Frozen Shadows - Wildwoman: JournalStone's DoubleDown Series, Book VII - by Gene O'Neill & Chris Marrs - Two stories of childhood abduction

4 of 5 Stars     Review copy

Frozen Shadows - Wildwoman: JournalStone's DoubleDown Series, Book VII is JournalStone's seventh release in their Double Down series  This is where JournalStone puts together a single volume featuring two novellas, one from an established writer and another from a relatively new voice in horror. This time, both stories deal with children being abducted and the result is another strong entry in this ongoing series.

Gene O'Neill has five published novels to his credit and more than 140 short stories.  The shorter fiction has been published in five collections.  He has been on the final ballot for the Bram Stoker Award and has twice taken home the coveted haunted house.

Frozen Shadows begins in Sutter Creek, California and has an opening that pulls the reader right into the heart of the story.

When I was six years old, I went to live with my grandparents in Sutter Creek.  Shortly thereafter, I met a beautiful girl named Bell.  Together, Bell and I would confront an evil man who cast no shadow. These three interrelated events would significantly influence the course of my life.

I enjoyed the way O'Neill developed the main characters.  Sean O'Donnell, Isabella "Bell" Marconi, and Bobby "Miracle Bob" Mericalli were the best of friends., living a pretty charmed childhood until Mr. Shadrach Black moved to town.  Although the premise of the evil that comes to Sutter Creek is of an unbelievable nature, the story is made credible in its telling.

I love a good coming of age story and there's quite a bit of that in Frozen Shadows.  It seems that, for once, good triumphs over evil, although not without a terrible cost.  Fifty years later and on the other side of the country a story makes the news and...

~

Chris Marrs lives on the West Coast of British Columbia. During the day she tends bar to keep her kids fed, watered, and sheltered and spends her nights writing.  To date, several of her short stories have seen publication and in the Fall of 2013, Bad Moon Books published her novella Everything Leads Back To Alice.

WildWoman also features a killer opening line...

At the age of seven, Ghoulie Julie found a naked girl whose eyes were sewn shut.

The story itself takes place over the course of nearly 30 years.  A story of disappearing children, bullying, teenage angst, poor decisions, and redemption.

When Julie was seventeen her younger sister, Clare goes missing, a tragedy which sets her on a path of self-destruction.  Seventeen years later,  her own daughter, Natalie Jade, goes missing...

~

Two completely different stories of childhood abduction combine for another, largely successful, entry into the DoubleDown series.  I'm definitely looking forward  to what JournalStone has in stall for us next.

Frozen Shadows - Wildwoman: JournalStone's DoubleDown Series, Book VII is available now in both paperback and e-book formats.

Recommended.

Seize the Night: New Tales in Vampiric Terror - ed. by Christopher Golden - Not a sparkly vampire in sight

5 of 5 Stars     Review copy

Christopher Golden is a very busy writer.  If a project involves the written word, it seems as if Christopher is willing to give it a go.  This includes comics, media tie-ins, YA novels, and books for adults.  Oh, and let's not forget editing anthologies.

Christopher's latest project is one such anthology.  Seize the Night: New Tales of Vampiric Terror  is built upon the premise that "once upon a time vampires were figures of terror...And they can be again."

The twenty-one authors collected in this volume have accepted that challenge and have largely succeeded in returning vampires and their ilk back into our nightmares where they belong.  Although, a couple of the stories had me scratching my head looking for the vampiric connection, each of the tales delivered the goods.  And by goods, I mean the terror.

UP IN OLD VERMONT by Scott Smith.  Scott is an American author and screenwriter with two novels to his credit.  His screen adaptation of his novel A Simple Plan earned him an Academy Award nomination. This is the sweet story of Ally, a woman who has not had a lot of luck with the choices she's made in her life.  She moves to Vermont to assist in the care of a wife with Alzheimer's in exchange for room, board, and a small stipend.  Sounds idyllic, but what happens is anything but.

SOMETHING LOST, SOMETHING GAINED by Seanan McGuire.  In 2010 Seanan was awarded The John W. Campbell Award for Best new Writer.  This is a wildly imaginative story of a young teen-aged girl who gets caught in a Summer storm while chasing fireflies. What happens next is devastating, life-changing, and brilliant.

ON THE DARK SIDE OF SUNLIGHT BASIN by Michael Koryta.  Michael is an American author of contemporary crime and supernatural fiction and has had his work translated into twenty languages.  There is a reason why Michael is a NYT bestselling author and why his work is so highly praised.  It all comes down to great story-telling.  I loved this tale of a big game hunter who refuses to listen to the advice of his Native American guide.  I really enjoyed Michael's legend building in this story.

