John Langan reviews Ray Cluley

Within the Wind, Beneath the Snow, Ray Clu­ley (Spectral 978-0957392793, $20.00, 82pp) May 2015. (Snowbooks 9781911390879, £4.99, 84pp, pb) September 2016.

Ray Cluley’s Probably Monsters was one of the standouts of 2015, a collection of well-written stories about a variety of monsters in a variety of landscapes. His follow-up publication, the standalone novella, Within the Wind, Beneath the Snow, is another success. Its protagonist, Gjerta Jørgensen, is a

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John Langan Reviews Paul Tremblay

Disappearance at Devil’s Rock, Paul Tremblay (William Morrow 978-0-0623-6326-8, $25.99, 336pp, hc) June 2016.

Disappearance at Devil’s Rock, the gripping new novel from Paul Tremblay, begins with a phone call in the small hours of the morning. Elizabeth Sanderson, who answers the phone, has been waiting for a check-in from her son, thirteen-year-old Tommy, who is at a sleepover at a friend’s house. The phone’s trill fills her

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John Langan reviews Christopher Buehlman

The Suicide Motor Club, Christopher Buehl­man (Berkley 978-1101988732, $26.00, 368pp, hc) June 2016.

The Suicide Motor Club, the new novel from Christopher Buehlman, is a lean, mean, souped-up, eight cylinder, four-speed race car of a book. It begins at high speed, with Judith Lamb, the protagonist, in a car with her husband and five-year-old son. The year is 1967, and the Lamb family is driving east through New

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John Langan reviews Joe Hill

The Fireman, Joe Hill (William Morrow 9780062200631, $28.99, 768pp, hc) May 2016.

The Fireman, Joe Hill’s big new novel, is a freight train of a book. Long, composed of many sections, it’s already in motion on the first page, and it does not let up until the very end. Its premise is straightforward: a plague is spreading around the world. The infection’s scientific name is Draco incendia trychophyton,

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John Langan reviews Gemma Files

Experimental Film, Gemma Files (ChiZine 978-1771-48349-0, $16.99, 305pp, tp) Decem­ber 2015.

There’s a cache of lost films at the center of Experimental Film, the fine, compel­ling novel by Gemma Files. The movies were made in the early years of the 20th century by a woman who herself went missing during what should have been a routine train journey to Toronto. Shot on highly unstable silver nitrate stock, the

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John Langan reviews Stephen Graham Jones

Mongrels, Stephen Graham Jones (William Morrow 978-0-06-241269-0, $24.99, 320pp, hc) May 2016.

For some time, now, Stephen Graham Jones has been writing fiction that boldly engages familiar horror tropes, from demonic posses­sion, to the serial killer, to the zombie, in the process compiling one of the more impressive and interesting bibliographies in recent memo­ry. Now, in Mongrels, his excellent, exuberant new novel, he turns his attention to the

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