'From somewhere out of space, through the stratosphere, from the unknown, dropping through a silence with bleak eyes fixed greedily towards the inhabited earth. They might have bred here unseen, unheard of, in some darkly warm unexplored tropical fastness, but where in the world is any unexplored territory? No, from some passing planet, some other world from which I like to think they had been exiled, outcast, for the beastly things they are, and from the space into which they had flown for safety, chanced upon earth. And the voyage had made them hungry!'

First published in 1935, Alan Hyder's Vampires Overhead has now achieved almost mythic status, due mainly to its scarcity. It begins innocently enough with the meeting of two old army comrades outside a London cinema, but the action quickly intensifies as earth is invaded and virtually destroyed by hordes of nightmarish vampires, which leave desolation and destruction in their wake.

In London, three lone survivors manage to flee the wastes of the city and escape to a new life in the countryside. However, the horror of the vampires soon takes a back seat to the difficulties the trio experience as human nature begins to take over, and they face terrors which come from much closer to home.

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