The sun will burn out in five billion years (give or take a few years). And when it does, our earth will eventually wither and die. 

There’s a pretty good chance that humankind will be extinct long before the sun goes dark, however. With population exploding worldwide, land resources won’t be able to regenerate fast enough for people to survive.  

The world will soon be starving, confirmed Dr. Janice Fuller during her five-page novel-ending soliloquy. What was everyone going to eat in the future? “Bugs were a solution,” she said. “Vegetables and meat substitutes made from plants were another. They both had great potential, but each of these solutions relied on land mass for production. There wasn’t enough of it, even if we found ways to grow food on every desert and iceberg on the planet.”

Fuller and her colleagues at England’s National Nutrition Laboratory had a crazy plan to solve the existential crisis. They developed a squid-salmon hybrid that was fast growing and easy to farm. They called it “Squish.”

Unfortunately, all their ambitious gene manipulation and recombinant DNA techniques only resulted in an unpalatable mess. the Squish tasted like ammonia, apparently. With a shrug, they flushed their failure down the toilet.  

Not only did the hybrid creatures survive, but they also mingled with sludge from a nearby nuclear plant. Readers will undoubtedly be thinking to themselves: “Wait a minute. Why was a secret research laboratory located next to a nuclear facility anyway?” It sounded like a conspiracy theorist’s dream scenario, didn’t it? 

The Squish quickly mutated into a squad of unfathomable “squid things” that traveled up and down the Bristol Channel eating cows, dogs, pretty girls, fishermen and naked witches. After filling their bellies, they were pumped up and ready to spawn. And that was a bad thing according to an NNL biologist.“Squid males get extremely aggressive at mating time,” he warned.  

In order to stop the fast and aggressive waterborne predators, a former M15 agent and a local journalist get together to compare notes. They both agreed that the Squish could spark a worldwide disaster if it wasn’t destroyed. 

Feeding Frenzy is told through the eyes of Hickory Hollis, an independent contractor with Her Majesty’s Armed Forces. Hollis is an affable fellow who travels the countryside in his unglamorous Fleetwood Tioga. Interestingly, he keeps a copy of The Kraken Wakes by John Wyndham at his bedside for late-night reading. 

The novel ends in a scramble of Tom Cruise-like military heroics. Helicopters, high-tech harpoon guns, explosives and derring-do combine to eradicate the Squish. Or maybe not. 

Hollis couldn’t help but wonder what other unholy hybrids the scientists at the NNL were working on. He had a feeling that he would be recruited again to help squash another Squish-like monster in the near future. To be continued?

[Feeding Frenzy / By Robert Fael / First Printing: March 2023 / ISBN: 9781922861573]

Three years ago, a pair of over-sized dinosaurs trashed the entire city of San Francisco (see my review of Rise of the Titanosaurus here). Fisherman’s Wharf, Haight-Ashbury, City Lights Bookstore, Lombard Street and the Painted Ladies were all destroyed. 

Now, in John Grover’s latest effort Rage of the Titanosaurus, the City by the Bay was slowly rebuilding itself. A new Golden Gate Bridge was put up, although nobody knew exactly what to call it. And Alcatraz, the iconic prison island, was now a science and military outpost. 

Unfortunately, the good folks of San Francisco didn’t totally eradicate their dino problem at the time. Not only was a new Titanosaurus raging across the landscape, but something else had arrived—something from beyond the Mesozoic Era.

The quadrupedal, sail-fin Dimetrodon was arguably  the premier apex predator during the Permian period and was long gone before the first dinosaurs appeared. When the giant-sized synapsid was spotted in San Francisco’s Sunset District, residents with PTSD knew their neighborhood was going to be demolished again. 

The two monsters battled endlessly and with no fear of consequence. Nothing could stop them. There were no comic book heroes coming to wrestle the behemoths into submission—no Shang-Chi, no Ant-Man, no Wasp, nobody. Said the author: “The two mega-giants shrieked and roared, rolling, tumbling in clouds of smoke and debris. They barely noticed the jets buzzing around them as they bit and clawed at each other.”

“Where does the world go from here?” wondered a dispirited onlooker. “This could just happen again and again. Will we have to live forever with the threat of giant dinosaurs appearing at random?” 

