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Not With an Explosion by Temi Oh (Solstice, £20)
The four daughters of a doomsday prepper were taught what to do in an emergency: break their bags and head to the well-filled bunker he built in his London garden. But when a world-shattering event occurs, the family is scattered, each trying to figure out what they can do to survive as they hide in their homes or struggle through the haunted and chaotic streets. The story can be related to a disaster movie (the author also writes the screenplay), but it is the complexity and the conflicting relationships that make it a compelling read. These characters are shown in different ways, and they are flawed, human and real. Well done, this is a suspenseful picture of survival in the midst of a civilizational collapse.
Tillinghast by Clare Cavenagh (Borough, £16.99)
Stuley Tillinghast has been alone for a long time. A former minister in a rural Rhode Island parish, he is now the caretaker of a deserted church. He avoids contact with others – except when his strange need leads him to find someone to kill without attracting attention, take what he wants, and put the body in the basement with the rest of them. His life is boosted by the arrival of a stranger from England, a girl named Sarah who has come to look for her mother. There is no possibility that Sarah could be his daughter, yet he recognizes the symptoms of her illness: they are the same as his. She is too weak to do what she has to do to save her life, and the man will not let her die. This original novel, inspired by the vampire scare in 1800s New England, is a fascinating, early modern gothic, a welcome departure from the daily grind.
Atomic Coffin in Benedict Anning (Bantam, £20)
This 1984 debut combines a chilling spy novel with undersea horror. Heidi Sperling, codenamed Thistle, is a British cargo in East Germany, where she receives a message about a Soviet nuclear submarine that has been detected in the sea between Scotland and Iceland. Heidi is inexperienced as an agent, but she has to meet a nearby British submarine and take it to see what the threat is. As the only person who speaks Russian, he is forced to overcome his fears and join the first boarding party. The Russian version looks lifeless, though something there. When the tour guide goes missing, Heidi doubts herself, and realizes that she can’t trust her memories of the terrifying, fear-inducing journey.
The Unicorn Hunters in Katherine Arden (Century, £20)
In this fictional story inspired by the life of Anne of Brittany, Anne is a few years older than the young man whose marriage was arranged by the king of France in the 15th century, and we are in the realm of myth and fantasy, where Breton fairies are real. No one has seen a unicorn alive in 100 years, but Anne manages to meet one in the forest of Brocéliande, and meet a wild-eyed man emerging from the Lost Lands two centuries after leaving the underworld. The result is rich, deep and wonderfully escapist.
Bad Things Happen Here in Mark Morris (Flame Tree, £20)
That a place may be scarce, or have a bad atmosphere, is well established; an unacceptable idea is the idea that an indwelling spirit can leave one place and haunt others. In a recent book by an award-winning British Fantasy author, the fifth floor of the hall of residence is where terrible things happened to the first-year students. Twenty years on, the survivors find that their lives are disturbed by disturbing thoughts and realities, until even the most determined among them decides to call an exorcist, and decides to return to where they came from. A modern horror that will hold both believers and skeptics in its fold.
