Halloween Reads And Reviews
I’ve been holding back a number of reviews of some of my favourite books of the year for this special time of the year. So ovewr the next 10 days or so keep tuned for reviews of the following books
Indie filmmaker Kyle Freeman is a man at the end of his tether. He faces bankruptcy and obscurity, until he lands a commission to make an unusual documentary. The Temple of the Last Days was a notorious cult, which reached its bloody endgame in the Arizona desert in 1975. Ever since, the group’s rumoured mystical secrets and paranormal experiences have lain concealed behind a history of murder, sexual deviancy and imprisonment. Kyle and his one-man crew film the cult’s original bases in London and France – finally visiting the desert crime scene where the cult self-destructed in a night of ritualistic violence. But when Kyle interviews survivors, uncanny events plague his shoots. Frightening out-of-body experiences and nocturnal visitations follow, along with the discovery of ghastly artefacts. Until Kyle realises, too late, that they’ve become entangled in the cult’s hideous legacy. Praise for Adam Nevill: ‘This novel grabs from the very first page … Superb’ Guardian, ‘Lean, compelling, dark, at times frightening’ The Herald, ‘Horrifyingly scary … Nevill sinuously ramps up the tension’ Sunday Times
The ”Northumbrian Poltergeist,” was an infamous case from the 1970s: twins haunted by a spirit they nicknamed Captain Clickety. The media of the time were split between derision and hysteria. As Ben teases out the supressed details of the story, he finds himself drawn to a woman whose young daughter went missing years ago during a spate of child abductions. He also finds himself investigated by a local policeman, whose private life seems tied up with events in the grove, and harassed by the father of the missing child. Then the scarecrows appear, their heads plastered with photographs of the long-missing and the dead. Hummingbirds flock to certain areas of the estate, as if awaiting the arrival of something… a door has been opened and a presence is about to step through. It is up to Ben to put the ghosts to rest and unravel fact from fiction. He is about to discover that the story he seeks is his own, and only he can plot the ending.
The forest has always been there, and the high hedge around it has stood since Roman times. No one remembers any more why the hedge was planted, and bit by bit, as houses and modern life advance, the ancient barrier is being torn down. Slowly, creatures that have been trapped within for centuries are creeping through the gaps in the wall, hungry for revenge for their long imprisonment. As murder and horror spread through the nearby town of Hedge End, a stranger arrives, eager to give the residents a May Day celebration they will never forget.
But James starts to dig up some rather curious bones, Sam has a screaming fit in which he seems to be speaking to a previous occupant of the house, and Adèle’s paintings become odd, disturbing, wrong. A sheep is found, mutilated. Another. Sheep are found lying on the rocks below the cliff, torn open. The destruction of the beasts has begun…
‘The best debut novel I have read since The Wasp Factory. Wonderful original writing glittering with savage imagery, the pages breathe the tough, dark texture of a real world, of real inescapable fears, blurring the boundaries between nightmare and reality…’ Peter James
IF YOU LIKE THE SOUND OF THESE BOOKS, THEN PLEASE CONSIDER PURCHASING A COPY BY CLICKING ON THE AMAZON LINKS.
THE GINGER NUTS OF HORROR 