The Ash Angels by Ian Rogers (Burning Effigy Press) is a follow-up to Temporary Monsters with investigator Felix Renn still haunted by his experience in the Black Lands. The story could use more background about the Black Lands, a dark alternate dimension from which some of the horror comes. Temporary Monsters by Ian Rogers (Burning Effigy Press) is a fast-moving dark mystery about actors, murder, and supernatural creatures. But when she’s asked to rescue a woman from Faerie by the woman’s twin, she finds herself drawn into sticky, dangerous rivalries among those faeries exiled to earth after an ill-fated insurrection. In this masterful tale, PI Miriam Aster has had far too much contact with the faerie world to want to become involved in yet another case related to it. Ball (Twelfth Planet) is a hard-boiled detective story in which the private eye is a woman resurrected from death by her former lover, the Queen of Faerie. A Revelation of Cormorants by Mark Valentine follows a compiler of quotations about birds on his journey to encounter the real thing. Russell is a chiller about a house-hunting couple in an unfamiliar land. When the Door Closed, It Was Dark by Alison Moore is about an English au pair stuck in a foreign country with an unpleasant and rather scary family. Nicholas Royle’s Nightjar imprint brought out four chapbooks: Black Country by Joel Lane about a policeman sent to investigate a mysterious outbreak of violence perpetrated by young people near where he grew up in the west midlands of England. Turns out, the bones are way older than that. The novella is about a young woman forced to stay with nasty relatives in the Yorkshires, where her aunt has begun to dig up what they believe are Roman bones. Humpty’s Bones by Simon Clark (Telos) includes the title novella and a short story.

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