Don’t worry if you’ve never heard of this before. LibraryThing, a free personal library management site, has been around for a while. I believe it even predates GoodReads, but it wasn’t as flashy or as easy to use, so it didn’t take off as well. But you know, it’s still around and constantly improving its game. In some ways, it’s better than GR, now that the great Zon has taken over. Signing up is free, and the platform has gotten much easier to use, though still a little difficult to navigate, in comparison.
Anyway, earlier this year, they started Early Reviewers, a new program where authors and publishers can offer new titles to reviewers anywhere up to six months after publication. This month we have only one title on offer, but snap it up. It’s a good one!
The Dead Bear Witness by James Chambers (Corpse Fauna Volume 1)
A chronicle of survival in a world of the living dead.
There is no Heaven or Hell; there is only blood and the dust of flesh.
Sentenced to life after a bank robbery gone bad, Cornell thought his worst nightmare had come true—and that he deserved it. After a stint in solitary, though, he learned his nightmare had only started: While Cornell rotted in isolation, all around the world the dead had returned to life.
Inside the prison walls, Cornell should’ve been well protected.
He didn’t reckon on the stone-cold killer who demanded his help breaking out, nor the fanatic warden who forced him to help “save the souls” of other prisoners. He didn’t count on being snared in a web of lies, violence, and betrayal. He didn’t expect his survival to depend on fighting his way back to freedom before the eyes of the watchful dead. Now as nooses sway over the prison yard, Cornell can almost feel one tightening around his neck, and freedom seems so far away….
The Corpse Fauna Chronicles by James Chambers
A chronicle of survival in a world of the living dead.
There is no Heaven or Hell; there is only blood and the dust of flesh.
A vast, malevolent darkness streams across the cosmos. A plague of the living dead sweeps over the Earth. Those left alive scramble for survival like insects feasting on a corpse. And from dead flesh stare a million unnatural eyes. Will the balance of the world tilt to life—or death? Only a handful of the living will decide. Manipulated by undead powers, they travel rough roads of deprivation and danger, finding themselves snared in a web spun by saints and sinners with control of the reanimated dead.
- Cornell, one-time bank robber seeking only freedom.
- Della, nurse escaping the prison of her past.
- Burke, former military scientist clinging to the last of his sanity.
- Vale, abandoned, finding her true strength in the world of the dead.
These four and a handful of others must discover the truth behind what brings the dead back to life and what they desire from the living.
Forget the meek. Will the living or the dead inherit the Earth?
Find out in The Corpse Fauna Chronicles. Collected here for the first time in one volume is the complete Corpse Fauna cycle of novellas, short stories, and illustrations, a saga of horror and survival more than twenty-five years in the making.
James Chambers is an award-winning author of horror, crime, fantasy, science fiction, and other genres. He wrote the Bram Stoker Award®-winning graphic novel, Kolchak the Night Stalker: The Forgotten Lore of Edgar Allan Poe and was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award for his story, “A Song Left Behind in the Aztakea Hills.” Booklist described his collection On the Night Border as “…a haunting exploration of the space where the real world and nightmares collide,” and, in a starred review, said of his collection On the Hierophant Road: “For fans of the new breed of dark-speculative-fiction writers who actively play with genre confines to create reads that are inventive, thought-provoking, and creepily fun.” Publisher’s Weekly gave his collection of four Lovecraftian-inspired novellas, The Engines of Sacrifice, a starred review and described it as “…chillingly evocative….”
He is also the author of the short story collection Resurrection House, the Corpse Fauna novellas, including The Dead Bear Witness, Tears of Blood, and The Dead in Their Masses, as well as the dark urban fantasy, Three Chords of Chaos, and Kolchak and the Night Stalkers: The Faceless God. His short stories have been published in numerous anthologies, including After Punk: Steampowered Tales of the Afterlife, The Best of Bad-Ass Faeries, The Best of Defending the Future, Chiral Mad 2, Chiral Mad 4, Gaslight and Grimm, The Green Hornet Chronicles, Kolchak the Night Stalker: Passages of the Macabre, Qualia Nous, Shadows Over Main Street (1 and 2), The Spider: Extreme Prejudice, Truth or Dare, TV Gods, Walrus Tales, Weird Trails, and the magazines Bare Bone, Cthulhu Sex, and Allen K’s Inhuman.
He edited the anthology Under Twin Suns: Alternate Histories of the Yellow Sign and co-edited A New York State of Fright: Horror Stories from the Empire State, a Bram Stoker Award nominee.
He has also written and edited numerous comic books including Leonard Nimoy’s Primortals, the critically acclaimed “The Revenant” in Shadow House, and The Midnight Hour with Jason Whitley.
He lives in New York.
Visit his website: www.jameschambersonline.com.
eSpec Books 