British Fantasy Award nominee 2014.
A giant ape... A heartless priest... A descent into depravity under London... An immortal hound... A baby thrown up by the sea... A Voodoo prayer... A legend made flesh in the eyes of a terrified child...
Monsters come in all shapes and sizes...
From human individuals with an evil streak or deeply aberrant nature, to those who are simply physically wrong. From beasts of the imagination to modern myths from the big screen...
In these 15 stories representing the very best recent fiction by the writer of TV's Ghostwatch and Afterlife and the acclaimed novella "Whitstable", you will meet all the things that made our childhoods terrifying - and bearable.
Others had Bobby Moore or Elvis. We had Christopher Lee and Quatermass. We had monsters in our hearts forever...
"A marvellous collection. Imaginative, intelligent writing from a master craftsman. Highly recommended." - Dark Musings
"Serves both as a time capsule of Volk's work over the years, but also his diversity in how he crafts his stories." - Gef Fox - Wag the Fox
"A very fine collection." - Simon Bestwick
"Where would horror be without Stephen Volk? Very much the poorer is the answer. The book collects 15 stories that range from the touching ('Swell Head') to the outrageous ('In the Colosseum'), from the witty ('Who Dies Best') to the unsettling ('After the Ape'). All demonstrate Volk to be as versatile and creative in the short story medium as he is as a screenwriter. Highly recommended for fans of contemporary, well-written, intelligent horror fiction." - John Llewellyn Probert
"A frankly remarkable collection of stories... Up there with the very best." - Matthew S. Dent - Mad Man With A Blog
"A captivating showcase of the author's skill in creating dark and disturbing material... Warmly recommended." - Mario Guslandi, British Fantasy Society website
Contents:
- After The Ape
- Who Dies Best
- Monster Boy
- Notre Dame
- A Paper Tissue
- Fear
- Swell Head
- In The Colosseum
- Hounded
- Air Baby
- Easter
- White Butterflies
- Pied-a-Terre
- The Hair *
- Appeal For Witnesses *
[* new, never-before-published stories]
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).
Links
Official website.
Stephen Volk. Wikipedia.
