Maria Savva's Blog - Posts Tagged "david-wailing"

Book Review: Signal Failure, by David Wailing

Signal Failure by David Wailing

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Emily is on her way home after a night out in London. She takes the Tube in the middle of the night. Her journey starts off quite normally but then things start to take a strange turn when the train stops between stations causing the passengers to panic. I found the descriptive quality of the writing enthralling. This short story is a prelude to the author's novel due to be released next year. As a stand alone short story it is thought provoking but leaves many questions unanswered. I think that was probably deliberate because after reading this story readers will be eager to fill in the gaps. It held my interest from the beginning and is definitely a page turner. In this story we follow Emily as she tries to make her way home. This is quite a creepy tale that touches on themes such as mind control and the paranormal. A well crafted prelude to what I expect will be a brilliant novel.

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Published on August 21, 2016 06:57 • Tags: book-review, david-wailing, horror, short-story, signal-failure

Halloween reading recommendations

It's nearly Halloween, so maybe you're looking for some creepy fiction to read...

Here are some suggestions. All of them have some kind of paranormal/supernatural elements to the story, and all are very entertaining.

13, by Julie Elizabeth Powell

About the book:

What is found within the depths of the human soul? Does wickedness linger, as if the Devil’s thumb is ready to pluck the strings of certain choices? And with the strumming, just how far will Evil spread?

13 is the story of random souls pitted against the tragedy of the modern world. What is their connection, if any? Nameless; are these mere humans whose weaknesses force them to commit heinous crimes, or demons under the skin, aware of their sins yet indifferent to the outcome?

Will they decipher the unknown and make it out alive?

Buy the book:

Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/13-Julie-Eliza...
Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/13-Julie-Eli...

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Signal Failure, by David Wailing

About the book:

It’s four in the morning and Emily is heading home on a London Underground train. But the Night Tube is running slow tonight – delays caused by a signal failure, as usual.

The train stops again, stuck in a tunnel between Tube stations. And then the lights go off. The motors cut out. Silence from the driver.

All the doors slide open at the same time, exposing the passengers to the tunnel.

To let them out?

Or to let something in?

Signal Failure is a 12,000-word short story set in the London Underground. It is a standalone story and also a prelude to the forthcoming novel "Under".

Buy the book:

Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/Signal-Failure...
Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Signal-Failu...

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Just Plain Weird, by Tom Upton

About the book:

Travis MacDuff has always led an uneventful life. His greatest concern was making the high school football, until an odd girl moves in next store, a girl whose secrets threaten not only his existence but the existence of everyone on the planet.

Buy the book:

Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/Just-Plain-Wei...
Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Just-Plain-W...

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Into The Light, by Darcia Helle

About the book:

Max Paddington refuses to go into the light until he finds his killer. This presents a dilemma, since Max is even less competent as a spirit than he was as a live person. No one sees or hears him and he can't manage to get anywhere or do anything on his own.

Joe Cavelli is a private investigator, living an ordinary life. Then one day he walks across a parking lot, gets yelled at by a ghost, and his life only gets stranger from there.

Max and Joe team up to find Max's killer. In the process, they form an unlikely friendship and change each other's lives in ways they never expected.

Buy the book:

Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/Into-The-Light...
Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Into-The-Lig...

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Lost And Found - A Short Story From Odin's Eye, by Maria Haskins

Somewhere in the vast depths of space, a mission has gone horribly wrong. Now a woman is trapped all alone on an alien planet with nothing but her pain and her harrowing memories. At least, she thought she was alone... Lost And Found is a chilling and evocative science fiction short story from Maria Haskins' book Odin's Eye

Buy the book:

Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Found-Sho...
Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lost-Found-S...

