again becoming active and would begin publication of new titles in 2008 was welcome news. The very first book that NP selected to commence its rebirth with is Paul G. Tremblay’s Novella, The Harlequin & The Train, which at One Hundràd Fifty Five pages is virtually at short-novel length, and will retail for $20.00.

Author Paul G. Tremblay is a two-time finalist for the Bram Stoker award, and served as fiction editor of Chizine and co-editor of Fantasy magazine. Mr. Tremblay has published over fifty pieces of short fiction, co-edited three anthologies including the recent Bandersnatch, and has published a collection of his short fiction, Compositions For The Young And Old, which included the short story from which this novella arose, also titled The Harlequin & The Train.

The novella’s structure is rather ingenious, if intricate, with numerous flash-forwards and flashbacks. However, the initial seemingly puzzling “Chapter Headings” soon become the clever cipher needed to make perfect sense of the proceedings and characters presented. While the author deftly weaves the reader through the introduction of various interesting and mysterious characters and seemingly mundane goings-on, all become effectively linked within the story, and the mysteries quickly grow riveting.

The novella’s protagonist is twenty nine year old Rudy, who has been on the job as a train engineer with the Boston, MA area mass transit authority for only a few months. He listens in disbelief to the seemingly tall tales of the more experienced train conductors and engineers about all the supposedly deliberate suicides-by-train that are quickly and quietly hushed-up and never really reported on by the media. Rudy has a sister Karen, eight years older than he, who six years previously, while happily married and pregnant, suffered a rare brain aneurysm while giving birth, which has left her totally disabled, childlike, and requiring around–the-clock care in an assisted living facility. Abandoned by her husband who moves away with their child, Karen’s only visitor is her ever-loving younger brother.

One day, as Rudy is driving a commuter train headed in from the suburbs towards Boston, he suddenly faces the ultimate trauma for a train engineer, a person on the tracks who isn’t listening to Rudy’s frantic horn blasts, and who is too close to the train for the train to avoid hitting him, no matter that Rudy has engaged the emergency brake, which can cause the entire train to derail, and will certainly cause injuries to the many commuter passengers. Rudy is just able to observe that the person on the tracks is strangely dressed in a harlequin clown outfit as the train strikes him, spreading gore all over. As the fast moving train grinds to a sudden stop, the already traumatized Rudy gets his own ticket to the Twilight Zone punched, as he observes a bunch of people scurrying out of the surrounding woods, and even a few persons climbing down from the train itself, quickly gathering up pieces of what used to be a human being in a clown outfit, and devouring them with much gusto. They then disappear as quickly back into the woods.

We also eventually find out that this is not Rudy’s first brush with the inexplicable. In one of the novella’s many important time-shifts, a flashback reveals that when Karen was a junior in high school she asked her younger adoring brother to help her with her statistics project. She gives him a “special” quarter and composition notebook and asks little Rudy to flip the quarter at least one hundred times per day for a couple of weeks, and record in the composition notebook both his guess as to whether each flip will be heads or tails, and the actual result of the coin toss. She further instructs Rudy how to figure out his daily average/percentage of correct guesses. Rudy is very diligent in doing as his sister asks, and as expected, Rudy’s daily average continually hovers around the expected fifty percent each day. At least it does until the fateful day that Karen and Rudy’s parents are killed in an auto accident on the icy roads. On that particular day, Rudy’s percentage rises to a level that is far more impressive than fifty percent, one that should be statistically impossible, unless …

Back in the present, Rudy begins to receive a number of brutal shocks. Without revealing any major spoilers, Officer Shandley, the policeman who is investigating the train crash, questions Rudy, suddenly making a shattering revelation to Rudy about the identity of the splattered clown. Further gory “accidents” that appear to Rudy as staged, also take place, always with a group of people who seem to have advance knowledge of the time and place appearing at the accident scene, only to seek to sate seemingly ghoulish appetites at the expense of the suddenly deceased. Rudy finds a strange cell phone inside his locked car, and when he answers as it rings, he is threatened by a mysterious woman who warns him that if he tries to discover the caller’s identity or destroy the cell phone, his loved ones will be harmed. She instructs Rudy that he must carry the phone with him always, and tries to recruit him via telephone conversations, into the mysterious group that he has observed at the accident sites. Rudy begins to question everything about his life as the novella moves to a shattering climax.

Paul G. Tremblay is a very talented author. His prose flows rhythmically and almost hypnotically. He presents wonderfully complex characters in a way that ensures that readers will be truly interested in and solicitous of what happens to them. The author is expert at creating a quiet yet very profound feeling of horror that inexorably envelops the reader. The Harlequin & The Train is both edgy and relentless, and is a thoroughly mesmerizing and engrossing read. If one could, for a moment, imagine the literary equivalent of The Police’s songs Synchronicity, parts One and Two, The Harlequin & The Train comes delightfully close. Congratulations to both Paul G. Tremblay for writing such an excellent and disturbing novella, and to Jeffrey Thomas for resurrecting Necropolitan Press with such an outstanding new offering.

