Monthly Archives: December 2022

A Happy Christmas to you all. And here’s Jethro Tull.

We end this Advent Calendar with my thoughts on Priya Sharma’s novella Ormeshadow. It won the 2019 Shirley Jackson Novella Award and the 2020 British Fantasy Society Best Novella Award, so you don’t need me to tell you how good … Continue reading →

At the time of writing, Steven J. Dines’ short story collection Look Where You Are Going Not Where You Have Been is my favourite book of the year and with just over a month of 2022 to go that doesn’t … Continue reading →

The novella Burning Girls is the first and as yet only thing I have read by Veronica Schanoes. I see from Amazon that it’s no longer showing as a stand-alone, but presumably is available in the collection Burning Girls and … Continue reading →

I’ve read the odd story or two by Marc Laidlaw over the years, but White Spawn is the first book length work I’ve seen from his pen. The first chapter of this novella has a court officer absconding with an … Continue reading →

Jay Caselberg’s novella The Wind opens with a quotation from Christina Rossetti and then presents us with an engaging story that casts a wary eye over country people and their quaint customs. Gerry is the new veterinarian in Abbotsford, a … Continue reading →

I read Sarah Lotz’s first novel written under her own name, The Three, when it came out but nothing since until now. With husband Iain away on work and son Jake at university, Claire is alone in her woodland cottage … Continue reading →

Lisa Moore’s Azeman is inspired by an incident in Dracula where Quincey Morris goes off in hot pursuit of the vampire Count and then hides behind a tree, an act for which no explanation is forthcoming, and it is this … Continue reading →

The protagonist of Duncan P. Bradshaw’s novella And the Night Did Claim Them is the bartender at a country pub. We find him reminiscing about his life, all the things that have gone wrong and the expectations of others that … Continue reading →

Day Sixteen of our Advent Calendar and Tim Major’s Shade of Stillthorpe is the fourth consecutive novella from the Black Shuck Books stable to take a turn in the limelight, with two more titles waiting in the wings. In a … Continue reading →