Ancient Images, (Samhain Publishing), by Ramsey Campbell

The Oxford Companion to English literature calls Ramsey Campbell Britain's "most respected living horror writer", and Ancient Images, a Samhain Publishing re-print of one of Campbell's earlier novels, bears excellent testimony to this assertion.  As with all of Campbell's works, the prose is smooth, his attention to detail immaculate, and the tension winds tighter and tighter as the story progresses. 

Campbell's pacing is also excellent, as he slowly builds a solid foundation upon which to sprint toward the novel's end.  An enthralling read, one that evokes very primal emotions - fear of the dark, of isolation, and of the things we can't see moving in the shadows, hiding just beyond the light's reach.
 

After her friend and co-worker dies under mysterious circumstances, film editor Sandy Allen embarks upon a quest to unearth a mythic film, a lost horror-movie starring Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff.  It was this film she was to screen with her friend the night of his death, and, much as she can't prove it, Sandy can't shake the feeling that her friend died BECAUSE of this film... and not just because someone killed her friend to steal the lost film.

But because the film itself brought death to him.

Every step Sandy takes closer to the film's secrets - interviewing retired actors, camera men, descendents of those involved in the film's production - Sandy senses something drawing closer to her.  Shadows become figures dogging her steps at night.  Windblown branches claw at her windows like talons.  And when Sandy is finally drawn to the small community whose history provided the basis for the film, Redfield - a  harvest community whose past is drenched in bloodshed - Sandy realizes she may have stumbled upon an ages-old power that will not only do anything to cover its tracks....

But will also kill to continue its legacy.

For Redfield's rich soil is thirsty, once again. It demands to be sated.  And just about anyone's blood will do.

Horror comes in many shapes and sizes, and the genre's big enough for all kinds of tastes, but it's always refreshing to know there still exists writers like Campbell, who can invoke fear simply through the power of excellent story-telling, through emotional cues, creating psychological disquiet subtly, with great care and restraint.  And this is also a nice homage to movies and the enduring power of their stories and images, how they preserve things...as well as a haunting concept.

That maybe some things shouldn't be preserved at all.

Visit http://www.ramseycampbell.com/ and Samhain Horror. Buy the paperback or ebook today.  

Kevin Lucia is a Contributing Editor for Shroud Magazine and a blogger for The Midnight Diner. His short fiction has appeared in several anthologies. He's currently finishing his Creative Writing Masters Degree at Binghamton University, he teaches high school English and lives in Castle Creek, New York with his wife and children. He is the author of Hiram Grange & The Chosen One, Book Four of The Hiram Grange Chronicles, and he's currently working on his first novel. Visit him on the web at www.kevinlucia.com.

The Woman: Special Edition, (Cemetery Dance), by Jack Ketchum and Lucky McGee

The Woman is the third act of a harrowing tale begun in Jack Ketchum's legendary Offseason, a tale of feral cannibals living in the woods, hunting and breeding and terrorizing the Maine coast. The Woman begins with the last surviving member of this savage clan seeking refuge in cave, resting and healing from wounds inflicted upon her when her clan was attacked and killed by those hunting them.

But this survivor isn't left in peace for long. Because she's spotted by Christopher Cleek, a sophisticated, socially-upstanding lawyer, while he's out hunting. And just the sight of her flips a switch inside. Because though a respected member of the community, the local PTA and Kiwanis Club, Christopher Cleek is something much more. And while that something has been held tightly under wraps, concealed from the public eye, it hungers for release and sees something in this savage woman that whispers of infinite opportunities.

So he captures her.

Brings her home, chains her in his fruit cellar.

To civilize her, of course. And he enlists the aide of his family: wife, teenage son and daughter, his little girl. Because they are well accustomed to acquiescing to his desires. The Cleek household is good at keeping secrets. Has kept them for years.

But the woman is not just a savage cannibal. She is a hunter, skilled in fighting and killing for survival. So she waits.

For the scales to tip, turning prey into predator.

A taut thriller, The Woman isn't for the faint of heart. But the narrative shows admirable restrain for its first half, letting the reader wonder in glimpses what exactly is amiss in the Cleek household (other than the woman chained in their fruit cellar). The dread builds, as it becomes very apparent that Christopher Cleek is far worse than this savage woman he's imprisoned, that dysfunctional family is a kind term for the Cleek household. And when Chris finally slips over the edge, taking his family with him, it is impossible to look away.

Even if you want to.

This special edition also contains a bonus novella entitled "Cow", picking up the The Woman's tale a year later. Without giving away any details, "Cow" makes up for The Woman's early restraint, as nothing is left to the imagination.

