Anthologies – Baskerville Book Reviews

Review: Chronicles of Maradoum Volume 4

Gods and dogs. Apes, bandits, and cat-people. Wyverns and were-beasts. Arcane arts and assassins. Carnage and mayhem.

Travel back to the enigmatic realm of Maradoum with the fourth Chronicles, set in the same world as the Convent series, beginning with A Dead Wizard’s Dream.

From the forbidden forests in the downtrodden land of Paeu to the strange and secretive folk high in the Kutzian mountains, from the cracked black wastes of Zamphia to the lush jungle of Shala’Hyddin, please enjoy this collection of zestful and zany sword and sorcery short stories collected in one volume for your entertainment, including but not limited to battles with supernatural forces, zealots’ raids, succouring spirits, and tales of star-crossed love and togetherness.

Featured in Chronicles of Maradoum Volume 4:

“Nightingales”
“Dogs of War”
“Curse of the Sidhe”
“The Pygmy and the Bandits”
“Prophet’s Blade”
“Morkri and the Mouser”
“The Sorcerer’s Tower and the Were-Beasts”
“Dragon Stance”
“Shadows of the Damned”
“Kappas and Drowned Lizards”
“Undead Monkeys”

Review: SHREDDED

Reader beware! This sports and fitness body horror anthology is dangerous. Side effects include monstrous steroid transformation, concussion-induced madness, possession by jock ghost, death by yoga cult, and more. Read with caution!

Featuring seventeen reps of terror by Nikki R. Leigh, Tim Meyer, Brandon Applegate, Red Lagoe, Caias Ward, RW DeFaoite, Mae Murray, D. Matthew Urban, Charles Austin Muir, Joe Koch, Michael Tichy, Rien Gray, Robbie Burkhart, Eric Raglin, Matthew Pritt, Madeleine Sardina, Alexis DuBon, and J.A.W. McCarthy.

Review: EVERYTHING WILL BE ALL RIGHT IN THE END

What happens…after?

In Everything Will Be All Right in the End: Apocalypse Songs, you’ll see the lengths a father will go in order to protect his child, the emptiness that revenge can harness, gods compelled to act after being forgotten, a boy carrying the weight of decisions he didn’t make, and monsters both within and without. You’ll meet people who have lost everything, faced everything, lived through the worst that could happen, attempted to pick up the pieces of their shattered realities, and you will hear their apocalypse songs.

Listen closely.

Review: What’s Your Story? Postcard Collection

To celebrate the National Year of Reading Waterstone’s asked 13 world-class authors to tell us their story. We extended this invitation to our customers, in the form of a nationwide competition to win the opportunity to be published in this limited edition postcard book, alongside the original works from Doris Lessing, Neil Gaiman, Michael Rosen, Nick Hornby, Sebastian Faulks, Lauren Child, Tom Stoppard, Irvine Welsh, Axel Scheffler, Margaret Atwood, Richard Ford and Lisa Appignanesi.

Please note that because the postcard book contains a mixture of authors, some stories are not suitable for children.

Review: The Wicked West

It started as a simple freelance photography assignment.

Nick O’Flannigan has a keen eye for detail and a knack for solving mysteries. Murder seems to show up everywhere he goes. From a series of overdoses in Olympia, Washington, to a missing woman in Boise, Idaho, ever state capital offers a new challenge.

This series compilation contains the first five of a total of the 50 novellas that will make up the Capital City Murders series:

Overdoses in Olympia
Slaying in Salem
Strangled in Sacramento
Decapitated in Carson City
Buried in Boise
Will a new budding friendship turn romantic? Can he focus on his assignment and still solve the mysteries, or will he put himself in danger? Enjoy the first five books in the Capital City Murders series and get caught up with Nick as he travels the country. Once you start listening, you won’t be able to stop!

Review: Dracula’s Guest: And the Squaw

Beware Walpurgis Nacht! – when lightning rips across black skies, wolves lurk in snow-covered cemeteries and the dead rise up from their tombs. On this treacherous night, a daring, but naive, English Tourist stumbles across a deserted village and is drawn into a macabre circumstances beyond his wildest imaginings. Is the timely rescue by a great wolf mere luck or the supernatural act of the mysterious count who dwells nearby?

From the creator of Dracula comes this fantastic tale of terror as well as The Squaq – the tale of a man who after cruelly mistreating a cat’s litter gets his just deserts when the mother cat extracts her revenge. These two tales of terror, highlighted with 15 black-and-white illustrations by Eric Shanower, make this CLASSIC FRIGHT™ sure to have even the most intrepid readers blood run cold.

Review: Adventures of Stratvs Collection: Short Stories of the Bloodlines Reforged Saga

Did you ever wonder just how Lucas came to be lost in the deadly obsidian halls of Nolcavanor? Are you curious about the founder of House Morosse? Just exactly who was Lord Ivant? You’ll find answers to these questions and much, much more in this collection of short stories from the Bloodlines Reforged epic fantasy saga! www.bloodlinesreforged.com

Review: Randomize

In the near future, if Vegas games are ingeniously scam-proof, then the heists have to be too, in this imaginative and whip-smart story by the New York Times bestselling author of The Martian.

An IT whiz at the Babylon Casino is enlisted to upgrade security for the game of keno and its random-number generator. The new quantum computer system is foolproof. But someone on the inside is no fool. For once the odds may not favor the house – unless human ingenuity isn’t entirely a thing of the past.

Andy Weir’s Randomize is part of Forward, a collection of six stories of the near and far future from out-of-this-world authors. Each piece can be read or listened to in a single thought-provoking sitting.

Review: The Last Conversation

Audible narration by Steven Strait (The Expanse)

What’s more frightening: Not knowing who you are? Or finding out? A Bram Stoker Award-winning author explores the answer in a chilling story about identity and human consciousness.

Imagine you’ve woken up in an unfamiliar room with no memory of who you are, how you got there, or where you were before. All you have is the disconnected voice of an attentive caretaker. Dr. Kuhn is there to help you – physically, emotionally, and psychologically. She’ll help you remember everything. She’ll make sure you reclaim your lost identity. Now answer one question: Are you sure you want to?

Paul Tremblay’s The Last Conversation is part of Forward, a collection of six stories of the near and far future from out-of-this-world authors. Each piece can be read or listened to in a single thought-provoking sitting.

Review: Roland’s Triumph

An unseen evil gathers just beyond perception. In the quiet mornings jaundiced eyes peer out from imagined shadows. Daeriv’s forces have withdrawn, but his pall touch still lurks in Lawrec. Its presence stirs Roland’s every nerve. Will he understand its nature before it’s too late?

Roland faces a choice. He struggles to fulfill two vows, one to his lord and another to his betrothed. Will he ignore the wisdom offered by his father? If he does, what will it cost? An army that curses the very ground it walks upon puts the future of Lawrec at stake and threatens a bloodline. How does a knight weigh the life of a single child against the possible desolation of thousands of families?

Bound by his struggle between oaths, Roland may fail to see Claire’s own dilemma. As she risks what may be fatal rejection, will her love for Roland be enough to see them through? Roland’s journey continues in Roland’s Triumph, the third book of the Heirs of Vanity Series.