After almost a decade and more than a dozen novels, insanely prolific romance author Shiloh Walker is concluding her Hunter saga (which includes Hunter's Salvation, Hunter's Need, Hunter's Fall, et. al.) in appropriate style: with a wildly romantic – an erotic – offering. Hunter's Rise revolves around the incendiary relationship between a more than century-old werewolf named Toronto who has no memories of his past before the Change and Sylvia James, a mercenary assassin who happens to be a vampire...

The latest release from China Miéville, a novel for “readers of all ages” entitled Railsea, absolutely blew me away. I read and review books for a living and it has been a very, very long time since I have experienced a novel so insanely imaginative that I dreaded putting it down as much as I dreaded it coming to its inevitable end. It was a singularly unique, genre-transcendent, masterwork – and looking at the book now on my desk, I have the completely irrational urge to pick it up and begin reading it all over again…

The Weird Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories, edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, is a shelf-bending compilation of the best weird fiction of all time. The most obvious attribute of this anthology is its size. This thing is massive – weighing in at 1152 pages and featuring more than 100 stories from a laundry list of literary legends like Franz Kafka, Clark Ashton Smith, H.P. Lovecraft, Fritz Leiber, Ray Bradbury, Stephen King, James Tiptree, Jr., George R. R. Martin, Octavia E. Butler, Harlan Ellison, Joyce Carol Oates, Neil Gaiman, and China Miéville, to name just a few...

The much heralded debut novel from Jeff Salyards, entitled Scourge of the Betrayer – the first installment in a fantasy saga called Bloodsounder’s Arc – was an intriguing and entertaining reading experience but because of the author’s unconventional (ie: not typical) approach, I’m guessing that this novel won’t be nearly as popular as it deserves to be...

I suppose I should’ve seen it coming. Zombie fiction has not only radically influenced every area of genre fiction – horror, fantasy, science fiction, romance, mystery, etc. – it has spread its necrotic reach into other literary categories as well. There are undead cookbooks (A Zombie Ate My Cupcake!, The Zombie Cookbook, etc.), zombie children’s books (David Lubar’s Nathan Abercrombie, Accidental Zombie saga), zombie business and investment guides (Z.E.O. by Scott Kenemore, etc.), and zombie philosophy books (Zombies, Vampires, and Philosophy by Richard Greene), so a zombie tarot deck was all but inevitable...

Laird Barron's long-awaited debut novel The Croning is finally on bookshelves and I'm happy to report that this novel is nothing short of a masterwork, comparable in so many ways to Lovecraft’s 1931 classic At the Mountains of Madness. Powered by a luminously dark writing style, a phantasmagoria of nightmarish imagery, and a bladder-loosening mythos, this is exactly the kind of novel Lovecraft would’ve written had he been alive in the 21st century...

Since the release of Dead until Dark back in 2001, Charlaine Harris has released one Sookie Stackhouse novel every year for the last 12 years – an impressive feat, especially considering that during that time she also published installments of her Harper Connelly saga (Grave Sight, et. al.) and edited numerous anthologies (like Wolfsbane and Mistletoe) – but next year, when the 13th and concluding volume of her landmark series is released (the title was recently revealed as Dead Ever After), it’s all going to end...

Zombie fiction has come a long way since Romero’s seminal horror flick Night of the Living Dead(1968). Almost 50 years since the release of that creepy cult classic, zombie fiction has evolved and expanded into almost every category – science fiction, fantasy, horror, literary fiction, tongue-in-cheek comedy, romance, even children’s books. And that’s the beauty of zombie fiction – innovative writers can mold it into almost any narrative form. That’s why Dana Fredsti should be applauded. Her latest release Plague Town...

With the release of Siege – the third and final installment of Rhiannon Frater’s As the World Dies trilogy (after The First Days and Fighting to Survive) – one of the most entertaining zombie epics in recent memory comes to a rousing, albeit predictable, conclusion. The story follows two women, a disillusioned mother named Jenni and an attorney named Katie, in their desperate quest to survive the zombie apocalypse in Texas. As Siege opens, the heroic duo (I’ve described them as Thelma and Louise of the Apocalypse) is safe inside of...

There have been some extraordinary post-apocalyptic novels for young adults released in the past few years – Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games trilogy (The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay), The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan, Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies saga (Uglies, Pretties, Specials, and Extras), Enclave by Ann Aguirre, etc. – but Julianna Baggott’s Pure just may be the most powerfully moving...