Black Static

Listed below are the books received for review since the last update, which was a whole two months ago back on 4 June 2011.

Five of the titles are by women, bringing our total for the year so far to 16 books by women out of a total of 96 received for review. That breaks down to one in six - last time it was one in seven and before that one in eight, so the percentage appears to be rising all the time, though we're still falling short of the one in five figure we had when I first did a count up back in 2010.

Nice to see new work from Black Static irregulars Joel Lane, Nicholas Royle and Gary McMahon, and a couple of my very favourite writers are there too, the wonderful Tim Powers and equally splendiferous Dan Simmons.

A special shout out to former Interzone editorial team member David Mathew, whose novel, a supernatural thriller titled O My Days, is now out in paperback and electronic format from Triskaideka Books.

And, for the first time, I have a title by James Herbert, an author I've never been that keen on. So far in my life I've read four books by Herbert, and each time sworn that it will be the last, only to then get sucked in to reading another one, because they sound so intriguing and people keep telling me that he's good and promising that this one is different from all the ones that I've disliked. Will I read The Secret of Crickley Hall? Well, it does sound intriguing...

There are also a couple of books listed here that I probably shouldn't have been sent, so please remember that Black Static is a horror magazine. I'm not particularly prescriptive about that label, and will look at 'dark' work from outside the bulwarks of the horror genre, while exceptions can be made at my discretion for work by past contributors to the magazine, but in general there's got to be 'something of the night' about the titles we review.

If in doubt about suitability, please ask before you send a copy.

And, as ever, people are welcome to query me regarding the possibility of a review by writing to whitenoise@ttapress.com with the usual caveat that an expression of interest does not guarantee if or when a review will be done.

October 2011

• Colson Whitehead - Zone One - Harvill Secker hardback (ARC)
• Justin Evans - The White Devil: A Ghost Story - Weidenfeld & Nicholson hardback (ARC)

September 2011

• Nicholas Royle - Regicide - Solaris paperback
• Tim Powers - The Bible Repairman and Other Stories - Tachyon Publications paperback (ARC)
• Gary McMahon - Dead Bad Things - Angry Robot paperback (ARC)
• Val McDermid - The Retribution - Little Brown hardback (ARC)
• Thomas Mullen - The Revisionists - Mulholland Books hardback (ARC)

August 2011

• Edited by Nancy Kilpatrick - Evolve Two: Vampire Stories of the Future Undead - Edge paperback
• Allyson Bird - Isis Unbound - Dark Regions Press paperback
• Daniel Polansky - The Straight Razor Cure - Hodder & Stoughton hardback
• Oliver Stark - 88 Killer - Headline paperback

July 2011

• Edited by D. F. Lewis - The Horror Anthology of Horror Anthologies - Megazanthus Press paperback
• Michael Reynier - Five Degrees of Latitude - Tartarus hardback
• James Herbert - The Secret of Crickley Hall - Tor paperback
• Dan Simmons - Flashback - Quercus hardback
• Edited by Ellen Datlow - Naked City - St Martin's Press paperback

June 2011

• Joel Lane - Do Not Pass Go - Hotwire paperback
• David Mathew - O My Days - Triskaideka Books paperback

May 2011

• Edited by Ellen Datlow - The Best Horror of the Year Volume 3 - Nightshade Books paperback