Kayleigh Marie Edwards has been entertaining and chilling audiences with her own eclectic mix of horror and comedy. Now, for the first time, this popular author has collected her works together, reviewing and revising each one to bring you the definitive versions of her unique tales. From murderous children to nightmarish trips to an ill-fated zombie apocalypse, Corpsing will send you running for the light switch, but smiling as you do it.

Women in Horror month has just passed us by and I’m incredibly lazy/busy. I thought I’d make an effort and actively read a female writer.

I’ve known Kayleigh since I first started writing in 2010, so we’ve followed one another’s successes from our time on the forums of Spinetinglers to the present day. Even then, I knew she had a quirky voice, a true horror fan that writes for herself first.

Corpsing is her first collection of previously published short stories and gives the reader an eclectic mix of murder and mayhem with a tongue firmly in cheek. From killer trees, to bad mushroom trips, monsters under the bed and the chaos as the zombie apocalypse unfolds at a secure mental facility.

There’s a dark vein of humour that runs throughout; a mischievous glint that twinkles in the corner of each page, which when done right in horror, provides the reader with a comic relief tilts the story and adds to the chaos. There’s an eclectic mix of tales here, which shows her range as she sweeps from bizarro, to comedy, then back to weird, with a brief detour to gruesomeness.

​Kayleigh is definitively a voice to listen out for in the future, and I can’t wait to read something longer from her. Funny AND scary is a rare combination.

Take a tour through the horror paperback novels of the 1970s and 80s . . . if you dare. Page through dozens and dozens of amazing book covers featuring well-dressed skeletons, evil dolls, and knife-wielding killer crabs! Read shocking plot summaries that invoke devil worship, satanic children, and haunted real estate! Horror author and vintage paperback book collector Grady Hendrix offers killer commentary and witty insight on these trashy thrillers that tried so hard to be the next Exorcist or Rosemary’s Baby. It’s an affectionate, nostalgic, and unflinchingly funny celebration of the horror fiction boom of two iconic decades, complete with story summaries and artist and author profiles. You’ll find familiar authors, like V. C. Andrews and R. L. Stine, and many more who’ve faded into obscurity. Plus recommendations for which of these forgotten treasures are well worth your reading time and which should stay buried.

Buy this book.

I should leave the review at that, but I should try and convince you a little more, just in case. But the chances are, if you’re a reading this, then you’re a horror fan. And Paperbacks from Hell is for horror fans.

So, go and buy this book.

If you’re in any way nostalgic about the horror you read growing up, chances are, you’ll find a morsel of that within these pages; a scrap of trivia, or nugget of information that you weren’t aware of. Something that’ll make you smile. Hendrix has extensively researched his subject matter (I’m talking years, a lifetime probably), and it shows. You can feel his enthusiasm bubbling up at the turn of every page.

As well as revisiting old tales I once read and loved, I discovered books I wished I’d read during my youth. The horror market for me growing up was a vast and wild plain, often the stuff I found as a spotty teenager was stuff I simply stumbled across at second-hand shops and car boot sales, books that I discovered instead of sought out. Grady Hendrix has been collecting these titles, like some great cryptozoological hunter, and organised them under different chapters, sectioning off the history, different sub genres, publishers, prolific authors and the famed artists whose work helped grabbed the reader in the first place.

Hendrix is funny, sometimes injecting a caustic wit whilst still showing he respects the subject matter as he waxes lyrical about the good, the bad and the ugly. He knows these books like the back of his hand and it shows. Every page is a love letter to the craft, to the discover of new works by old story tellers and to the entire industry itself.

Included throughout is page after page of gloriously lurid artwork in full colour, each beautiful and disturbing in their own right.

Paperbacks from Hell is like discovering photos from your childhood that you never know existed. If you’re after a weighty tome that will inform, educate and entertain you on a subject you love greatly, this is a trip to hell that’ll be worth it.

Selected from indie publishers and magazines such as Weirdpunk Books, Necro Publications, Splatterpunk Zine, Corner Bar Magazine, Carrion Blue and Raw Dog Screaming Press, these stories represent the state of the art of extreme horror fiction. Whether extreme in theme or with gore galore, these disturbing tales will be hard to forget even though you may wish you could.