Necropolitan Press

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FOUND: THE MISSING: BOOK 1 by Margaret Peterson Haddix
Review by David Simms

Young adult books are tough to classify in most cases: are they horror, sci-fi, fantasy, mystery, etc? Most of the successful ones (we’ll leave Potter out of the equation for now), combine genres, which is what the best adult fiction does. Think of The Golden Compass, Narnia, Goosebumps, and then modern series such as Pendleton & Petrucha’s great Wicked series and F. Paul Wilson’s new YA Repairman (now simply) Jack series. All have elements of horror but hit the reader with many levels.

Haddix’s new series is no different. Having not read her Shadow Children series, her writing was new to me. This means FOUND was a pleasant surprise.

An airplane arrives at the gate with only 36 passengers aboard – ALL infants (that’s scary in itself!). Of course, it’s covered up but thirteen year-old Jonah, his buddy Chip, and sister find themselves peering into a mystery that’s deeper than any conspiracy theory. If you’re thinking X-files junior, you’re not far off from the plot. As both Jonah and Chip are both adopted, they find links to people who appear from empty space, disappearing into ???

When they begin to discover the truth, actual horror begins. Thinking from a teenager’s point of view, this attack on identity is truly scary. Scarier when none of the options seem to lead back to a “normal” life.

The toughest part about writing YA is getting the characters right – the dialogue, actions, thought process, etc (as in all good fiction). Haddix obviously knows teens, which is why this book feels so natural. Not just for kids. Recommended for anyone who loves conspiracy scares with a touch of the supernatural.

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DARK TERRITORIESEdited by Mary SanGiovanni and Gary Frank
Reviewed by Cesar Puch

The Garden State Horror Writes take us on a ride through old New Jersey, from posh suburbs to crowded streets, and offer us fifteen tales of fear, madness, lost hope, darkness, death ... and lots of heat.

In his introduction, Gary Frank asks us readers to forget all the tropes and clichés we’ve been exposed to. He offers us dread not necessarily hidden behind a hockey mask. No better example of this than what might be the best tale in this anthology, Harrison Howe’s “All that you can’t leave behind”, a story that tackles one of the greater fears of us humans: the fear of failure. Howe’s story is haunting and terrifying as it turns our attention to dreams lost and just how far our apparent success has taken us. At the other end of the book we have the brief but most effective “Dream Girl” by John R. Platt, which makes us wonder if we’ll ever catch up with “the one that got away”, and if so, what will we find. Platt’s story is concise and leaves the readers chilled in their need to know more.

You can’t go wrong with Charles L. Grant who takes us to the Jersey suburbs in “Temperature Days on Hawthorne Street” where people are getting their heart’s desire after leaving little requests to a milkman no one has ever seen. Thirty years olds and above might remember the adaptation of this story as “The Milkman Cometh” in the 80s TV Show “Tales from the Darkside”. A classic example of quiet horror.

A pleasant surprise is provided by Edward Greaves, whose story “Sucker Kiss” is reminiscent of the old TV anthology shows from the 80s (the aforementioned “Tales from the Darkside”,” Monsters” and even “The New Twilight Zone”). This all-in-a-day’s-work tale is original and fun and one of the best in Dark Territories. Other stories worth mentioning are Peter Gutiérrez’s “Scopophilia” which has a Holmes/Watson feel to it, even though it’s far from a detective story and J. G. Faherty’s “Family First”, a new take on the zombie tale.

Unfortunately not every story in this anthology is equally effective. “Man of Principle” by Michael Penncavage starts off as a good descriptive exercise but then turns into an extremely predictable piece. Likewise, Brian Pedersen’s “Shred” begins eerily enough in what could have been the inspiration to the movie “The Happening” but predictability once again has the upper hand in the end. Finally, William Mingin’s “Cat & Mouse” has some promise but doesn’t quite deliver in his tale of paranoia and alien invasion.

There are many stories in this anthology that are worth checking. Pick it up and make sure you have a glass of water at hand.

Garden State Horror Writers

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THE VERY BLOODY MARYS by M. Christian
Review by Alicia "Kestrell" Verlager

Unlike most vampires, Valentino, the protagonist of  The Very Bloody Marys, is not very broody: he isn't preoccupied with existential angst or philosophical questions concerning aesthetics or his lost humanity. In this queer vampire noir story, Valentino is just a smart-aleck supernatural (barely) competent law enforcement agent reluctantly fighting the forces of darkness in the seedier parts of San Francisco.

