I was a massive fan of Thomas Olde Heuvelt’s breakthrough English language debut Hex (2016) and was looking forward to his next release, but ultimately found his follow up Echo to be a disappointment. This novel was a real trudge to finish, mirroring the fateful climb of main character Nick Grevers on the peak of the Maudit mountain (in the Alps) which the main plot is built around. Nick scales the mountain, a guy in his mid-twenties prime, but when he is introduced to the reader is a broken man, physically changed forever, but how did he get this way is the big question the novel asks? But by the time you reach page-200 you might not care either way how his face was disfigured, I certainly did not, as all suspense deflates like a slow puncture hampered by a plodding narrative.


Echo opens with the strongest and one of the few genuinely creepy scenes in the entire novel and subsequently takes an ice age circling back to it towards the end. A young woman wakes up and finds a number of people standing stock still in her room ominously staring at her, which was seriously freaky. When she blinks they have moved closer (I’m sure this also happened in an episode of Doctor Who), feeling terrified and threatened, soon the closest of the group are lurking upon her bed. This was a killer opening, but such moments were very few and far between with the author instead using incredibly slow very drawn-out pace which heads to a predictable and anti-climactic ending. If ever a book needed a ruthless editor to streamline the plot, this was it.


The core premise of Echo had promise but was hampered by long-winded pages which droned on and on with narrative circles which went nowhere. Climber Nick Grevers is brought back from the mountains after a terrible accident which mutilated his face and his climbing partner is lost, presumed lost. Suspicion falls on whether what happened to Nick was an accident, or whether he had any knowledge of the fate of the companion climber. Soon it becomes obvious that Nick is not the same person, psychologically broken, good looks gone, he begins to experience weird stuff that suggests he has brought something back with him from the mountain.


The story is told in both Nick’s voice and his boyfriend Sam Avery who also has to deal with the fallout of the horrific injury and the disappearance of the good looks of his lover. A few years younger than Nick, Sam struggles to cope with his partner’s mood swings and the fact that a brief look underneath Nick’s mummified face reveals that this might not be the guy he fell in love with. Faced with a dilemma, does he abandon his partner and return to America or stick it out with a guy who is fast becoming a stranger? The longer he hangs on the more certain he is that there is something more than physical afflicting Nick and begins an investigation which runs through a fair bit of Echo.


I found the supernatural aspect of the story ponderous and the author fails to recreate the eerily superb sense of time and place which made Hex so memorable. Hex featured a town which was forever cursed and connected to an eternal witch they had once wronged and Thomas Olde Heuvelt tries to pull off the same trick with the mountain and surrounding areas in Echo, but it falls flat and quickly becomes repetitive and rather than ominous the mountain just becomes boring.


I felt little liking or empathy towards either Nick or Sam and when the reader cares little for the central characters a novel is always going to struggle to connection. Both were whiney, flat, self-centred and for the most part unlikable and I had zero investment in what happened to either of them. However, there were some unsettling moments where Sam was trying his best to hide the yuck factor when the bandaged Nick was cuddling up close to him.


The language, this might have been a translation issue, also tested my patience and the use of abbreviations or youth slang (for lack of a better word) grated and I found this to be both inconsistent and lazy. According to my Kindle search facility the word ‘cuz’ was used 99 times (it felt like more) so why was this text-speak word used so frequently? The book was not written in any kind of a dialect so these words jarred, even though it was predominately in Sam’s voice, it became distracting.


Part of the reason Echo felt so drawn out was the continual jumping backwards and forwards in time to the events leading up to the point Nick had the accident, to other passages where we are reading his laptop thoughts. All of this led to a really messy and disjointed reading experience and even though there were a few nice moments on the mountain, such as when they realised they were at an impossible height, the climb still dragged on way too long and the narratives became confusing.
If you were a fan of Hex read this and make your own mind up, however, it is not a book I would recommend. It was painfully slow and drawn out, repetitive, populated with unlikable characters and a derivative supernatural story which failed to convince. Hell, if you want to read a scary horror story set on a mountain check out the Gabriel Dylan’s YA novel Whiteout, it has considerably more action, gore and thrills than this disappointment.


