The Wine-Dark Sea

Written by Robert Aickman
Genre:  Horror, fantasy
450 pages

This book is a collection of eight short horror stories (or "strange stories" to use the author's preferred term) by English author Robert Aickman.

An English tourist in Greece makes an unwise trip to a shunned island; two young women on a  walking holiday in northern England shelter from  a severe storm in a remote farmhouse, only to discover some disturbing secrets about heir initially friendly host; a lonely academic becomes obsessed with a series of strange telephone calls from a mysterious woman; a mother becomes terrified of her increasingly violent and ever hungry twin sons who seem to be growing at an unnatural rate; a man is haunted throughout his life by a faceless specter whose appearance always means death for someone close to him; a little girl receives a grotesque dollhouse as a gift which has such a strange effect on her that her parents get rid of it - years later the dolls seek revenge; a tourist in Venice takes a gondola trip with a seductive but sinister guide; and a woman visiting Sweden stays at a secluded sanitarium for a rest but it turns out to have a profound and disturbing effect on her  

The stories are creepy and subtle, with little graphic gore in them.  They tend to start out form a very realistic, but details increasing pile upon details leading to a final sting at the often enigmatic conclusions.  

John Constantine: Hellblazer - In the Line of Fire

Written by Paul Jenkins, with art by Sean Phillips and Al Davidson
Year of Publication: 2015

Magician and con man John Constantine has once more evaded damnation.  This time by splitting off the negative aspects of his personality and sending them to Hell in his place.  However, things are far form over for him.  Haunted by the loss of parts of himself, Constantine has to find out what kind of person he wants to be.  In the meantime there are ghostly dogs, haunted houses, demonic soccer fans and the spirit of England itself and more to deal with.  At the same time he has to confront the deepest and darkest of his own past in order to become whole again.

John Constantine was first created by legendary comics creator Alan Moore in the pages of Swamp Thing in 1985.  In 1987 the character graduated to his own title, John Constantine:  Hellblazer, which ran for 300 issues until 2013.  Throughout it's run Hellblazer was one of the cornerstones of Vertigo, the mature readers imprint of DC Comics.  In more recent years Constantine has become part of the more mainstream DC Universe. John Constantine was a working class English magician, who was always at best an antihero.  He was a con man, a manipulator, a thief and often extremely unlikeable but usually sympathetic, even when he succeeded, it was often more due to luck, bargaining  or trickery than any magical ability.  Fortunately for fans, Vertigo are reprinting Hellblazer in bulky large format books.  In the Line of Fire is the tenth volume collecting issues 97 to 107 which ran throughout 1996.  It's part of the hitherto uncollected four year run on the title by writer Paul Jenkins and artist Sean Phillips.

The book consists of loosely linked mostly one and two part stories and one three part story.  The story about the soccer hooligans and the demon is possibly the weakest, but it is still pretty fun and the rest are good slices of classic Hellblazer.  Interestingly, for an American comic published by an American company, the stories are very British and full of references to British politics, history and mythology.  Jenkins has a good feel for time and place and roots the comic very much in the Britain of the mid nineties.  The horror is rooted in the characters and is well complemented by Phillips' artwork which is at turns realistic and moody.

Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances

Written by Neil Gaiman
Year of Publication:  2015
Genre:  Fantasy, horror, Science-fiction

This is fantasy author Neil Gaiman's third collection of short stories (following Smoke and Mirrors (1999) and Fragile Things (2006)).  Here is a collection of short tales (some of them very short) and poems ranging over a variety of speculative fiction, from horror, to fantasy and science-fiction, fables, fairy tales  and dramas.  There is a story about Sherlock Holmes in retirement, a Doctor Who short story and a second short story follow up to Gaiman's successful novel American Gods (2001) (the first story "Monarch of the Glen" can be found in the Fragile Things collection).

As the title suggests, there are some pretty disturbing scenes and elements in the stories, so people who were turned on to Gaiman from his children's books may be advised to think carefully before reading.  All due to the range of the stories it may be too much of a mixed bag for some.  However, this collection is a great sampler of Gaiman's themes and is definitely recommended for fans.

The Encyclopedia of Early Earth

Written and illustrated by Isabel Greenberg

Year of Publication:  2013

This is a wonderful fantasy graphic novel set in the mythical world of Early Earth.  A storyteller from the land of the Nord at the North Pole embarks on a quest to find a missing part of his soul which he believes is at the South Pole.   Along the way he meets a variety of different people from different lands and they swap stories and folklore.  This is a book about storytelling and about stories and stories within stories.  It's written with a contemporary sensibility and sense of humour, but it has a genuine mythic charge and a real timeless quality.

