Duet-One in the "Diabolical Duets" collection brings us two tales of female-led fantasy, suspense, and horror.

We open with Theo Hopcraft's "Forever Malign" and an eerie and chilling tale of female-led vengeance from the grave. It's 1932, and Julian Westerhuis, a cynical Londoner and womaniser, escapes retribution from an angry husband to visit a female cousin in the North Devon fishing village of Combe Lynton where she, an investigator of the paranormal, has acquired keys to a house with a gruesome past. Eager to uncover its secrets, she persuades Julian to join her for a night that will change everything for him. For as they delve into the house's history, they find a tale of tragic love and violent death that has led to the spirit of a beautiful Romany woman occupying the house in spectral form. A form burning with hatred for the married man who toyed with her affections... Only to her young life... A married man who looks very much like Julian Westerhuis!

We conclude with Rafe Linnell's "Madame Solange", as the lives of two friends in a sleepy English village between the wars are turned on their heads when one of them confesses to a murder he committed while living in Paris. A murder committed at the behest of an evil, mesmeric, and erotically warped landlady whose clutches he subsequently escaped by returning to England... A demonic and sexually controlling landlady for whom nothing matters but the control that slakes her warped thirst... Control she is determined to exercise over the handsome Englishman once again now she has found him.

2-Believable fantasy female-led tale of occult horror and human bondage in the style of the early 20th Century masters of the genre.