Tony Jones

Four members of the HOWL (Horror Obsessed Writing and Literary) Society have joined forces to each give us a tale of family (and they do not mean the Hallmark variety). Each novella promises a dark dive into what being part of a family means, and none can resist showing the dark side of that familial bond. Boasting an introduction by HOWL Society founder, Solomon Forse (which is worth the price of admission alone) alongside four tales from some immensely talented horror writers, I’ve broken down some sneak peeks at what ‘Bloodlines’ has in store for you.

Our Migraine by Christopher O’Halloran

Angie, Liza and Penny are three sisters who share a terrible burden. They share a migraine. One that can be passed between each sister when the pain becomes too much to bear. Until it is passed on the migraine builds with each passing moment, becoming increasingly more debilitating and painful until the holder has no choice but to transfer it to the next sister in line. With Angie working on her PhD in the hopes of finding a cure, Liza finding success in her new career and Penny finding happiness in a new relationship, each has their own life to live, but can they find a way toward normalcy while their curse hangs over (or within) their head?

Anyone who has suffered from migraines will find O’Halloran’s lengthy and vivid descriptions of his lead characters in the throes of the worst of their ‘turns’ absolutely stomach-churning. The early paragraphs really help set the scene for quite how awful their communal migraine is to live with and it comes as a huge relief when we learn it is at least something the sisters, who seem to share a genuinely loving bond with each other, can take away from each other, even if just for a short time.

It's such a unique and interesting premise and one that is a great springboard into deeper themes (familial bonds, trust, loss). Not only does the story boast a unique concept, but it continues to be an unpredictable narrative right through to the end. The other big reason this story works so well is how well-drawn the three sisters are as characters. You feel very connected to them, almost from the outset, and each come across as complex individuals while sharing enough quirks and traits with each other to mark them out as a family without the need to expressly state it. It is an impressive feat, given the story is relatively short, but ‘Our Migraine’ packs a lot into its brief page count and gets ‘Bloodlines’ off to a darkly memorable start.

Nos Da, Tad by Antony Frost

“That’s what it means to be the son of a monster, you will always have him with you”.

The above sentence, taken from the closing chapter of ‘Nos Da, Tad” (Good Night, Dad in Welsh) perfectly encapsulates what Antony Frost is writing about in this haunting tale of cosmic horror.

When Fin receives word that his father has passed away, he immediately greets the news with indifference. His father had been absent for much of his childhood and his memories of the man are universally unpleasant, half recalled instances of violence and abuse. His hand is forced when he discovers his father has left him an inheritance and with partner Martin in tow, he sets off to visit the now-empty home of his estranged parent.

Almost immediately upon arrival, Fin begins to have strange encounters with men he does not recognise and finds items in his father’s possession that defy explanation. He becomes to suspect that his father may have been involved with some occult fanatics and that he may unwittingly find himself embroiled in what his father left unfinished.

This was a great mix of family drama and otherworldly terrors, managing an unusual balancing act of being both unsettling and heart-warming at the same time. Fin is a big part of why I liked the story so much, as the focus throughout the story is how events impact him, no matter how grand and the focus on character gives a lot of depth to someone we only get to spend a few dozen pages with. It also happens to feature one of my favourite endings to a story I have read in a very long time.

I am Not To Be Replaced by Carson Winter

I love stories where the reader gets dropped into a situation where all of the characters know what is going on, but we don’t have a clue, and so until we get caught up, you are poring over every word, analysing every word spoken by every character, trying to figure it out. It’s not often you see such a tactic pulled off entirely successfully because it’s a tough balancing act between keeping us engaged and holding just enough back. ‘I am Not To Be Replaced’ has a fantastic opening hook and keeps the reader on it until the last page.

