Midnight Call and Other Stories
An artist is summoned to paint the portrait of sinister Mr. Finster in a decaying mansion...
A suburban couple is vexed by the inveterate lawn-mowing of a ghost...
In ice-bound Vermont, one farmer’s crop is suspiciously bountiful...
A miniature nymph is found swimming in an office water cooler...
These are the bizarre conceptions of Jonathan Thomas, a powerful new writer of weird, horrific, and supernatural fiction who introduces himself to the reading public with this rich and varied short story collection. Thomas is, however, a practiced hand at terror-weaving, and his work spans the spectrum from comic fantasy to psychological suspense to science fiction. Unifying all his tales is a prose style of singular fluency and grace, enlivened by keen observation and mordant satire.
“Jonathan Thomas has an enviably impressive range – from the gentle to the gruesome, from science fiction through fantasy to the spectral and horrific – but his wit is reliable, and so is the clarity of his eye, and the precision of his prose. He’s an asset to all his fields.” – Ramsey Campbell.
“Thomas’s dynamism in plot-weaving and his pungently satirical prose testify to a prodigious fund of creativity and a fine eye for observing the little absurdities of life in the twenty-first century.” – From S. T. Joshi’s Foreword.
Contents:
- Foreword S. T. Joshi
- Eben's Portrait
- The Weird Old Hole
- The Returns of Johnny Mapleseed
- Fingers of Stone
- The May Day Melée, Explained (Beltane)
- Doctor Farrell's Goddesses (Lughnasad)
- Sonic Days Before Shadow Damsel (Samhain)
- In the Wake of Bridget (Imbolc)
- Midnight Call (Beltane Again)
- Damn the Wheelwright
- The Road to Schwärmerei
- McEveety Among the Leisure Elect
- The Judgment Birds
- An Office Nymph
- Another Psychic on Comp
- Towbear to Hell
- The Christmas Clones
- Awakening of No Return
- A Vampire Heart
- Subway of the Dead
- Graveside Friday Night
- Dappled Ass
- An Alternate History of Annette
- Tendrils in Formaldehyde
- Ariadne's Hair