The Chill


Scott Carson - 2020
    Early in the 20th century, the town was destroyed for the greater good: bringing water to the millions living downstate. Or at least that’s what the politicians from Manhattan insisted at the time. The local families, settled there since America’s founding, were forced from their land, but they didn’t move far, and some didn’t move at all…Now, a century later, the repercussions of human arrogance are finally making themselves known. An inspector assigned to oversee the dam, dangerously neglected for decades, witnesses something inexplicable. It turns out that more than the village was left behind in the waters of the Chill when it was abandoned. The townspeople didn’t evacuate without a fight. A dark prophecy remained, too, and the time has come for it to be fulfilled. Those who remember must ask themselves: who will be next? For sacrifices must be made. And as the dark waters begin to inexorably rise, the demand for a fresh sacrifice emerges from the deep...

Soul


Tobsha Learner - 2006
    In Soul, Learner relates the story of Lavinia and Julia Huntington, passionate women trapped in emotional whirlpools that threaten to drown them and everyone they love. In 19th century Britain, Lavinia is married to an older man who seems to appreciate her lively curiosity. Lavinia proves to be an apt pupil in both the study and the bedroom, glorying in the pleasures of the physical. In 21st century Los Angeles, geneticist Julia is trying to identify people who can kill without remorse. Stunned to discover that she seems to possess the trait she is looking for, Julia is reassured of her emotions by her intense passion for her husband and her delight in her pregnancy. In the past, Lavinia’s desire for her husband grows, but his cools as he becomes fascinated with another. In the present, Julia’s love overwhelms her husband, who leaves her. Lavinia and Julia feel the tortures of passion unspent. Cold logic tells them that the deaths of their tormentors will bring them peace. Separated by a hundred years, two Huntington women face the same decision. Their choices will echo far into the future.

The Nekropolis Archives


Tim Waggoner - 2012
    Private Eye. Zombie.His mean streets are the city of the dead, the shadowy realm known as Nekropolis. You’ve got to keep your head in Nekropolis. But when you’re a zombie attempting to battle the vampire lords, that’s not as easy as it seems…This massive omnibus editions collects all three Matt Richter novels — Nekropolis, Dead Streets and Dark War — plus a swathe of short stories too.File Under: Urban Fantasy [ Tooth And Claw | Flirting With Danger | Underworld | A Head For Business ]

The King of Terrors


D.M. Mitchell - 2012
    DCI Thomas Rayne discovers the decomposed body of an unknown man in a Suffolk barn, a strange black symbol painted on the barn wall. A crime that Inspector Rayne never solved. A case he would go to his death calling his Curse.More than eighty years later in 2011, guilt-ridden Gareth Davies seeks a quiet life in rural Wales. But his self-enforced solitude is soon to be violently shattered. Driving home one night in a snowstorm he knocks down and nearly kills a mysterious young woman in a country lane. He doesn’t know it but his life will never be the same again. The woman claims to be his twin sister Erica – a sister he never knew he had, because his unknown mother abandoned him in 1976 as a baby at Cardiff Central railway station. But his newfound sister brings with her a dire warning: his life is in great danger. When she disappears unexpectedly, he decides he must find her. That’s when his nightmare truly begins.Police find false ID papers in a Manchester flat, bearing Davies’ photo; a flat in which a woman has been murdered. Moreover, the details of the gruesome murder mirror those exactly of the man found in the barn by DCI Rayne in 1929. Why is Davies being followed by a strange Canadian man? Why is ninety-year-old Sir David Lambert-Chide, wealthy pharmaceutical giant, desperate to find Davies’ sister too? Who is the attractive but mysterious red-haired woman who warns him he is being hunted by the deadly Doradus? And who or what exactly is Doradus?What becomes clear is that someone wants him dead, whilst others want him very much alive. His life in the balance, he finds he’s being hunted for reasons he cannot fathom, with no one to turn to, not knowing who to trust and caught up in dark forces many hundreds of years old.