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The Hyde Hotel, by various authors

About the book:

The Hyde Hotel Welcomes You...
The Hyde Hotel looks almost exactly as you'd expect it to: a faceless, budget hotel in a grey city you are just passing through. A hotel aimed at people travelling alone, a hotel where you know so little about your fellow guests that they could be anyone... and where, perhaps, so could you. But sometimes things are hiding in plain sight, and not everyone who stays at The Hyde gets a good night's sleep... Featuring stories about the guests and staff of The Hyde Hotel from James Everington, Simon Bestwick, Ray Cluley, Alex Davis, Cate Gardner, V H Leslie, Alison Littlewood, Amelia Mangan, S P Miskowski, Iain Rowan, Mark West and the editors.
Enjoy your stay.

Buy the book:

Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/Hyde-Hotel-Jam...
Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hyde-Hotel-J...

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Mystical High, by Lisette Brodey

About the book:

In Mystekal, a small, dying town in the Southern California desert, only 75 students attend the old, sometimes creepy high school dubbed “Mystical High,” where strange things have been known to happen. Jessie Dalworth and Jinxsy Patterson are juniors and lifelong best friends. At home, Jessie deals with the pain of an absentee mother who has abandoned the family for the lure of Hollywood; Jinxsy contends with a 17th “birthday present” she never wanted or expected.

Meanwhile, at school, the unexplained activity begins to escalate when Jinxsy keeps seeing a long-haired guy in the hallway checking her out. Jessie can’t see him, but her younger brother, River, can.

Then, in English class, a stapler mysteriously flies off teacher Eve Carrow’s desk, hitting a student in the face who has just mouthed off to her. The beloved teacher is in the unenviable position of having her brute of a father as principal, so she hates sending any student to his office. As Principal Ernest Carrow begins to terrorize Eve and others more openly, something or someone unseen decides that it’s payback time.

School is getting stranger, and Jinxsy and Jessie are faced with mind-boggling changes in their home lives that complicate everything. When a string of shocking events expose explosive secrets, decades-long mysteries are finally revealed.

Buy the book:

Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/MYSTICAL-HIGH-...
Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/MYSTICAL-HIG...

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I'll finish off by mentioning a couple of my own novels that have a paranormal theme:

The Spider and Haunted

You can find more details about those and my other books/stories on my website: http://www.mariasavva.com

Enjoy Halloween!

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Published on October 30, 2016 06:48 • Tags: 13, darcia-helle, david-wailing, into-the-light, james-everington, julie-elizabeth-powell, just-plain-weird, lisette-brodey, lost-and-found, maria-haskins, mystical-high, signal-failure, the-hyde-hotel, tom-upton

Book Review: Under, by David Wailing

Under by David Wailing

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I read the prequel to "Under" a while ago (Signal Failure) and really enjoyed it, so I was looking forward to reading this book. "Under" is a brilliant book. I don't know whether it's because I'm a Londoner but I was completely hooked by the mysterious stories running through this novel about the 'ghost stations' on the Underground. The London Underground is the perfect setting for a horror story and the author has done a fantastic job in creating a suspenseful and intriguing tale using the dark and sinister tunnels of the Tube network as the framework for the story.

The book is well-constructed with two separate stories, years apart, that both link to the tales of disused or abandoned Underground stations. There is the story of Mike Thames, who is desperately writing down his memories of the letters and stories his father had told him about working on the London Underground as a train driver; tales of abandoned stations and ghost stories - and then there's the story of Jake and his group of expert explorers who are trying to get into these abandoned stations.

I found the structure of the book engrossing. The way some of the narrative was set out in letter form made the story that much more interesting to read, like reading someone's diary.

The way the two stories come together at the end is cleverly done.

This book is interesting not only because it has a very imaginative and well-constructed story about one family's history and their connection to the London Underground, but also because it contains so many eye-opening facts interwoven with the fiction, and then there are those parts of the book that make you wonder whether they are fact or fiction. The characters are all believable and seem like real people. There are highs and lows and twists and turns that kept me hooked.

The horror element is nicely woven with social commentary about the state of the world and human nature. I loved the ending; the choice the character has to make is thought-provoking. A masterful twist.

This novel is full of interesting facts, fiction borne from the mysteries of the Tube network, and it will make you think about the fine line between what we believe is true and what is actually true.

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