THE NEIGHBORS by Sherrilyn Kenyon.  Sherrilyn is a popular urban fantasy writer.  Her novels have sold over 30 million print copies in over 100 countries. This short features some kids spying on their neighbors while there is a serial killer at large.  A short, yet terrifying tale.

PAPER CUTS by Gary A. Braunbeck.  Gary writes in a number of different genres, but is primarily known for his work in horror.  He is also the recipient of two Bram Stoker Awards. Gary's story opens with the most visceral writing so far in this collection.  Vampires are far from the worst of the horrors featured in this short story.

MISS FONDEVANT by Charlaine Harris.  Charlaine has been writing for more than thirty years with her later works being in the urban fantasy genre.  Most notable would be her Sookie Stackhouse novels which led to the HBO series True Blood.  Here, a group of sixth graders think their teacher is an energy sucking vampire.  Truth is, they might be on to something.

IN A CAVERN, IN A CANYON by Laird Barron.  Laird is an award winning author and poet whose work falls primarily within the horror, noir, and dark fantasy genres.  Laird delivers a well-told story of a woman, now in her fifties, still trying to understand if her father walked out on her and her siblings or if something more sinister occurred.

WHISKY AND LIGHT by Dana Cameron.  Dana began her professional career as an historical archaeologist and later turned to writing.  Originally having success with the Emma Fielding Archaeology Mysteries and more recently with her Fangborn Urban Fantasy Series. Dana is a new writer for me as a reader and I love that about anthologies.  Her story from the days of the Puritans, features legends, superstition, demons, and a young woman wanting desperately to get away from all of that.

WE ARE ALL MONSTERS HERE by Kelley Armstrong.  Kelley is a Canadian writer who's had a great deal of success in the urban fantasy genre.  She's created multiple series set in multiple worlds.  It's been two years since the outbreak that led to the onslaught of vampirism and there were still no explanations as to a cause.  "Of course people blamed the government.  It was in the vaccinations or the water or the genetically modified food.  What was the trigger?"  I love me some Kelley Armstrong.

MAY THE END BE GOOD by Tim Lebbon.  Tim has been writing for nearly twenty years, primarily in the field of horror and dark fantasy.  The story of a monk, in France, during the reign of William the Bastard.  As if the atrocities of the French Army against the people was not horrible enough...

MRS. POPKIN by Dan Chaon and Lynda Barry.   Dan has two novels and numerous short stories to his credit and has twice had his work included in Best American Short Stories.  Lynda has worked as a painter, cartoonist, writer, illustrator, and more.  She is the creator of Ernie Pook's Comeek, a syndicated comic strip which ran for more than two decades.  I found this to be a charming tale, but I couldn't quite figure out how it tied into the theme of the anthology.

DIRECT REPORT by Leigh Perry.  Leigh also writes as Toni L.P. and is the author of the Family Skeleton mysteries.  Wow.  Wonderfully told story. A totally original vampire concept.  It took a while to get there, but the payoff was worth the wait.

SHADOW AND THIRST by John Langan.  John is an American writer of contemporary horror, he's been a finalist for a Bram Stoker Award for Best Collection, and he serves on the Board of Directors for the Shirley Jackson Awards.  This story is an interesting and complex tale of a grandfather who discovers an unusual structure on his property.  After coming back from investigating it, he's a changed man and not for the better.

MOTHER by Joe McKinney.  Joe has more than thirty books to his credit.  He is a two time Bram Stoker Award winner.  And is a sergeant with the San Antonio Police Department.  Joe gives us a tale of the search for what has killed five young children in a small Texas community.  Believed to be the work of a chupacabra, turns out to be something far more terrifying.

BLOOD by Robert Shearman.  Robert is an award winning short story writer who is likely best known for the modern day Doctor Who.  A wonderfully told story of forbidden love and a trip to Paris.  I really like it, but might have liked it even more if I understood it in the context of the anthology's theme.

THE YELLOW DEATH by Lucy A. Snyder.  Lucy has more than 80 published short stories to her credit and won the Bram Stoker Award in the short story category for her 2012 short "Magdala Amygdala."  This story features some serious vampires.  Well done, Lucy.

THE LAST SUPPER by Brian Keene.  Brian is an American author, primarily of horror, crime fiction, and comic books. He has won two Bram Stoker Awards.  A fairly short short story from Brian showing how immortality isn't always all it's cracked up to be.

SEPARATOR by Rio Youers.  If you are not familiar with Rio's work, you really should correct that ASAP.  He's written two of my favorite novels from the last few years, Westlake Soul and Point Hollow are both worth your time.  Rio's vampire story was much like a perfect storm and was truly horrifying.

