A mesmerising SF thriller from a master of the genre. Hap Thompson is a REMtemp, working the night hours, having people's anxiety dreams for them. For the first time in his life, Hap's making big money - and that should have been enough... Hap Thompson has finally found something he can do better than anyone else. And it's legal. Almost. Hap's a REMtemp, working the night hours, having people's anxiety dreams for them. For the first time in his life, Hap's making big money - and that should have been enough. But then Hap is made an offer he just can't refuse: proxying memories instead of dreams. This is not almost illegal - this is illegal in bold with flashing lights. The last thing the cops want are criminals who can pass lie detector tests and Hap knows it, but he's relying on the promise that he won't have to carry anything that relates to a criminal offence. Big mistake. Before he knows what's happening, Hap is locked in a vicious nightmare that threatens to tear his mind and his life apart... And, as in all Michael Marshall Smith novels, that is just the start.

Welcome to a landscape of ancient evil . . . with stories by masters of horror Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, H. P. Lovecraft, M. R. James , Ramsey Campbell, Storm Constantine, Christopher Fowler, Alison Littlewood, Kim Newman, Reggie Oliver , Michael Marshall Smith, Karl Edward Wagner, and more! The darkness that endures beneath the earth . . . the disquiet that lingers in the woodland surrounding a forgotten path . . . those ancient traditions and practices that still cling to standing stone circles, earthworks, and abandoned buildings; elaborate rituals that invoke elder gods or nature deities; the restless spirits and legendary creatures that remain connected to a place or object, or exist in deep wells and lonely pools of water, waiting to ensnare the unwary traveler . . . These concepts have been the archetypes of horror fiction for decades, but in recent years they have been given a name: Folk Horror. This type of storytelling has existed for more than a century. Authors Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, H. P. Lovecraft, and M. R. James all published fiction that had it roots in the notion of the supernatural being linked to objects or places "left behind." All four writers are represented in this volume with powerful, and hopefully unfamiliar, examples of their work, along with newer exponents of the craft such as Ramsey Campbell, Storm Constantine, Christopher Fowler, Alison Littlewood, Kim Newman, Reggie Oliver, and many others. Illustrated with the atmospheric photography of Michael Marshall Smith, the stories in The Mammoth Book of Folk Horror tap into an aspect of folkloric tradition that has long been dormant, but never quite forgotten, while the depiction of these forces as being in some way "natural" in no way detracts from the sense of nameless dread and escalating horror that they inspire . . .

Michael Marshall Smith's surreal, groundbreaking, and award-winning debut which resonates with wild humour interlaced with dark recollections of an emotional minefield. May we introduce you to Stark. Oh, and by the way - good luck. Stark is the private investigator who goes to work when Something Happens to you. And when a Something happens it's no good chanting 'go away go away go away' and cowering in a corner, because a Something always comes from your darkest past and won't be beaten until you face it. And that's not easy in a city where reality is twisting and broken, a world in which friends can become enemies in a heartbeat - and where your most secret fear can become a soul-shredding reality. And the worst of it is, for this nightmare you don't even have to be asleep... Considered a modern classic, and consistently featured in lists of Books To Read Before Your Head Explodes, ONLY FORWARD is a novel you'll never forget.

The first ever collection of Michael Marshall Smith's award-winning short stories. The first piece of fiction Smith ever wrote -- a short story called The Man Who Drew Cats -- won the World Fantasy award. It's included here along with many others, some unpublished, which show the incredible versatility of one of the most exciting writers working in Britain today. The collection is stuffed with surreal, disturbing gems including: 'When God Lived in Kentish Town' Someone comes up to you when you're quietly eating your stir-fried rice in a great Chinese take away, and tells you: 'I've found God'. You try to ignore them, right? But what if they have, and what if He works in a drab old electrical store on Kentish Town Road and he's not getting many customers? 'Diet Hell' Some people will do anything to fit into their old jeans. 'Save As...' What if you could back up your life? Save it up to a certain point and return to it when things went horribly wrong? 'Everybody Goes' An idyllic childhood day from a long, hot summer. The kind you want to last for ever. All good things must come to an end, mustn't they?

Michael Marshall Smith's surreal, groundbreaking, and award-winning debut which resonates with wild humour interlaced with dark recollections of an emotional minefield. Stark lives in Colour, a neighbourhood whose inhabitants like to be co-ordinated with their surroundings - a neighbourhood where spangly purple trousers are admired by the walls of buildings as you pass them. Close by is Sound, where you mustn't make any, apart from one designated hour a day when you can scream your lungs raw. Then there's Red - get off at Fuck Station Zero if you want to see a tactical nuclear battle recreated as a sales demonstration. Stark has friends in Red, which is just as well because Something is about to happen. And when a Something happens it's no good chanting 'Duck and cover' while cowering in a corner, because a Something is always from the past, Stark's past, and it won't go away until you face it full on.

