Halcyon Years by Alastair Reynolds; Paris Fantastique by Nicholas Royle; All Tomorrows by CM Kosemen; The Salt Oracle by Lorraine Wilson; The Witching Hour by various authors

Halcyon Years by Alastair Reynolds (Gollancz, £25)
Yuri Gagarin, the Russian cosmonaut who was the first man in space, is reborn as a private eye on board the starship Halcyon as it draws nearer to the end of a centuries-long journey. Yuri knows he died for the first time back in the 1960s, long before the technology existed to launch such sophisticated spaceships, but believes his remains were preserved and stored for future revival. Onboard life is modelled on classic crime noir from the 1940s: men in hats, cigarettes and whisky, with no futuristic tech beyond some clunky, glitching robots. As he doggedly pursues the truth about the seemingly unconnected deaths of two teenagers from the most powerful families on the ship, Yuri gradually learns about himself. There’s a conspiracy that goes back generations in this clever, entertaining blend of crime and space opera.

Paris Fantastique by Nicholas Royle (Confingo, £9.50)
The third collection after London Gothic and Manchester Uncanny captures both the reality and the mysteries of contemporary life in Paris in 14 short stories, 11 published here for the first time. Royle is a genius at blending the ordinary with the eerie, and his stories range from displays of outright surrealism to sinister psychological mysteries that play out as suspensefully as Highsmith or Hitchcock. It’s a memorable, unsettling excursion through the streets, passages and banlieues of Paris, and a masterclass in writing evocative short fiction.

Inspired by the scary film franchise, playwright Levi Holloway and Punchdrunk maestro Felix Barrett are bringing the ‘bizarrely joyous’ world of terror to the stage

Malevolent spirits be damned – theatres can be haunted simply by the memory of bad plays and perhaps unscary horror in particular. The last time London’s Ambassadors theatre aimed to give audiences the shivers, with The Enfield Haunting, it led to some frightfully poor reviews. But a couple of years later, this intimate West End playhouse is hosting Paranormal Activity, a new instalment in the franchise that was kickstarted by a low-budget supernatural movie about a couple plagued by inexplicable nocturnal noises. “Hold your nerve” runs the play’s tagline – a directive you suspect applies not just to the audience.

Arriving at the theatre on the day of the first preview, it’s not creepy bumps and thuds that echo through the building but whizzing drills, sound checks and the last-minute discussions of a crew with a deadline. Perched in the dress circle bar, US playwright Levi Holloway and director Felix Barrett (best known as the founder of immersive theatre specialists Punchdrunk) are discussing how rarely they have been frightened in the theatre.

Park theatre, London
Gleefully leaning into all the cliches and groansome laughs, Dan Patterson and Jez Bond’s musical vampire romp is supremely silly

If ever there was a show where the title came first, you’d guess it was this one by Dan (Whose Line Is It Anyway?) Patterson and Jez Bond. Why else, if not to justify a pun, would you make an a capella singing version of the Victorian vampire novel? And Dracapella is nothing if not fond of a pun. (“There is a supernatural force at work in Transylvania.” / “Which is?” / “No, not witches.”) There’s lots more where that came from in this spooky comedy romp, in which an undead Romanian count concludes his 400-year search for love to a soundtrack of closely harmonised 80s power ballads and champion beatboxing.

The latter is all provided by ABH Beatbox, a cast member of the BAC Beatbox Academy’s Frankenstein, in whose globetrotting success I discern another (distant) inspiration for this music-gothic crossover. This one’s a more traditional affair, a knowing entertainment forever sending up its own storytelling cliches, and at every turn choosing groansome laughs over thrills. Arguably it lowers the stakes (it’s catching!) when a story about centuries-spanning passion becomes a vehicle for The Play What I Wrote-style larks. But the relentless silliness of Patterson and Bond’s confection amply compensates, as Harker’s train to Dover is decanted on to a rail replacement bus, and Dracula demonstrates his metaphysical powers by having his henchman consume – as if by magic! – a bowlful of marshmallows.