I picked up this book at Edge Lit in July of this year, but due to a TBR pile that is beginning to exert its own gravitational pull, I didn’t get around to reading it until recently, and indeed was about halfway through the novel when it won the Best Horror Novel award at The British Fantasy Society's annual awards do in October.

So I guess the crude question is, does the novel live up to the hype? And the crude answer is, fuck yes, it does.

For starters, this is a horror novel that explores some of the darkest themes of the human condition. Though it is strongly and unapologetically supernatural, the roots run deep into recognisable real-world horrors - poverty, precarious employment, the de facto loss of basic legal resources such circumstances put you under, and the all-too-real life monsters that predate on such vulnerability.

Stephanie Booth is an achingly realised character - her situation frighteningly plausible. Nevill manages to avoid the horror cliches of either the hopelessly naive and clueless victim or the archetypal Last Girl, full of piss and vinegar. Steph is smart and resourceful, but also afraid and penned in by circumstances. As her situation in the house deteriorates, I found myself increasingly frantic with anxiety for her, but never once did I feel she was acting implausibly or passively. 

Having read almost 80 books so far this year, coming up with a top 5 list is – well – difficult at best. I’m constantly discovering new authors and checking out the latest releases from my favourites.  After careful consideration and a lot of backspacing whilst putting this list together, here are my top 5 horror reads of 2015. 

Let’s get this out of the way up front: I know Duncan Ralston. We became acquainted via Facebook, and he ended up beta reading my debut novel. The reason I asked him to do this is because I read his short story collection Gristle and Bone and was mightily impressed with his abilities as a writer. So, yes, I consider him a friend, but to be clear, I’m also a fan. Also, my standard reviewing policy applies, in that I only review books I a) finish and b) enjoy, regardless of who wrote it. 

Since it is only something like five or six weeks until Christmas it seemed only right to start our round up of the novels, short stories, anthologies, novellas and basically everything else that we felt really stood out this year.  These lists will hopefully give you some ideas for presents for your loved ones, or even just for yourself.  

I'm going to cheat and rather than having a best of list for each category I'm just going to list what I thought were the highlights over the whole horror genre this year.  A s always if anything takes your fancy please consider purchasing the items through the associated links as doing so helps to keep Ginger Nuts of Horror afloat, as all income that is generated is put back into the site via advertising and promos which helps to bring the reviews of your favourite horror makers to an even wider audience.  

Last year Adam Nevill chilled us to the bone with one of the most claustrophobic horror novels of the recent times. This year Adam gave a truly chilling vision of a possible near future.  Lost Girl is a masterpiece of personal horror within a world gone to hell.  It is a brutal unrelenting story that will leave you feeling as bleak as the future of the world written about within its pages.  


Purchase a copy here 

Neil Spring, much like Adam Nevill is in my opinion an author who just gets better and better with each new publication.  The Watchers is a perfect slice of X-Files type paranoia set in 1970's England with government conspiracies, Aliens, mysterious cults and isolated villages, The Watchers is an exhilarating read that brings something new and special to the table with it's unique take on the close encounters of the spooky kind. 

Purchase a copy here 

If you are looking for a cracking no holds barred love letter to the horror films of 1970s then you can do no better than Slaughter Beach from Ben Jones.  This is a riotous mix of non stop thrills and bloody kills  Slaughter Beach packs in more fun and excitement in its novella length than you could ever think possible.  

Purchase a copy here 

William Meikle has published many great stories this year, however after a long deliberation my pick of the year from the Meikle has to go to his novella  Tormentor.  A chilling ghost story that set on the Island of Skye, Meikle perfectly captures the sense of the island with a few choice passages.  With the cold and bleakness of the north coat of the island perfectly mimicking the cold and bleakness of the protagonists plight.  Tormentor is a prime example of how to write a truly chilling ghost story.  


Purchase a copy here 

I like stories with emotional depth, I prefer my horror to come from the emotions of the story's  protagonists rather than from some poorly written scene of carnage and death.  The Bureau of Them, Cate Gardner's beautiful tale of loss, separation and isolation is a perfect example of this, a deeply emotional story of a woman coming to terms with the death of her partner, and her frantic quest to be reunited with him, this is a power story that draws its horror from the her sense of loss and loss of control.  