These questions (and more) remain unanswered by the end of the book. But that’s okay, I’m sure the author is working on a sequel at this very moment. There are a few tidbits to ponder in the meantime. 

First and foremost, we know there are dinosaur eggs incubating in a subterranean labyrinth below the streets of San Francisco. If I had to guess, I’d say there’s probably a yet-to-be discovered interior world of monsters in the area. Expect some spelunking in the near future. 

And finally, I hate to say it but the writing is lackluster overall. I expected better from the author. Rage of the Titanosaurus is a perfunctory sequel filled with unsatisfying descriptive language and unearned emotional moments. And, as a former resident of the area, I can tell the author’s knowledge of San Francisco comes directly from a popular phone app. 

But who knows? With so many giant creatures running amok, my Google Maps criticism might not be relevant. In the next installment, there’s a good possibility that the entire Bay Area may soon disappear from all maps completely. 

[Rage of the Titanosaurus / By John Grover / First Printing: March 2023 / ISBN: 9798385502981]

When I was a kid there was a place in my bedroom dedicated to monsters. Admittedly there wasn’t much to it—a small stack of Famous Monsters of Filmland mags, a Frankenstein movie poster, a Godzilla model kit and a Creeple Peeple Thingmaker—but it certainly stoked my imagination in ways superheroes, Hot Wheels and basketball trading cards never did. 

My meager collection of monster gewgaws also made me a little bit sad. I would daydream endlessly about living in a world filled with reanimated mummies, human flies, howling wolf men, walking skeletons and giant tarantulas. I desperately wanted monsters to be real. 

In this way, I was a lot like the 11-year-old protagonist in Monster Camp, the latest novel by Sarah Henning. Sylvie Shaw pined for a world with monsters, for fangs and claws and spectral apparitions and for magic spells and beasts in the woods and full-moon shapeshifting.

The middle schooler loved monsters so much she dressed willfully like a vampire every single day. She looked a bit like Vampirina, but her classmates mockingly called her Draculette. Even after school, she continued her undead roleplaying.  

Naturally her dad was a little worried about her. “You need to get used to life as a boring old human,” he said. “The sooner you come to terms with the fact that you’re not a vampire, no matter how much you pretend to be, the better your actual life will get.”

Without her father’s consent, Sylvie enrolled in a nearby summer camp for monsters. There were only two rules at Monster Camp: be kind and be yourself. Sylvie would be free to be as monstrous as she wanted to be as long as she wasn’t monstrous to anyone else.

But Monster Camp presented a problem for “Sylvie the Vampire.” Like all preteens, she wrestled with identity issues. In her mind, she was a human and a monster. How could she be herself when she didn’t even know what that meant? 

Everyone at camp was friendly—even the ones with fangs. To Sylvie’s delight she was surrounded by a variety of spooky creatures including werewolves, witches and ghosts. Also in this Brothers Grimm utopia was a kelpie, a goblin, an invisible boy and a half-vampire-half-human girl. The Loch Ness monster was also at Monster Camp and living happily in a nearby river. Nessie relocated to the United States because tourists in Scotland were giving her panic attacks. 

Spending a week at Monster Camp brought out the real Sylvie—in the worst possible way. Despite her sympathies for monsters, she couldn’t escape her humanness. She was willing to lie and cheat to get the things she wanted: friends, popularity and privilege. 

It was easy to forgive Sylvie because she wasn’t a mean girl in any way. She was actually pretty likable. She was simply young, insecure and trapped in an awkward situation. For her, Monster Camp was the first tentative step along a path of self-awareness. Monsters were people too she discovered in the most literal way possible. 

[Monster Camp / By Sarah Henning / First Printing: May 2023 / ISBN: 9781665930055]

Not every story about human-like amphibians is meant to be an homage to the Creature from the Black Lagoon (Abe Sapien, for example. Or maybe Kermit the Frog). Still, it’s always nice to see a nod to the legendary Universal monster when the opportunity presents itself. 

Here’s how author Graeme Reynolds describes the lair for his gnarly water creatures: “The tunnel begins to open up until it becomes a vast cavern, lit by green and glowing fungi. On the far side of the cave, a small waterfall spills out into a large, black lagoon.”

