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The Ghoul Archipelago by Stephen Kozeniewski, narrated by Jennifer Fournier

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The Ghoul Archipelago takes us on quite the adventure. On the high seas, to the islands of Southeast Asia, we experience a region of the world unfamiliar to many of us. Kozeniewski populates his near-future vision of the exotic environment with smugglers, pirates, island tribes, missionary religious fanatics, a smug computer programmer and inventor, and, of course, zombies. We’ve witnessed zombies all over American and Europe, the cities of Asia, and the islands of the Caribbean. Stephen Kozeniewski takes us to a novel location where we can witness the collapse of civilization and the rise of the undead, somewhere it’s less apparent that the rest of the world is gone.
At the core of this story, we see the same sad commentary on human nature fans of the subgenre should be familiar with. No matter where we are in the world, it would appear that we’re always too preoccupied with petty squabbles and power plays to focus on the survival that should be the unifying goal under such dire circumstances. As depressing as it might be, the author probably isn’t far off from the truth of it all.
Skirting through a gauntlet of pirates on the payroll of a billionaire still fixated on profit, adherents of a Christian death cult, and a megalomaniacal naval commander are Henk Martigan and his crew of smugglers. Will anyone make it through Kozeniewski’s tale alive, or will monsters, both living and undead, grind all of the survivors into a meaty pulp of blood and viscera until only maggots thrive?
It’s not easy to create an original story of the zombie apocalypse, but The Ghoul Archipelago is precisely that. Reliant on three-dimensional, believable, and even sympathetic characters, Kozeniewski propels the reader through scattered viewpoints as the adventure becomes far more than just a zombie story.
Jennifer Fournier’s audiobook narration is excellent, especially when capturing shifts in cadence and accent from one character to another.

Fucking Scumbags Burn In Hell: Book 7 by Lewis Kelly

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Hell Week introduces us to Tailor, President of the Sigma House fraternity, just as he’s about to cross a line from which he’ll never come back. Let’s face it, though, Tailor was an irredeemable and monumental piece of shit long before he ever approached the line he’s careening toward. You’re sure to feel just like I do, thinking Hoop can’t show up fast enough.
Tailor and his inner circle of fraternity brothers pride themselves on degrading women in every conceivable way, but they appear to especially enjoy drugging and raping impressionable and insecure younger girls from their college. Alone with Nicole/Melanie/Pig Dolphin as she’s rapidly losing consciousness, Tailor discovers that taking everything up a notch might be the only way he’ll be able to get off this time. Already a monster, he doesn’t flinch as he passes the point of no return, in the process, destroying multiple additional lives with casual cruelty and disregard for anything approaching humanity.
This kid should have been on Hoop’s radar for a long time before the events of Hell Week. Spoiled, narcissistic, cold-blooded, and lazy, the best that can be said about Tailor is that he’s apparently handsome and that he comes from wealth. Thankfully, with Hoop’s intervention, Tailor manages to do something good, unintentionally taking out the trash as he receives his comeuppance.
Lewis Kelly is a new name for me, as I’m sure he is for many of you, but his is a name you’ll want to be watching for. I do not doubt that we’ll be seeing a lot of good material coming from this up-and-coming writer. Hell Week is a worthy addition to the Hoopiverse, and Lewis is a worthy author to have been included.

This title is available September 15th, 2021 on http://www.godless.com or through the Godless app, available on your preferred mobile platform. The link is below:

Hell Week (Fucking Scumbags Burn in Hell: Book 7) by Lewis Kelly – SEPTEMBER 15th

Horrorgasm by Nikki Noir

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Molly Massacre’s HorrorGasm page on FANdom is successfully drawing subscribers with her horror-themed camgirl antics. She’s generating income at a rate most girls on FANdom would probably kill for, but everything is far from perfect. Molly wants out of the life she’s living with her narcissistic, domineering, drug-dealing boyfriend, Chad.
With the assistance of her best friend (and business manager), Selena, Molly has a plan to escape from her boyfriend and to start a new life. For her final HorrorGasm performance, with a Texas Chainsaw Massacre-inspired vibrator, Molly raffles off the chance to go on a date with her, and the plan seems to be wildly successful.
Unfortunately, Chad’s increasingly erratic behavior and the white knight fantasy of a HorrorGasm subscriber, Dylan, send the plan off the rails. Will Molly Massacre’s HorrorGasm ultimately lead to true horror? You’ll have to read the story to find out.
Unlike a lot of Noir’s fiction I’ve read, there is no supernatural/paranormal element to this tale. Horrorgasm is a straightforward thriller with a heavy erotic component. Don’t dismiss this story for the lack of surreal horror. Nikki Noir is no one-trick pony, and she’ll have you speeding through the pages, desperate to see where she leads you.

