Strange Tales: December 2025

Monday, 22 December 2025

The Seventeenth Annual Westies - review of the year 2025

And so we come to the close of 2025. I realise the blog has been in hiatus for a year now, but next year I'll be starting a monthly newsletter on Substack, so I'll post details of that here when it's live and - more than likely - will be continuing the Westies on there going forward. I'm a man who doesn't like change and the thought of stopping something that's been running for this long feels wrong to me.

Anyway, it's been a year. I finished Book 8 at the start of summer then was part of the team putting in SAP at work and that, quite literally, sucked up almost every moment of my time. As a top tip, if your work says they're putting the system in, quit and find a job somewhere else. To that end, I haven't done much writing but David & I have been busy plotting and planning Book 9 and hopefully I'm going to be starting that in the early part of 2026. Due to publishing timelines, there was nothing published this year - which is the first time that's happened since 2022 - and it feels a bit odd. Next year, fingers crossed, you'll more than likely see two new psychological thrillers from me.

In the meantime, as ever, I've been reading and that means it's now time to indulge in the annual blog custom and remember the good books of 2025.

Once again, it's been a great reading year (though I managed less books than last year), with a nice mix of brand new novels, a lot of books that have languished on my TBR pile for too long, some good second-hand finds (which jumped straight to the top of the pile) along with some welcome re-reads.

My target for the year was to read at least twelve old school horror paperbacks and I more than achieved that - some of them were good, a couple were dire, but some were absolutely brilliant.

As always, the top 20 places were hard fought and, I think, show a nice variety in genre and tone.

So, without further ado, I present the Seventeenth Annual Westies Award - “My Best Fiction Reads Of The Year” - and the top 20 looks like this:

1: Ceremony, by Robert B. Parker
2: Secrets Of The Italian Guesthouse, by Sue Moorcroft (to critique)
3: The Widening Gyre, by Robert B. Park
4: The A Team (The A-Team 1), by Charles Heath
5: The Dead Side Of The Mike, by Simon Brett
6: Valediction, by Robert B. Parker

7: Some Kind Of Wonderful, by David Bischoff
8: Only Old Bones, by Richard Farren Barber (to critique)
9: Dupe, by Liza Cody
10: Star Wars, by Alan Dean Foster
11: Return Of The Jedi, by James Kahn
12: The Empire Strikes Back, by Donald F. Glut
13: H Is For Homicide, by Sue Grafton
14: Tig's Crime, by T. R. Burch
15: The Plastic Nightmare, by Richard Neely
16: A Catskill Eagle, by Robert B. Parker
17: The Manitou, by Graham Masterton
18: Welcome To The Grave, by Mary McMullen
19: Woe Betide, by Wayne Parkin (to critique)
20: The Glow, by Brooks Stanwood

The Top 10 in non-fiction are:

1: Sonny Boy, by Al Pacino

2: On Writing, by Stephen King

3: Under A Rock, by Chris Stein

4: Stories I Only Tell My Friends, by Rob Lowe

5: Never, by Rick Astley

6: Cinefex 48, by Various

7: The Blues Brothers, by Daniel De Vise

8: The Movie Brats, by Michael Pye & Lynda Myles

9: Inside Out, by Demi Moore

10: The Last Action Heroes, by Nick de Semlyen

And for the sake of complete-ness (and because I like the idea of sharing titles that some people may not even realise exist), here's my list of vintage paperback horror novels, in order of my appreciation of them:

1: The Manitou, by Graham Masterton

2: The Glow, by Brooks Stanwood

3: The Fungus, by Harry Adam Knight (Hak!)

4: Deadhead, by Shaun Hutson

5: The Unholy, by Michael Falconer Anderson

6: The Funhouse, by Owen West

7: Midnights Lair, by Richard Laymon

8: The Hiss, by Andrew Laurance

9: The Brain Eaters, by Gary Brandner

10: The Sphinx, by Graham Masterton

11: Night Killers, by Richard Lewis

12: Spider Girl, by Peter Lear