The inhabitants of this black lagoon aren’t lonely gill-men pining for a sexy scientist named Kay Lawrence (R.I.P. Julie Adams). They are the female progeny of an ancient witch—“a woman of the water, like the mer-folk and the sirens.” For thousands of years Jenny Greenteeth and her 28 water-hags have been killing, dismembering and eating people in the lakes and rivers of North West England, from Preston to Liverpool. 

A spat of recent water-related deaths attracts the attention of Samantha Ashlyn, an investigative reporter for a small-time news website. Almost immediately she sees the “horrific parodies of women” in action and knows what needs to be done. She vows to kill the fucking she-creatures once and for all.

But there’s a lot to accomplish before Samantha finds her way down to the black lagoon. First and foremost, she needs to untangle a multi-generational mystery that includes her dead parents, her uncle, her children and even her best friend. It all leads to a shocking resolution that changes Samantha’s life forever. 

Ol’ Jenny Greenteeth is a monster, that’s for sure, but her priscine handmaidens are a pitiful crew. When they attack their victims, they do so with a shocking sexual intensity. There’s a reason this novel is called Dark and Lonely Water. The killer mermaids are trapped in an eternal cycle of servitude, loneliness and depravity.

Readers will figure out pretty quickly that Samantha’s uncle is entangled in Greenteeth’s centuries-long curse. Not only did he willingly enable her spirit to exist, but he also doomed all future generations to a watery anti-life. “The goddess comes before all,” he tells his niece. “She is our family and this is our destiny, our holy charge and our legacy.”

Samantha, as you might guess, doesn’t agree with her nutty uncle. “Screw you,” she tells him. “You’re just another fucking prick destroying women’s lives. You think this is some sort of blessing? It isn’t. It’s the worst thing in the world.”

[Dark and Lonely Water / By Graeme Reynolds / First Printing: February 2023 / ISBN: 9781957133279]

Author Harrison Phillips admits upfront that his latest novel Feces of Death is based on true events. What does that mean exactly, I wonder? Was Phillips a plumber at one time? A wastewater treatment operator? A trash collector? Maybe he was a dung beetle in a former life?

Whatever the case may be, it’s obvious that Phillips knows his shit. There are endless descriptions of animatum excrementa throughout the book, and most of these descriptions are gleefully rendered. Be forewarned: At some point you may think to yourself “Why am I sitting here on my comfy couch, drinking milk thistle tea, listening to lo-fi beats and reading a book about shit?” It’s a fair question, I have to admit. 

Here’s how the author describes his monster fecal fatberg for the very first time: It was slimy and sticky, a mottled green, black and brown mound. An awful smell emanated from it—like a rancid concoction of dried vomit and decomposing waste.“It was like a mountain of shit,” explains Phillips, “shimmering in the darkness.” 

But it gets worse … waaaay worse. If you’re thinking about reading this book you better batten down the hatches and get ready for an avalanche of rampaging, sentient shit. For example: “The thing down in the toilet sprang forth from the water and entered John, squeezing itself into his anus. A terrible burning sensation exploded from his rectum, as if he’d just been given a gasoline enema, and a lit match had been inserted into his sphincter.” 

The novel begins like all comic book supervillain origin stories. There’s an unfortunate accident, a series of unforeseen events and the unlikely emergence of abominable evil. Flint Marko and Clayface (among others) know what I’m talking about. 

Three weeks later, the shits emerge from the sewers in great swarms. They varied vastly in shape and size. Some were as big as a large man, while others were the size of a dog. Some had wide, gaping maws full of razor-sharp teeth. Others seemed to be entirely formless, malleable blobs of excrement. “Nobody was safe from the wrath of the shits,” says Phillips. 

The fecal onslaught is terrible, but it isn’t the most horrible thing in the book. There’s one snippet that’s gross and cruel. Hopelessly inebriated at a party, a 16-year-old girl is taken to the bathroom, pushed face-first into the toilet bowl and raped from behind. 

“Sorry babe,” says her teenaged assailant with an evil laugh, “but I didn’t get a chance to put a rubber on. You might need to get an abortion in a couple of months!” 

The girl didn’t laugh. She didn’t move a muscle. She didn’t even take a breath. That’s because her face was gone, eaten by a hungry shit monster emerging from the toilet. Final verdict: Feces of Death is nasty business. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.  

