Simon Strantzas

"With Burnt Black Suns, Strantzas continues a trajectory into deeper darkness . . . and in some respects the odyssey has brought him closer to the primal core of the tradition and its rawest, purest essentials."-From Laird Barron's foreword "The stories of Simon Strantzas exemplify a style of horror that might be compared to the novellas of T. E. D. Klein."-Thomas Ligotti "Burnt Black Suns demonstrates Strantzas's remarkable narrative skills, his unerring, feverish sense of pace, and his absolute willingness to hurl himself into the darkest ranges of his excellent imagination."-Peter Straub "In Burnt Black Suns Strantzas casts far into time and space to find the alien, and what comes back wriggling inside his net is ghastly."-Adam Nevill In this fourth collection of stories, Simon Strantzas establishes himself as one of the most dynamic figures in contemporary weird fiction. The nine stories in this volume exhibit Strantzas's wide range in theme and subject matter, from the Lovecraftian "Thistle's Find" to the Robert W. Chambers homage "Beyond the Banks of the River Seine." But Strantzas's imagination, while drawing upon the best weird fiction of the past, ventures into new territory in such works as "On Ice," a grim novella of arctic horror; "One Last Bloom," a grisly account of a scientific experiment gone hideously awry; and the title story, an emotionally wrenching account of terror and loss in the baked Mexican desert. With this volume, Strantzas lays claim to be discussed in the company of Caitlín R. Kiernan and Laird Barron as one of the premier weird fictionists of our time.

A Collection of Weird Tales

Burnt Black Suns

Aickman's Heirs

Simon Strantzas, master of the subtle and the bizarre, returns with a dozen strange tales and eerie mysteries. From the shores of a remote oil-stained sound to deep within the familiar heart of suburbia, these are the songs of broken people who cannot find a way to fix themselves, who must search the dark for salvation. Like a siren, the nightingale sings them onward to face their end. But it sings for you too. A requiem in your honor. Because, for you, it is already too late.

Nightingale Songs

Nothing is Everything is a masterful new collection from Simon Strantzas. With elegant craftsmanship Strantzas delicately weaves a disquieting narrative through eerie and unexpected landscapes, charting an uncanny course through territories both bleak and buoyant, further cementing his reputation as one of the finest practitioners of strange tales.

Nothing Is Everything

Vastarien: A Literary Journal is a source of critical study and creative response to the corpus of Thomas Ligotti as well as associated authors and ideas. The journal includes nonfiction, literary horror fiction, poetry, artwork and non-classifiable hybrid pieces. All Color Issue - Cover art by Danielle Hark and 13 illustrations by Danielle Hark, Giuseppe Balestra, Donyae Coles, Rhiannon Rasmussen, and Michael Sawecki.

A Literary Journal Vol. 4, Issue 1

Vastarien

Jeffrey Thomas

Brian Evenson

Sunny Moraine

Lucy A. Snyder

Daniel Mills

Kaaron Warren

Michael Cisco

Richard Gavin

Livia Llewellyn

Scott Nicolay

Damien Angelica Walters

Nadia Bulkin

Gemma Files

Christopher Slatsky

Craig Laurance Gidney

Brooke Warra

Michael Wehunt

Kristi DeMeester

Michael Griffin

Betty Rocksteady

S. P. Miskowski

Lisa L. Hannett

Kurt Fawver

Anya Martin

LOOMING LOW presents 26 wondrous and unsettling tales that represent some of the best writing from the new golden age of strange literature. Featuring brand new stories from: Nadia Bulkin, Michael Cisco, Kristi DeMeester, Brian Evenson, Kurt Fawver, Gemma Files, Richard Gavin, Craig Laurance Gidney, Michael Griffin, Lisa L. Hannett, Livia Llewellyn, Anya Martin, Daniel Mills, S.P. Miskowski, Sunny Moraine, Scott Nicolay, Betty Rocksteady, Christopher Slatsky, Lucy A. Snyder, Simon Strantzas, Jeffrey Thomas, Damien Angelica Walters, Brooke Warra, Kaaron Warren, Michael Wehunt, and A.C. Wise.

Looming Low

Laird Barron

"[This collection] features all new tales in tribute to the creations of Robert W. Chambers"--P. [4] of cover.

A Season in Carcosa

Stories often find their origins in unexpected ways," Strantzas reveals. "I was inspired in this case by a photograph of a Zen garden I once used as my computer's desktop background. After staring at it day-in and day-out while I worked, I began to wonder about that dark circle of rocks and just what its true purpose might be. "There was something there in the coldness of the photograph, something that brought to mind the barren vistas of the Canadian Arctic, which ended up being the perfect setting for my tale of tested faith.

