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What I read in 2024

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  2024 was another remarkable year for reading. Somehow I got through 264 books. Here are my favourites .       Fiction     The Incubations , Ramsey Campbell – another fantastically inventive and labyrinthine experience from one of the finest prose stylists in the business. Unique and memorable.     You Like it Darker , Stephen King – the master’s best book in years; a stirring collection of powerful tales, including one short novel surely coming soon to a cinema near you. He still has it.     Yellowface , R F Kuang – a brilliantly caustic look at contemporary PC culture and the publishing business under the shade of sensitivity reading and cultural appropriation. Blackly comic.     None of T his is True , Lisa Jewell – one of the darkest thrillers I’v e ever read and topped off with a twist so ingenious you’l l have to go back to the start and see if its suggestion bears out. Jewell has always been a fine storyteller...
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An Echo of Children by Ramsey Campbell -- a review

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An Echo of Children by Ramsey Campbell Review by Gary Fry Ramsey Campbell has many enviable literary qualities but I think even his most ardent fan might be reluctant to use the term "page turner" to describe his approach. That's not to say he hasn't written any number of gripping thriller-type narratives. On the whole, however, his is a style that demands close attention, a kind of active collaboration between author and reader.  That is why I was surprised – pleasantly so, as it happens – by An Echo of Children . Coming off the back of a string of quite idiosyncratic Campbell novels ( Fellstones, The Lonely Lands, The Incubations ), the stark commercial appeal of his latest novel will, I hope, expose him to new fans, perhaps some of those readers who have in the past struggled to engage with his work on the basis of its elusive aesthetics. None of this is to suggest that in An Echo of Children Campbell has sacrificed any of his trademark artistry. The book is as el...
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13 DAYS BY SUNSET BEACH by Ramsey Campbell -- a review

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THIRTEEN DAYS BY SUNSET BEACH by Ramsey Campbell – a review by Gary Fry   For a long time I’ve felt that a collection of Ramsey Campbell’s short fiction set in countries other than in the UK would make a great book. Remember such tales as ‘The Same in any Language’, ‘All for Sale’, and (more tangentially, perhaps) ‘Seeing the World’? I personally loved every one, and I strongly believe that stories taking place amid alternative cultures and geographical landscapes offer horror an additional layer of unease, of potential alienation. And so it seems unusual that – with the exception of a few chapters in the likes of The Claw and The Count of Eleven , along with a significant chunk of Pact of the Fathers  – none of Campbell’s novels has been set wholly abroad. Until now, of course. All the events of his latest, Thirteen Days by Sunset Beach , take place on a fictional Greek island. The plot is relatively straightforward. Focusing exclusively on the perceptions of an older...
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