Crime Meets Horror

Treat yourself to this anthology featuring the darkest criminals you’d never want to meet outside its pages. Miriam sets out to recover a rare manuscript on display in a bookshop owned by her best friend Phoebe’s husband. But that’s just the beginning of a yarn that will take you to the city morgue in the basement of Alexandria’s splendid Palace of Justice:

Phoebe’s husband Bion and I follow the soldier’s easy stride through a tangle of corridors to a narrow flight of stone steps. Claiming two portable lanterns from a stand in the landing, igniting them with his fire steel and handing one to Bion, the soldier opened the thin sheet of mica on his lamp to direct an amber beam down the steps and into the low-raftered chamber that was the morgue.

The thud of his military boots and the rhythmic clang of his sword against his thigh filled the stairwell.

The air exhaled a chill.

The stench, a hideous brew of decay and human waste, rushed up the stairwell, growing closer and heavier as we made our way down. A fit of retches ripped through Bion, his face turning a bright pink before he covered his nose with the tail of his cloak. My own skin turned clammy as a foul taste collected on my lips. Worsened by underventilation, the stink of decomposition hung over the chamber like a mist.

Here's a place to visit but only in June’s first Miriam bat Isaac short story. Click here to read the beginning of the first chapter.