'Spares' – human clones, the ultimate health insurance. An eye for an eye – but some people are doing all the taking.

'Spares' – the story of Jack Randall: burnt – out, dropped out, and way overdrawn at the luck bank. But as caretaker on a Spares farm, he still has a choice, and it might make a difference…if he can run fast enough.

'Spares' – a breathless race through strange, disturbing territories in a world all too close on our own.

'Spares' it’s fiction. But only just…

“ Comic, cruel, twisted and surreal.”
EMPIRE

“Some books stretch the imagination.This one mugs it.”
DAVID BADDIEL

“Tense, exciting and at times very, very funny…He’s worth every penny.”
TIME OUT

“Witty, hard – edged and coruscatingly imaginative…Compellingly off – kilter.”
NEW SCIENTIST

“'Spares' blurs imaginative surrealism and hard – bitten horror with a storytelling skill that can only be described as pure genius.”
'VENUE'

“A compulsively readable melding of hardboiled narrative and hardware invention.”
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

An unpredictable, poignant, and captivating tale for readers of all ages, by the critically acclaimed author of Only Forward. There are a million stories in the world. Most are perfectly ordinary. This one... isn't. Hannah Green actually thinks her story is more mundane than most. But she's about to discover that the shadows in her life have been hiding a world where nothing is as it seems: that there's an ancient and secret machine that converts evil deeds into energy, that some mushrooms can talk - and that her grandfather has been friends with the Devil for over a hundred and fifty years, and now they need her help.

Jeffrey Thomas' collection Punktown explored the streets and back alleys of a futuristic and nightmarish urbanscape in a series of unconnected short stories. In Punktown: Third Eye, Thomas has teleported authors Simon Logan, Jonathan Lyons, Charlee Jacob, Paul G. Tremblay, Michael McCarty, Mark McLaughlin, Garrett Peck, Thomas Andrew Hughes, and Scott Thomas into the city to pen their own tales of its citizens, aliens, mutations, and sentient machines. These talented authors bring a new perspective, a personal vision, a third eye view to the phantasmetropolis that is Punktown.

For young Mark, the world has turned as bleak and gray as the Brighton winter. Separated from his real father and home in London, he's come to live with his mother and her new husband in an old house near the sea. He spends his days alone, trying to master the skateboard, while other boys his age are in school. He hates the unwanted stepfather who barged into Mark's life to rob him of joy. Worst of all, his once-vibrant mother has grown listless and weary, no longer interested in anything beyond her sitting room.

But on a damp and chilly evening, an accident carries Mark into the basement flat of the old woman who lives at the bottom of his stepfather's house. She offers tea, cakes, and sympathy . . . and the key to a secret, bygone world. Mark becomes caught up in the frenetic bustle of the human machinery that once ran a home, and drawn ever deeper into a lost realm of spirits and memory. Here below the suffocating truths, beneath the pain and unhappiness, he finds an escape, and quite possibly a way to change everything.

A richly evocative, poignantly beautiful modern-day ghost story, The Servants marks the triumphant return of Michael Marshall Smith--the first novel in a decade from the multiple award-winning author of Spares.

Only a handful of authors write with such startling originality that the uniqueness of their vision has become synonymous with their name. In Spares and One of Us, Michael Marshall Smith has earned that distinction. In this unsettling, suspenseful, and wildly imaginative novel he's written a tale that from page one hurtles us....

Only Forward

Call him Stark.  If you have to.  If you're lucky, you won't call him at all. Because if you do, it means you've got trouble. Big trouble.  And the problem is that before Stark is done fixing something, a whole lot of other things usually get broken.  Like laws and lives--and anyone who gets in the way.   It's that attitude that's earned him his latest assignment: finding a missing VIP named Fell Alkland.  The authorities believe Alkland has been kidnapped.  Stark doesn't. He hasn't stayed alive this long without learning the basics of survival in a world hurtling straight to hell: Things are always more complicated than they seem.  And when a job seems too easy, that's when something really ugly is about to happen. For Fell Alkland is about to become Stark's worst nightmare, a nightmare where anything can happen at any time--where friends can become enemies in a heartbeat and your most secret fear a soul-screaming reality. And the worst of it is that for this nightmare you don't even have to be asleep.