We are busy and constantly bombarded. Notifications, pings, alerts: we carry in our pockets devices that are designed to capture and keep our attention. We are never fully present, always thinking ahead to the next thing, distracted by an email, playing worries over in our minds. But what effect is this having on our lives, relationships and, most importantly, our spiritual health? We need rest – the rest that only Christ can give. But this book is not simply meant to get you off your phone, make more time to stop, or help you simplify and digitally detox. Instead, you are invited into the greatest life imaginable, where we have the openness to be interrupted by God and used in a way that will bring Him glory. At the end of each chapter, Thomas encourages us to take time to ponder and pray – or Selah – and gives us guiding questions to consider. A challenging read for anyone who feels overwhelmed by all that calls on their attention and for those who long for peace.

In this third short story collection, following up on "Midnight Call" (2008) and "Tempting Providence" (2010), Jonathan Thomas continues to demonstrate the skill and emotive power that have made him a dynamic new voice in contemporary weird fiction. This volume opens with a quartet of tales elaborating upon Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, including "Mobymart After Midnight" (a delightful skewering of Walmart culture) and "King of Cat Swamp," an ingenious riff on "The Call of Cthulhu." Other stories treat a variety of weird themes: "Way Up When," about a man who has remarkable precognitive powers; "The Comeuppance Hour," in which the makers of a skeptical TV show about occult phenomena find more than they bargain for; and "A Retouch in Camonica," about strange happenings in an Italian archaeological site. The volume concludes with a "Swedish-American Triptych," in which various protagonists encounter the bizarre in a far Baltic land. Each tale is crafted meticulously and enlivened by a wit and mordant satire that renders them unique in recent weird writing.
"Jonathan Thomas pushes us toward . . . fresh hells, as in his pages we recognize the still startling twenty-first-century disjunction between our own fragmentary human skull and our own residual ape-like jaw."-"From Barton L. St. Armand's Foreword"
"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"

Will Rollins, a greenhorn--cheechako--(chee-chock-oh) is miserable in his new Alaska life. In addition to the bully after him, he can't seem to make any friends in school and doesn't know a thing about dogsleds, riverboats, hunting, or surviving at 40 degrees below zero. Even though he doesn't feel very brave, Will darts out alone onto rampaging river ice to rescue a stranded dog. His bravery wins him a valuable, trained sled dog, Blackie, and a new human friend as well, an Alaskan Indian boy named Elias. It's Elias who challenges and inspires the cheechako to become a rugged outdoorsman and a real Alaskan. Will starts out by feeding, harnessing and then driving a sled dog team. He learns to throw a hatchet-and hit what he aims at He learns to snowshoe and stay alive in the cold, to challenge his fears and to push on when everything he wants to do is quit. Best of all, he learns to be a good friend. But when a fierce, Siberian blizzard rampages across central Alaska, stranding Will's family, nearly burying their log cabin in wind-blown snow drifts, it will be up to Will and Blackie to try to make it out alive. With Elias injured and Will's family in danger of freezing, can a cheechako save them? Can he save himself?

Jonathan Thomas follows up the critical and popular success of his collection from 2008, Midnight Call and Other Stories, with this new and substantial volume of weird tales long and short. The title story is a marvelous evocation of Providence yesterday and today, with much for the ghost of H. P. Lovecraft to dislike in the way his city has evolved. Providence is the setting for several other tales-tales that introduce us to such anomalies as a Lord of the Animals who seems to have an inexplicable sympathy with our four-footed friends, and a man whose quest for an extremely rare psychedelic album leads to something much stranger . . . In these twelve stories, Thomas fulfills the promise of his earlier work and shows that he has become one of the leading figures in contemporary supernatural horror. "Myth and archetype, as well as the influence of masters of the Gothic tale, seep in from the groundwater in Jonathan Thomas's world, but the landscape is wholly his own. The stories amuse, challenge, and unsettle." - From Sherry Austin's Foreword "I found 'Tempting Providence'] by Jonathan Thomas unexpectedly charming (if it's permitted to describe a horror tale as charming), not least in its evocation of old Providence . . . It certainly brought back memories of my own wanderings around the city in the '60s, the same 'wistful daydreams' his hero engages in, the sense that, if only HPL hadn't died so young, he might still be renting rooms in one of the neighborhood houses and enjoying a sundae or an evening stroll." - T. E. D. Klein

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.