Cover art by Jill Bauman. Introduction by Richard Christian Matheson.
Chet Williamson's first story collection, Figures in Rain, won
the International Horror Guild Award and was shortlisted for the World
Fantasy Award. But while that collection was primarily made up of ghost
stories, The Night Listener and Others is an assemblage of
tales that cover all aspects of the fantastic and horrific by a writer
whose work critics have favorably compared to such disparate writers as
Camus, Cheever and King, and who Supernatural Literature of the World hailed as "the rare writer whose fiction reflects an intimate
familiarity with the supernatural literary tradition, and who extends it with works that occasionally subvert its principles."
In these pages you'll meet a number of "night listeners," including:
Eustace P. Saunders, a New York illustrator whose desire to see the
"real" Wild West he has depicted plunges him into unimaginable horror...
Bernie Worster and Jeaves, whose master/servant relationship takes the
strangest of turns, due to a razor dedicated to decapitation...
Lattimore, whose guilt and sorrow over lost lives lead him into a
mythical Japanese underworld that threatens his sanity and reality
itself...
Andy and Kyle, teenagers who are waiting in a hospice for Kylie to die,
but who learn that going "into the light" might be the worst thing you
could do...
Tim Corcoran, an Irish-American musician who learns that in certain
places old hatreds never die, but linger like smoke to claim new victims...
As R. C. Matheson states in his introduction, "Chet Williamson
transcends the taxidermy that passes for much of contemporary writing,
stirring admiration in peers, famished demand in readers and cloudbursts of devout ink from critics. For those privileged few lucky enough to be new to the miraculous Chet Williamson, you are about to enter worlds of glorious and sinister wonder. I envy you."
