Stump and Corpse Meet the Vampire Bride by Ken Preston

Preston grounds the speculative and fantastical in utterly realistic portrayals of human behaviour, creating horror that blends the fear of otherness with a visceral sense of plausibility. This collection features six short stories in a variety of horror sub-genres. ‘Stump and Corpse Meet the Vampire Bride’: When Alderton’s wife was killed in a vampire attack, …

From the Ashes by Baileigh Higgins

Higgins continues her portrayal of how groups of emergency service workers might act during a zombie apocalypse with a classic “packs of zombies breach the compound” narrative. Note: while the author is blessed with a spiffing surname we are unrelated by blood or marriage. This novel is the fifth in Higgins’ Heroes of the Apocalypse …

Rayna the Dragonslayer by Cynthia Vespia

Vespia balances adherence to fantasy tropes with fresh details, creating an engaging tale of warriors and dragons that is neither slavish homage nor exercise in moral relativism. Cursed before she was even born and orphaned by dragonfire, Rayna devoted her life to slaying dragons until it seemed there were none left. However, when an elite …

His Black Tongue by Mitchell Lüthi

Lüthi tells four tales of very different people facing threats in very different worlds that are united by a sense of how fragile humanity’s control is in the face of a vast universe. This collection contains two novellas and two short stories, spread across genres but united by a sense of dread. His Black Tongue: …

Savage Headhunters by J. Manfred Weichsel

Recreating both the format and the blatantly racist stereotypes of 1940’s horror-adventure comics, Weichsel satirises conservative and liberal US extremes alike, offering a world where holding the US to be morally superior and becoming offended on behalf of minorities are equally ridiculous. This is the third volume in Weichsel’s Tales to Make You Vomit series. …

The Thing From HR by Roy M. Griffis

Griffis inverts the classic Lovecraftian trope of humans amid an incomprehensible universe, portraying human society as a thing incomprehensible to an eldritch monstrosity. The hierarchies of the Elder Gods and the Great Old Ones exist within gulfs and spans incomprehensible to the human mind but they exist; and when humans interact they must be put …

The Hunter by Nicole C.W.

Showing that friendship is as powerful a bond as attraction, this novel offers the intensity of a paranormal romance without the consuming focus of a single destined lover. When a young Raven fought off a vampire attack by turning her blood into a weapon, she was recruited by the Blood Hunters, an organisation dedicated to …

Sherlock Holmes and the Shadwell Shadows by James Lovegrove

Lovegrove delves deeper than the immediately recognisable traits of a Sherlock Holmes story, delivering a plausible perspective on how the consulting detective might react to the discovery of Lovecraft’s incomprehensible and hostile cosmos. As Dr Watson’s famous stories will tell the world, when he returns from Afghanistan in 1880 to recover from serious injuries, his …

Call of Catthulhu, Book I: The Nekonomikon by Joel Sparks

While laden with allusions to the works of Lovecraft, this rule book focuses on simulating cats in the liminal zone between realistic and fantastical, very definitely giving it the feel of Eliot not Ulthar. The world faces many threats, from the mundane dog to the eldritch Snarlyhotep and Phatproggua. While saving civilisation from these threats …

Magician by Raymond E. Feist

Feist offers an interweaving tale of war, politics, and magic across two worlds that echoes the larger-than-life scale of epic ballads while keeping more than enough of the grit of real life to prevent characters becoming mere archetypes. This novel collects Magician: Apprentice and Magician: Master, the first two books of Feist’s Riftwar Saga, into …