TITLE: Hex
AUTHOR: Thomas Olde Heuvelt (translated from the Dutch by Nancy Forest-Flier
PUBLISHER: Hodder & Stoughton
RELEASE DATE: April 26, 2016
GENRE: Thriller, Paranormal Horror
PAGE COUNT: 384

Hex is terrifying for reasons you wouldn’t expect.  Chronicling a small town’s descent into a hell of their own making, it brings humanity’s deeply buried darkness to the surface.  

Present day Black Spring is under the curse of a 17th century witch with eyes and mouth sewn shut.  To ward off Kathryn’s wrath, the town hides the haunting from outsiders, masquerading fear as folksy tradition.  While most of the townspeople play their part for the greater good, a gang of teen fundamentalists takes a joke too far and incites Kathryn’s revenge.  Soon Black Spring’s fragile façade of law and order is shattered forever. Continue reading →

TITLE: This Census-Taker
AUTHOR: China Miéville
PUBLISHER: Del Ray
RELEASE DATE: January 12, 2016
GENRE: Magical Realism, Adult Fiction
PAGE COUNT: 210

China Miéville’s brand new novella boasts contemporary style as well as the grace of an old classic.  It uses the power of silence and suggestion to make a lasting emotional impact.  

Isolated on a mountaintop with his parents, a seven-year-old boy believes his key-maker father is a murderer.  Lacking proof, he has no option but to live under a shadow of fear. Continue reading →

TITLE: Slade House
AUTHOR: David Mitchell
PUBLISHER: Random House
RELEASE DATE: October 27, 2015
GENRE: Supernatural Horror
PAGE COUNT: 233

Every nine years a guest is summoned to Slade House, never to return.  The only people who know the truth behind the disappearances are already dead.  David Mitchell uses his iconic split narrative style to magic this supernatural horror story into being.  

Over the course of five decades, five guests walk into a terrifying trap.  Slade House is nothing more than the facade for a deadly game of cat and mouse.  Like flies in a web, the unwitting victims don’t stand a chance against the sinister powers at work here.  Who are the residents of Slade House and what is their purpose?  This grown-up equivalent of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline is creepy and compulsive. Continue reading →

TITLE: The Bees
AUTHOR: Laline Paull
PUBLISHER: Fourth Estate
RELEASE DATE: January 1, 2015
GENRE: Thriller, Action
PAGE COUNT: 352

Imagine a thriller told from the perspective of bees.  Through the analogy of a totalitarian beehive, Laline Paull’s debut novel questions our perception of the world and our humanity.  With its startling political message, The Bees is destined to become a powerful dystopian classic.  

Flora 717 is a sanitation worker from the lowest class of the hive.  From birth, she knows her one duty is to accept, obey and serve.  When Flora saves the hive from a wasp invasion and becomes the first of her kin to forage for nectar, she catches wind of insidious secrets.  Plague, massacre, and religious purge bring death and discord to her home.  Despite her readiness to sacrifice everything for her Queen, Flora’s stirring of forbidden maternal love could lead her to commit the most sacrilegious crime of all.

She dragged her body through and fell out onto the floor of an alien world.  Static roared through her brain, thunderous vibration shook the ground and a thousand scents dazed her.  All she could do was breathe until gradually the vibration and static subsided and the scent evaporated into the air.  Her rigid body unlocked and she calmed as knowledge filled her mind.  This was the Arrivals Hall and she was a worker.  Her kin was Flora and her number was 717 – page 3

Continue reading →