The artwork which resembles medieval woodcuts is beautiful and detailed making good use of a limited colour palette.   

A Delicate Truth

Written by John le Carre
Year of Publication:  2013

"Operation Wildlife" is a top secret mission engineered by Fergus Quinn, an ambitious politician in the British Foreign Office, and Ethical Outcomes, an American private defense contractor to capture a high-ranking terrorist arms-buyer in Gibraltar.  It is so secret that not even Quinn's private secretary Toby Bell is cleared for it.
On paper the mission is a complete success but, three years later, Bell discovers some disturbing secrets about what happened in Gibraltar.  Slowly uncovering the mess of death, corruption and ruined lives that Operation Wildlife left in it's wake, Bell finds himself torn between his duty to the Service and his conscience.

John le Carre rose to fame in the early 1960s with Cold War spy thrillers such as The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (1963), The Looking Glass War (1965), Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1974) and Smiley's People (1979).  As the Cold War thawed in the late 1980s and 1990s, le Carre seemed to struggle to find a subject, but that has recently changed.  His latest books deal passionately and angrily with the modern world of surveillance and espionage.

This novel is a gripping and chilling suspense tale which, as always with le Carre is beautifully written.  His books are complex and take their time to build.  His characters usually stiff, posh British spies or civil servants inhabiting a world of country estates, gentlemen's clubs, offices in Whitehall, lonely hotel rooms and casual betrayal.            

The Rats

Written by James Herbert
Year of Publication:  1974

This book was the debut novel of one of Britain's most popular authors, James Herbert, who was an art director at an advertising agency before he turned his hand to writing.  By the time of his death in March 2013, Herbert had written twenty four novels and two books of non-fiction.

The Rats tells the story of a new breed of rat appearing in London.  These new rats are much larger, stronger, more intelligent, more vicious and bolder than normal, and one of their preferred foods is human flesh.  To make matters worse, they carry a new type of disease, and a single bite from one of the rats causes death within 24 hours.

It's very much a pulp B-movie style plot with the handsome tough but caring teacher hero, Harris, bravely battling the evil mutant rats, and indifferent or ineffectual authority figures.  It's very much a product of it's time and many of the attitudes and some of the language in the book are not exactly politically correct.  The female characters are rarely anything more than victims or girlfriends.  There is also a lot of clunky dialogue.  However this doesn't really detract from the force of Herbert's writing.  The action scenes and the film's plentiful explicit gore scenes are handled with real skill and power, and there is also a very strong level of social commentary.  Also in the scenes of the rat attacks, the secondary characters who are soon to be brutally slaughtered are depicted with skill and compassion.    

The book was an immediate bestseller on it's first publication and helped introduce a new wave of more visceral, socially aware contemporary-set horror writing.  It was also very controversial due to it's frequent graphic descriptions of death and mutilation.  Herbert wrote two sequels to The Rats:  Lair (1979) and Domain (1984).  The novel was also adapted into a video game in 1985 for the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum, and it was adapted into a movie called Deadly Eyes (1982).       

House of Small Shadows

Written by Adam Nevill
Year of Publication: 2013

This is Adam Nevill's fifth excursion into supernatural horror.  The story revolves around 38 year old Catherine Howard, a woman with a deeply troubled past, who works for an antique dealer.  She is offered the career opportunity of a lifetime when she is asked to visit the lonely country house, Red House, and value the estate of master puppeteer and taxidermist M.H. Mason.  When Catherine arrives she is met with suspicion and outright hostility by the house's two residents: Mason's elderly wheelchair-bound niece Edith, who is his sole surviving heir and executor, and her formidable, mute housekeeper, Maude.
Catherine finds the house full of grotesque puppets and dolls and hideous tableaux made up of stuffed animals: such as amazingly detailed World War I battlefields populated by dead rats.
At night however the house comes alive with strange sounds and shadows.  As Catherine delves deeper into the mysteries of the house and it's occupants she becomes convinced that she is the victim of a monstrous game.

The book is hugely atmospheric, with a twisty plot.  It's very heavy on backstory and takes some time for the action to kick in, but it all leads to a genuinely shocking conclusion.  The characters are well drawn and the sense of time and place is well done.

It's main flaw is that sometimes the pacing flags, but that is a minor quibble.  This is a must-read for horror fans.