The fourth release in the Exotic Gothic series (and the first to be published by PS Publishing), this edition contains stories by 25 authors from nine countries - Australia, Canada, England, Fiji, Italy, Malaysia, Russia, USA, and Wales. Three of these authors are also members of indigenous nations, tribes or peoples (Abenaki, Métis, and Ojibway). None of the stories have been previously published.
'Peter is a young man who has been chosen by his town to be the latest lighthouse keeper. This is not the normal kind of lighthouse whose purpose is to warn ships approaching land. It is a prison where convicts are held forever. For their crimes, they have been made immortal, but their bodies decline so they can barely move. Every year, for two weeks, someone is sent to tend to them, but not help them very much. The town is paid money for maintaining the facility. This was an imaginative and very unsettling story.'
Source: SFRevu (http://www.sfrevu.com/php/Review-id.php?id=14272). (Sighted: 18/2/2014)
'Morley Turrand is a photographer artist and one of his special prints is called 'Escena de un Asesinato', which means murder scene. It is a picture of a place where a Mexican revolutionary, called El Roto, was shot and killed in 1994. Before he had taken the picture, he had been given a doll that might have been modeled on El Roto by a beautiful mysterious woman who calls herself La Coronela, the name of a heroine of the Revolution of 1910. One of the prints of the picture seems to show a mysterious figure in it but that must be a flaw in the print. A woman buys the print and her and her husband are found mysteriously murdered. So are others who buy unblemished versions of the print.'
Source: SF Revu (http://www.sfrevu.com/php/Review-id.php?id=14272). (Sighted: 18/2/2014)
' Loriane loves Lucas Greave and is excited about marrying him. During their wedding banquet she blacks out and wakes in a strange place. What follows is an overlong passage until the finale which capitulates a familiar old tradition about the lord of a land and a newly wedded maiden.'
Source: SFRevu (http://www.sfrevu.com/php/Review-id.php?id=14272). (Sighted: 18/2/2014)
'Wilson is an Australian comic book writer who has traveled to Tokyo to meet his collaborators. Kyoko and Yoshi. They had created a web-based comic called The Conqueror Worm. "Wilson had written most of the story, Kyoko had translated it into Japanese and drawn the human characters, but Yoshi had designed the distinctive steampunk hardware, the elaborate deathtraps, the architecture of Hell, and most of the dreaming demons." Kyoko tells Wilson that meeting Yoshi is problematical. He is hikikomori, someone who cannot leave his bedroom unless there is no one around. Wilson manages to meet with Yoshi, who is something of a Poe-like recluse whose only company is a sex doll that he calls Midori. Things go downhill from there.'
Source: SFRevu (http://www.sfrevu.com/php/Review-id.php?id=14272). (Sighted: 18/2/2014)
'Yan is a young girl whose mother has died. She has been invited by her aunt, Mak Ina, to come to live with her in Setang, where she cooks for the territorial chief, Dato Nan. Yan has no marriage prospects because of her club foot and a black birthmark the size of a guava on her cheek. Even the Japanese soldiers she sees on the way leave her alone. She is warned by her aunt not to venture out at night alone. Of course, she needs to and sees a tiger. It seems to disappear and then she sees Dato Nan. Her aunt says to tell no one about it but tells her a story.'
Source: SFRevu (http://www.sfrevu.com/php/Review-id.php?id=14272). (Sighted: 18/2/2014)
'When her parents are divorcing, a young girl is sent from her native Australia to an unnamed city in Europe to live with an aunt. The girl is strange and withdrawn. Even her own mother does not understand her. Less, so, the plump frowsy aunt she is sent to. The girl has dreams of a tunnel and something white which lives in it. On a day out with her aunt, she is unexpectedly on her own and must make her way home on the subway. Her dreams and her purpose in life come to fruition in this dark, moody, tale.'
Source: SFRevu (http://www.sfrevu.com/php/Review-id.php?id=14272). (Sighted: 18/2/2014)
'Three boys (Davey Renford, Riley Trencher and Frank Combs) ride on a classic Charles Carmel merry-go-round at Sydney's Luna Park on a cool autumn night in 1977. A blue glass jewel pried out from Davey's horse results in dire circumstances for one of them. Twenty-five years later, they are reunited through the vicious machinations of one of them. He is obsessed with a story of the jewel, a carousel and magic.'
Source: SFRevu (http://www.sfrevu.com/php/Review-id.php?id=14272). (Sighted: 18/2/2014)