I want this to be a platform for EVERYONE within the horror community; authors, publishers, bloggers, reviewers, actors, directors, artists. I could go on, if you work in the genre then you are more than welcome to apply for the job.
For the sake of Twitter characters and in looking for something a little more punchy, I’ve now decided to call this feature The Graveyard Shift. (#GraveyardShift)
The rules are quite simple…
You are invited to imagine yourselves as warden for an old graveyard, and choose eight books, preferably horror/dark genre, to take with you to cover your shift; here you can discuss why you chose the books.
As well as the books, wardens are allowed one song/album to listen to. Again, an explanation for this choice is required.
You must also discuss one luxury item you can bring, which must be inanimate and not allow communication.
If you’d like to take part in The Graveyard Shift then please submit an application to gavin@kendallreviews.com
Things are kicking off up at the Kendall Reviews Cemetery. Madeleine Swann is valiantly fighting off the weird and bizarre and needs assistance. Having travelled for the last week visiting blogs clutching a copy of his latest book Eden (Titan Books), he’s finally found himself here at Kendall Reviews. I’ve sent him straight to the Cemetery, for the first time we have two wardens, Madeleine and…
Tim Lebbon
Eden is published by Titan Books
Eight books in one shift? That’s a long time … but I guess I am in a graveyard, filled with the dead, and time here is going to be fluid.
Books
The Stand By Stephen King
The author’s preferred version will last me a good long time. Over a thousand pages of King at his best (and that’s saying something), this apocalyptic tome sets the standard for all end of the world novels. A bit too close to home as I write this (during the Coronavirus pandemic), it still engages as a powerful, richly imagined apocalypse, with whispers of light and darkness in the main characters’ dreams drawing them towards a final, terrible conflict across the wasteland of North America.
The Haunting of Hill House By Shirley Jackson
Honestly, I’d take this book for just the opening paragraph alone. A masterful novel of haunted places and haunted people, with lyrical prose and an almost hypnotic rhythm, it’s as powerful today as it was when it was first published.
Bird Box By Josh Malerman
I only discover Malerman recently, but he’s quickly become a firm favourite. No two books of his are remotely the same, and he’s one of those creative geniuses that makes me question why I bother. But it’s good to have them, because they make me bother harder! Bird Box was the first novel of his I read, and it’s stuck with me for its complex narrative, original ideas, and the terrible dilemma at its core. I love family in peril books, and in this novel the kids are in danger from within as well as without.
The Death House By Sarah Pinborough
Pinborough has written horror, thrillers, and fantasy, and it’s her mega-selling thrillers she’s now most known for. But for me this is one of her strongest novels. Set in a beautifully realised world (she only tells us as much as we need to know), its cast of desperate, sad, ultimately doomed characters tells you everything you need to know about death, and how life is important however close or far away death might be.
Survivor Song By Paul Tremblay
This book isn’t out yet. I was lucky enough to read an early copy, and I think this is Tremblay’s best novel yet. And that’s saying something, considering his stellar output. On the surface it’s a simpler novel, set in a mostly linear form. But that simpler structure hides such traumatic depths that your fingers will be creasing the pages in a vice-like grip when you’re reading it. Set in real time, it follows a traumatic journey to safety in an area afflicted by a deadly strain of rabies. To tell any more would be unfair, because I’m jealous of you all reading this for the first time. Masterful.
Islington Crocodiles By Paul Meloy
Meloy is one of those writers whose work just isn’t appreciated as much as it should be. A superb short story writer with a bizarre, knife-sharp imagination, his stories build on an incredible background world that’s richly imagined and drawn, and is a place none of us would want to be.
Incarceron By Catherine Fisher
A fantastic novel set in a world that is a vast prison, following the exploits of a group of people trying to escape, and those outside who must desperately prevent such escape. Richly imagined, it’s one of those books that left me thinking, “I wish I’d thought of that!”
Horror Hall of Fame Edited By Robert Silverberg & Martin H Greenberg
A bit of a cheat this one, as it features a collection of some of the greatest short stories and novellas the genre has to offer, such as Casting the Runes (M R James), The Willows (Algernon Blackwood), Smoke Ghost (Lieber), The White People (Machen), and the shattering The Whimper of Whipped Dogs (Harlan Ellison). Just brilliant.
Song/Album
My album would be Angel Dust By Faith No More. Explanation? One of my favourite albums, and one that I never tire of listening to. Some call them hard rock, but Faith No More are pretty unique, and there’s no one quite like them.
Luxury Item
As for a luxury item, considering my choice of reading material it would have to be a comfortable chair. Those gravestones would prove too hard after a couple of hours spent reading.
Eden
From the bestselling author of Netflix’s The Silence comes a brand-new horror eco thriller.
In a time when Earth’s rising oceans contain enormous islands of refuse, the Amazon rainforest is all-but destroyed, and countless species edge towards extinction, the Virgin Zones were established in an attempt to combat the change. Off-limits to humanity and given back to nature, these thirteen vast areas of land were intended to become the lungs of the world.
Dylan leads a clandestine team of adventurers into Eden, the oldest of the Zones. Attracted by the challenges and dangers posed by the primal lands, extreme competitors seek to cross them with a minimum of equipment, depending only on their raw skills and courage. Not all survive.
Also in Dylan’s team is his daughter Jenn, and she carries a secret––Kat, his wife who abandoned them both years ago, has entered Eden ahead of them. Jenn is determined to find her mother, but neither she nor the rest of their tight-knit team are prepared for what confronts them. Nature has returned to Eden in an elemental, primeval way. And here, nature is no longer humanity’s friend.
You can buy Eden from Amazon UK & Amazon US
You can read the Eden Kendall Review HERE
It’s an honour to be part of this blog tour, please make sure you check in on the stops.
Tim Lebbon
Tim Lebbon is the New York Times bestselling author of Coldbrook, The Silence, and the Relics trilogy. He has also written many successful movie novelizations and tie-ins for Alien and Firefly. Tim has won three British Fantasy Awards, a Bram Stoker Award, a Shocker, a Tombstone and been a finalist for the International Horror Guild and World Fantasy Awards.
Find out more about Tim via his website www.timlebbon.net
Follow Tim on Twitter @timlebbon
Tim’s Amazon author page can be found here
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