Use Once, Then Destroy

A serial killer is removing victims' hands in a Venice shackled by winter. A woman at the end of her tether finds a terrible release on holiday in the fens of East Anglia. A man is haunted by graffiti, and finds that his road to discovering the perpetrator leads to death, and worse. A husband trying to comfort his terminally ill wife seeks help in a forbidden zone from his childhood, where blood is the price of perfection.

In this spellbinding collection of his best stories from the last ten years, award-winning writer Conrad Williams offers the kind of horrors that move subtly into you, like pain, or love, or regret. They are stories that explore the scarred outposts of desperation and desire, sickness and death, sex and decay. Within these pages you will also find the acclaimed novella Nearly People (nominated for awards by the International Horror Guild and the British Fantasy Society), in which a woman's search for food in a nightmarish city brings her attention from an enigmatic man known as The Dancer, and a host of terrible epiphanies. - Observes Publishers Weekly (starred review).

The book includes three stories never before seen: Nest of Salt, The Night Before, and The Owl. The contents are: The Machine Supple Bodies, The Light that Passes Through You, Nest of Salt, City in Aspic, Other Skins, The Windmill Wire, The Burn, The Owl, The Night Before, Edge, MacCreadle's Bike, Known, The Suicide Pit, Excuse the Unusual Approach, and Nearly People.