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We return to Australia for the second time in a month, to find that (once again), home invasion isn’t the worst thing to happen on a typical day.

Alan Baxter’s Blood Covenant is a violent, thrilling story of a threeway battle between an innocent family, a nasty criminal gang of bogans (see, I’m learning!) and an otherworldly force that is even worse! Think, what if The Strangers took place in the Overlook Hotel.

It’s a hugely enjoyable book that prompts a conversation about the influence of 70s and 80s paperback classics, the overlap of horror and crime in Australian fiction, some extreme horror movies and a whole long celebration of unpretentious storytelling.

Enjoy!

Blood Covenant is released May 24th from Cemetary Dance

Other books mentioned:

The Gulp (2021), by Alan Baxter

Hidden City (2018), by Alan Baxter

The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia’s Founding (1986), by Robert Hughes

“Devil” by Glen Hirshberg, in Screams From the Dark: 29 Tales of Monsters and the Monstrous (2022), edited by Ellen Datlow

The Fog (1975), by James Herbert

The Hunted (2021), by Gabriel Bergmoser

Terra Nullius (2017), by Claire G. Coleman

Dirty Heads (2021), by Aaron Dries

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