Constantly distracted by more fleshly concerns and chronically late for his night job, Valentino arrives at work one day to find that his mentor, Pogue, has disappeared. What's worse, this disappearance seems to be just one move in a larger game that involves a supernatural feud amongst San Francisco's less human residents, a feud which promises to leave a lot of corpses in its wake, including everyone close to Valentino.

M. Christian creates a variety of quirky characters from wizards to zombies to fairies, and the tone captures the feeling of a fast-paced horror movie, alternately funny and creepy. The one element which sometimes causes the pacing to lag is Christian's tendency to occasionally use repetition with too heavy a hand, thereby interrupting the action of this story which is otherwise non-stop.

Haworth Press

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PS SHOWCASE #2: CONSCIENTIOUS INCONSISTENCIES by Nancy Jane Moore
Review by Norm Rubenstein

PS Publishing (PS) is the multi-award winning British based Publisher of quality Horror, Fantasy, and Science Fiction titles, helmed by the eminent author Peter Crowther. PS recently decided to publish a line of hardcover books that would showcase short fiction mini-collections from some of the Horror/Fantasy/Dark Fiction Genres’ rising young star authors. Titled the PS Showcase line of books, they are available in two editions, a Hardcover edition of three hundred copies without any dust jacket, signed by the author, for $20.00, and a fancier hardcover edition limited to only one hundred copies, with a handsome dust jacket and signed both by the author and the person writing the Introduction, for $50.00.

PS recently released the second title in the PS Showcase line of books, titled PS Showcase #2: Conscientious Inconsistencies by Texas based author Nancy Jane Moore. The book I reviewed had the optional dust cover with extremely evocative artwork by famed artist Edward Miller, and was signed on a nicely designed and artful signature page by both author Nancy Jane Moore, and by noted Science Fiction author L. Timmel Duchamp, who provides a nice introduction to the book. The slim volume contains five short stories by author Nancy Jane Moore, whose fiction spans various genres such as Fantasy, Science Fiction, and “Slipstream”. Author Moore is described as an “unrepentant feminist,” and indeed each of the stories in this collection contains a female protagonist. owever, this should not put anyone “off” as the included stories are all strong with interesting and entertaining characters, and thought-provoking novel plotlines.

The collection’s first story, “A Mere Scutcheon,” is a very entertaining adventure yarn firmly in the style of Alexandre Dumas’ (pere) and his Three Musketeers. However, in Ms. Moore’s slightly re-imagined Seventeenth Century France, the Queen’s Guard, those brave highly trained fighters so expert with swords, muskets, and fists, and sworn to protect the Queen’s life and honor with their lives, are all females instead of males. As the King’s Guard are all male, this makes for potentially very interesting conflict, which isn’t long in coming. A political intrigue instigated by the evil Cardinal suddenly pits the King versus Queen, and thus the two sets of Guards at seemingly opposite goals with potentially deadly consequences. Much swash is heroically buckled, with the Queen’s Ladies in Blue acquitting themselves very well indeed against the King’s Men in Red. The story is well written, contains wry umor and perhaps just a dollop of gentle and understated social commentary. It all works, and works very well.

The next story, “The First Condition Of Immortality,” is a contemporary story that could with a great deal of justification, be considered as well within the bounds of the Horror/Dark Fiction Genre. After the sudden death of her female friend Elaine, the female protagonist of this story is jolted to suddenly find herself being haunted by a frightening shadow. She assumes the vague and menacing specter to be the ghost of her departed friend, but is very wrong. The eventual truth is far more terrifying. Again, the author displays great writing skills and is readily able to evoke a number of emotions in the reader, including fear. This is a skillful, evocative and very effective tale that is expertly presented.

The third story in the collection is titled “Thirty One Rules For Fulfilling Your Destiny,” and is a clever piece of flash fiction that will give you pause to consider as you smile at the enumerated rules themselves.The Forth story in the book is titled ”Homesteading.” This is a longer work of nearly twenty pages, and is yet another triumph for author Moore. It is a wonderfully descriptive post-apocalyptic tale that introduces a truly memorable protagonist, Isabel, who is, in nearing middle age, one of the few left alive old enough to remember the world as it had been, and such “niceties” as how to read and write. Isabel is also a trained fighter and expert with weapons such as blades and guns, which, in the bleak and desperate new world in which she finds herself, are now far more prized and necessary survival skills than reading and writing. Isabel managed to save a young girl named Lily, and they’ve traveled together for some time now. Lilly is now a blooming and attractive teenager. This causes friction and could spell disaster as they try to survive the bad winter months as hired hands at a homestead run by a crass, bullish autocratic man and his harem of wives and children, including his eldest son, who has designs upon Lilly. Once again, the author displays exceptional writing skills, weaving details about the bleak post-pocalyptic world she has imagined and created into the truly interesting and involving plotline of her story, without ever consciously removing the reader’s attention from the developing story itself. This is a world, and a protagonist so well conceived that one can only hope that author Moore will revisit both in some future tales.