Yes, there will be blood. Lots of it. Gore galore and plenty of the gushy stuff. But you'll also find tales less graphic but with hardcore attitudes, transgressive stories you're not sure you should be reading, stories showing you things you shouldn't see.

Back again with another tome of collected horror. Let’s visit my favourites from the latest collection by

55 ways I’d prefer not to die by Michael A Arnzen is pretty much what it says on the tin, as 55 scenarios of gruesome deaths are discussed and dissected in a series of humorous shorts.

Ownership by Wraith James White is an effed up gory sex horror, which has to be read to believed. Bulging cocks literally fuck people to death in a visceral, blood spattering orgy of BDSM and what the fuckness. I’d worry if this arouses you.

The Bed of Crimson Joy by Jasper Bark. A haunted bed? Why not? An older couple find themselves troubled by an ominous four-poster. Utterly haunting and original.

Please Subscribe by Adam Cesare explores the dangers of baring your soul of the internet, and how bullying can destroy those weak of spirit and how the screen we stare into isn’t just a one-way mirror. What we put online might seem harmless, but every keystroke has its consequence.

Bacne by Tim Miller. A bad case of toxic zits gradually gets worse and worse for warehouse worker Jerry. Labels on things are important and remember health and safety first; before it you regret it.

The Girl who loved Bruce Campbell by Crista Carmen. A die hard Evil Dead fan finds herself under siege by trio of drug fuelled, psychotic maniacs, deciding to take her survival into her own hands, taking inspiration from her favourite horror hero. Bloody good fun.

A mixed bag of tales; the great ones making up for the weaker ones. As usual, Joe Hempel delivers a fine and engaging performance that captures the listener from the get go.

This unique collection of stories features a range of international talent: award-winning authors, masters of horror, rising stars, and fresh new voices in the genre. Take care as you reach into these dark places, for the things here bite, and you may withdraw a hand short of a few fingers.

Antonio Simon Jr’s opener Water, Ice and Vice is a Twilight Zone-esque cautionary tale about being careful what you wish for, as two college students discover a fridge that offers the possibility of fulfilling any vice.

Routine By Mia Bravo is a stand out story as a man’s OCD spirals out of control with bloody consequences. Despite the obvious reasoning for his escalating condition, I enjoyed his descent into madness.

The Pied Piper’s Appetite by Rich Phelan follows the tale of a competitive eater whose gluttonous appetites go further than just food. A likeable tale that borders on noir and surprises throughout as things get more and more messed up and a sinister agenda comes to light.

Highlights from volume two include Toll Road by Antonio Simon Jr (again) in which a kidnapper finds himself on a literal road to hell in tale of bizarro noir.

Boxed, by Brian Cassiday turns up a Hitchtockian heat as a group of strangers find themselves trapped in a lift with a plague of zombies waiting for them on every floor. A tense, enjoyable romp that keeps turn the pressure up until the inevitable bloody finale.

The Enormous Turnip gets a twisted horror retell in We all ate the White Flesh by Chris Lynch, in which a band of starving pioneers find themselves inundated with a food which turns out isn’t as favourable as first thought.

The narration by Wyatt S Gray is suited to each story, although I had a giggle at his attempts to read stories set in the UK; it just doesn’t sound right when and American tries to pull of English sensibilities. Twenty very different tales make up these eclectic collections. Not every tales hits as hard as the last, but they’re all written well, and some will entertain more than others, but there’s definitely something for everyone. Some surprising tales from some up and coming writers that you should definitely keep an eye (and ear) out for.

Dexter LeGrasse thought he was lucky to be alive. He was wrong. The only survivor of a plane crash over the Atlantic, he finds himself washed up on an uninhabited island. Dazed, dehydrated and desperate to escape, he will have to use all his wits just to stay alive in a strange and unforgiving environment. But when he discovers an ancient ruin, he unwittingly unleashes an unstoppable evil and his nightmare truly begins. Primal, merciless and fuelled by a burning hatred, the creature has a hunger that must be appeased. It hunts Dexter wherever he goes, driving him to the edge of his own sanity, and with time running out and no place left to hide it's escape... ...or die.