Jeannie is waiting at her family’s cabin for them all to arrive. She wasn’t invited, and they don’t know she is there and when they show up, there is another Jeannie with them. This other Jeannie looks the same, talks the same, and acts the same as she does. The family seem to adore her and treat her like one of their own. They are almost identical, but there is one big difference.

One of them is dead.

I absolutely raced through this story. The concept is so intriguing and the big reveal so satisfying, that you need to set aside enough time to read this one in its entirety in a single sitting because there is no way to put it down once you’ve started. I loved that it didn’t necessarily give you all the answers by the end either. There is enough hinted at for you to draw your own conclusions but not so little that the story becomes overly vague. It also boasts the most bombastic, over the top ending of the collection, giving just another reason why this is a story you’re going to remember long after you’ve read it.

The Heads of Leviathan by Alex Wolfgang

I’ve been a big fan of Alex Wolfgangs’ since reading his phenomenal short story collection ‘Splinter’ last year and I was looking forward to reading more when I picked up ‘Bloodlines’. If I thought I knew what to expect with ‘The Heads of Leviathan’ based on my past experience with the author, then these expectations were soon shattered.

When a family living alone on a remote island lose their mother to a mysterious illness it is left to eldest son Adam to look after his four young siblings, with only his mother's cryptic last words to guide him.

“Once it starts, you’ll know. See it through quickly. I’ll try my best to help. Please, try not to be scared”.

So begins Adam’s journey of discovery, into his family’s history, of why they live alone on an island nobody visits, and why there is a basement door in his house that has been locked up tight as long as he can remember. Locked, until now.

There is a beautiful, dream-like quality to ‘The Heads of Leviathan’ that gives the whole piece an ethereal, otherworldly feel that is wonderfully apt for the story being told. There is an innocence to the whole thing that is present in a lot of coming-of-age horror stories (of which this is an especially unusual example) that makes some of the body horror-centric elements take on a more graceful and transformative tone, and the story is all the more interesting and relatable for it.

It mixes elements of fantasy with some familiar horror themes but uses them to tell an incredibly unique story, one, unlike anything I’ve personally read before. It’s a beautifully written, wholly unpredictable story and a strong, memorable note to end this collection on.


There is a perfect mix of stories on offer in ‘Bloodlines’ from an undeniably talented group of writers. Some of the stories will horrify, some will disgust while others are genuinely touching, or create a feeling of wonder, but every single one will enthral you in its own way. It will also leave you excited to read whatever these authors come up with next.   5 Stars

​If you’ve ever dreaded a family dinner, felt terror at the blood pumping in your veins; if you’ve ever thought maybe the people you call kin just aren’t quite right—Bloodlines will hold you in its thrall with its literary daring, blood-soaked wit, and taste for carnage. From quiet horror to caterwauling bloodshed, this quadruple feature is fun for the whole family.

A trio of sisters take turns sharing a migraine that challenges their pain tolerance—and sanity ("Our Migraine," Christopher O’Halloran).

A man struggles with his inheritance when his absent father—and namesake—dies, leaving him with disturbing visions and an unwanted purpose ("Nos Da, Tad," Antony Frost).

A young ghost watches a sinister family gathering complete with a prettier, smarter replica of herself—then, makes sure it’s their last ("I Am Not to be Replaced," Carson Winter).

Following the death of his mother, the eldest of five siblings must uncover the true nature of his family’s strange, isolated existence while an apocalyptic event looms ("The Heads of Leviathan," Alex Wolfgang).

This is where the family tree meets the family plot. This is Bloodlines.

Glen Hirshberg’s Infinity Dreams opens with main character Nadine, who lives in a remote part of the Northern Californian woods, about to be interviewed by a young journalist. Nadine lives with her partner Normal, who suffers from early-onset dementia, and is both her work and personal soulmate. Because of his unconventional occupation, which is the theme of the book, he is alternatively known as ‘The Collector’. Although the journalist gives an early vibe of naivety, Nadine quickly realises that the guy is digging for something deeper and has an agenda which stretches beyond a simple interview. But what is he genuinely after and does Infinity Dreams answer all the questions it throws at the reader? Partially, but it is open to question how satisfying these answers are.