Mammoth Books presents Cold to the Touch

Beneath the Surface

There is a cold that cannot be imagined, a chill so deep it turns blood to ice, cracks flesh, tears meat from bone. It is the horror of our own reality, the terrifying curse of our own survival. Can you feel it creeping down your spine? Simon Strantzas, author of the mesmerizing Beneath the Surface and brilliant Nightingale Songs, brings his critically-acclaimed and long out-of-print collection back to find a whole new audience. In these thirteen strange and dark tales, you will find vacationers on the edge of forever, lonely pilgrims searching for answers, the dying reminded of all they have lost and all they have yet to lose. Strantzas's fiction is a haunting echo across the barren Arctic tundra, and once you hear its howl you will never forget the sound.

Cold to the Touch

Ramsey Campbell

Michael Marshall Smith

Nicholas Royle

Robert Shearman

Rosalie Parker

What Happens When You Wake Up in the Night - Michael Marshall Smith For Michael Marshall Smith, this was one of those stories that dropped straight into his head, but the problem was that he didn't want it: "It wasn't an idea I liked. It was clearly some part of my brain serving up a notion simply because it could, and because it knew it could frighten me with it. "It did frighten me, and so I did what I always do when that happens - which is write it down, in the hope it will go away." Respects - Ramsey Campbell "'Respects' was suggested by a local incident in which a car thief in his early teens killed himself while fleeing the police," recalls Campbell. "A lamp standard at the site of his demise is still decorated with flowers years after the incident, and the tributes on the obituaries page of one Wallasey newspaper were at least as grotesque as the ones I've invented - the romanticisation of a petty criminal. Cold to Touch - Simon Strantzas "Stories often find their origins in unexpected ways," Strantzas reveals. "I was inspired in this case by a photograph of a Zen garden I once used as my computer's desktop background. "There was something there in the coldness of the photograph, something that brought to mind the barren vistas of the Canadian Arctic, which ended up being the perfect setting for my tale of tested faith." The Reunion - Nicholas Royle "'The Reunion' is based on actual events," reveals the author, "but the story only really came into focus for me when I was invited to contribute to Ellen Datlow's Poe anthology. "Poe is brilliant. I was at a conference recently where a teacher revealed that she had read Poe's 'The Black Cat' to a lecture theatre full of schoolchildren. She switched off all the lights and used a torch to read by. A number of parents lodged complaints, which she took as a measure of the event's success. My tale is inspired by a different Poe story." Granny's Grinning - Robert Shearman "I love Christmas," says Shearman. "Always have done, and always a bit too passionately. The intensity with which I loved Christmas was delightful when I was eight years old, slightly unusual by the time I was eighteen, and increasingly disturbing thereafter. "I was the last one to grow up. It suddenly dawned on me one year, looking into the faces of my parents, and of my sister, that they were all older, and fatter, and less and less festive. And that they were trying so hard to keep me happy each Christmas, pretending they wanted all those presents I'd bought, all those sausage rolls and Quality Street chocs. That what I was trying to do, each December, was somehow reach back into the past and resurrect a time that was dead, that was long dead. "I still love Christmas. But now I recognize - as I still make them perform party games, as I still make them open their gifts and smile and say thank you - that they're zombies now. All of them, zombies. I'll never get my childhood back again, not really, or the innocence of that family get-together. So I'll make do with the dead, and pretend. "This is a story all about that." In The Garden - Rosalie Parker "'In the Garden' was written after I challenged myself to write a horror story about gardening," explains the author. "It emerged more quickly and easily than anything I've ever written. I think of it more as a prose poem than a story."

Six short stories by Michael Marshall Smith, Ramsey Campbell, Simon Strantzas, Nicholas Royle, Robert Shearman and Rosalie Parker

Mammoth Books presents The Unexpected

Thin places ... Where worlds crash against each other, rippling soft spots through reality. Ancient portals through which the darkest nightmares seep, spreading uncertainty and doubt. These places haunt us, and from them shadows edge ... A figure from the past, lying in a field ... The unlikely three, bound by their quest ... A high-rise apartment, where creatures crawl ... The drive in the storm, through blurring edges ... The brother, hiding from his sins ... 15 tales of numinous horror from some of the genre's most exciting voices ... A major new anthology, edited by Simon Strantzas.

Shadows Edge

Simon Strantzas

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