Book Mail to Get Excited About!

Hey, folks, it has been a while; for those of you who care, the operation was a success, and the slow but eventual return to normality in my life begins.

I am not going to lie. The past two years have been hell; the constant never, ending, crippling pain took a toll on everything; I had no joy in my life as everything was drowned out by the pain. The pain is not gone, well, not the surgery pain, but it is getting better with each passing day.

Fingers crossed, we will be back completely next week, but in the meantime, here is a soft relaunch of some of the book mail received for review over my stay in the hospital. If any of the books take your fancy click on the images to purchase.

The backlog of books to review is so huge I have had to break out Wee Jimmy and Tiny Jimmy. On that note if any one would like to join the review team, please drop me an email here jim.mcleod@gnofhorror.com

Book Mail to Get Excited About!

Freakslaw: by Jane Flett

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Doubleday; 1st edition (20 Jun. 2024)

Discover the dazzling new queer literary horror novel about chosen family and the risks it takes to become the person you want to be.

‘The glittery punk offspring of Katherine Dunn’s Geek Love and Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus.’ Chelsea G. Summers, author of A Certain Hunger

A travelling funfair of seductive troublemakers arrive in a repressed Scottish town. What could possibly go wrong?

It’s the summer of ’97 and the Scottish town of Pitlaw is itching for change.

Enter the Freakslaw – a travelling funfair populated by deviant queers, a contortionist witch, the most powerful fortune teller, and other architects of mayhem. It doesn’t take long for the Freakslaw folk to infiltrate Pitlaw’s grey world, where the town’s teenagers – none more so than Ruth and Derek – are seduced by neon charms and the possibility of escape.

But beneath it all, these newcomers are harbouring a darker desire: revenge.

And as tensions reach fever pitch between the stoic locals and the dazzling intruders, a violence that’s been simmering for centuries is about to be unleashed…

Praise for Freakslaw:

‘A wild, fun house of horrors – whip smart, the sharpest writing, funny, visceral and filled with vengeance. I loved it!’ Rachelle Atalla, author of The Pharmacist

‘Delightful, delirious and transgressive… a queer punk masterpiece and we should all be so lucky to have our lives turned upside down by a visit to the Freakslaw.’ Leon Craig, author of Parallel Hells

‘Wild, raunchy, brutal – a madcap funhouse with heart.’ Liska Jacobs, author of The Pink Hotel

All Who Wander Are Lost: Destination Horror Stories by Gemma Amor

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Independently published (20 Mar. 2024)

First Landing State Park. Antarctica. Mongolia. France. Norway. Ireland. Somerset. Egypt. A giant glacier in an unnamed land.

What do all these places have in common?They’re the perfect place to set a horror story, is what. In this brand new collection of destination based tales of terror, Bram Stoker and British Fantasy Award nominated author Gemma Amor (The Folly, Full Immersion, Six Rooms, Dear Laura) takes us on a series of adventures through the weird and the wonderful, the strange and the unexplainable, across the remotest, wildest parts of this world, and through lands yet to be discovered. Expect dark and deranged encounters, beautiful vistas, old gods, ghosts, peculiar creatures, vampires, and that most terrifying of all monsters: humanity.

That Which Stands Outside by Mark Morris

Publisher ‏ : ‎ FLAME TREE PRESS (16 July 2024)

That Which Stands Outside is a horror novel inspired by Nordic folklore. After Todd Kingston rescues Yrsa Helgerson from muggers one rainy London night, their resulting friendship quickly develops into a romance. When Yrsa’s mother dies, Todd accompanies her back to her childhood home, an isolated Nordic island. The reception they receive there is one of suspicion and hostility. The islanders believe Yrsa to be a child of a mythic race called the Jötnar, a claim which Yrsa dismisses as superstitious nonsense. But as the island is rocked by a series of devastating events, Todd finds himself caught up in a terrifying battle, one which possibly threatens the future of the world itself.

FLAME TREE PRESS is the new fiction imprint of Flame Tree Publishing. Launched in 2018 the list brings together brilliant new authors and the more established; the award winners, and exciting, original voices.

The Dissonance by Shaun Hamill

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Titan Books (23 July 2024)

Four teenagers are thrust into a life of magic, secrecy and sacrifice in this captivating dark fantasy, perfect for fans of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower and The Shadow Glass by Josh Winning

It starts as an end-of-junior-school sleepover, but when Athena, Hal, Peter and Erin stumble across a missing boy, deep in the forests surrounding sleepy Clegg, Texas, they discover a world of sorcery and untold power. So begins a new life with the Dissonance, under the tutelage of Professor Elijah Marsh.

Twenty years later, separated and broken by their experiences, the friends are pulled back to Clegg for the anniversary memorial service at the town’s high school. Each carrying their own trauma, they come together once more to confront the legacy of their actions, and the monsters they failed to bury.

Hurled onto a collision course with the apocalyptic events of their past, Owen, a young man trapped in service to a murderous entity, and several lifetimes of mistakes, three unsuccessful adults and one frightened teen are all that stand between reality and oblivion.

Smothermoss by Alisa Alering

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Titan Books (24 July 2024)

Set in an isolated 1980s Appalachian community, reeling from the brutal murder of two hikers, this novel is deliciously creepy and unsettling, yet gorgeous and dreamlike in its portrayal of two impoverished girls who must come to terms with what’s happening on the sentient mountain they call home and also with themselves as they stand on the cusp of adulthood.

1980s Appalachia. Sheila knows she needs to keep her appetites in check. Isolated and struggling in ramshackle poverty, her desires – for food, for escape, for the perfect girls in the pages of her pilfered magazines – are about the only things she can control. But with every passing day, life with her exhausted mother and her half-feral younger sister Angie feels more like a rope tightening around her neck.

When a pair of hikers are brutally murdered on the trail, Sheila and Angie find themselves drawn inexorably into the hunt for the killer. The mountain they live on is ancient and powerful – and it’s using them for its own ends. Sheila knows the landscape’s folklore is dangerous and unpredictable, but as the ever-present threat of violence looms larger, it might be the only thing that can save her and her sister from the darkness consuming their home…

Somewhere between a rural gothic and a dark fairytale, Smothermoss beckons readers into the eerily beautiful woods of the Appalachian Mountains―as well as into a lyrical investigation of girlhood, bodies, class, desire, nature, and the otherworldly. Full of the picturesque dread of an A24 horror movie, it’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle meets Winter’s Bone, and will appeal to fans of Sophie Mackintosh, Julia Armfield, and Kelly Link.