A Web of Black Widows is Showcase number 7 from Peter Crowther’s PS Publishing out of the U.K.

It holds six stories by the writer Scott William Carter and features cover art by Glenn Chadbourne.

Carter is an American writer from Oregon who has seen publication in Weird Tales, Analog, Asimov’s, Realms of Fantasy, Chiaroscuro, Ellery Queen, Fantasy Magazine and in a number of anthologies.

The Terror is an epic adventure, albeit a largely ice bound one. This from the pen of Dan Simmons who has, over the last twenty years or more brought us such fine books as the masterful Song of Kali (purportedly slated by the prime properties collector Darren Aronofsky as a future film project), the collection of short works Prayers to Broken Stones and the recommended Lovedeath composed of five novellas, among many other Horror, S.F., Fantasy and Crime Thriller books.

Fine black hair tendrils, drifting in a night ocean, floating through air, drifting, drifting.

I’m channeling a well, a well not filled with water but with hair. And bone. Bones buried under masses of the dead matter that is hair. Black water. Black hair. Strands of hair being pulled out from between a woman’s lips, more and more, thicker and thicker, till she regurgitates the hair like ropy, coarse vomit.

A rusty stained scalpel, nestled on a bed of black velvet.

I have never met Felicity Dowker. However, in the imaginative realms, we have walked a few paths together.

Nightshade & Damnations is a prime collection for any Speculative Fiction reader's shelf.

What a shame that Kersh could not be living and writing now. I think he'd fit in nicely with the modern mode of story and its practitioners of psychological, atmospheric darkness.

Burn this book.

Perhaps, after he died on the island, this is where Doctor Moreau went.

Entering the grubby marble foyer of Bloom Memorial Hospital, after a brief introduction from one Nathaniel Lambert, the first person we meet is Felicity Dowker. She has a nightmarish story to tell us of staff recruitment at Bloom.

A little further, into the shadowy corridors of this edifice, W.D. Gagliani and David Benton whisper to us of Bloom's history; growing from a subterranean "Tree of Life" and its "gift".

During Exploration #5 Navidson had no illusion about what he would find there. While staring into those infernal halls, we can hear him mutter: “Lazarus is dead again.”

XVII Footnote 374 page 395.

Ah, that pitchy, architecture and physics defying region makes me suspect that the crawling woman from Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s "The Yellow Wallpaper" may well be, even now, making her way along those ashen walls.

Stranger things might be found there.

Or very little at all.

House of Leaves...

Every story is a ghost.

They are still, writers.

There are writers who are akin to ghosts. They may have extensive, respectable, large bodies of completed works, even have an honourable list of published pieces. Yet, they are insubstantial, these writers, these scribblers and their careers, their reputations, their achievements.

They have not been gifted by the golden light of discovery warm and radiant on their faces. Some will perpetually have shadows upon them, year after year after year, decade after decade, as torturing ambition slowly turns rancid.

A brilliant read! Here is a lesson in how to construct a genre novel, an education in style and substance. The dark thriller as haiku.

Once you purchase this collection and open the door of the cover and read, you will enter realms where a living glass woman is on display in a glass box, you’ll meet the Streamers/Screamers and the Bone-Dog. You can linger in "The Drawback" and marvel at a tidal giant. You’ll visit "Al’s Iso Bar" during a quest for a husband, meet those who work for the god of the love of money, journey through peculiarly skewed cultures occupied by people who are like us, but strangely different.

“Most people think of Special Operations soldiers as cowboys; Rambo-types that bust through doors then kick ass and take names. There is an element of truth to that, but the violent actions on contact usually come after painstaking planning and exhaustive rehearsals; preparation that writes every movement you will make into a script of muscle memory. Success on the battlefield doesn’t just happen.”

“I glutted myself quickly in the open body cavity, as werewolves came to punish my trespass.”

“Worfipped”

Let me tell you about the best Graphic Novel that I've ever read. In fact at the time of reading it (June of 2001) it was the best horror work I'd read in five years.

A work of horror wherein horrible things actually happen.

How refreshing.

I had come to it late. From Hell was first, partially, serialised in the late eighties early nineties in the comic anthology Taboo.

Engines of Desire by Livia Llewellyn

Reviewed by Stephen Studach

At this point in time there are more original writers in the speculative fiction genre finding print outlets than ever before. The reasons for this relate to population, the evolution of the imagination and the modes of publication. However, all that concerns us here is the fact that Livia Llewellyn is one whose words are worthy of attention.

Here’s a grungy little roadside pump station and redneck hellbilly museum out in the back of beyond. You pull in, switch off, listen to the isolated, isolating silence. And as your car is ticking down in the subtly insect-chirping night, this guy in filthy overalls comes out. His name is Cain he tells you, and this surely could not bode well. The overalls are stained with grease and crimson and odd-smelling lube, and he’s got a funny little smile this guy, when he does smile, and black under his fingernails and when he slips that bowser nozzle into your uncapped tank it feels like abuse.

The tall pine tree tops; bristling, waving fingers indicating the fulgent moon. There is a distant howling; picked up again and again in a nearing chorus. The chill air is perfumed with a melded musk of human and beast. The shadows growl . . .

That’s right, you’re in the country of the changed. Skinwalker-bound volumes are about to tell you their individual tales, inscribed with spattered blood, steaming gore, gnashing, foaming fangs and sweeping claws.