Pre-order The Woman today. Visit www.jackketchum.net.

Kevin Lucia is a Contributing Editor for Shroud Magazine. His short fiction has appeared in several anthologies. He's currently finishing his Creative Writing Masters Degree at Binghamton University, he teaches high school English and lives in Castle Creek, New York with his wife and children. He is the author of Hiram Grange & The Chosen One, Book Four of The Hiram Grange Chronicles, and he's currently working on his first novel. Visit him on the web at www.kevinlucia.com.

Shock Totem: Holiday Tales of the Macabre and Twisted

Edited by K. Allen Wood
Published by Shock Totem Publications


Culturally, we tend to adopt a dualist approach to the holiday season, bookending our naughty/nice deliberations between those representative yin-yang extremes of the color spectrum, Black Friday and White Christmas. Perhaps this is the kind of simplicity we need to get through the Exodus-rivaling travel, wallet-flogging, and family intrigue, not to mention all the trite, overdone bitching over department store Christmas muzak casually rattled off ad nauseam—as if buying toilet paper to the strains of Kelly Clarkson’s latest breakup anthem back in October had been some kind of transcendental, edifying experience! Which is to say, amidst yuletide chaos tradition is employed as a small oasis, and we seize upon it for whatever serenity it can offer us.

Now imagine you’re standing next to the tinsel-festooned tree in your mother’s living room, nursing a second eggnog and wondering how long you can resist those Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer sugar cookies. The Burl Ives is on repeat and you’re smiling and nodding even though you haven’t picked up a goddamned word Uncle Ralph has been laying down lo these last forty-five minutes.

Screw it, you say to yourself, Rudolph can light the way down my esophagus for him and his whole gang.

Ralphie finally pauses to take a breath and you make an escape speedy enough to rival those epicene teenage vampires that are all the rage these days. You’ve almost reached the dessert spread when the sound of breaking glass stops you in your tracks. A fat man in a crimson suit lined with white fur waves jollily through a shattered windowpane then thrusts an industrial sized nozzle into the room. The intermittent, multihued illumination of the outdoor Christmas lights reveals a hose snaking across the backyard to a tank soldered onto the back of his souped-up sleigh. You are tempted to utter some of the same obscenities dad did while staple-gunning those blinking faux icicles and glowing plastic evergreens to the eaves, but before the vituperation finds its way to the tip of your tongue an elf hits a switch on the sleigh, the hose engorges, and soon the room is awash in bloody gore—plasma and fat and bits that could probably be put together in the form of an organ by Auntie Ester, the family’s jigsaw master.

Ho, ho, ho! Never sounded so sinister.

The preceding scenario is something of an allegory for what Holiday Tales of the Macabre and Twisted achieves. This excellent volume of sublime malevolence from the provocateurs at Shock Totem magazine dispenses with the goodwill toward men fairly early on and sets about planting sticks of dynamite around that aforementioned oasis. Fair warning: The humor is black, the twists are twisted indeed, and before you stick a finger in the splatters of red stuff coagulating everywhere, please be aware chances are it is not cherry pie filling.

It would be a shame, really, to degrade shock value with a detailed review. But in the interest of whetting appetites let’s just say that in the skewed Shock Totem reality bad clowns occasionally become even worse Santas, some elves are not nearly as gregarious as Dudley Moore and Will Ferrell, getting exactly the gift you ask for can be more curse than blessing, and not all kids take Santa’s “naughty” verdict lying down.

Oh yes, K. Allen Wood and crew go there…and then some. Remember when Siskel and Ebert threw a tantrum back in ’84 over Silent Night, Deadly Night? Those scolds had no idea. The stories in Holiday Tales of the Macabre and Twisted make Silent Night, Deadly Night look approximately as gritty as The Muppets Take Manhattan.

As an added bonus Shock Totem peppers the volume with holiday recollections of several horror fiction luminaries—brief respites from dark otherworldly visions, sometimes heartwarming, sometimes heartrending.

Christ, what more could a fan of horror fiction ask for, really, than a poem by Jack Ketchum about decorating a Christmas tree stoned out of his gourd in 1969?

Buy it here.

