Shadow Zone

by Barbara Cottrell

“Cottrell drags the Cthulhu Mythos kicking and screaming into the Twenty-First century…making Lovecraft fiction fresh and accessible.” —Peter Rawlik, author of Reanimators

A daring daylight robbery. A graveyard teeming with unnatural activity. A shadowy creature stalking the halls of an Arkham retirement home. Coincidence? Or the first signs of something far worse?

Ellen Logan and Andrew Carter reunite to investigate these unsettling events. Their path takes them down a twisted trail of forbidden art, impossible mathematics, and a house that defies physical space. Only then do they discover the terrifying scope of what’s unfolding. And if they don’t stop it in time, the boundary between nightmare and reality may vanish forever.

304 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 16, 2025

About the author

Barbara Cottrell gave up her career as a professor to pursue her true passion: writing weird fiction. She is the author of Darkness Below and is a lifetime member of the Horror Writers Association. She enjoys presenting her work in unusual venues like Mystery Writers in the Mausoleum and Word Horde Emporium of The Weird and Fantastic. She also served as a judge on the Redwood Writer Anthologies Redemption: Stories from the Edge, Endeavor: Stories of Struggle and Perseverance, and helped edit Remember When and On Fire. She lives in Sonoma County on a not-at-all-haunted vineyard. When she isn’t exploring the dark side, she makes wine with her husband, Lance.

To find out more about her and the world of Miskatonic University, visit www.barbaracottrell.com.

Reviews

[Richard Christou · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lovecraft’s Dreamlands with a Difference

Barbara Cottrell has given us three books in her Shadows of Arkham Series. This review is focused on the third, Shadow Zone, but I recommend reading the three in chronological order for the best experience.

Cottrell describes her books as “Character Driven Lovecraft”, and this is an excellent description of Shadow Zone. All the elements of Lovecraft’s Dreamlands are present, but Lovecraft’s protagonists, including Randolph Carter, are only cardboard figures. Cottrell brings them to life through vivid dialogue and emotional stakes that Lovecraft himself never explored;

Thus Shadow Zone shows Randolph Carter, his son Robert and Grandson Andrew as real people, tied together in love and conflict. Their complicated relationship with Ellen Logan, a young student at Miskatonic University, is at the heart of the story, driving the plot and giving it the warmth, character depth and human drama so lacking in Lovecraft’s original vision of the Dreamlands. This is a worthy addition to the Lovecraft canon, a respectful but fresh take on the Mythos.

[Lance · Rating 5 out of 5]

The next book in The Shadows of Miskatonic delivers!

Shadow Zone is a fantastic continuation of Ellen Logan’s story, following directly from Darkness Below and Thin Places. I’ve really enjoyed seeing how these books build on each other, and this one takes the stakes higher than ever.
It begins with a series of seemingly unrelated mysteries in Arkham, including a robbery, strange occurrences in a graveyard, and a creature haunting a retirement home, all of which draw Ellen and Andrew into something much darker. The pacing is relentless, moving from one revelation to the next, and by the end, the scope of what they’re facing is far bigger than I expected.
Ellen is a great lead character. She’s funny, clever, stubborn, and very human.
This series blends the atmosphere of classic Lovecraft with modern energy and characters you actually care about, making it both fun and chilling.

[Mary Hart · Rating 5 out of 5]

So happy to be back in the land of The Shadows of Miskatonic with the third book in this series by Barbara Cottrell.

The characters and setting are so familiar to me from the first two books in the series that I was quickly drawn back in to Ellen’s adventures.

I didn’t want the book to end.