Dark Corners
A rich blend of dark fiction:
A strapped-for-cash undertaker who is given an unspeakable task to perform...
Two sisters who leave a saucer of milk out for something that isn't human - and may not be real.
A Hollywood agent who has a problem with rats: for once, the four-legged kind.
A group of ragamuffin children who find a body during the London Blitz: and decide to keep it.
A city businessman's memory of his father, and the day his life changed forever...
BAFTA-winning writer Stephen Volk outraged the critics with his first screenplay, Ken Russell's Gothic, and shocked an unsuspecting nation with his notorious BBC TV Halloween hoax Ghostwatch. His new, gripping supernatural drama series Afterlife was called "Terrific television" (The Guardian) and "Unmissable" (Mail on Sunday).
This first collection of his short fiction, like his best work for the screen, combines scenes of intense physical and psychological horror, with moments aching sadness and poignancy. Not without occasional stabs of black humour. Whether exploring traditional ghost stories reminiscent of the past, disturbing crimes of the present, or the wild imaginings of a far flung future, Volk delights in the dark corners of haunted houses and haunted people alike.
"Four of the sixteen stories appear for the first time... and they are all good." - Ellen Datlow, Year's Best Fantasy and Horror
"An excellent collection." - Video Vault
"The dark corners of Stephen Volk's short stories contain all that is heart-rending, grotesque and rage-inducing in the human condition. But he illuminates these enigmatic and unsettling pieces with a polished, subversive and delirious wit. This is a cracking collection." - Andy Hedgecock (Associate Editor, Interzone)
Contents:
- Introduction by Tim Lebbon
- 31/10
- The Best in the Business
- The Latin Master
- Three Fingers, One Thumb
- The Anamorph of Hans Baldung Grien
- Blitzenstein
- The Chapel of unrest
- The Fall Children
- A Pair of Pince-Nez
- Indicator
- Sleepless Nights
- Curious Green Colours Sleep Furiously
- Time Capsule
- The Good Unknown
- No Harm Done
- Little H
- Afterword by Stephen Volk
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Stephen Volk
Stephen Volk is a British screenwriter, whose first produced work was Ken Russell's film Gothic in 1986.
His most famous work is Ghostwatch, a controversial drama shown on BBC One on Halloween 1992. It is commonly misrepresented as a hoax documentary, but this was never the intention. It was originally planned as a six-part series for the BBC. However, the producer of the six-part series, Ruth Baumgarten, didn't believe it had commercial viability. Stephen reworked the script so that everything would be set "Like episode six" and repitched it as a 90 minute live broadcast drama on behalf of BBC's Screen One drama segment. Ruth accepted the new format. Volk's work often involves the supernatural and the paranormal, such as with the ITV1 thriller series Afterlife (2005–06).
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