Reviewed by Shawn Macomber

Shawn Macomber is a Miami based writer whose work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Reason, Radar, Yankee, The Weekly Standard,the Los Angeles Times, National Review, and Decibel, among many other fine and middling publications. He has reported from five continents covering everything from combat in Iraq, riots in the Baltics, and two presidential elections to designer cat shows at Madison Square Garden, the cross Carrot Top bears, and the Carcass “Exhumed to Consume” reunion tour. His story "Demon Envy" will appear in Shroud #12. More info at www.shawnmacomber.net

Escape from Zombie City

by Ray Wallace
Published by Apex Book Company


RAY WALLACE hails from the Tampa, FL area and is the author of The Nameless (Black Death Books). More than two dozen of his short stories have appeared in such magazines and anthologies as The Zombie Fee: VOL. 1, The Blackest Death: VOL. 1&2, and Erotic Fantasy: Tales of the Paranormal. A few of his other stories have appeared at The Chiaroscuro website where he took first place in their second annual fiction contest. He also wrote a long running book review column for The Twilight Showcase webzine and now writes reviews for Chizine and SFReader.com. His most recent novel is Escape From Zombie City.

In the past few days, I have been bombed; fallen to my death on top of a zombie; mauled by zombies in an elevator; captured by religious fanatics for the sake of sacrifice only to be bombed again; trapped into a car and eaten to death; shot execution style by the military; shot off the top of a building; trapped on a boat, pulled under by zombies and eaten to death while drowning; and turned into a zombie. All of this is thanks to Ray Wallace's Escape from Zombie City. Escape from Zombie City is a story in which the reader is periodically given choices, and these choices lead to different endings. Most of these endings result in the death of the reader, but one leads to ultimate survival. This book is built around the model of the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books popular with tweens in the 1980s and 90s, but with far grislier content.

While the concept of a CYOA novel for adults is not new, this is the first attempt I know of using zombies, which seems like a natural fit. Zombie tales, be they fiction, films or otherwise, center around the choices made by the protagonists attempting to escape or simply survive. These choices sometimes lead to freedom, but usually lead to one or many of the main characters being eaten alive. In Escape from Zombie City, you face the same fate. The choices readers make can lead to freedom, but usually lead to the reader's demise. As the series title suggests, there literally is only one way out.

There are a few issues with the various plots. For example, in one narrative, the reader's gun gets stolen, but a few pages later, the reader uses it to beat off a zombie. Other narratives are quite short, the length of a short story, which makes for a disappointing read. But of course, that's all part of the adventure. Reader's can learn from their mistakes, flip back a few pages, make better decisions, and survive. That, or they can die an equally horrible death. Wallace makes sure that happens a lot.

All in all, the cleverness of the novel and its nostalgic throwback to CYOA novels more than makes up for any disappointments the reader might have with the book. Ray Wallace's Escape from Zombie City is a really fun read and welcome addition to zombie literature.

Buy it here.

Reviewed By Joshua Gage

Joshua Gage is an ornery curmudgeon from Cleveland. His first full-length collection, "breaths", is available from VanZeno Press. Intrinsic Night, a collaborative project he wrote with J. E. Stanley, was recently published by Sam’s Dot Publishing. He is a graduate of the Low Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing at Naropa University. He has a penchant for Pendleton shirts, rye whiskey and any poem strong enough to yank the breath out of his lungs. He stomps around Cleveland in a purple bathrobe where he hosts the monthly Deep Cleveland Poetry hour and enjoys the beer at Brew Kettle. Hooks and Books livejournal.com

Eyes To See

by Joseph Nassise
Published by TOR

Joseph Nassise has been involved in the horror genre as former president of the Horror Writer's Association and the author of the Templar Chronicles. His latest protagonist, Jeremiah Hunt in Eyes To See from Tor books, is also involved in horror – the sort that goes bump in the night.

Billed as an urban fantasy novel -- what's urban fantasy for one generation is Gothic to those of us dinosaurs who remember it –- Nassise paints a wounded character in the midst of a haunted environment. Reminiscent of a noir detective, Jeremiah utilizes his gift of “ghostsight” to help the local police detective Stanton to track down a brutal killer and earn cash on the side. Mesh this noir attitude with a dash of the occult and an atmospheric setting and you have Eyes To See.

The origins of Jeremiah's Hunt's lonely and alienated life and how he becomes blind to everything but the haunts that surround him, have to do with the disappearance of his daughter five years before. While Nassise provides plenty of plot and action to keep the reader busy attempting to untangle the path that lies before Hunt, it's the back story that proves most intriguing. Hunt's transformation from happily married man declining into a broke-down shell in his search for the daughter he blames himself for losing, he eventually finds himself in an occult underground world. His journey into the heart of desperation defines horror itself as he trades away his eyesight in the hopes of finding his child.

Nassise also succeeds in dishing up a last minute surprise. While Hunt's prior life is defined by the absence of people he cares about, toward the conclusion it becomes filled with new people who have secret histories of their own, from the hedge-witch Denise to the street-wise bartender Dmitri.

If you find yourself alone on a dark night, Jeremiah Hunt's ghosts from Eyes To See would prove entertaining company. . .

