Mystery
An otherworldly London: The Great When, by Alan Moore, reviewed
Is occult knowledge even possible in the age of the internet? If a recondite author obsessed you back in the…
Small-town mysteries: A Case of Matricide, by Graeme MacRae Burnet, reviewed
The gifted writer Graeme Macrae Burnet makes a mockery of the genres publishers impose on credulous readers. The author of…
Mysteries and misogyny: The Empusium, by Olga Tokarczuk, reviewed
Tokarczuk revisits Thomas Mann’s masterpiece The Magic Mountain in this ‘health resort horror story’ set in a Silesian guesthouse on the eve of the first world war
Anonymous caller: This Plague of Souls, by Mike McCormack, reviewed
A man returns to his remote rural home after an absence – to be greeted not by his family but a sinister stranger on the telephone
A topsy-turvy world: Peaces, by Helen Oyeyemi, reviewed
At a village train station in deepest Kent two men and their pet mongoose are setting off on their honeymoon.…
Putting the boot into Italy
A young woman, naked and covered in blood, totters numbly down a night road. A driver spots her in his…
City of dreadful dusk
Fantastic fiction loves contrasts made explicit: Eloi and Morlocks, orcs and elves, and above all humans battling vampires, Martians or…
A remote island community is disrupted by the arrival of a troubled teenager
Benjamin Wood’s first novel, The Bellwether Revivals, was published in 2012, picked up good reviews, was shortlisted for the Costa…
