Simon Kurt Unsworth

Thomas Fool, an Information Man who is tasked with cataloging and filing reports on the endless stream of violence and brutality that streams through Hell, must piece together clues to identify a serial killer who is challenging the rules and order of a place where death is common currency.

The Devil's Detective

Thomas Fool is an Information Man, an investigator tasked with cataloging and filing reports on the endless stream of violence and brutality that flows through Hell. His job holds no reward or satisfaction, because Hell has rules but no justice. Each new crime is stamped "Do Not Investigate" and dutifully filed away in the depths of the Bureaucracy. But when an important political delegation arrives and a human is found murdered in a horrific manner, extravagant even by Hell's standards, everything changes. The murders escalate, and their severity points to the kind of killer not seen for many generations. Something is challenging the rules and order of Hell, so the Bureaucracy sends Fool to identify and track down the killer.

Strange Gateways

"Do you love Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series? How about the Rivers of London series by Ben Abronovith? Like a bit of John Le Carre intrigue? If so, you will LOVE The Devil's Evidence." -- Starburst Magazine “With the character of Fool, Simon Kurt Unsworth has crafted a hero among the damned.” —HUGH HOWEY, NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF WOOL Thomas Fool—the resilient investigator doomed to catalog Hell’s atrocities in Simon Kurt Unsworth’s stunning debut, The Devil’s Detective—is back. The man with no memory of who he was or what led to his damnation is now in command of the Information Office of Hell. This power has only inspired new, deadly enemies like Mr. Tap, the cunning leader of a shadowy organization known as the Evidence. Fool alone has survived the wrath of both demon and angel, and now he faces his most thrilling and complex challenge. Troubling and deadly fires are spreading throughout Hell, and it is Fool’s job to sift the ashes and find their source. The clues he finds are mysterious and unsettling, implying something different from the usual litany of cruelty he sees. But one fact is the most disconcerting: the fires have left his masters at the Bureaucracy terrified. In the midst of the chaos, Fool is sent to accompany a political delegation to Heaven. It is unprecedented for a condemned human to enter the land of the elevated, but Fool is protected as one of Hell’s own. When his arrival coincides with the discovery of an impossible murder, he faces a catastrophic paradox. Violence, corruption, and fear are Hell’s currency; how does one investigate evil where those concepts cannot exist? Impossible or not, the killings are real, and the evidence leads Fool deep into the contradictions of a visionary landscape, where danger can present itself in any form, and to the heart of a conspiracy with the power to upset the balance of Heaven and Hell. The Devil’s Evidence is an exotic crime thriller as exhilarating as anything in recent fiction. It is a provocative novel of horror, filled with sharp twists and propulsive action that will keep you riveted through the final page.

A Novel

The Devil's Evidence

THE HOUSES ARE QUIET. IT IS THEIR RESIDENTS WHO ARE SCREAMING... "No-one could be that unhappy and be alive..." A chambermaid's seemingly innocent request is granted, an act of kindness that has dire consequences for the guest at THE ELMS, MORECAMBE. Human despair has a power of its own after death, and it is contagious... "I wish I had been right; I wish that it had been a man, or death alone, that had found her..." An unearthly light in an abandoned bungalow resolves the mystery of a missing child, but no human force has taken her. An entity that fishes for children is in THE MERRY HOUSE, SCALE HALL. But will it remain there? "Go beyond the graves, and they will come to you." An invitation to a clifftop graveyard leads to a harrowing chase by burrowing things that remain unseen, their hunger unknown and never satisfied, BEYOND ST PATRICK'S CHAPEL. "The great delight in being part of the Save Our Shit crew was that sometimes they could persuade those designers of the present and the future to save or incorporate the past into their designs." There is no need in THE OCEAN GRAND, NW COAST, because the original artists created a living work of art for the hotel. Art that celebrates the triumph of the natural world over the man-made. A life force that transcends - and brings death... "Something white came out. Something white, screaming and screaming..." Homes fit for heroes, they were promised after the Great War. They were given something else in THE TEMPLE OF RELIEF AND EASE. There is a hidden agenda to paranormal researcher Richard Nakata's investigations into these houses. A commission that witnesses cattle lowing in the cowsheds of STACK'S FARM long after they've been slaughtered, and a reckoning in the showhouse of 24 GLASSHOUSE, as he and his colleagues pay the price for creating their own ghost... Simon Kurt Unsworth reinvents the classic English ghost story with a portmanteau collection that takes the haunted house genre and makes it scream...quietly. Because the most terrifying screams are the silent ones. "A major new talent in the horror genre." - Pete Tennant

Quiet Houses

A stunning new thriller from the critically acclaimed author of The Devil’s Detective. When a violent outbreak of fires plunges his city into chaos, Thomas Fool, commander of Hell’s Information Men, finds himself outsmarted by a shadowy new department called the Evidence. Sent away to Heaven on a diplomatic mission he discovers murder has come to paradise, yet no one is willing to admit it. As tensions mount on both sides of the afterlife, can Fool solve the ultimate paradox?