Plotwise the interview between Nadine and the journalist is used as a literary mechanism to dig deep into their joint past, including the circumstances surrounding how the woman met ‘The Collector’, key stories from their shared history, which involve buying and selling desirable objects which have been obsessively tracked for years by those desperate enough to pay any price. The Collector has made obtaining what others have spent a lifetime searching for his life’s work, and with Nadine as his sidekick, they were very successful at achieving it.


As a concept this story fired the imagination, a man searching for what was near impossible to find was an intriguing idea, but the manner in which Glen Hirshberg has transferred this idea to paper left me rather cold and I found the whole experience a combination of bland and confusing. The story has an undiagnosed supernatural, almost Magical Realism element to it, but at different stages I genuinely struggled to follow what was going on. This was not Bizarro Fiction, where one might expect to be thrown random curveballs, and in the end amounted to a rather frustrating read.


Part of the problem was that both central characters Nadine and Normal AKA The Collector were so incredibly dull and one-dimensional. Try as I might, whenever The Collector was mentioned I kept thinking of a character of the same name in the long-running John Connolly ‘Charlie Parker’ series. Subconsciously I was obviously wishing I was reading elsewhere. Connolly’s ‘Collector’ was a vivid and monstrous creation and the central character in Infinite Dreams was such a limp flat disappointment in comparison. He is idolised, loved and hero-worshipped by Nadine and you will soon be wondering why, and if the author is attempting to present him as some kind of ‘enigmatic’ central character, it is a total failure. Nadine is no better and apart from a flashback scene to when she meets The Collector in Paris for the first time is equally boring. She seems to have zero purpose in her own life except for following her man around like a puppy, for a novel to have such non-descript central characters it is going to have problems holding the attention of the audience, no matter how quirky or weird the plot is.


Via the journalist Nadine spills the beans on her relationship and wheeling-dealing with The Collector, with these occasions being presented as story within stories. Various characters drop in any out of her tales and conversations, those who for example, collect coins, baseball cards, or significantly stranger stuff. These oddities are traded and sold at conventions, flea markets or antique malls with The Collector and Nadine using their extensive web of contacts to find what others obsessively want. One of the most fascinating of these involved the collection of rare songs from the favourite singers, with the collector claiming slightly more of the artist than the song. Another takes us back to Nazi Germany and a very strange story involving the baker of Hexenhaus, his product and an old vendetta.   


My favourite flashback took us to Paris in which a bizarre incident in a hostel (which might not exist) leads to Nadine meeting The Collector whom she chances upon after an encounter with ‘Buddha’ a hostel owner who is on his own hunt. It is in this segment we find out most about the young Nadine, what took her away from her Irish homeland to end up working with The Collector and the peculiar investigation he was working at the time.


Even though the prose is often very poetic and dreamlike it left me cold and I kept on thinking I was missing something. The pace is also incredibly slow and I came very close to giving up on the book on several occasions and as my concentration waned the supporting characters began to merge together and I struggled to tell them apart. Overall Infinity Dreams lacked any kind of urgency or spark with the two main characters seemed to sleepwalk through the story. I am usually a fan of Cemetery Dance and the style of fiction they release, but this one of their weaker releases.


Tony Jones

There are many excellent female authors of horror fiction around and I’m fully appreciating their great contribution to the genre. A Woman Built By Man is a collage of 21 horror tales that seek to crawl under the skin and deconstruct the many ways women are built up and broken down by a patriarchal society.


The present anthology is a huge one, including twenty-one short stories, mostly interesting enough  and good enough, which makes it for a reviewer an impossibe task commenting upon each single tale.

Thus, my only choice is to mention the contributions which, in my opinion, are the most accomplished.


“Every Woman Knows This” by Laurel Hightower is an insightful tableau depicting  the complex relationship between a predator and his female prey, while  “She Sings of Pain and Sorrow” by Holly Cornetto  is an offbeat piece of fantasy about a lovely yet desperate mermaid kept prisoner in a traveling circus.