You find yourself marooned on an island after a devastating plane crash. Waiting for help to arrive, you decide to explore the island, finding a source of water and some sparse supplies of food. You might be able to survive until a rescue party finds you. Exploring deeper, you find evidence of primitive civilisation.
You are alone.
But you are not alone.

I thoroughly enjoyed Maldicion. It’s a simple story of a man alone on an island facing off against an ancient evil that is much bigger and stronger than he, with nothing but the contents of a few suitcases and his wits to fight it with.

At times, it feels like a choose your own survival adventure but without the choices (not a bad thing, because I used to love them) as it moves from dilemma to dilemma, although some of the discoveries feel a little convenient in order to advance the plot, the story is tight and keeps things interesting, which is ideal for the length.

The narration by Nigel Peevers is fantastic and his dramatically rising tones are suited for this story pefectly
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Mixing up The Twilight Zone, parts of Robinson Crusoe, a dash of LOST, and a slice of Lovecraft mythos, Maldicion is a short read of creeping terror, that plunges the main character into a waking nightmare that they can’t wake up from.

It was supposed to be fun. A chance to get away. An opportunity for two sisters to bond and for one sister to heal. It was a small river, calm, slow-moving. Perfect for a leisurely canoe trip on a beautiful summer day. But then they hear a baby crying on the shore, abandoned and overheated. Alie and Carin have to take her with them. They can’t just leave her there. A simple canoe trip becomes a rescue mission. But there’s something on the shore, hidden by the trees. Something that’s following them every step of the way – watching, waiting . . .

Rivers are mystical places; twisting veins of life and death that cut into the land, carving their own path wherever they like. Magic can happen on them, but they can also transport us to darker places downstream, somewhere we don’t want to go, but are carried there regardless.

Deep like the River could’ve quiet easily been another hillbilly horror of modern civilisation versus the creeping horror of buckteeth in the undergrowth, but manages to transcend the (Wo)man vs nature genre and be something much more, something almost otherworldly.

Waggoner gives us two characters with little introduction and plunges them to the strange scenario of finding a screaming infant on the bank of the river, giving the tale a biblical feel from the get go. But things get curiouser and curiouser as they decide to take the baby to safety, but soon find themselves under threat from something lurking behind the cover of the trees.

From here, the pressure gradually increases with each turn as the safety of the foundling is challenged by threats from the shore and the river itself, all leading towards a shocking and unexpected finale.
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Tim Waggoner has created an exemplary piece of American fiction, which feels like a missing episode of The Twilight Zone in its delivery. Atmospheric, brooding and pressurised to the point where you feel it could explode on any page.

It’s the summertime rush in the Jersey Shore resort town of Smuggler’s Bay, as tourists flock to the beach, boardwalk, and rides…but it’s not all fun and games. As a superstorm looms, threatening to destroy the town, something else threatens the Bay…something lurking in the shadows…the creeping dead. As a mysterious infection spreads, the town must pull together if they are to weather the storm and survive a plague of living dead…


There’s something strange in the neighbourhood… well seaside resort Smuggler’s Bay, an idyllic holiday retreat for families. People are getting sick, and now people are going missing and the police are stretched as it as they expect their busiest weekend of the year, all the while, a super summer storm hovers on the horizon. The last thing they need is zombies. Well tough shit, they’re getting them.

