“[Christopher] Fowler repeatedly challenges the reader to redraw the boundaries between innocence and malevolence, rationality and paranoia. His strength lies in the way he unveils the darker side of the ordinary.”—Guardian
A geologist trapped in a town without water is lured into a desperate escape plan. A boy plans a murder in an eerie funfair. A cop witnesses an inexplicable plague of madness. A teenager learns a deadly trick with his cell phone.
Christopher Fowler’s tenth collection of uniquely disturbing short stories contains the blackest humor and the darkest fears.
Christopher Fowler is the author of twelve novels, including the Bryant & May series. He lives in London.
A hotel offers a taboo service for its trouble clients, a young man mu...
How can an elderly recluse drown in a chair in her otherwise dr...
Itâ??s the classic locked-room mysteryâ??a member of the Peculiar Crim...
This dark often amusing and satirical crime suspense anthology is a terrific anthology from one of the best short story authors today (Mr. Fowler's odd couple Bryant and May police procedural novels are also excellent). Each of the twenty-two entries is top rate. Baker St Irregulars will especially appreciate "The Lady Downstairs" starring Mr. Holmes's landlady while fans of 1960s British movies will relish the appearance of the late actor Terry-Thomas in the aptly named ghost story "Old Friends". Weird fun are "Turbo-Satan" in which two East Londoner slackers Daz and Mat text messaging to SATAN and even stranger "Take It All Back, Put It All Back" starring statistically bad luck magnet Lukas Forrest. Also superb is the Miami police officer struggling with "The Spider Kiss" mad disease spreading amidst residents in which an outbreak of insane human behavior in South Florida proves to have strange beastly origins. Well written, Christopher Fowler uses taken for granted aspects of everyday life like text messaging, walking the dog on a big city street, and comic books, etc. but runs them into dark dangerous devices and places. Harriet Klausner
Weird situations, as only Christopher Fowler can imagine. I'm not a huge fan of short stories but I've been reading Fowler for a long time and he's so very good at strange! As an author he's the English answer to Tim Powers (another of my top picks)who can make characters that are believeable, place them in the most bizare situations and you'll care about them. Not many can do it as smoothly as these two guys. If you are a fan of the strangeness that lies just below or behind the very ordinary, I'd recommend not only these two writers but also Phil Rickman (another English author - call me biased if you like, a Brit living in U.S.A.)but you won't be disappointed.
A werewolf gang-war mini-epic written in free verse (!!!). If it had stopped...
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