Michelle Tang provides “The Shock of Death” a quite original, intriguing story about love and death and the nature of survival after the electric chair fails , and SH Cooper contrbutes “The Cooper Girl” a tense, well told supernatural noir featuring a clever and courageous young woman.


Hoping my mentions will elicit your curiosity about the rest of the book, I wish you many hours of enjoyable, horrific reading.

First published in 1974, Gwen in Green was a rare foray into horror for jack of all trades, Hugh Zachary, who amassed dozens of publishing credits across the sci-fi, crime, mystery, romance, western, war and erotica genres, to name but a few. Working under a plethora of pseudonyms, Zachary was the self-declared “most published, underpaid and most unknown writer in the U.S” who wrote full time for almost thirty years. While his horror novels are few and far between, the fact that ‘Gwen, in Green’ boasts his real name, and not one of his many pen names, on the cover means this is one the man himself considered to be one of his better works.

When Gwen’s husband George unexpectedly comes into a large sum of money, the pair decide to invest in some dream real estate on which they intend to build the home they always wanted. A secluded island filled with lush greenery and abundant wildlife on which they can spend the rest of their lives together. The land itself is a steal, heavily reduced due to the ongoing building works across the river where a nuclear power plant is under construction, but the pair are unperturbed and begin work on their new house straight away.

There are things about their island getaway that nobody told them before setting roots there. Secrets long forgotten by the passage of time, of mysterious disappearances and murder. As Gwen begins to exhibit increasingly odd behaviour and the local workers turn up missing, it seems increasingly that history is about to repeat itself. What unseen force is causing these changes in Gwen, and can George discover the truth about his newfound home before it is too late?

Unlike a lot of Paperbacks From Hell, ‘Gwen, In Green’ delivers exactly what the cover promises. It’s beautiful painted artwork of a woman whose modesty is covered only by a few conveniently placed plants and her long red hair, wears a look of fearful trepidation as she’s surrounded by dark shadows and red (presumably bloody) reflections in the water she is waist deep in. It suggests a lot of sex and horror and, sure enough, that is exactly what we get.

Oddly enough, given how much of it there is, the sex is all relatively tame. The characters spend a lot of time having it, but Zachary seems weirdly reluctant to actually go into any details outside of clinical, after the fact statements declaring that the characters ‘got down’ or ‘boogied’, or whatever the appropriate 70s parlance may be. Given the in-story explanation for all this horizontal jiving is so flimsy, you’d think that if he didn’t want to write about it, he’d just leave it out entirely, but if you’re hoping for something more racy, prepare to be disappointed daddio.

The horror on the other hand, is a big success, largely because it’s so delightfully odd. The ending comes completely out of left field and has to be read to be believed, but it manages to be endearingly in-keeping with the weirdness that preceded it. There is a section toward the end of the book where George is partaking in a spot of gardening which, in context, was actually quite tense. I audibly gasped when he started, genuinely shocked at what I was reading. The fact that someone gardening was remotely horrific speaks volumes about how peculiar and bizarrely entertaining the book is. It’s not without it’s more typical horrors either. Gwen racks up a pretty impressive body count throughout the book, and her victims tend not to go quickly or quietly. There are two particularly grisly ends met in the final few chapters which show Zachary is far more prudish with the sex than he is when it comes to axe murders.

As with a lot of earlier mass market pulp paperbacks of this era, ‘Gwen, In Green’ is not without its more dated depictions of things like racism, homophobia, animal cruelty and, perhaps most noticeably, misogyny. None of these things are major presences (with the exception of the latter, which is fairly constant) but are understandably jarring now to the modern reader. There are far more egregious examples in horror literature of this era and later (I’m looking at you William W Johnstone) but it seems only fair to call it out, as the attitudes of fifty years ago when it comes to race, gender and sexuality have obviously moved on fairly significantly from when this was written.
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Gwen, In Green, is basically exactly what you want from a Paperback From Hell. It’s infectiously fun and more than a little silly but its hard not to find the whole thing rather endearing. It’s more 70s that tie-dye and bell-bottoms combined and while that may be reflected in some rather dated attitudes on occasion, it’s difficult not to get swept along in the story jam packed with great ideas and absolutely bananas execution. It’ll certainly give you food for thought before you next decide to head out into the garden to do some weeding.
      
