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Post by dem bones on Aug 14, 2022 14:29:52 GMT
Three more.
James Stanger – Jacob Raffles: In the aftermath of capitalism's collapse once the oil gave out and technology failed, the day's government introduce hallucinogens into the food supplies to soften the populace for enslavement. The few dissidents are herded into concentration camps to await their date with the state executioner. S. F. Stewart – The Inn: It stands behind the graveyard, deserted but for a pale young woman in a black dress who silently ushers narrator and his horsemen inside ....
Richard Cosgrove – Cattle: A journalist's investigates the murder of his lead on what he's convinced is a huge story. Sam Maxwell's pursuit of the truth upsets the clutch of vampires behind a cash-for-small-blood-donation-exchange operating from Soho Square and surrounding alleys and back-streets. Ironically, the sums received are a life-line to the destitute and addicted. Of the locations featured in the story, we've since lost Goth hang-out The Ben Crouch Tavern in Wells Street, the Virgin megastore on Oxford St., and the Astoria, Charing Cross Rd. The World's End, Camden, Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, Fleet St., (Grade II listed, should be OK for a few more years), and Burnt Oak station survive (though iconic 'Burnt Oak Boot Boys" welcome in huge white lettering is gone).
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Post by dem bones on Aug 16, 2022 5:43:00 GMT
Franklin Marsh – The Darklands Hall Legacy: On the death of his Great Aunt, Isadore Darklands, Timothy Uptyte, a young high-flier in Pater's Stockbroker's office, inherits Darklands Hall, a vast estate on the outskirts of Lyttle Pyddle, Sussex. The hall achieved notoriety when almost featured in an episode of Most Haunted which was pulled from the schedule as too terrifying to broadcast. Tim is nonetheless delighted that his inheritance includes with a sizeable fortune, but, as Mr. Ezekiel Arkwright, sinister solicitor, maliciously informs, there are strings. He and his companion - best pal William Malodorous, a council employee at the municipal dump - will spend the night locked in with great aunt's encoffined remains (it's an open-casket affair, obviously). View her final videotaped message (incorporating the banned footage) for further instructions ...
Meanwhile, Jenny Thompson (make-up dept) and boyfriend, Rich, gaffer on the ill-fated Most Haunted shoot, have kept watch on the property ever since. A crashed limousine with dead passenger decides them to break in for a nose around .... by which time, the Mad Magister of Darklands has revealed his diabolical hand!
It's all very well popular novelist Gregory Pendennis cautioning us — via a 1950's interview in the News of the Screws — against involvement in "so-called Black Sorcery." Perhaps he might have warned us that story also makes reference to a photograph of a young woman engaged in naked mumbo jumbo antics with two "witches" and a dwarf ... That said, this is yet another of Franklin Marsh/ Fritz Maitland occult adventure deserving of a wider audience.
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Post by dem bones on Aug 17, 2022 5:47:41 GMT
Egerton The sobering truth behind An American Werewolf in London - the true story; trust no-one — ever; a distaff Bluebeard with scales. Neil Christopher – Cerberus Rising: Far the longest story in Vol 2 and a strong best of the best-of-book contenders — so far. David Glass, 36, an MI5 spy catcher who has been successfully deployed in tracking down serial killers, is despatched to Ceasescu's fearsome Romania. His mission: to assist the secret police in their hunt for a cannibal at large in the mountains north of Bucharest. To date, Ci Vultur is known to have slain and eaten seven men and five women, ages ranging from 13 to 67. Of particular interest to The Brits, the covert involvement of a Russian parachute regiment, under the command of Colonel Krasov, head of virology at Moscow Statue University. Why should they be interested? Late at night, Glass and Florin Popu of the Securitate are in the woods to witness Ci Vultur tear apart one of Krasov's men and eviscerate a second. Crucially, a second creature is captured and taken to Bucharest university under 24 hour Russian armed guard. Mission accomplished. Krasov has captured a werewolf — no matter the beast has since reverted to its original form, that of a frail peasant boy! Glass is now tasked with preventing Krasov transporting the specimen to Moscow, no matter the cost. Detained by the Securitate's torture squad, the Russian Colonel cheerfully volunteers that he is intent on developing an antidote to the lycanthrope infecting a vast quantity of his population since a lab-created virus was let loose on Russia. Hard as it may be for Glass to accept, it wasn't the Soviets cultivated and deliberately let loose the Cerberus virus. James Brough – Crowd Scene: A lecturer reminds his packed audience that, as we know nothing of thousands of people fleetingly encountered during our lifetime, is it not unlikely that, at one time or other, we are in proximity of a murderer? Carole Hall – Portrait Of A Young Woman: Detective Barsini falls in love with a young woman he routinely interviews during a spate of killings in a red-light district of Venice. The victims, all of them criminals, are exsanguinated before disposal in the river canal [see below]. Violetta is an enigma, independent, wealthy, with no discernable source of income. It is as ludicrous to think of her as a suspect as it is to blame the murders on a sea monster, but even after they are wed, doubts persist.
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Aug 17, 2022 11:41:20 GMT
Detective Barsini falls in love with a young woman he routinely interviews during a spate of killings in a red-light district of Venice. The victims, all of them criminals, are exsanguinated before disposal in the river. There are canals, but no rivers in Venice. Venice is not on the mainland. It was built on top of wooden poles stuck in the mud at the bottom of the Venetian lagoon. Also, there is no red light district.
