DON Conroy's gripping and entertaining story Vampire Journal (Poolbeg £3.99), introduces us to an engaging chancer called Brendan Doyle: "He would leave his flat in the city early each morning - with £20 in his top pocket, and endeavour to return home having had several cups of tea, breakfast, lunch and possibly dinner, or tea anyway, without having to break it. This had taken skill; it involved years of practice.
Brendan gets hold of an old book claiming to be a diary of grisly Transylvania-style events in 19th century Wexford, and sells it to a strange antiquarian called Doctor Drachler.
The Doctor decides there's money in vampires, and they set off with picks and shovels to dig in an abbey graveyard. But also on the trail are four young movie fans who have just formed a Horror Club. They confront more horrors than they bargained for as they tangle with crooks, weirdos and creatures of the night, in a story that has a lot of sparky humour as well as plenty of thrills.
Gerard Whelan has followed his award-winning novel The Guns of Easter with a masterly and menacing story of nightmares that come true called Dream Invader (O'Brien £3.99). The young heroine Saskia goes to stay with her aunt and uncle and their three-year-old son Simon, who is delighted with a second-hand bed his parents get for him. It's designed to look like a racing-car, but Simon's pleasure turns to terror as he starts to have night-time visits from a creature called a Pooshipaw, shaped like a dustbin and covered in coloured fur:
"As it turned Simon noticed that its arms were bare of fur, though they too were green. The arms were strongly muscled, and there was something odd about them that Simon couldn't quite make out. Then he saw that the oddity wasn't so much in the arms as in the hands that were at the ends of them: the creature had two left hands."
The Pooshipaw has a jokey line of chatter that amuses the boy, until he finds himself at the wheel of the car-bed, on a hectic drive with horrifying sights along the way.
His bewildered parents think he is simply having nightmares, but a ninety-year-old woman called Birdie Murphy knows better. With her knowledge of the world of magic and the age-old struggle between good and evil, Birdie brings Simon and Saskia into a realm that hovers between dream and reality, and the battle is on to save the young boy from a ghoulish fate.
Gerard Whelan's vivid storytelling style makes us believe utterly in his people and in a world that includes an ointment that induces visions, a stone that makes you invisible, and a stuffed toy that turns into a huge talking tiger.
Wolfhound Press has launched a new series of Timeline books with two stories by Cora Harrison. The first, Nuala and her Secret Wolf takes us back to the Iron Age when the fort of Drumshee was lived in by a family fearful of wolves and cattle-raiders. So young Nuala has to keep secret the orphan wolf-cub she finds and trains, until it must help them to meet a dreadful challenge.
Drumshee also features in The Secret of the Seven Crosses by Cora Harrison (Wolfhound, £3.99), which takes us to the 13th century and perils, secrets and treasure in the Abbey of Kilfenora.
Two young girls face famine, eviction, workhouse life and transportation in another skilful historical story, Soinbhe Lally's The Hungry Wind (Poolbeg, £3.99), while lovers of spooky stories will find lots of lively chills and ghostly goings-on in Eileen Dunlop's The Ghost by the Sea.
Gordon Snell's most recent books are Amy's Wonderful Nest (O'Brien) and The Phantom Horseman (Poolbeg)