[Feces of Death / By Harrison Phillips / First Printing: March 2023 / ISBN: 9781957133294]

The world was filled with all sorts of creepy-crawly critters and that made Melinda West happy. The 29-year-old sharpshooter was a gunslinger-for-hire and she enjoyed killing monsters. To paraphrase St. Mustaine: Killing monsters was her business and business was good.

In K.C. Grifant’s new novel set in the Wild (Weird) West, Melinda and her dreamy sidekick Lance Putnam come face-to-face with a glut of monstrous creatures, including giant flying scorpions, soul-sucking bugs, large canines made of ice, mind-controlling slugs, snakes with fish heads, owls with spider legs and an enormous 20-foot snow kraken. According to Melinda and Lance, any monster could be squashed, and they were the ones to do it.

But all things eventually come to an end—or that’s what the pair thought. They didn’t want to hunt monsters for the rest of their lives. They had plans to buy some land, build a home, get married and start a family. With one final payload, they announced their retirement. 

Sadly, their retirement only lasted one measly day. Melinda’s subconscious told her that she would never experience a moment of peace. There would always be more monsters to kill. With a heavy heart, she and Lance embarked on their most epic adventure yet. 

They both knew that monsters came from a nearby mountain range colloquially known as the Edge. But what they didn’t know was this: the Edge wasn’t a landlocked geographic location—it was a nebulous portal connecting Earth to a multiverse of demons and wizards. 

Melinda and Lance needed to find the Edge quickly because a big nasty demon was busy collecting souls to enlarge the gateway between worlds. If it was successful, reality would never be the same again.

Grifant’s prose really comes alive when describing her boss demon (“a monster making and feasting on an abundance,” she says). Even though Adamophelin took many forms, the author never stumbles with her descriptive language. “It took a step forward,” she writes at one point, “like a bull that had learned to walk on hind legs. It was both hideous and captivating to look at, and when it spoke it sounded like a snake learning to speak through a human mouth.”

Melinda West: Monster Gunslinger features an anachronistic clash of traditional genre tropes and modern-day semiotics. It’s a fun mashup that mostly works. In particular, Grifant has gone out of her way to include a diverse and inclusive cast of characters in her quest narrative. Good for her.

One final comment. Melinda West is a big lady (her boyfriend describes her as “a sullen gal taller than a snake on stilts”), but for some reason we’re never explicitly told how tall she is. Why is that? Is she as tall as Brittney Griner or She-Hulk? Gisele Bündchen? Michelle Obama? I want to know. 

[Melinda West: Monster Gunslinger / By K.C. Grifant / First Printing: February 2023 / ISBN: 9781957537375]

Author Joshua Rex and a mob of ancient Chinese philosophers agree: Life and death are just one long thread, the same line viewed from different sides. 

But don’t get too romantic or philosophical about it. Life and death ain’t no bed of roses. They are both, says Rex in his outstanding new anthology titled New Monsters, “the domain of unspeakable perversion and insanity.” 

Take for instance a story called “Death. In the Present Tense.” The journey from living to dying becomes a ghastly carnival ride for a young boy obsessed with thanatotic adventures. To him, the world was only beautiful in decay.

While compiling his ongoing death journals, the boy is hoping to bump into “the cliched tall shadow, the hood and robes and the bone hands gripping the stick with the curving blade.” Instead of being smitten by the Grim Reaper, however, he gets hit by a car driven by his dad. The last thing he sees is his father behind the wheel with a woman by his side. She’s wearing a blood-red dress, and her hair is a blonde coif rising from a bare skull. Says the author: “The lipless mouth gaped, its laugh the sound of shrieking tires.”

The transformative power of death is central to a story called “The Blue Meat.” A pioneering family kills and eats a strange blue-skinned animal shaped like a moose with facial expressions more human than beast. The forest creature is eerily similar to the deer god from the movie Princess Mononoke but waaaay more creepy. The tasty Shishigami-like meat turns the family into monsters with the mandate of their blue-skinned “savior” burning within them. 

Other enjoyable stories in this collection include: “The Master’s Duty” about a zombie dog that understands the sacred duty shared by pet and master, “The Goliath” about a young boy’s freakish future and “The Squatter” about a ghoul’s inalienable right to live anywhere and do anything he wants. “Dreams in the Furman House” is a story about how brutality is celebrated as a form of kitsch. 