Horrorgasm is a Godless Exclusive title and you can obtain it for yourself at http://www.godless.com or by downloading the Godless app on your smartphone, tablet, or Kindle device. The link is below:

Horrorgasm by Nikki Noir

Knuckle Supper: Ultimate Gutter Fix Edition by Drew Stepek

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If like me, of the two major vampire films released in 1987, you prefer the Kathryn Bigelow directed Near Dark over Joel Schumacher’s The Lost Boys, Knuckle Supper is the vampire novel for you. The Lost Boys may have had the audience and the soundtrack, but Near Dark had the brutality, originality, and grittiness that befitted the monsters at the heart of the story. Knuckle Supper carries that tradition into 21st-century horror literature.
Stepek writes vampires the way one might expect from someone who wants to take the monsters back from the L. J. Smiths and Stephenie Meyers of the world, restoring them to the darkness and underground where they belong. It’s difficult for me to describe what he’s put together in these pages that race past the reader at a rapid-fire pace. Knuckle Supper is, in effect, Anne Rice meets Irvine Welsh, Near Dark meets Requiem for a Dream, and a little bit The Warriors meets 30 Days of Night. If that doesn’t intrigue you, I honestly don’t know how else I can try to describe it without just reading the book to you, and we know I’m not going to do that.
We meet RJ and Dez as they’re preparing to murder a pimp in the home they’re squatting in, a steadily depreciating house once belonging to a former child star turned heroin addict.
RJ, Dez, and the rest of the Knucklers aren’t your typical Hollywood vampires, even though they live in Los Angeles. Blood isn’t their only addiction. They need heroin to survive. Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as spiking a needle into their veins to get their fix. They need blood to carry the high into their starving, desiccated internal organs. Enter the pimp they’re about to have for supper.
The (almost) 13-year-old prostitute carelessly tossed into the bathroom is all but forgotten as RJ and Dez make a mess of the place in their desperate chase for a fix. Against his better judgment, and displaying more humanity than his peers, RJ decides not to kill the young girl. This act of uncharacteristic decency is how Bait becomes part of his family. It’s also how everything begins to spiral out of control, ultimately bringing RJ face-to-face with The Cloth, an organization he’d dismissed as nothing but a vampire’s boogeyman, and the painful truth at the core of what RJ actually is.
Drew Stepek introduces readers to a Los Angeles populated by a different sort of gang, consisting of a wholly different kind of gangster from what we’ve become familiar with from popular culture. The city is divided up between tenuously allied gangs of vampires, each feeding and dealing on their own turf. Brutal, far from immortal, and impulsive, Stepek’s vampires are prone to massive errors in judgment, and it’s only a matter of time before the flimsy alliances fracture and violence ensues.
There’s more to this story than drug addiction and graphic violence, though there’s plenty of both. There’s also a depth and character to this story that underscores the superficial, splattery elements of the narrative.

You can obtain a copy of Knuckle Supper as well as the sequel, Knuckle Balled, by going to http://www.godless.com or by downloading the Godless app to your preferred mobile device: The link to this title on both Godless and Amazon are below:

Knuckle Supper by Drew Stepek

Fish Pie Face Fuck! by Sean Hawker

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Jon and Spence live alone with what’s left of their mother. Alone, that is, until Jon brings Wendy home. Wendy, steadily decaying and host to insects and parasites of all kinds since Jon left her rotting in the woods until he couldn’t restrain himself from bringing his new lover home.
That is where the story begins, but it’s nowhere near the end.
Grotesque, violent, sexually explicit, and perversely hilarious, Sean Hawker introduces us to the world of The Cotswold Muff Mangler and his mentally deficient sibling. More than that, he introduces us to a form of afterlife that is utterly, horrifically awful. Think Return of the Living Dead, where the deceased remain aware and capable of receiving gradually diminished sensory input as they rot. Now imagine being at the mercy of a dude who takes you back to a home that resembles a landfill only to have his way with you in every disgusting manner possible. Yeah, it’s sort of chilling to think about it. I recommend not thinking about it if you can avoid doing so.
Thanks to our author, I find myself wanting to attend a Godless Horrors Lit Fest in some seedy dive of a bar/pub in a rundown, needle park region of a city. If there’s a guarantee of Simon McHardy filling an inflatable koala with semen, I think the venue will be packed!
There are no sympathetic characters in this story, but that’s a feature, not a bug. If you’ve enjoyed Hawkman’s other material, you’re sure to love this one. You’ll never look at a Halloween mask fashioned from gorilla foreskin the same way again.