Caitlín R. Kiernan

Mark Samuels

Richard L. Tierney

Autumn Chill - Richard L. Tierney Inspired by the work of Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, Donald Wandrei, Robert E. Howard and Frank Belknap Long, Tierney's poetry has been collected in Dreams and Damnations, The Doom Prophet and One Other, the Arkham House volume of Collected Poems, Nightmares and Visions, The Blob That Gobbled Abdul and Other Poems and Songs and Savage Menace and Other Poems of Horror. S.T. Joshi has described Tierney as "one of the leading weird poets of his generation." The Lemon in the Pool - Simon Kurt Unsworth "In the summer of 2009, I went on holiday with my family - the extended version. As well as my wife and son, Wendy and Ben, there were my parents, my sister and her husband, and my mother-in-law all sharing a villa in Moreira, Spain. "One of the delights of the holiday was having a private pool, and seeing Ben enjoy himself in the water, where over the course of seven days he learned to swim. Perhaps even more fun was seeing his joy when things started to appear in the pool on a daily basis - a tomato, a lemon, two courgettes, three green chillies. "I have no idea where they came from, but I suspect that children in a neighbouring villa were playing a joke on us and Ben loved it. It got to be one of the most exciting things about the holiday, waiting to see what would appear that day. After the appearance of the courgettes, my sister said, 'This'll find its way into one of Simon's stories,' and everyone laughed and someone (I think my mum) said, 'Even he couldn't write a story about this.' "Mum, if it was you that said that, this story is entirely your fault." Losenef Express - Mark Samuels About the story, Mark Samuels explains: "I think most fans of horror will recognise at once the late, great American author upon whom the central character of this tale is based (or, perhaps more accurately, filtered through my imagination). We never met, although I did once catch sight of him across a room at the 1988 World Fantasy Convention in London and, prompted by curiosity, took a hasty, half-obscured photograph. "A number of my friends knew him well, and I regret I myself never had the chance to do so. Sadly, I only discovered his brilliant work years after his untimely death." As Red as Red - Caitlín R. Kiernan "I don't know that 'As Red as Red' had any single source of inspiration," says Kiernan. "It coalesced from numerous experiences and accounts of the supernatural in Rhode Island. Also, I very much wanted to write a non-conventional vampire story which was also (and maybe more so) a werewolf story and a ghost story. "It's also true that I was just coming off having finished The Red Tree, and, in some ways, 'As Red as Red' is an extended footnote to that novel. I was still trying to get The Red Tree out of my system."

Four Stories by Richard L. Tierney, Simon Kurt Unsworth, Mark Samuels and Caitlín R. Kiernan

Mammoth Books presents Unexpected Encounters

John Shirley

Gary McMahon

Ramsey Campbell

Tim Lebbon

Guy Smith

Nancy Kilpatrick

Anna Taborska

Barbie Wilde

Steven Savile

William Meikle

Scott Nicholson

Johnny Mains

Peter Crowther

Steve Lockley

Stephen Laws

David Riley

Stephen Price

Steve Duffy

Cancer is a monster. It hides, it lurks, and it pounces when you think it's down and defeated. In these 17 stories, established horror writers take the attack to the beast, fighting it the only way they know how. Ramsey Campbell - Introduction Tim Lebbon - Just Breathe Simon Kurt Unsworth - Photographs of Boden Steven Savile & Steve Lockley - The Last Gift John Shirley - Where the Market's Hottest Anna Taborska - Underbelly Stephen James Price - Pages of Promises Scott Nicholson - Heal Thyself Stephen Laws - Harbinger William Meikle - The Unfinished Basement Nancy Kilpatrick - Alien Love David Riley - A Girl, a Toad and a Cask Barbie Wilde - Polyp Johnny Mains - The Cure Guy N Smith - The Big One Pete Crowther - Cankerman Steve Duffy - X for Henrietta Gary McMahon - Bitter Soup Edited by William Meikle Cover art by Simon Marshall Jones

The Unspoken

This is the world out of the corner of your eye. From seaside towns seen from the other side of an unhappy morning to the mysteries of things floating in sunlit pools, from a gentlemen's club where discussion centres around a cursed ruby to the ghosts that follow us wherever we run, these are the places we fall to when our directions are gone and our steps lead us awry. This reprint of Simon Kurt Unsworth's first collection contains eighteen stories, including the World Fantasy Award-nominated 'The Church on the Island', and a new foreword with revised story notes. Welcome to the places you hope you'll never find...