If you know anything about my reading habits, you know how much I like a good epistolary novel (Frankenstein, anyone? How about Dracula or Flowers for Algernon?). I was happy to encounter a fine example of epistle writing in New Monsters. And because of my inclination, It’s probably the best thing in the book. 

“The Betrothed” is the story of a wily opportunist who somehow inherits a country estate along with the hand in marriage to a comely young lady. “I am now so eager to see the estate and meet my young wife,” writes Julian in a note to his friend Rothchilde. “I shall waste not a moment in placing both tongue and gristle into Mademoiselle du Lyseine’s stinking places.”

Julian has seen a photo of his future wife and his blood was boiling hot. She had a face shaped for receiving kisses. Her hair was the color of light. And her bosom—“Mon dieu!” he exclaims enthusiastically. “I find myself increasingly unable to contain my lust, and have thus relieved myself of that tyrant confiture des testicules (Google Translate: testicle jam) with compulsive abandon.” 

Readers know instinctively that Julian is in for a big surprise when he arrives at the Castle of Prayers. As promised, his wife is waiting for him and is ready to satisfy the “primary needs and desires” of her new husband. Her intense devotion, unfortunately, is gross and never-ending. 

[New Monsters / By Joshua Rex / First Printing: January 2023 / ISBN: 9781957121413]

As unpredictable as an out-of-season storm and as elusive as shifting shadows at twilight, the Greek god Pan has maintained a well-earned reputation for being a devil, a tempter of flesh and a sealer of sin.

He’s more than a vicious demon, however. Pan is the guardian of the natural world and spiritual embodiment of nature’s cycle of birth, death and rebirth. He’s a physical deity and occult metaphor, a loving shepherd, sexual liberator, playful trickster and folklore fiend. Like all great gods and monsters, Pan is many things to many people.

According to William P. Simmons, the editor of this short story collection, weird fiction was rich with appearances of Pan during the late 19th century and mid-20th century. The horny god continues to be relevant to hedonists, intellectuals, artists, writers, rebels and horticulturalists today. 

The authors in this volume represent various literary disciplines and sub-genres, from gothic romance and decadence to ribald comedy. Baptisms of Horror & Ecstasy is truly a bacchanalian (dionysian?) orgy of fiction and poetry. 

A handful of stories bear witness to Pan’s influence over comely virgins. “The Moon-Slave” by Barry Pain (1901) is about a princess who enjoys dancing seductively under the full moon. Only later does she realize that she’s inadvertently encouraging the ardor of Pan.

In “Dryas and Lady Greenleaf” by R. Murray Gilchrist (1903) a young lady is raped by supernatural influences that awaken her carnal lust. “Who can say whether I am a goddess or a nymph?” she muses at the story’s end. 

Seduced by the beauty of nature, a 17-year-old girl pines for the embrace of Pan in a story called “In the Woods” by Amyas Northcote (1922). When the lonely girl finally hears the shepherd’s pipes, she quickly realizes the folly of her naive passions. “The piping rose louder and more clear. Beautiful it was, and entrancing, but evil and menacing too. She was like a bird charmed by the serpent.”

There are a couple of duds in this anthology (“Old Pipes and the Dryad” by Frank R. Stockton and an excerpt from Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows), but overall Simmons has assembled a terrific batch of prose and verse that “follow Pan’s hoofprints across the soil of myth, folklore and literature.” 

“The Story of a Panic” by E.M. Forester (1911) is probably my favorite story here. Pan doesn’t make an appearance in the narrative but he certainly inspires the “panic” felt by the cast of characters.

Fourteen-year-old Eustace Robinson is a peevish lad, “indescribably repellent,” writes Forester. After a mysterious (sexual?) encounter in the woods, the boy embraces a newfound homosexual lifestyle which represents some sort of erotic freedom. Eustace is last seen running afield, no doubt bleating like a billy goat in heat. 

[Baptisms of Horror & Ecstasy: Supernatural Stories of the Great God Pan / Edited by William P. Simmons / First Printing: January 2023 / ISBN: 9798369909966]

A group of American academics are schlepping across Peru looking for the existence of an ancient civilization mentioned nowhere in antiquity. Based solely on a hunch, they’re hoping to find evidence of a ruined city and a religious shrine ensconced inside a hollow mountain.

Local Peruvian authorities aren’t too happy about the expedition. As you’d expect, they’re hypersensitive to the mishandling of any found indigenous objects. And besides, they want a piece of the action for themselves. 