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Post by dem bones on Aug 17, 2022 17:42:18 GMT
Detective Barsini falls in love with a young woman he routinely interviews during a spate of killings in a red-light district of Venice. The victims, all of them criminals, are exsanguinated before disposal in the river. There are canals, but no rivers in Venice. Venice is not on the mainland. It was built on top of wooden poles stuck in the mud at the bottom of the Venetian lagoon. Also, there is no red light district. I've amended "river" — my sloppy mistake, not the author's. As to a red-light district, according to For Booking Lovers, it seems there was one, some centuries back, which sits well with the story, as it is implied the mystery woman sat for Botticelli's Birth of Venus (not that you could have gleaned that from above brief synopsis).
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Aug 17, 2022 18:33:28 GMT
There are canals, but no rivers in Venice. Venice is not on the mainland. It was built on top of wooden poles stuck in the mud at the bottom of the Venetian lagoon. Also, there is no red light district. I've amended "river" — my sloppy mistake, not the author's. As to a red-light district, according to For Booking Lovers, it seems there was one, some centuries back, which sits well with the story, as it is implied the mystery woman sat for Botticelli's Birth of Venus (not that you could have gleaned that from above brief synopsis). You may inform the author that Botticelli was active in Florence, not Venice. Let her try to talk herself out of that one!
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Post by dem bones on Aug 17, 2022 19:27:56 GMT
You may inform the author that Botticelli was active in Florence, not Venice. Let her try to talk herself out of that one! I don't know the author, so unless she gets to read this .... From the text, the young woman is in Venice under the stewardship of a guardian uncle. Doesn't mention where she lived previously, so it could be Florence, could be almost anywhere when we consider it needn't necessarily have been on dry land.
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Post by dem bones on Aug 18, 2022 9:22:54 GMT
Thirteen Ravens - The Oxford Vampire: PC Ben 'Lanky' Lawrence is jumped on the stairwell while investigating a break in at Hollingwood Heights, a particularly dilapidated and depressing tower block off the Oxford Ring Road. On his return to duty, Lawrence revisits the block following the discovery of two corpses — those of a rapist and a drug-dealer — completely drained of blood.
Mike Ward – The Sea Witch: Harry Camponara, 11, natural-born daredevil of a small Cornish harbour community, takes a motorboat out into the bay at high tide to disprove Johnny's grandpa's yarn of a giant sea witch who plucked his schoolchum from their boat fifty years ago this night. Johnny wishes he'd not agree to come along. After all, according to Grandpa, little Tommy's corpse was never recovered.
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Post by dem bones on Aug 19, 2022 12:51:13 GMT
Almost there. The counter culture has risen from the grave; Whoever heard of a red shadow?; Body-snatching is fine, but I draw the line at .... Very tempted to give Vol #1 another go. These are excellent.
Sam Dawson – Children Of The Summer’s End: "So who's ascendant this year?" "Oh, it's definitely students and young toffs on the slum again. It has been ever since they put Glastonbury on the telly and The Telegraph started to print pictures of posho girls in designer bloody wellies. It's the same here."
'Here' being Salisbury Plain during the annual HengeFest. Tim, a forty-something veteran festival goer, is dismayed that where once the event has the preserve of hippies, travellers, peace campaigners and outsiders, today it's just another moneyed plaything of the nouveau's, Hooray Henries and Henrietta's, chronic selfie-abusers and the terminally up-themselves, conformists playing outsiders. But he's even more concerned that an unseen someone has quietly pitched a black tent next to his own during the night. He recalls a nasty incident during the peace convoy years and a vicious sex predator who had to be ... asked to leave. Meanwhile, Tim's fellow left-over idealists are quietly made away with. The much vaunted "mystical" qualities of the site are about to become a violent reality.
Daniel McGachey – The Shadow In The Stacks: Story confided to Dr. Lawrence, folklorist, by Mr. Perdew, the master librarian of St. Montague's college, Greymarsh. Excavation of a cellar known to generations of students as "the haunted crypt" unearths an oilskin sack containing notebooks of the notorious Sir Nicholas Hobsgate - lord of the manor, black magician, and grave-looter, - the pages preserved between covers of ... who knows? Even old Mr. Harkwell the master bookbinder is at a loss to identify the strangely familiar texture. The Dean is irked at so worthless a haul, but not so the something resembling a tall, stooped, red shadow which has taken to haunting the reading room, desperate to take back that which once belonged to him.
Jason P Burden – Understanding: Jack Denny, a professional grave-robber working out of the Red Lion, Highgate High Street, is hired by creepy Dr. Thomsk to fetch certain ... items from first a cemetery, then a laboratory. Denny's undoing is to let his curiosity get the better of him. He simply has to take a look at what's inside the jar.
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Post by dem bones on Aug 20, 2022 13:33:53 GMT
E. H. Bourne – Dead Weight: "In 2007, BHF Books will publish its first novel - a comedy horror by new writer E. H. Bourne. For a taster, turn the page ...." Anyone know if it came out? The taster comprises chapters 1 to 9. Will, a reporter on local freebie newspaper The Clarion, is approached by Frank, long-retired journo turned busybody, at a Council meeting. Frank claims that he and fellow octogenarian troubleshooter Harry Barnes have unearthed a huge story for him concerning the extent of said council's corruption, dating back to the 1890s. Even as Will fobs Frank off, Harold and wife are burnt alive in a bizarre house fire, which also claims the lives of two firemen. Prologue reveals a knifeman from the void entering Mrs. Barnes' bedroom prior to tragic conflagration. Will, incidently, fancies himself an expert on pre-80s horror movies, which may or may not be a clue as to the author's identity? Then again, everyone on the BHF forum fancied themselves an expert ... etc.
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