The Pariah

A helicopter crashes with a young judge and his family onboard. The wreckage reveals his and his wife's mutilated bodies — but not their daughter's. An insurance investigator attempts to resolve this bizarre case, and in the process he discovers a merciless race of beings who never sleep... Fast-moving and highly readable, this novel features some very graphic violence and is definitely not for the squeamish. Masterton utilizes the American setting well, managing to conjure up a genuinely scary portrait of an alien-like race which should — quite literally — get your adrenaline pumping.

It is said that a mirror can trap a person's soul...

Martin Williams is a broke, two-bit screenwriter living in Hollywood, but when he finds the very mirror that once hung in the house of a murdered 1930s child star, he happily spends all he has on it. He has long obsessed over the tragic story of Boofuls, a beautiful and successful actor who was slaughtered and dismembered by his grandmother.

However, he soon discovers that this dream buy is in fact a living nightmare; the mirror was not only in Boofuls house, but witness to the death of this blond-haired and angelic child, which in turn has created a horrific and devastating portal to a hellish parallel universe. So when Martin's landlord loses his grandson it is soon apparent that the mirror is responsible. But if a little boy has gone into the mirror, what on earth is going to come out?

Out in a field, deep in the heart of Iowa hog-farming country, Terence Pearson beheads his own children, apparently without reason.

But appearances are deceptive. Terence is saving his children from a fate far worse: The Green Traveller, a strange mummer dressed in leaves, who with his companions, The Surgeon and The Witness, bring terror and pain to those who cross him. Terence knows his children are descendants of The Green Traveller, and he's returning for them — the consequences of which will be devastating...

This is a complex novel which features genetics as its theme, alongside a story involving the insertion of human genes into a monstrous pig. Steeped in legends, Flesh & Blood is a fascinating read with eviscerations and decapitations aplenty.