An unwelcome visitor in Oxrun Station.

Just genuinely the absolute master, effortlessly conjuring up the un-heroic cosmopolitan European mongrel, scarred by English public schooling, a small-time rogue running a minor racket in Greece who picks the wrong mark and gets forced into driving a car across the border to Turkey, not even making it across the border before getting into even more trouble. The plot unwinds, our unheroic hero does his best to get out unscathed. Immensely readable and entertaining.

A woman sets fire to her California house with her dead parents inside and sets out for Minnesota with a steamer trunk full of trouble. She is not prepared for what she finds there, and the people there are not prepared for what's in her trunk, and in many ways neither is she

A moribund, hamstrung, dead-on-its-feet inquiry into secret service wrongdoing is about to be put out of its misery when a bona-fide file about old school espionage dirty deeds lands on its lap. The events take place in 90s Berlin, but the consequences might affect the future of the Park as it tries to keep itself together in crumbling Brexit Britian. Great stuff, adjacent to but not directly part of the Slough House series (Standing By The Wall is a prequel Slough House story in the collection of the same name), it's a picture of a beaureaucracy of accountability as stagnant as the country's own finances which are being gradually broken down and scavenged and ultimately discarded. The cyncism and betrayals of the spy game at their most ruthless seem almost decent and honourable and patriotic set beside the heedless looting of the public purse. A great read, but a dark vision.

When a dodgy Grandfather shows up at a boy's home he shares with his academic parents and loyal dog, everything starts to go wrong. Tensions build in the family and the boy realises that there might be a monster inside him. It's pretty good.

Every year the teenage boys of a small town surrounded by corn fields hunt down a monster. The winner is never seen again. Yes, you know where THAT'S going. Big King vibe here, but the prose chews the scenery, just biting in there and chewing it all up, and the narrator goes right with it, absolutley living every moment. Good pulp Halloween fun.

Tim Underhill's sister-in-law takes her own life, and shortly afterwards his nephew goes missing. Yiug boys are disappearing in the locality and it seems almost certain that Mark has met with very foul play. But in the weeks running up to his mother's death and his disappearance, Mark had developed a strange obsession with a deserted house in his neighbourhood. Tim tries to follow events as they unfolded and understand the Mark's fascination with a truly terrible and evil place. 

No better woman than Liz Hand to pen an official sequel of sorts to The Haunting Of Hill House. A playwright rents the hellish abode for a few weeks to work with her partner, her friend and an aging actress to workshop her new play. Stuff starts to happen, and the group finds itself both disturbed by the place but also energised by the work they're doing and elect to stay on, precipitating a tragic climax. 

Atmospheric, spooky, well-written, great characterisation and full of nods to the original.

It's an excerpt from The Throat, expanded, I think, and it's brilliant, carves out a part of the dark heart of the entire brilliant Blue Rose trilogy.

The Cold War weaponises Cthulhu and Co. Fun and games and eternal horror ensue. A classic of the Weaponise Cthulhu genre, though I'm not sure there are actually many other examples.