Purchase a copy here 

Simon Kurt Unsworth's The Devil's Detective is an intriguing novel.  As the title suggests it's a detective story set in Hell. Thomas Fool is one of Hell's information men, a pawn a pure bureaucratic hell,  where the bodies of sinners are "born" into bodies with no sense or memory of their past lives.  He must find he killer of body on the shore before all hell really does break out.  Unsworth's book is a glorious mix of horror, fantasy and neo noir all set against a backdrop of a uniwue vision of hell. 
Purchase a copy here 

This is the  story of Scott, Paul, and Mark, and the dynamics of their friendship is a thing of beauty.  Their interactions with each other and the peripheral characters reads so true that you begin to wonder if this is an autobiography masquerading as fiction. They live and breath on the page, with their hopes, dreams and even their fears laid bare before us.  The characters are so strong that you cannot help but be drawn to them and even be reminded of some of your own past friends.  

Dead Leaves is a bittersweet coming of age story, full of emotionally charged writing that manages to present a sentimental look at a bygone age without ever becoming schmaltzy. Deeply moving and perfectly realized it cements Andrew David Barker's reputation as a top flight writer. 

Purchase a copy here  

Hell’s Ditch is a deeply complex novel that forces the reader to face up to many truths about the horrors of war.  The  grimy and dirty narrative perfectly captures the horrible nature of a resistance war of attrition.  Bestwick’s descriptive passages of the ruined landscape are truly evocative the sights, smells and screams of the narrative and it’s setting will imprint in your subconscious, with images of trench warfare from World War One coming to fore with a ruined no man’s land feel to the world.  It is a living and breathing landscape that serves as the perfect canvas for Bestwick to paint his wonderfully complex characters onto. 

Available from Snow Books on December 1st. 

Stay tuned for more entries in our round up of the year including my round up of horror films of the year   Each of Ginger Nuts wonderful contributors will be providing their own list of their top reads, will there be any cross overs or will we all have a unique list?  

If you happen to purchase any of these books on Amazon please scroll down to our reviews and give them a "yes" vote on the "was this review helpful" at the end of the review.  

Age is a fairly (and bafflingly) rare subject in most works of horror. Written, cinematic or video game, they tend to primarily revolve around protagonists in states of relative youth or good health (at least, to begin with). 

It's a strange thing that a genre that concerns itself primarily with dredging the unspoken dreads and disturbias of our sub-conscious fails to address or acknowledge a very genuine, overt horror that the vats majority of us are well on the way to being delivered into: 

The decay of our bodies, our minds; the increasing isolation and sense of obsolescence that culture imposes on us as we become less capable of fulfilling the basic requirements of civility and humanity it proscribes. These are factors that all of us face to some greater or lesser degree, the dissolution of our sense of self as our brains physically fail perhaps one of the most pervasive and inevitable fears that besets us. 

The crime and horror genre shares a lot of common ground and a lot of cross over in terms of thematics and tropes.  It also shares a lot of problems, for example just how many stories have read that involve a damaged cop, a detective on the brink, or most common of then all a detective permanently on the drink?  It can get rather tiresome when faced with a constant barrage of broken boys and girls in blue, however, despite this overuse, when this trope is done correctly it is easy to overlook this easy plot device.  

In Dallas Mullican's A Coin for Charon Marlowe Gentry is the division's best detective, damaged to point of being almost beyond repair after witnessing the brutal murder of his wife.  He barely clings on to life and reality, it is only his compulsion to catch the bad guys and the love of his daughter that keeps him going.  So when a new serial killer dubbed The Seraphim Kiler enters the scene Gentry gets a new lease of life, as he focuses all of his rage into bringing this killer to justice.  

Summer, 1995 at a church revival service in North Devon, England. An angry and confused young man attends the service with only one question on his mind: Is God real? 

The man walks up to the stage at the preacher’s request. The preacher sees it as his chance to convert the man, to turn him into a believer. The young man sees it as his last chance to find the answers he seeks. In what he hopes will force God to speak to him or a member of the congregation, he straps a bomb to his chest and lets the churchgoers know that if God doesn’t speak, he will kill everyone in the building.

One of the things that has always held me back from appreciating Lovecraft’s writing--you know, besides the racism peppered throughout--is ... well, Lovecraft’s writing.

His mythos was mesmerizing, and it’s easy to see how readers and writers have held onto it and nurtured it over the decades, but with each of those passing decades Lovecraft’s writing becomes even more impenetrable for me. By today’s standards it comes off as almost Vaudevillian in its presentation. Thank goodness for writers like Anonymous-9 who can drag that mythos in the 21st century.