The Book Plank

Mycroft Holmes by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anna Waterhouse Fresh out of Cambridge University, the young Mycroft Holmes is already making a name​ ​for himself in government, working for the Secretary of State for War. Yet this most British of civil servants has strong ties to the faraway island of Trinidad, the birthplace of his best friend, Cyrus Douglas, a man of African descent, and where his fiancée Georgiana Sutton was raised. Mycroft’s comfortable existence is overturned when Douglas receives troubling reports​ from home. There are rumors of mysterious disappearances, strange footprints in the sand, and spirits enticing children to their deaths, their bodies found drained of blood. Upon hearing the news, Georgiana abruptly departs for Trinidad. Near panic, Mycroft convinces Douglas that they should follow her, drawing the two men into a web of dark secrets that grows more treacherous with each step they take... So far Titan Books has been publishing a lot of Sherl...

Beneath London by James P. Blaylock,  A tale Langdon St. Ives The collapse of the Victoria Embankment uncovers a passage to an unknown realm beneath the city. Langdon St. Ives sets out to explore it, not knowing that a brilliant and wealthy psychopathic murderer is working to keep the underworld’s secrets hidden for reasons of his own. St. Ives and his stalwart friends investigate a string of ghastly crimes: the gruesome death of a witch, the kidnapping of a blind, psychic girl, and the grim horrors of a secret hospital where experiments in medical electricity and the development of human, vampiric fungi, serve the strange, murderous ends of perhaps St. Ives’s most dangerous nemesis yet.    Two years ago I started my first venture in the Langdon St. Ives stories, starting with The Aylesford Skull and later Homunculus. The former was a new addition to The Narbondo Series and the latter was a reprint. What James P. Blaylock proved to me in the The Aylesford S...

Author interview with Freda Warrington Author bio: Born in Leicester, Warrington grew up in Leicestershire. After completing high school, she trained at the Loughborough College of Art and Design and afterward held a job at the Medical Illustration Department of Leicester Royal Infirmary. She eventually moved to full-time writing, pursuing a love she had had since childhood. In addition to her writing, Warrington works part-time in the Charnwood Forest.  ---------------------------------------------------------------  Hi Freda, welcome over at The Book Plank and for taking your time to answer these few questions for us. BP: First off could you give us a short introduction as to who Freda Warrington is? What are you hobbies, likes and dislikes? FW: Hello! Where to start – well, I was born in the middle of England and I still live there; it’s home, and I love the countryside which has been very inspirational to my writing. I was an only chil...

Clash of Eagles by Alan Smale, Hesparian Trilogy #1 Imagine a world where the Roman Empire never fell... In AD 1218, Praetor Gaius Marcellinus, commander of the 33rd Legion, invades Nova Hesperia, a land inhabited by Powhatani, Iroqua and Cahokiani. In search of gold, he and his men find only death. Marcellinus is taken prisoner, but his life is spared. To survive he must re-evaluate his allegiances and find a new place in a strange land. So far in my Alternate History travels I have ventured to the old Romans, Brits and Vikings. But these were mostly stories contained in their own Empires. Alan Smale's Clash of Eagles is something different, it is an Alternate History story featuring Romans, but with a twist. This story is about a what if scenario. Imagine that the Roman Empire never fell. Imagine them making the trek across the ocean to discover the land that is now better known as America. Yes this is what happens in Clash of Eagles, when I read this on the cover ...

Finn Fancy Necromancy by Randy Henderson Finn Gramaraye was framed for the crime of dark necromancy at the age of 15, and exiled to the Other Realm for twenty five years.  But now that he’s free, someone—probably the same someone—is trying to get him sent back.  Finn has only a few days to discover who is so desperate to keep him out of the mortal world, and find evidence to prove it to the Arcane Enforcers.  They are going to be very hard to convince, since he’s already been convicted of trying to kill someone with dark magic. But Finn has his family: His brother Mort who is running the family necrotorium business now, his brother Pete who believes he’s a werewolf, though he is not, and his sister Samantha who is, unfortunately, allergic to magic.  And he’s got Zeke, a fellow exile and former enforcer, who doesn’t really believe in Finn’s innocence but is willing to follow along in hopes of getting his old job back. Sometimes I want to read a book j...

How the World Became Quiet: A Post-Human Creation Myth (An Extract)  by Rachel Swirsky Part One—The Apocalypse of Trees During the first million years of its existence, mankind survived five apocalypses without succumbing to extinction. It endured the Apocalypse of Steel, the Apocalypse of Hydrogen, the Apocalypse of Serotonin, and both Apocalypses of Water, the second of which occurred despite certain contracts to the contrary. Mankind also survived the Apocalypse of Grease, which wasn’t a true apocalypse, although it wiped out nearly half of humanity by clogging the gears that ran the densely-packed underwater cities of Lor, but that’s a tale for another time. Humans laid the foundation for the sixth apocalypse in much the same way they’d triggered the previous ones. Having recovered their ambition after the Apocalypse of Serotonin and rebuilt their populations after the Apocalypse of Grease, they once again embarked on their species’ long term goal to wreak as muc...