The final story in Conscientious Inconsistencies is titled “Three O’Clock In The Morning.” In a mere six and a half pages, the author again manages to present a cohesive and terrifying tale of mysterious and seemingly impenetrable walls that suddenly appear around cities and then neighborhoods, cutting off the haves from the have-nots, separating the rich from the poor, and then escalating to even more terrifying heights (pun intended). Again, Ms. Moore’s story is all the scarier for the refined social commentary she embeds within it.

Nancy Jane Moore is an extremely talented author whose stories are extremely entertaining while also being powerfully compelling by dint of the informed and elegant social commentary that infuses her stories. Kudos to PS ublishing for recognizing Ms. Moore’s burgeoning talent, and for introducing her work so accessibly to the reading public in their affordable PS Showcase Series. PS Showcase #2: Conscientious Inconsistencies is a truly worthwhile book that should be on everyone’s TBR Lists. I would not be at all surprised if the collection and the stories contained within, are recognized when the next batch of appropriate Genre awards nominations are announced.

PS Publishing

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HAUNTED HEARTS AND SAPPHIC SHADES: LESBIAN GHOST STORIES
Edited by Catherine Lundoff
Review by Alicia "Kestrell" Verlager

Women's writing is filled with stories of ghosts and haunted places and, as Catherine Lundoff explains in her excellent introduction to Haunted Hearts And Sapphic Shades, women's ghost stories can run the gamut from the spine-tingling to the romantic to the socio-political.

Haunted Hearts And Sapphic Shades follows in this long tradition of women's ghost stories by offering seventeen stories with a wide range of tones and themes demonstrating the breadth and depth of the ghost story.

Many of these stories use ghosts to link contemporary women to their historical counterparts, as in "Spirit Horse Ranch" by Sacchi Green, in which a contemporary rancher is haunted as much by the ghost of her own past as by any ghost from the historical past, or "Ostraca" by Brenta Blevins, in which a college student working at an archeological dig is haunted by dreams of an ancient Egyptian ghost.

Other stories provide a psychological twist to the ghost story, as in M. Christian's "The One I Left Behind" or the truly disturbing "Words Like Candy Conversation Hearts" by Kathleen Bradean’s in which a ghost is attracted to a female poet for her way with words.

There are ghosts who are unconcerned with the well-being of those they haunt, as in City Of The Dead by Kaite Welsh, while other ghosts prove to be busybodies determined to interfere in the lives of the living, as is the ghost experienced by the modern ghostbuster in Dayle A. Dermatis's "Some Old Lover’s Ghost."

Some ghosts turn out to be perfect companions, as in the amusing "Focus Of Desire" by Elise Matthesen while others turn out to be roommates from hell, as in "The Dyke You Know" by Selina Rosen.

Some ghost are sweetly romantic as in "Waiting Tables And Time" by Lyn McConchie, while others are demonic forces which must be outfoxed, as in Melissa Scott's exceptional "One Horse Town."

Haunted Hearts and Sapphic Shades is an enjoyable read, whether you are looking for something spooky to read on a stormy night or searching for new collections of lesbian writing.

Lethe Press

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PLIGHT OF THE TOOTHLESS VAMPIRE by Steve Stillwell
Review by Steve Wedel

You know the crotchety old man down the street? The one who shakes his fists at the kids and whistles through his dentures as he tells you the same story over and over about how good (or hard) things used to be? What if he became a vampire?

That’s the premise behind Steve Stillwell’s Plight Of The Toothless Vampire. Chester Watkins is the old man. On a winter walk he comes across one of those doped-out goth girls, who just happens to be a vampire. When Chester lets her know kids didn’t act that way in his days, she become a real pain in his neck … which results in Chester becoming a member of the undead. Trouble is, Chester doesn’t have any teeth.

It’s an interesting comic premise, and there are some nice moments in this novel. However, the book suffers from what plagues most self-published novels – the lack of a strong editorial eye. The plot meanders, unnecessary phrases are repeated, and some situations are just too far-fetched to believe. For instance, when a vampire lord (named Marius; haven’t we heard something like that before) gives Chester a manual on being a vampire and warns him that being toothless is a bad thing, Chester actually asks why that matters. Umm, hello? Has Chester spent his 84 years under a rock, never having seen Christopher Lee in a film?

Stillwell may have a career in this business, but he needs to find a good critique group, then have the patience it takes to find a publishing house with an editor who can help shape his prose.

Batfire Press

 

 

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