Glimpse is my second book by Jonathan Maberry, and I felt like I was taking a little bit of a chance because several years ago my attempt to read his book Patient Zero did not go so well. However, the premise simply sounded too good, and in the end I’m glad I overcame my hesitation to give this one a try because I really enjoyed it. In addition to being a blend of horror and the paranormal, this chilling story also has an element of otherworldly suspense that I think will make it appeal to fans of Joe Hill or Dean Koontz. Glimpse follows recovering junkie Rain Thomas, a twenty-something young woman who has struggled to overcome tragedy and loss to build a life for herself in New York City. At age sixteen, she became pregnant and was forced to give her child up for adoption after Noah, her first love, was deployed to Iraq and killed in an IED attack before he even found out about the baby. An embarrassment to her upper crust family, Rain was essentially left to fend for herself after she succumbed to her grief and fell into of life of drug addiction. Now three…

Adam and Meryam are a newly engaged couple from very different backgrounds, but they have always bonded over their love of adventure. In recent years, they have even achieved moderate fame for their series of videos taken from their travels around the world. Now they are eyeing their next great challenge, an expedition to climb Turkey’s Mount Ararat after an avalanche has reportedly revealed a massive cave up high in the side of the mountain. Wasting no time, Adam and Meryam call upon an old friend to be their mountaineering guide, and together they begin a harrowing race up Ararat in order to be the first ones to discover its secrets. However, what they end up finding in the cavern goes even beyond their wildest dreams. Within its depths, the couple discover the remains of a large ancient ship, which immediately raises the question: could this be Noah’s Ark, the great vessel that weathered the Biblical flood in the Book of Genesis? To answer this question, a full team is quickly assembled to excavate and study the find, with Meryam at its head as project manager. Included among the scientists and other experts is also a documentary crew, which is…

As its title implies, this novel is a bit of an oddball. Even the style of it reminds me a little of a children’s storybook, complete with its own whimsical fairy tale message: Your eyes only see what your mind wants to see, so sometimes all it takes is a change of perspective. Or, if you’d like: Magic is real, if you just look for it. The book starts with an introduction to the saddest protagonist ever. Wil Morgan is literally the kind of guy who has dreams about coming in second in a World’s Biggest Failure competition. He’s crotchety, cynical and unimaginative—but that didn’t used to be the case. His childhood was filled with hopes and dreams, and his mother the brilliant jet propulsion scientist Melinda Morgan always encouraged him to reach for the stars and believe in the possibility of magic. But the year he turned ten, Melinda died in a laboratory accident, leaving young Wil in the sole care of his father who is as different from his mother as can be. Barry Morgan, who was never an outside-of-the-box kind of man to begin with, became even more paranoid and set in his ways after the death…

Here’s a rundown of the books we think you should look out for in coming in the week. See any that you are really looking forward to? Find any you had not heard of yet? Know of books we missed? We know we don’t have everything and would love to hear what you feel we may have overlooked.   FANTASY        SCIENCE FICTION           HORROR   FANTASY     SCIENCE FICTION         HORROR         FANTASY          SCIENCE FICTION           HORROR   The Lazarus War: Origins (ebook) Jamie Sawyer 8/30/2016 Orbit Impact Rob Boffard 8/30/2016 Redhook The Empty Ones Robert Brockway 8/30/2016 Tor Books High Stakes Martin, George R. R. 8/30/2016 Tor Books A Torch Against the Night Sabaa Tahir 8/30/2016 Razorbill Curioddity Paul Jenkins 8/30/2016 St. Martin’s Press

The concept behind Dead Ringers is definitely a bit creepy and as you get further into the book, there are some seriously haunting scenes. The thought of suddenly coming across another person that is so identical to yourself, to the point that even close family can not tell the difference is strange. I will admit at times something about this tested my willing suspension of disbelief, I think because it happened to a number of characters. But really I think the reason I was not as easily swayed had more to do with the number of central characters. Horror books really rely on the readers emotions for them to be fully effective. The best way to get a very emotional reaction from the reader is to get them to really, really care about the characters. There were more perspectives in this than there tend to be with horror (pretty sure there were 4), and while I understand the need, I do feel like it put a little bit of a barrier for the reader to really get attached to any of them just because the pages were split amongst several people which gives the author less time to form that…

  One of the perks I’ve found with working with several bloggers is that we can cover more books than we have time to read on our own. So, when it came time to make our Best of 2015 list, I decided to ask each of the contributors to submit a ranked list of their favorite books (yep, I’m mean like that. Choosing favorites can be hard, ranking is even harder). I then used a scaled points system to calculate an over all list. So, the end result features a variety of books that either several of us agreed belong in the top 10, or books that perhaps just one reviewer read, but placed in their high on their ranked choices of the year. With so many great choices we had to expand our collaborative list past just 10 books to 25. Since our blog started late in the year, many of these books do not currently have reviews here. But we do plan on adding them, so keep your eye out. So here it is, Speculative Herald’s list of our absolute favorite books from 2015! And because I like to get straight to the good stuff, I am listing them in order starting with…

  With temperatures falling and leaves dropping, it’s time to brace our selves for winter. And honestly? What better way to beat the cold than with a good book? So, we have selected a set of books that make us think of winter, letting us experience the bitter cold while we are safely curled up under a blanket with a warm drink.                                                                                                

Here’s a rundown of the books we think you should look out for in coming in the week. See any that you are really looking forward to? Find any you had not heard of yet? Know of books we missed? We know we don’t have everything and would love to hear what you feel we may have overlooked.   FANTASY          SCIENCE FICTION           HORROR     FANTASY                     FANTASY          SCIENCE FICTION           HORROR     SCIENCE FICTION                      FANTASY          SCIENCE FICTION           HORROR     HORROR           FANTASY          SCIENCE FICTION           HORROR