Toady

A fantasy world, of course, for Richard, Robin and Nigel, the club's members, are ordinary boys from ordinary families, who just happen to share a taste for the macabre in films and videos, books and comics. And then they admit a fourth member to their club – Toady, a far from ordinary boy with a taste for the macabre in real life. From the moment he lures the others into a nerve-jangling seance in a house with a chilling reputation, their lives are blighted by worse horror than they have ever imagined. In a fusion of nightmare and reality, terror stalks the familiar streets of a sleepy seaside town and waits to invade the safest home. The pervasive stain of evil spreads like ripples on a pond, leaving a trail of sacrilege and death in its wake. One by one the members of the Horror Club are overcome and forced into a netherworld, halfway between illusion and reality. It is up to the final member to fight alone against the evil they have unleashed – until, in the final battle, he is joined by an unexpected ally... "Toady" is a staggering achievement.

BFS Award-nominated author Mark Morris takes all the established horror conventions and reworks them in a way that is completely fresh and inimitably his own, in this; his first novel.