“If you truly uncover a hidden temple,” explains the leader of the government’s security detail, “then we will pave a hiking path. An Inca Trail or something like that. People from around the world will come and visit. There will be hotels, restaurants and gift shops. It is a winning situation for both of us. We’ll let you publish your research papers … but the profit will remain ours.”

This so-called “winning situation” includes a tricky 160-mile hike across the southern tip of the Andes. The jungle is filled with dangerous flowers, predators, poisonous plants and deadly insects. A cute doctoral student named Annika doesn’t make it out of the tangle alive—she dies from a snake bite during a pee break. What a way to go. Readers take note: if you want to know how to safely pee in the wilderness, this is the book for you. Don’t end up like poor Annika. 

The group of scholars and government agents eventually stumble upon their ancient religious temple—an enormous five-stories-high ziggurat nestled comfortably inside an abandoned copper mine. Unfortunately, they also stumble upon the temple’s chief deity: The God of Darkness. Otherwise known as the Decapitator. Time to get nostalgic and turn up your 80s-era thrash metal mixtape.

The Spider God is 13-feet tall and 30-feet long with segmented legs as thick as a man’s torso. It has the head of a jaguar (??) and wears a crown made of human bones. It’s a big and bizarre looking monster that’s been trapped in an underground labyrinth for nearly 200 years. 

The search party is in trouble deep. They are totally unprepared to outwit the mad spider-beast in its own lair. Their combined dreams of fame and fortune evaporate with each grisly beheading. The Decapitator’s skull-crunching carnage is unquenchable.

But all novels have to end and all monsters eventually get their comeuppance. Ironically, the novel’s fiery finale takes place in the pyramid’s sacrificial alter. The Spider God dies on the floor of the temple erected in its honor. 

[Temple of the Spider God / By Steve Metcalf / First Printing: January 2023 / ISBN: 9781922861474]

A mummy had come to New York City, but he wasn’t  the brittle and shambling kind of monster seen in old movies. This guy was far worse. He was a giant, fast-moving serial killer with a penchant for removing the heads and limbs of his victims. 

The death toll was increasing nightly, but the NYPD was unconvinced there was any supernatural deviltry afoot. The probability of a rampaging mummy in Manhattan was totally insane. Mummies weren’t real, they argued. 

They were wrong of course. Many cultures around the globe have been practicing mummification for thousands of years as a way to preserve (and honor) the bodies of the dead. Of all the famous monsters you can think of, mummies were the real deal.

Like it or not, New York’s police department had a nasty mummy problem on its hands. Actually, that’s not totally true. It had two nasty mummy problems, and both of them were connected to events dating back to Egypt in 1888. Skullduggery, desecration and murder begat a double-barreled curse that doggedly followed the original culprits from Abydos to Manhattan. 

With the police in denial, it fell to a couple of defrocked department detectives to unwrap the escalating mummy mystery. Tom Reardon and Dan Reese were once partners on the force, but recent events had derailed their careers and their personal lives. No spoilers from me, but I’ll say this: a rowdy game of strip poker may have been the pair’s undoing. 

No longer friends, but still dedicated to justice, Reardon and Reese team up once again. Explained author J.G. Faherty: “They were like two pieces of a machine that didn’t operate properly when separated, but when joined together, they created a powerful force.”

The former cops knew an ancient Egyptian curse had infected Manhattan’s elite society. They had the receipts. Strips of ramie linen were found at every murder scene, suspicious activity was taking place at the city’s Egyptian Cultural Museum and specific symbols were seen etched into dead bodies. 

Things get literal in a flash when Reese dies and wakes up in Egyptian Hell. He successfully navigates the Lake of Fire and winds up in the Hall of Judgment where he comes face to face with Osiris the ruler of the Underworld and Anubis the Accuser. Eventually returning to his earthly body, Reese sees the endgame clearly. I’d like to thank the author for providing a big dose of helpful exposition during this deep dive into Egyptian mythology. 

Still, it wasn’t easy for Reardon and Reese to vanquish the two powerful mummies and their double curse. But somehow they did it. They overcame all the obstacles in their path and all it took was a quick jaunt through Hell. 

[Ragman / J.G. Faherty / First Printing: January 2023 / ISBN: 9781787587434]