Buy it here.

Reviewed by Martin Rose

Martin Rose lives in New Jersey, where he writes a range of fiction from the fantastic to the macabre, holds a degree in graphic design, and enjoys blurring the line between art and life. More details are available at mrmartinrose.blogspot.com

Night of the Crabs

by Guy N. Smith
Ghostwriter Publications


Originally published in paperback in 1976, this instant bestseller and seminal classic is back from the depths and in print for the first time in hardback. “Night of the Crabs” spawned an entire series about giant crustaceans with a taste for human flesh and crowned Guy N. Smith king of pulp.

Professor Cliff Davenport, one of the UK's leading botanists, is expecting a visit from his nephew, Ian Wright, and Ian's fiancée, Julie Coles, who are vacationing on the Welsh coast. However, the couple never arrives. Instead, Davenport gets a visit from the police informing him they found his nephew's car abandoned with the couple's clothes inside. It looks as if they were swept out to sea while swimming.

Davenport heads to the Welsh coast to help search for the couple, but what he finds is something far different. On the beach are strange tracks in the sand, tracks that look like claw marks, crab claws, from impossibly huge crabs. It's not long before the professor is hunkered down in the sand dunes watching in horror as giant crabs the size of cows crawl from the sea with almost human-like expressions of evil on their faces.

The professor rings up an old friend in the Ministry of Defense and the troops are sent in. They hit the crabs with bullets, mortars and tank fire, but the crabs get back up and keep coming, tossing transport trucks and the tank into the sea like toys. The carnage is stopped only when the leader of of the crabs, the most monstrous beast of them all, King Crab, clicks his claws and sends them back into the sea.

Now it's up to Professor Davenport to find the monsters' underwater lair and devise a way of exterminating them before they push farther inland, crushing villages and killing hundreds of people along the way.

“Night of the Crabs” is a quick, fun read that never tries to be anything other that what it is: pulp fiction at its best. Smith keeps the plot arrow straight, the cast of characters minimal and the action non-stop. There are gallons of blood, buckets of bowels and loads of dismembered limbs. Oh, yes, and giant, cattle-sized crabs. This new version of the book includes an intro by the author, foreword by J.F. Gonzalez, prologue and epilogue, a new chapter and additions to several others. The hardback version is limited to 100 signed copies with a paperback run ongoing.

Buy it here.

Reviewed by Durant Haire

Durant Haire has been writing for 13 years, working as a reporter, copy editor and copywriter. His stories have been published in magazines and books such as Dark Wisdom, Dark Lurkers, Darkness Rising and Decadence 2 to name a few. He lives in North Carolina and holds a B.A. in English.

Amazonas, (Cemetery Dance), by Alan Peter Ryan

Amazonas, by the late Alan Peter Ryan, reads like a fantastically lucid fever dream. A surreal journey, it works a hallucinatory magic by blurring the lines between reality and horror, taking the reader on a journey deep into the jungles of the Amazon, where the normal rules of civilization and humanity have no meaning. The horror here is all too real: the cruelty of slavery, the lust and hunger of ordinary men driven to fever pitches, the inability of feeble human good to do anything to stop it.

The story is simple: three whites and a group of natives are traveling down the river, deep into the jungle, searching for something called "The Slave Tree". What they find defies all logic and rationale, a figment of some dark fantasy, but dreams of financial success plumbing the slave market with an inexhaustible supply of slaves dies in the ravages of disease, lust for power and violence.

There are no winners in this story, but that is faithful to the world and mood Ryan establishes early in the narrative: this is not world in which anyone can win, because there are no rules to play by.

Even if not an homage to Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, the comparison is inevitable, and not just because of the setting. Ryan invokes that same sense of "slipperiness" and madness without the density of Conrad's prose, and like in Darkness, the jungle is presented as an alien entity, uncaring of human aims or goals.

The Slave Tree itself remains largely unexplained, but this doesn't detract from the tale, simply adds to the story's thrust: most of the natural world is unexplained, much of it dark, and often, humanity just wants to exploit it for mercenary means.

The ending is fast and furious, but again: this feels loyal to the tone of the story, that violence is fast and brutal, and the natural world around it indifferent of the outcome.

Buy it today.

Kevin Lucia is a Contributing Editor for Shroud Magazine. His short fiction has appeared in several anthologies. He's currently finishing his Creative Writing Masters Degree at Binghamton University, he teaches high school English and lives in Castle Creek, New York with his wife and children. He is the author of Hiram Grange & The Chosen One, Book Four of The Hiram Grange Chronicles, and he's currently working on his first novel. Visit him on the web at www.kevinlucia.com.