THE GUARDIANS by Andrew Pyper

Andrew Pyper’s novel The Guardians sucked me in on the first page and just wouldn’t let me go until I’d finished it. There have been a lot of comparisons to Stephen King’s It and “The Body,” the short story from Different Seasons that became the movie Stand By Me. Those comparisons are dead on in […]

THE LONG BLACK TRAIN by Heath Lowrance

“The Long Black Train” is the second short story featuring Heath Lowrance’s gritty gunslinger who squares off with the supernatural. This story has a little more set up than the last tale, and a few pages pass by before Hawthorne appears on the scene. But once Hawthorne is there, things get weird in a hurry. […]

THAT DAMNED COYOTE HILL by Heath Lowrance

“That Damned Coyote Hill” is the first of Heath Lowrance’s Hawthorne short stories featuring a bounty hunter (I think, though that’s more hinted at than definite). In this first story, he’s out looking for personal vengeance, though. To me, Hawthorne seems more like Robert E. Howard’s Solomon Kane character, a wandering soldier of fortune who’s […]

THROTTLE by Stephen King, Richard Matheson, Joe Hill and Adam Johnson

Throttle is the first fiction I’ve seen that was written by horror writer Joe Hill and his father, Stephen King. It’s an interesting bit of fiction because one of the primary issues in the story is the relationship between fathers and sons, and it was written for the newest venue in literary entertainment, the ebook. […]

CARPATHIA by Matt Forbeck

The plot is so good for this one that I wish I’d thought of it first. Imagine the Titanic sinking only to have part of the doomed passengers rescued by a ship filled with bloodthirsty vampires. Cool, huh? Real movie potential. Matt Forbeck is a good writer and world builder, and he’s learned how take […]

DUST OF THE DAMNED by Peter Brandvold

I’ve read some of Peter Brandvold’s Westerns under his name as well as the Frank Leslie name, and I’ve enjoyed them as solid actioners that are quite a bit harder edged than anything Louis L’Amour ever wrote. And his latest release, Dust of the Damned, is way weirder than anything L’Amour wrote even back in […]

BLOOD DREAMS by Jack MacLane

For a few years, mild English professor Bill Crider (writer of several mystery series, including the Sheriff Dan Rhodes books) had a very disturbed alter ego named Jack MacLane. From what I’ve been able to decipher, MacLane wrote five novels back in the old 1980s horror market, and these books were for the Zebra line, […]

DEAD OF NIGHT by Jonathan Maberry

It’s official. Zombies are currently all the rage when it comes to horror fiction. And I have to admit, I’m a sucker for the hordes of decaying masses. My son and I watch Walking Dead whenever the new seasons are rolling, and we love the soap opera feel of the storylines (even though they occasionally […]

THE FIVE by Robert McCammon

Robert McCammon’s The Five took me by the throat and wouldn’t let me go until I’d turned the final page. It is hands down the most gripping novel I’ve read so far this year. Notice that I didn’t say what genre the book reflects. I’m not sure where I’d categorize this one because the story […]

MILE 81 by Stephen King

“Mile 81” is the first original short story Stephen King has written for the Kindle, and it’s also a return to the kind of horror story that he used to write before he got famous. The story has very pulpy roots, and the action is something that – along with the short length – that […]