WHAT KEPT YOU SO LONG? by John Ajvide Lindqvist.  John is a notable Swedish horror writer. Here he delivers another entertaining story about doing what you have to do, what you're "called" to do.

BLUE HELL by David Wellington.  David writes about monsters, including a five book vampire series that follows a Pennsylvania state trooper battling a centuries old vampire. David's story for the anthology is about tradition, sacrifice, and what happens when it all goes wrong.

These are not your Count Dracula vampire stories, but thankfully they're not of the friendly variety either.  What they all have in common is that each and every story is a cut above the ordinary.

Seize the Night: New Tales of Vampiric Terror is out now from Gallery Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, and is available both in paperback and e-book formats.

My highest recommendation.

Hell Bound - by Andrew P. Weston - Similar to Richard Kadrey's Sandman Slim series, but not as much fun

3 of 5 Stars   Review copy

Andrew P. Weston is Royal Marine and Police veteran from the UK who now lives on the beautiful Greek island of Kos with his wife, Annette, and their growing family of rescue cats.  He is the creator of the international number one bestseller, The IX.  On weekends, you might find him drinking Earl Grey Tea whilst dressed as Captain Jean Luc Picard.

Hell Bound is new novel of the underverse from Perseid Press...

It's not often that this happens, I'm generally pretty good with selecting the stories I want to read, but I really didn't care for Hell Bound as much as I though I would.

Conceptually it sounds like I should love this story about Satan's Bounty Hunter, Daemon Grim, and his personal posse of trackers: Nimrod, Champ Ferguson, and Yamato Takeru. Known collectively as the Hell Hounds.  There are a number of interesting characters  as well as a generally engrossing story, but it wasn't enough to overcome the cutesy approach to Hell.

What I mean by cutesy is calling just about everything in Hell by the antithesis of its name from the world above.  This quickly became annoying and distracted me from enjoying the story, but the author continued to pile them on throughout the book.  Things like the Fiendish Bureau of Investigation; instead of a bible in each room of a hotel they have a copy of Dante's Inferno; there's a ship called HSMS Titanic (His Satanic Majesty's Ship); "there's been a lot of chatter on the white market" and on and on.

Although the story is self contained, there are more than enough loose ends to warrant a sequel, a sequel I'm nearly certain I'll be skipping.

Hell Bound is available now as an e-book from Perseid Press.

Godbomb! - by Kit Power - The most powerful book I've read in 2015

5 of 5 Stars     Review copy

Kit Power lives in the UK and writes fiction that lurks at the boundaries of the horror, fantasy, and thriller genres, trying to bum a smoke or hitch a ride from the unwary. 

In his secret alter ego of Kit Gonzo, he also performs as front man (and occasionally blogs) for death cult and popular beat combo The Disciples Of Gonzo, www.disciplesofgonzo.com.

I've been lucky enough to be reading Kit for a couple of years now. Admittedly, I have not always given him the most positive of reviews, but he's always been gracious and has continued to work diligently on his craft.  I have to say his perseverance has paid off.

I think I've just read the best book I'm likely to read in 2015.  Godbomb! is that good.  No, not just good.  It's great.  Kit has written a story that takes the reader into the heart of the kind of story we see every day on the news.  The kind of story that leaves us shaking our heads at how crazy this world we live in has become.

The story takes place in North Devon, England. 1995. A born-again revival meeting in a public building. The usual mix of the faithful, the curious, and the desperate. And one other – an atheist suicide bomber. He's angry. He wants answers. And if God doesn't come and talk to him personally, he's going to kill everyone in the building.

I found Godbomb! to be a totally engrossing read from the very first word.  The more I read, the more I thought to myself how I'd love to see this on the stage.  In a way, this book even reads a bit like a play with several key players playing major roles.  Aside from the suicide bomber and his accomplice, there's a disabled woman, an alcoholic, a dirty old man, a sax player, a sixteen-year-old girl, a woman ready to give birth any day, and each one plays a major role.

This can easily be a career defining book for Kit Power.  It's a book I think everyone should read, just so you can say you were among the first.

Godbomb! is available now in both paperback and e-book from the Sinister Horror Company. If you subscribe to Kindle Unlimited, you're in luck as you can read this one at no additional charge.  Also, if you have Amazon Prime you can read it for FREE as your monthly selection in the Kindle Owners Lending Library.

If you only ever read one book I recommend, make Godbomb! the one.

Convalescence - by Maynard Sims - A very entertaining ghost story novella

5 of 5 Stars     Review copy

Maynard Sims is actually a "they."  Len Maynard and Michael Sims have been writing together for more than forty years.  In addition to supernatural thrillers, like Convalescence, they also write stories in the thriller, mystery, and suspense genres.

