'Isn't the one Rory took enough?'

'You put on weight since then. Hey, no bad thing. We don't need the author looking like a ghost even on your sort of book. Maybe he can take some shots after we've all had lunch.'

'Does Charlotte know about the things you're asking me to do? Isn't she still Ellen's editor?'

'Sure thing. I'm just trying to help their books along. Makes sense for all of us.'

'What's keeping her? Shouldn't she be here by now?'

'She was finishing something off downstairs. I guess it's taking longer than she thought. She could catch us up at the restaurant if you're famished, Ellen.'

'No, I want to wait for her. We shouldn't leave her on her own.'

'She isn't, believe me, not down there.'

'Shall I go and find her?'

'You can't do that, Hugh.'

'Why not? Why are you telling him that, Glen?'

'Because n.o.body gets to go behind the scenes by themselves unless they're part of us, not just your brother. Here comes the elevator. Maybe that's her now.'

'Gee,' Rory said, having turned to watch that letter rob its neighbour of the light. It continued to glow, if somewhat fitfully, as the metal doors parted below the display. The inside of the lift seemed dim, perhaps by contrast with the street, where the window of a taxi caught the sunlight, flaring in his eyes. The blank patch it left on his vision appeared to loiter behind Charlotte as she stepped into the lobby, so that he couldn't immediately tell whether somebody was at her back. No, the gaping gloom was deserted, and in a moment the doors shut before the light shifted to the lowest number. Rory rested his hands on the upholstery to push himself off the settee, so fast that the blank patch engulfed his vision. He mustn't start imagining that it had wiped out Hugh and their cousins or the editor, let alone the place Rory had taken ages to reach. 'Now we're all here,' he said.

The Grin of the Dark.

by Ramsey Campbell.

Tubby Thackeray's stage routines were so deranged that members of his audience were said to have died or lost their minds. When Simon Lester is commissioned to write a book about the forgotten music-hall clown and his riotous silent comedies, his research plunges him into a nightmarish realm where genius, buffoonery and madness converge. In a search that leads him from a twilight circus in a London park to a hardcore movie studio in Los Angeles, Simon Lester uncovers a terrifying secret about Tubby Thackeray and must finally confront the unspeakable thing he represents.

9780753513811.

Teatro Grottesco.

by Thomas Ligotti.

In this peerless collection of dark fictions, Thomas Ligotti follows the literary tradition that began with Edgar Allan Poe: portraying characters that are outside of anything that might be called normal life, depicting strange locales far off the beaten track, and rendering a grim vision of human existence as a perpetual nightmare. Just to enter his unique world where odd little towns and dark sectors are peopled with clowns, manikins and hideous puppets, and where tormented individuals and blackly comical eccentrics play out their doom, is to risk your own vision of the world.

9780753513743.

My Work Is Not Yet Done.

by Thomas Ligotti.

When junior manager Frank Dominio is suddenly demoted and then sacked, it seems there was more than a grain of truth to his persecution fantasies. But as he prepares to even the score with those responsible for his demise, he unwittingly finds an ally in a dark and malevolent force that grants him supernatural powers. Frank takes his revenge in the most ghastly ways imaginable a but there will be a terrible price to pay once his work is done. Destined to be a cult cla.s.sic, this tale of corporate horror and demonic retribution will strike a chord with anyone who has ever been disgruntled at work.

9780753516881.

The Unblemished.

by Conrad Williams.

Enter the mind of a serial killer who believes he is the rightful son and heir to an ancient dynasty of flesh-eaters.

Follow the frantic journey of a mother whose daughter is infected with the stuff of nightmare.

Look through the eyes of Bo Mulvey, who possesses the ancient wisdom a blood thirsty evil needs to achieve its full and horrifying potential. A man upon whom the fate of the human race depends.

One of the most powerful horror novels of our time, The Unblemished is an epic tale of history and destiny, desperation and desire, atrocity and atonement. It is a savagely beautiful tale of a mother's determination to rescue her daughter, which plunges you into the monstrous world of serial killers and a cannibalistic apocalypse that rips through modern Britain.

9780753513514.

One.

by Conrad Williams.

This is the United Kingdom but it's not a country you know or ever want to see, not even in the howling, shuttered madness of your worst dreams. You survived. One man.

You walk because you must. At the end of this molten road, running along the spine of a burned, battered country, your little boy is either alive or dead. You have to know. One hope.

The sky crawls with thick, venomous cloud and burning red rain. The land is a scorched sprawl of rubble and corpses. Rats have risen from the depths to gorge on the carrion. A strange, glittering dust coats everything. The dust hides a terrible secret. New horrors are taking root. You walk on. One chance.

9780753518106.

Banquet for the d.a.m.ned.

by Adam Nevill.

Few believed Professor Coldwell was in touch with an unseen world a that he could commune with spirits. But in Scotland's oldest university town something has pa.s.sed from darkness into light. And now the young are being haunted by night terrors. And those who are visited disappear. This is not a place for outsiders, especially at night. So what chance do a rootless musician and a burned-out explorer have of surviving their entanglement with an ageless supernatural evil and the ruthless cult that worships it?

9780753513583.

The Perils and Dangers of this Night.

by Stephen Gregory.

A bleak mid-winter. An icy wind blows through the corridors of Foxwood Manor, a boys' prep-school deep in the woodlands of Dorset. It is the end of the Christmas term and the old house is empty save for the headmaster, Dr Kemp, his wife, and the one boy who has been left behind. Alan Scott, 12, abandoned by his f.e.c.kless mother, faces the grim prospect of Christmas alone with the Kemps. Until, at dusk the following afternoon, a vision from the outside world arrives at the school: Martin Pryce, a suave, arrogant ex-pupil, and his bewildered girlfriend Sophie. And, as the snow falls heavily on the house and the surrounding woods, a story of revenge and retribution unfolds: a web of half-truths and innuendoes woven into a bizarre game of hide-and-seek through the corridors and dormitories of the school . . . and a series of shocking revelations which lead inexorably, horrifically, to a b.l.o.o.d.y climax on a crisp, lovely Christmas morning.

9780753513798.