Phantoms – edited by Marie O’Regan

What could be better for a bit of poolside relaxation than 18 spine chilling tales of ghosts and hauntings? Marie O’Regan’s Phantoms had been sitting in my to read pile for almost a year by the time I slung it in my overnight bag for the flight to Spain. It was just the thing.

Cover design Natasha MacKenzie

You can always rely on Titan Books to publish the very best collections of supernatural fiction and Phantoms is no exception. Kicking off with Angela Slatter’s ingenious When We Fall, We Forget, a tale of a fallen angel’s revenge upon the killer of her child, the tone and quality of the writing is consistently good throughout. The stories that stood out for me were: AK Benedict’s The Adjoining Room where a woman conference delegate staying at a seaside hotel discovers that the person she hears calling for help through the wall of her room isn’t actually there; MR Carey’s My Life in Politics where a callous politician  finds himself being haunted by all of the people he has abused through one of his constituency workers and the ever reliable George Mann whose Restoration which sees a young artist become obsessed with returning a long forgotten piece of art to its former glory even if kills her.

Other authors whose work features in Phantoms include; Muriel Gray, Paul Tremblay, Tim Lebbon and Alison Littlewood.

Phantoms is published by our good friends at Titan Books £7.99 UK/ $14.95 US and $19.95 Canada