Although short on words, coming in at only 87 pages, Convalescence is long on story.

James Bently, fourteen, is the only member of his family to survive an outbreak of tuberculosis.  Sent to live with his uncle Thomas, at his sprawling estate, it's not long before he hears what sounds like a child crying.  Later, he begins to communicate with a mysterious entity on the property.  With the aide of a house maid, sixteen-year-old, Amy, the riddle is eventually solved only to reveal a horrifying truth about what had taken place at his uncle's house.

Reading Convalescence was like stepping briefly into another time and place. The prose was lyrical and I loved the bits with James' little transistor radio, his only link to the outside world and British pop music of 1965.  All in all, this was a truly wonderful ghost story.

From Samhain Horror,  Convalescence will b available as an e-book on November 3, 2015.

If you are a fan of ghost stories you don't want to miss this one.

The Mirrors - by Nicole Cushing - A strange collection of speculative fiction

4 of 5 Stars     Review copy

Nicole Cushing is a Shirley Jackson Award finalist who's written a number of stand-alone novellas and dozens of short stories. Nicole has been referred to as the literary equivalent of the love child between Jack Ketchum and Poppy Z. Bright.  Raised in rural Maryland and now living in southern Indiana, Nicole counts master storyteller Edgar Allen Poe as having had a big influence on her as a writer.

A few weeks ago, I read Nicole's debut novel, Mr. Suicide. a book filled with richly demented and deformed characters.  This was one of my favorite reads so far in 2015.  Highly recommended.

The Mirrors is a collection of twenty works of speculative fiction which, for the most part, have been published elsewhere, but appear together for the first time in this volume.

As I read story after story, each a bit stranger than the last, the words from Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken came to my mind. "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by..."  These are NOT the typical stories one expects to find in a collection from a horror writer. Sure, they're twisted, demented, and at times unsettling, but there's more to it than that.  Have you ever walked through a Hall of Mirrors at a carnival, the kind that present you with reflections that are misshaped and often leave you lost? Yeah, reading these tales was a bit like that.

There are stories told from the Point Of View of a bottle of morphine, of suicide, hell, amnesia, a homeless time traveler.  There's even a story with a hermaphrodite.

One of my favorites is THE LAST KID SCARED BY LUGOSI where a film buff brings the actor back to life on the 100th anniversary of the release of the iconic Dracula film.

I also loved EULOGY TO BE GIVEN BY WHOEVER'S STILL SOBER about a zombie writer attending his own funeral, planning to drink himself to death.

I often think it might be fun to get inside a writers mind to see just what makes them tick,   After reading this collection by Nicole Cushing, I'm not so sure I'd want to make that trip.  At least, not without adequate protection.

The Mirrors is available now in softcover, with e-book coming soon, from Cycatrix Press.

Recommended.

The Incurables - by Jon Bassoff - Whether you put your faith on God or science, there is little hope of redemption

4 of 5 Stars      Review copy

Jon Bassoff was born in 1974 in New York City and currently lives with his family in a ghost town somewhere in Colorado. His mountain gothic novel, Corrosion, was called "startlingly original and unsettling" by Tom Piccirilli, a four-time winner of the Bram Stoker Award, and won the DarkFuse Reader's Choice Award for best novel. His surrealistic follow-up, Factory Town, was called "A hallucinatory descent into an urban hell" by Bram Stoker award-winning author Ramsey Campbell. For his day job, Bassoff teaches high school English where he is known by students and faculty alike as the deranged writer guy.

Bassoff's third novel is filled with characters with few, if any, socially redeeming qualities.   The Incurables is set in the early 1950s, and Dr. Walter Freeman's nearly thirty years at the same mental institution are about to come to an end. Despite his many successes in treating the most insane of patients through a process he developed called a transorbital lobotomy, the times are changing and the institution's board is eager to move on to more humane treatments using modern medications to modify the behaviors of the asylum's residents.

Instead to changing his ways, Dr. Freeman sets out on his own with his most recent success and travels the country preaching his cure for many mental conditions. At the same time there is a father and son team of a preacher who is convinced his son is the Messiah.

If you like your horror dark and violent, The Incurables is most definitely for you.  It's a book where once you start reading, you won't want to put it down.  There are no heroes in this tale filled with delightfully despicable characters.  Personally, I found the work to be a criticism of both science and religion, and whichever you put your faith in, there is no redemption to be found.

The Incurables is published by Darkfuse and is available in both paperback and e-book formats.  If you subscribe to Amazon's Kindle Unlimited you can read this work at no additional charge.  Plus, if you are an Amazon Prime member you can read this book for FREE as your monthly selection from the Kindle Owners Lending Library.

Recommended.