A FAMILY AFFAIR!

When Judge Dredd comes face -to-face with one of his clones he knows that the rookie may well be his replacement one day. Old Stoney Face isn’t getting any younger and as he shows the new recruit around the streets of Mega-City One he reminisces about his dead clone brother Rico.

Out of respect for Dredd, the clone decides to take on Rico’s name but will he also share Rico’s fate?

Brothers of The Blood is another modern classic from writer John Wagner.

It’s 1242. The Mongol army crushed Baghdad, then Russia under its heel, then moved on to devastate Poland and Hungary. The Holy Roman Empire stood to war with the Papacy. The second Lombard League wielded the word of the Pope and fought off Frederick II.

The War of Princes rages. Patricide looms. Young powers look up the ladder to the next rungs, and see stagnation and hypocrisy. They see targets. When they look down, they see humanity. They see a power that could change everything. They see mortals organizing into universities and empires.

In the mortal world of 1242, power shifted at the rate an army marched. For the undead, power shifts faster than a fire overtakes a haven. To the Damned, power flows as fast as blood from an ancient heart.

Part sword and sorcery, part extreme horror, King of the Bastards is wild adventure across seas, beaches, and mountains full of horrifying monstrosities, dark magic, and demonic entities.

Rogan has been many things in his life as an adventurer — a barbarian, a thief, a buccaneer, a rogue, a lover, a reaver, and most recently, a king.

Now, this prehistoric bane of wizards and tyrants finds himself without a kingdom, lost in a terrifying new world, and fighting for his life against pirates, zombies, and the demonic entity known as Meeble. And even if he defeats his foes, Rogan must still find a way to return home, regain his throne, save his loved ones, and remind everyone why he’s the KING OF THE BASTARDS.

New class options, character backgrounds, and deity descriptions from the Forgotten Realms.

Get everything you need to adventure in the Forgotten Realms on the exciting Sword Coast, home to the cities of Baldur’s Gate, Waterdeep, and Neverwinter! A collaboration between Green Ronin Publishing and the Dungeons & Dragons team at Wizards of the Coast, the Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide provides D&D fans with a wealth of detail on the places, cultures, and deities of northwestern Faerûn.

The Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide is also a great way to catch up on recent events in the Forgotten Realms, to get background on locations featured in the Rage of Demons storyline coming in September, and to learn the lore behind video games like Neverwinter and Sword Coast Legends.

The Hungry Dead
Selected & Edited by Lester Smith
146 pages
Popcorn Press

In a tribute to the speed at which the publishing industry is changing these days, The Hungry Dead is the first collection – that I’m aware of, at least – that purports to have been solicited, edited, collected and at the printer within one month. The fact that the solicitation process took place at least partly online may account for some of that speed.

The Hungry Dead is a collection of poetry and short stories that mostly hovers around the title’s stated theme. The excellent and evocative cover image shows a slightly decayed – yet no less well turned-out – young woman, a plate of brains in front of her, gold-plated knife and fork in hand.

Savannah is under siege.

For 20 years the minions of the Wyrm have threatened the Coastal Empire, checked only by the courage and cunning of the Shadow Lords. Every year, the septs of the Southern Protectorate send young warriors to aid in the defense and to prove their mettle in the pressure cooker of the port city.

It’s not enough.

Every night, the Wyrm grows stronger, its forces more bold. Now, young cubs are dead and a hidden foe reaches out its claws to exact revenge against Savannah’s Garou.

Ingrid Stormwalker, war chief of the Coastal Empire, must defy her sept’s law, her family, and her pack to uncover the root of the rotten vine that chokes her beloved caern.

Time is running out for the historic city — and the entire Southern Protectorate.

I don’t do research for any of my novels or stories.

A part of me, as I typed the above, felt a sense of guilt. It’s the received wisdom these days – and, for all I know, always has been – that a fiction writers must assiduously research the background to their works in order to present a credible ‘world’ to their readers. After all, if you’re writing about a World War II fighter pilot, isn’t it wise to have read up on what it’s like to be a fighter pilot? And that goes for any other specialist profession or area of expertise, of course. To lend greater fidelity to one’s visions, research is essential.

“The Americans were passing Intel to the Israelis, hoping that they’d act fast to grab the artefacts as a cultural priority, mainly to snub the Russians. They didn’t know about the Stasi mole funnelling everything back to Moscow, or that their Damascus network was wide open. We had some agents in place throughout, but I didn’t for a minute think we weren’t compromised in some way or another. And my code N sources were feeding back whispers from the cultists that they’d got a solid lead on the origins of the pieces and were getting ready to move. The whole thing was a murky mess, and I needed to clean it up. The only thing I knew for sure was that we needed to neutralise half a dozen people in the next 24 hours… but who?”

World War Cthulhu: Cold War throws you into one of the most paranoid and chaotic conflicts of the 20th century. The tangled webs of the spymasters tear and rejoin, double and triple agents make their moves and counter-moves, and it’s hard to be sure which side you’re really working for. Nuclear destruction hangs over everyone, and a few people at the heart of western intelligence continue their personal battle against the insidious influence of a much older enemy…