Cardillo sets his story up well, the locale, introducing a multitude of interesting characters, and setting them up for their fateful falls, but perhaps spends too long on scene building when the simpler approach would have done. This isn’t the Great American Novel, most of these townsfolk are going to meet horrible ends, and thus nearly two hundred pages are spent going through the motions, trials and tribulations of the citizens of Smuggler’s Bay. The inclusion of the approaching storm is an interesting device, though unfortunately it isn’t used to great effect as much as I hoped. The way the story built, I expect things to go Jurassic Park and for the town to be overrun, instead it serves as a interested, though short finale. Had a good portion of the story concentrated on the storm itself instead of talk of it, my interest might have been held more (zombienado anyone?)
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Saying that, the slow burn of the dead as they creep forward in the plot is good, and Cardillo writes the horror of their transformation quite well, it’s just a shame in parts it gets bogged down in soap opera shenanigans of the characters that are going to die anyways. There’s a lot to like; there’s a wry small town humour and the diverse characters are likeable and real enough, and that’s where the strengths are, but it just feels that there’s some missed opportunities (zombies during the storm could have been more prominent, the inclusion of zombie clowns could have been an equally terrifying horror had they been utilised more.)
Hits and misses aside, if you like a slow burn, small town horror The Creeping Dead might be worth a visit.

 “Sometimes, the membranes between worlds thins and something slips through…

Taking their kids on a hunting trip to Maker's Woods, Sergeant Kris Jensen and her Special Ops friends, Brooke and Melanie, soon realize they are the ones being hunted.

As a covert military base sends out units to neutralize the threat, Kris, her son, the kids, and friends fight to survive against an enemy ripped from a loved one that will stop at nothing to infect them and overrun our world with its offspring.

Kris battles the ultimate nightmare. One that refuses to end and might ultimately destroy her and the entire human race.”

There’s something out there and it ain’t no man. Or woman. Or of earth.
Alone in the woods, three women and their children find themselves up against a horde of beasts like no one was ever set eyes on before…and survived. But luckily the three women concerned are highly trained soldiers on a hunting trip, so don’t take the appearance of their antagonists lightly and quickly become a force to be reckoned with.
Lock and load.

Part Aliens, part Predator, Obsidious is an enjoyable, but by the numbers, guns and gore military bullet fest. It doesn’t break any new ground in the monsters vs humans genre, but the female leads are plucky enough to keep it interesting as endless piles of marine meat fill the forest floor.

If you want something short, that gets stuck into the action within the first few pages, doesn’t let go until the last page, and is action packed from cover to cover with guns and bombs and blood and brains and teeth, Obsidious is a B-movie read that harks back to 80’s horror with plenty of references to look out for.

In a suburb on Boston's North Shore, a catatonic little girl is found behind a dumpster. She is a mystery. As Social Worker Debbie Gillan pieces together the puzzle of the child's identity, she discovers the child had disappeared two years earlier along with a twin sister. She also discovers HANNAHWHERE, an alternate world that is both a haven and a prison.... Life altering trauma becomes the key to unravelling the truth about the children, about Hannahwhere...and about Debbie herself. Truths that could either save them or destroy them all.”

As a father of twins, I can understand some of the spooky closeness experienced in Hannahwhere. Twins are more than just siblings; they have an uncanny friendship which some will struggle to understand. My two for example, are convinced that they’re going to marry the same woman. Twins aren’t two people, but two halves of a whole. Not it in a ying and yang sense, it’s far more complicated that. McIlveen captures an understanding of this twinship in Hannahwhere, in which sisters Hannah and Anna are divided by a tragedy, but remain linked in a world like no other, the truth of which will shake the foundations of reality for every living (and dead) person on Earth.

Despite keeping its locations small, Hannahwhere barrels on with great pacing, keeping the reader engaged throughout. Utterly heart-breaking in parts, fantastical and humorous in to others, it feels like early Dean Koontz when he diverts from his usual monster and crime lore and concentrates of the more saccharin supernatural elements of speculative fiction. Not that this is a bad thing. It’s good to read a novel that can be both horrific and uplifting at the same. It’s not an easy task to pull off, but McIlveen gets the balance just right, putting the reader right behind Hannah and her social worker, Debbie, in their quest to right a wrong and find happiness.

Mary Ann Jacobs reading, scratch that, performance is fantastic. Juggling voices, ages and genders with ease. When a narrator goes the whole hog and immerses themselves in a story, not just telling it, but becoming the characters, squeezing every emotion from every line, I find I enjoy it much more.
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Hannahwhere is fantastic little read if you want something to uplift and take you a journey of emotions. If you enjoyed What Dreams May Come or The Lovely Bones, then Hannahwhere might be worth a visit.