England. 1923. A violent earthquake has mysteriously transformed the village of Dennington Cross into a hellish realm of eternal darkness, overtaken by murderous beasts roaming the cobbled streets.English university lecturer Alexander Drenn attempts to flee the village but narrowly escapes plunging into the abyss that completely surrounds it. Upon returning home to live out his final days, Drenn finds a mysterious invitation to the home of Lord Hargraven, a man whose obsession with the occult has paved the way for a dark entity to wreak havoc on an unsuspecting world.But Drenn realizes he's not the only one invited to the party—there are others who received the same invitation. Now they must discover why Hargraven chose to lead them straight into the belly of the beast and solve a riddle that will bring Dennington Cross back into the light.

There is an open wound in the heart of the Cosmos. A wound that tears at the flesh of reality, drawing powerful and malign aberrations from an unknowable realm. Salem Ben stopped the first, but more are coming, and now he must solve the riddle of their purpose if he is to prevent an all-out invasion. Only by living the digitally reproduced lives of three individuals will Salem find the solution: Diabolis Evomere, a tortured but enlightened prisoner in ancient Babylon; Clifford Arken-Bright, a twentieth-century physicist who has uncovered a terrible secret in the quantum world, and Silicant 5, a refugee of the Great AI seeking to understand its hatred of humanity.

In a future so distant that time is almost without meaning, death is defeated and immortality has been made reality through instantaneous cloning and synaptic transfer. Mankind, frustrated by the futility of timeless existence, chooses extinction. All but one man. Far removed from the known universe with only one companion, an AI named Qod, Salem Ben watches the cosmos from afar and relives the digitally reproduced lives of countless souls archived in the Soul Consortium by means of a neuroimmersive device. He hopes to discover the answer to the ultimate question: What lies beyond? But at the birth of the next universe, billions of years before the pattern of life repeats its design, Salem’s quest takes a disturbing turn. Unexplained aberrations appear among the digital souls. To hunt down their source and to continue his search for evidence of life after death, Salem endures four very different lives: Orson Roth, a serial killer in 20th-century Britain; Dominique Mancini, a spiritual medium from 16th-century Lombardy; Plantagenet Soome, a monk sent to the distant Castor’s World; and Queen Oluvia Wade, the creator of the Soul Consortium. As the mystery unfolds, Salem is confronted by a malevolent entity which threatens the future of humanity before it can begin again—and only Salem stands in the way of it breaking free.Review"This story is pure science fiction with enough plot twists and turns to keep the reader busy." —www.SingleTitles.com"This heartbreaking, mind-bending tale challenges our assumptions about life, death, and the fragility of our eternal spirit." —Richard Thomas, author, TransubstantiateAbout the AuthorSimon West-Bulford is a writer of theological essays, tutorials for PC game level design, and short stories. His short story "Crimson Lakes" was Dark Fire's New Year 2010 feature story, "Amiko" was included in Eternal Night: A Vampire Anthology, and "Star God" appeared in This Mutant Life magazine.

Bringing the mythological world into a modern setting and introducing young adult readers to a variety of strange monsters, this fantasy novel follows 12-year-old Joe Copper on his quest to save humankind. When Joe is hired by the eccentric Mrs. Merrynether as an errand boy at her remarkable veterinary practice—a hidden refuge for a menagerie of creatures that should only exist in dreams and legend—he soon learns that she has a startling plan for his future: he is destined to command an army of beasts to protect humanity from the Conclave—a brutal council of dragons hiding on a distant island. But Joe is plunged into his new role prematurely when the callous tycoon Argoyle Redwar, who has a secret menagerie of his own, tricks Mrs. Merrynether into revealing the location of the island. Overcoming his fears, the school bully, and an escaped creature on the loose in his own village, Joe races to the island to stop Redwar from provoking the dragons to war. He...