Fourteen books in, and I’m now all caught up on the Paperbacks From Hell series. I hope you’ve all enjoyed reading along with me as much as I’ve enjoyed discovering the best forgotten paperbacks from the golden era of horror literature. While that might be all for now, Valencourt are already hard at work selecting more out of print treasures to unleash on us as part of the line, so make sure you visit their site at www.valancourtbooks.com/paperbacksfromhell to keep up to date on the latest releases coming our way.

Our Fearful Roots, written by Carmilla Voiez and Faith Marlow, is a Southern Gothic tale following the Anderson family as they relocate from Seattle to Alabama upon inheriting a house from Mary’s recently deceased aunt, Blanche.

The story is told from four viewpoints, Mary (wife/mother), Chuck (husband/father/stepfather), Eric (son/stepson/stepbrother), and Anita (daughter/stepsister). While the story incorporates all four character’s viewpoints, the narrative mostly centers around Mary and Eric, both of whom have ties to this beautiful cottage, and its horrible history.

True to Southern Gothic style, the ghostly hauntings in this tale are representations of traumatic memories resurfaced after many years of dormancy. The book is heavy with atmosphere. Not since Michael McDowell's classic, The Elementals, have I read a sticky, humid Alabama summer that served as much of a presence as any of the novel's characters. 

The one major drawback, at least for this reader, was Chuck’s character arc. I had a difficult time believing the authenticity of his change in character by the book's end. 

Despite this complaint, and a few cliched villains, this book is still one of the best Southern Gothic novels that I've read in a long time. Hailing from Alabama myself, I had high hopes for this book, and it did not disappoint. 

Recommended for fans of Southern Gothic and unique takes on haunted houses.



A book review by Holley Cornetto

This is quite a short collection of spooky/horror tales. A significant chunk of which did not feel like horror to me, at least not when I first read them. However, the more I’ve puzzled, trying to collect my thoughts about this collection, the more it has haunted me and the more I have been able to see the horror. For me the horror was very much seen rather than felt within. There is a realism and relatability to most of the tales and it is the realism where the horror comes from. Even the stories with the heavy fantastic and supernatural elements. What horror there was in the tales was real and understandable, be it the horror of the consequences of your life biting your arse, the horror of customers, or fearing that you have made the wrong choice in your relationship once it’s too late.

 Most of the stories were simple and seemed to lack depth and meaning. But I think that this was deliberate and theorise that it is because there is no deep meaning in life, we just think there is and make what meanings we can. That is what I felt her characters were doing in the stories and I wonder if it is a lack of character depth or if Taylor is just being sparing with the information provided allowing the mind to wander and conjure up its own meaning. The stories have that kind of ambiguous feel.

The stories that stood out to me were ‘The Parrot’, a tale of vengeance, brutality and the consequences of victimizing others. ‘Candy’ stands out very vividly in my memory. Would you kill for your favourite candy? ‘You Promised Me Forever’ could the love you have for your loved one last for ever? Do you really want to put it to the test? ‘Tis Better to Want’ more exotic fantasy and obsession than horror but out of the collection, it is the one that will stay with me the longest.
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To summarize, all the stories are well written and have merit and have a unique unexpected quality. The horror is subtle and in cases too subtle. Almost every story has erotic elements. The more you think about the stories, the more alive they seem to feel and you realise that when you thought the characters were shallow you just weren’t seeing them properly. I would recommend this anthology to someone looking for softer horror or erotic horror that haunts and to someone who wants to look out of the window and wonder if they’ll see a gold pair of eyes staring back at them.

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