Books by Alison Armstrong

When twelve-year-old Sherrie-Lee witnesses a failed bank robbery in her neglected town, she seizes an opportunity to claim a new identity for herself. Escaping her troubled home life, she tries out a new name and invents stories and personas to cover her tracks. Sherrie-Lee finds both possibility and loneliness in this new freedom, as well as an unusual friendship which she nurtures. But harsh realities close in, and she's plagued with foreboding - from her vulnerable brother at home to the climate crisis. While she dreams of a kinder world, it won't be long before her own deceits start catching up with her. This arresting debut challenges assumptions and captures the powerless yearning of adolescence with a voice that is fresh, magnetic and often funny - one that pulls you in and won't let go.

Incorporating essays, short stories, film and book analyses, Consorting with the Shadow examines the psychological bond between women and the archetypal creatures of imagination, the vampires, shape-shifters, and other monsters we fear, love, and wish to emulate.

"My fingers quiver, jerking in electrified spasms as pulsations . . . , surge from the tiny, cold, motionless tabby. Defying gravity, the pulsations shoot upwards from my fingers to my hand, my arm, shoulder, and neck, throbbing at my jaw like raggedy velvet hammers on the strings inside a piano...summoning my fangs from their swollen sheaths...I force the bitter, fishy droplets down my throat, then tear into the vein on my wrist, watching as my blood splatters onto the kitten's mouth."A sequel to Revenance, Toxicosis is a surreal, hallucinatory novel featuring supernatural beings, psychotropic feline muses, and deranging diseases. Contagion lures, infestation gestates, and feral energies resurrect as the vampires in Revenance encounter sinister entities. Sustaining themselves on the blood of the despairing, the vampire, Ligeia, and her Awakener, Cinaed, evade perilous attachments by assuming aliases and changing hotels. Their immortal survival, however, is endangered by Aloysius, a vampire from Cinaed's past. Obsessed with pharmacological research into psychedelic substances, Aloysius finds the perfect experimental subject when he meets Don, a wealthy gourmand infested with maggots. Meanwhile, Ligeia and Cinaed inadvertently discover the hallucinogenic effects of feline virus Toxoplasma gondii when they rescue two dying kittens and revive them with vampire blood. After ingesting the psychedelic Toxoplasma blood from the kittens, Ligeia is haunted by menacing presences that try to drive her insane. Cinaed, in turn, is threatened by Aloysius, who steals one of the vampire kittens to use for his experiments. As Ligeia and Cinaed battle otherworldly entities, they learn the destructive as well as creative possibilities of their enhanced supernatural perceptions.

Blending aspects of vampire myths with other supernatural and psychological archetypes, as well as punk music culture, Revenance presents a dreamlike world of horror and passion.