The Stranger Times

I love finding a new series that hits all my favourite urban fantasy points – smart, funny, peopled with delightfully weird and very uncool characters, and it’s set anywhere in the UK outside London (nothing against London, it’s just fun to read about somewhere different). C.K. McDonnell’s The Stranger Times hits all of these, plus is partly inspired by actual news stories from around the world (some clippings included, and the author’s podcast covers a lot more). This is a pure joy to read, and I’m definitely looking at Manchester a little differently now...

In this absurdist horror comedy, The Stranger Times is a newspaper that reports on all of those “Bat-faced boy ate my cat!” stories that proper newspapers ignore. The press office is utter chaos, perpetually on the brink of collapse, and the editor is a foul-mouthed drunkard with a painful past. It’s not surprising that, faced with all of this, new reporter Hannah has trouble understanding what her job is meant to be. When she discovers that the newspaper has stumbled onto a true story of demonic horrors, it’s up to her to save everyone’s lives. And her own career.