The Book Plank

The Last Days of Jack Sparks by Jason Arnopp Jack Sparks died while writing this book. This is the account of his final days. In 2014, Jack Sparks - the controversial pop culture journalist - died in mysterious circumstances.  To his fans, Jack was a fearless rebel; to his detractors, he was a talentless hack. Either way, his death came as a shock to everyone. It was no secret that Jack had been researching the occult for his new book. He'd already triggered a furious Twitter storm by mocking an exorcism he witnessed in rural Italy.  Then there was that video: thirty-six seconds of chilling footage that Jack repeatedly claimed was not of his making, yet was posted from his own YouTube account. Nobody knew what happened to Jack in the days that followed - until now. This book, compiled from the files found after his death, reveals the chilling details of Jack's final hours. I was tipped that this book would be one of the books to watch out for this year. Orbit has...

Guest Blog: Who is Sherlock Holmes? by Paul Kane. Who is Sherlock Holmes, really? That’s a question I’ve asked myself a lot in the past, particularly in the last few years as I’ve started writing Holmesian fiction myself – and specifically Holmesian Horror. I’ve written four stories featuring Holmes now: ‘The Crimson Mystery’ – which was the first one I tried, but has only recently come out through SST with cover art from legendary Jaws and Empire Strikes Back artist Roger Kastel; ‘The Greatest Mystery’, which appeared in Gaslight Arcanum edited by J.R. Campbell and Charles Prepolec; ‘The Case of the Lost Soul’ – a novelette for Simon Clark’s The Mammoth Book of Sherlock Holmes Abroad , which transports Holmes and Watson to Haiti; and finally my new novel for Solaris, Sherlock Holmes and the Servants of Hell , which pits our hero against Clive Barker’s most famous villains, the Hellraising Cenobites. In each one my depiction of Holmes has been a little different, as necessitat...