Editor Mike Heffernan took the title for his WWII horror anthology A Dark and Deadly Valley (published April 2007) from the statement made by Winston Churchill on January 22, 1941, about the bleakness of the battles to come:
“Far be it from me to paint a rosy picture of the future. Indeed, I do not think we should be justified in using any but the most sombre tones and colours while our people, our Empire and indeed the whole English-speaking world are passing through a dark and deadly valley.”
Churchill may have envisioned the horrors of war, but none quite like these. In my own tale, a weary soldier on the streets of rubble-strewn Berlin during the final days of the war finds himself the object of a tug of war between emissaries of Heaven and Hell. Other writers took Hiroshima, Dresden and Dunkirk as their settings, populating them with everything from ghosts to radioactive mutants.
The other 19 authors include Brian Keene, Rick Hautala, Elizabeth Massie, Graham Joyce and David J. Schow, and the book contains an introduction by John Skipp. Each story also features an illustration by Alex McVey.