The Dead Man #6: Kill Them All by Harry Shannon Now Available at a Special Price

The sixth book in the Dead Man series, KILL THEM ALL by Harry Shannon, is now available for a very limited time at the special introductory price of 99 cents. Like all the other books in the series, this is a hugely entertaining tale. Buy 'em all!

The Hungry - Steven W. Booth and Harry Shannon

I don't read a lot of horror novels, as I've mentioned before, but when I do, I go more for action-oriented horror rather than slow-paced psychological horror. And action is what you get in THE HUNGRY by Steven W. Booth and Harry Shannon. Set in the wide-open spaces of Nevada, this novel tells the story of an outbreak of rampaging zombies, their condition caused by experiments at a top-secret government lab. (That's not a spoiler, by the way.) Trying to survive and maybe even stop the zombies is a small group of human survivors led by the local sheriff, Penny Miller.

Miller is at the center of this novel, and she's a great character: tough, determined, possessed of a wicked sense of humor, a real valkyrie in a bloodstained wedding dress. For a novel with a ton of gory action, THE HUNGRY is actually pretty funny in places, due to the skill with which Booth and Shannon develop the characters. Everybody is believable, and the reader can't help but root for Penny and her allies.

Booth and Shannon keep things moving along at a really fast pace, making this a perfect book to read in a sitting or two. It seems likely there'll be a sequel, and I certainly hope so because I'm ready to read it.  Recommended.

A Host of Shadows - Harry Shannon

I don’t know Harry Shannon well, but we have a lot of good mutual friends and have had stories in some of the same anthologies. I also hadn’t read much of his work until now, but I just finished the massive collection, A HOST OF SHADOWS, which has been nominated for a Stoker Award by the Horror Writers of America.


Despite that nomination, there are quite a few stories in A HOST OF SHADOWS that aren’t what you’d think of as traditional horror. You got your Westerns, your war stories, your crime and suspense stories to go along with plenty of stories that definitely are horror yarns. What they all have in common, though, is that they’re very dark and very well-written. Shannon’s clearly a master of the terse and hardboiled.


Another thing I like about this collection is that a number of the stories take place in the West and Southwest, and Shannon does an excellent job of portraying the bleak high desert country that manages to be both starkly beautiful and depressingly ugly at the same time.  He's written a number of mystery novels with the same setting, and I plan to read those as soon as I get a chance.


So I think the Stoker nomination for this collection is well-deserved, and if you haven’t read Harry Shannon’s work yet, A HOST OF SHADOWS would be an excellent place to start. Highly recommended.


(Harry Shannon is a member of the Top Suspense Group.)