This title is a http://www.godless.com exclusive. You can obtain it for yourself by going to the website or downloading the app on your preferred mobile device. The link is below:

Fish Pie Face Fuck! by Sean Hawker

Cucumbers & Comforters by Nikki Noir

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Nikki Noir has an exceptional talent for blending supernatural elements with splatterpunk sensibilities. If you haven’t read the Black Planet installments–or the collection of the first four–you are seriously missing out on a writer who is easily one of the best emerging voices of indie horror. If, however, you want to avoid diving into a series, you’re in luck. Nikki has several stand-alone short stories like this fantastic tale.
Jen is still an outsider at school, even after spending a year in the new town where her family moved. One of her only friends is a young boy named Dale, a special boy from an unhappy home. Jen met Dale hanging out near the river, and she began telling him stories. One of those stories Jen shared concerns the Japanese myth of the Kappa. Dale internalized that particular myth and began playacting as a Kappa near the water. But Dale has been missing for a couple of weeks.
Heading home after a party where she’d gotten into an unpleasant verbal exchange with one of the popular girls, Jen is startled and pleased to discover Dale hanging out on one of the rocks near the river. She attempts to take him home, but he resists, insistent on playing a Kappa. Leaving him with the cucumber she’d carried with her–the favorite treat of one of those supernatural creatures–Jen races off to bring attention to Dale’s presence near the river.
From there, Cucumbers & Comforters becomes a barrage of sex, sexual violence, unraveling mysteries, sinister family drama, and myths seemingly come to life. There may be no amount of childlike security found in carrying cucumbers or hiding beneath comforters that will save Jen from the awful repercussions of the events set in motion the night of the party…but you’ll have to read the story to find out for yourself.
If you’re in the mood to read about glowing orbs brutally extracted from human anuses, taboo sexual trysts, and murder, you are in the right place. This is a voyage Nikki Noir is the perfect host to guide you on.

You can obtain your own copy of Cucumbers & Comforters from http://www.godless.com or by downloading the Godless app on the mobile device of your choice. The link is below:

Cucumbers and Comforters by Nikki Noir

The Doze by Drew Stepek

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The Doze takes the unrelenting violence and satisfying splash of gore and viscera from the previous two Godless League installments and runs headlong into a concrete wall with it. Of course, this concrete is the fluid manifestation of Jack Slaughterdozer.
If you’re trying to figure out just what sort of superhero The Doze might be, think a little bit Sandman, a little bit Green Lantern, maybe a touch of Venom, and a whole lot of Hulk–plus just a smidge of Lennie Small, for those who read Of Mice and Men. The Doze can transform himself from an already dangerous man into a giant formed of living concrete, able to transform himself into seemingly anything he can imagine–and his imagination for causing damage is virtually unlimited. When assholes from Construction Mercenary Union Local 222 show up to demolish Slaughterdozer’s home in the landfill on behalf of Globoshame Construction Corporation, all hell breaks loose in the most graphic, over-the-top manner one could imagine. I’m pro-union, but these guys deserve what’s coming to them.
Running counter to the excessive violence and concrete climax, there’s a story of tragedy and pain, with the loss of Slaughterdozer’s family and the painful cost of illiteracy.
Stepek takes readers on a rollercoaster of highs and lows that shouldn’t even be possible within such a short tale, but he guides us masterfully through the loops and whirls, and we reach the end exhausted and fighting back tears.

You can pick up The Doze, as well as the other Godless League titles, by going to http://www.godless.com or by downloading the Godless app on your mobile device. The link is below:

Godless League #3 (The Doze – "Home") by Drew Stepek

Sweet Tooth by Matthew A. Clarke

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If you take a dash of Brave New World, toss in a healthy dose of Bladerunner, and blend it all with a bit of sadism, you’ll end up with Sweet Tooth by Matthew A. Clarke. It’s a short story that overall feels like a transcript for an episode of Black Mirror.
The ultra-wealthy have finally done away with the poor and undesirable, and they’ve replaced those forgotten and discarded people with Hollows. Hollows are manufactured in bulk to perform the menial tasks and services the ruling class deems beneath them.
Candy is such a hollow, designed to be an escort–though not in a sexual sense, as she isn’t equipped with the necessary parts.
In tribute to the banality of all existence, we first discover Candy is becoming aware beyond her programming because she’s unhappy about someone else deciding how her hair should look. Other Candy models are disappearing, and there appears to be a man involved in those disappearances. Our Candy finds herself in the predicament of needing to unravel the mystery behind the missing hollows while maintaining her facade of going along with her base programming.
In a sense, this is a truly depressing, dystopian vision of a possible future, extrapolating on the income inequality and class warfare we already experience. More than that, it showcases that no amount of weeding out undesirables based on social status will erase the sort of people who become serial killers today. Those types of people will always find a new group of “less dead” as criminologist Steven Egger refers to the typical victims of serial murderers. Clarke captures that grim reality in this story.
Is there a happy ending?
Is such a thing even possible in a world like that?
You’ll have to read the damn story for yourself to find out.

Sweet Tooth is a Godless exclusive title available at http://www.godless.com or by downloading the Godless app on the mobile device you utilize for reading digital texts. The link for the story is below:

Sweet Tooth by Matthew A. Clarke

Sweet Shot by Todd Love

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Byron Sweet is a killer with a signature style.
Haunted by the accidental death of his mother, Sweet forged himself into a professional killer, but he’s a killer with a conscience. But, like all assassins–and all men–inevitably do, he’s reaching the point when he won’t be able to perform. Planning to retire, Sweet is called into service one last time with the promise of a massive payday. Will this “sweet shot” be his last?
Does this sound like a well-trod path full of tropes and stereotypes?
Of course, it does.
But Todd Love excels in subverting those tried and tested tropes the story leans into, by filling the interstitial space with so much creativity and sheer absurdity that no amount of catering to preexisting conventions could detract from the tale. Byron Sweet is no grizzled government assassin you’ll find in the pages of pulp suspense novels or big-budget action thrillers. He’s a man you’ll only ever find in the realm where indie horror and bizarro overlap.
While a sequel certainly isn’t likely, I would love to read a whole series of novels focused on the life and work of Byron Sweet. I think you’ll feel the same way after you’ve been turned inside out by his “sweet shot” too.

Sweet Shot is a Godless Horrors original short. You can obtain this title for yourself–at no cost–by visiting http://www.godless.com or by downloading the Godless app to your mobile device of choice. The link is below:

Sweet Shot by Todd Love

I’m a Marionette (Or, the Nowhere Train for Elaine) by Ben Arzate

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If you haven’t read Arzate’s Elaine, I can vouch for the fact that it’s not necessary to enjoy I’m a Marionette. I also haven’t read the story that sets the stage for what we discover in these few pages.
Amy wakes up in what appears to be an abandoned, run-down hotel room. Surrounded by filth and unfamiliar with how she found herself there, she grabs her purse and makes her way to her car parked outside. The atmosphere is oppressive and unsettling, and Arzate maintains that atmosphere throughout the tale.
From that auspicious beginning, we soon discover that Amy, along with her mourning parents, has been searching for information regarding her missing brother, Chris. The last thing she remembers was deciding to purchase a pack of cigarettes at a convenience store before finding herself in the grimy hotel room.
I’m a Marionette perfectly captures the fluid dream logic that makes the worst nightmares so challenging to shake. Amy finds herself led along by impulses she only barely comprehends–and certainly does not control–as she meanders through a world that feels only slightly like the real world she expects. We can’t help but witness Amy’s unsteady travel through this surreal, nightmare version of Wisconsin, as helpless as the dreamer when they don’t know they are dreaming.
I couldn’t help but appreciate Ben Arzate’s rather different interpretation of a train station, as Amy flips through the apparently empty radio channels only to find one station broadcasting what sounded like the constant thrum of an approaching train. I found myself thinking, “That’s a different sort of train station.”
I immediately picked up Elaine after finishing this story, and I suspect you might do the same. If it’s half as captivating and unnerving as I’m a Marionette, it’ll be worth the price of admission for sure.
The three poems contained within the Godless exclusive edition feel perfectly in line with the story that precedes them, carrying the same surreal, dreamlike horror beyond the conclusion of the story itself.

This edition is exclusive to http://www.godless.com or from the Godless app, available on your favorite mobile devices. The link is below:

I'm a Marionette (Or, The Nowhere Train for Elaine) by Ben Arzate