Lost Places

Debut novelist Simon Kurt Unsworth sends the detective novel to Hell. In The Devil's Detective, a sea change is coming to Hell . . . and a man named Thomas Fool is caught in the middle. Thomas Fool is an Information Man, an investigator tasked with cataloging and filing reports on the endless stream of violence and brutality that flows through Hell. His job holds no reward or satisfaction, because Hell has rules but no justice. Each new crime is stamped "Do Not Investigate" and dutifully filed away in the depths of the Bureaucracy. But when an important political delegation arrives and a human is found murdered in a horrific manner—extravagant even by Hell's standards—everything changes. The murders escalate, and their severity points to the kind of killer not seen for many generations. Something is challenging the rules and order of Hell, so the Bureaucracy sends Fool to identify and track down the killer. . . . But how do you investigate murder in a place where death is common currency? Or when your main suspect pool is a legion of demons? With no memory of his past and only an irresistible need for justice, Fool will piece together clues and follow a trail that leads directly into the heart of a dark and chaotic conspiracy. A revolution is brewing in Hell . . . and nothing is what it seems. The Devil's Detective is an audacious, highly suspenseful thriller set against a nightmarish and wildly vivid world. Simon Kurt Unsworth has created a phantasmagoric thrill ride filled with stunning set pieces and characters that spring from our deepest nightmares. It will have readers of both thrillers and horror hanging on by their fingernails until the final word. In Hell, hope is your worst enemy.

Neil Jackson

James A. Moore

Mark Morris

Stephen Volk

Leslie S. Klinger

Charles Prepolec

Lawrence C. Connolly

J. R. Campbell

Hayden Trenholm

Barbara Roden

Leigh Blackmore

William Patrick Maynard

Robert Lauderdale

THE MONSTERS ARE DUE ON BAKER STREET! Between the shadowy realms of fear and the unforgiving glare of science lies a battleground of unspeakable horror. In vile alleyways with blood-slick cobblestones, impenetrable fog, and the wan glow of gaslight, lurk the inhuman denizens of nightmare. CAN REASON PREVAIL WHEN ELIMINATING THE IMPOSSIBLE IS NO LONGER AN OPTION? Faced with his worst fears, Sherlock Holmes has his faith in the science of observation and deduction shaken to the core in 13 all-new tales of terror from today's modern masters of the macabre!

Nightmare Tales of Sherlock Holmes

Gaslight Grotesque

Diseases of the Teeth, the fourth collection of short stories by World Fantasy Award nominated author Simon Kurt Unsworth. Pirates facing craft that are prepared to defend themselves, hills awash with rain and blood, phobias that walk and things abandoned and lost and angry. Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the places of fragility and corruption.

Diseases of the Teeth

Black Shuck Shadows presents a collectable series of micro-collections, intended as a sampler to introduce readers to the best in classic and modern horror.

The Martledge Variations

Benjamin Kurt Unsworth

A series of micro-collections featuring a selection of peculiar tales from the best in horror and speculative fiction. From Black Shuck Books, Simon Kurt Unsworth and Benjamin Kurt Unsworth comes Uneasy Beginnings, the twenty-first in the Black Shuck SHADOWS series.

Uneasy Beginnings

Nakata's ghosts won't stay dead... A chambermaid's seemingly innocent request is granted, an act of kindness that has dire consequences for a guest... An unearthly light in an abandoned bungalow resolves the mystery of a missing child... An invitation to a clifftop graveyard leads to a harrowing chase by things that remain unseen... In an abandoned hotel, work is underway to upgrade the building but something is stalking the residents... There is a hidden agenda to paranormal researcher Richard Nakata's investigations into these houses. A commission that witnesses cattle lowing in the cow-sheds of Stack's Farm long after they've been slaughtered, and a reckoning in the showhouse of 24 Glasshouse as he and his colleagues pay the price for creating their own ghost... Simon Kurt Unsworth reinvents the classic English ghost story with a portmanteau collection that takes the haunted house genre and makes it scream... quietly. The houses are quiet, it's the residents who are screaming.

Simon Kurt Unsworth

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