Together these stories form The Weird, and its practitioners include some of the greatest names in twentieth and twenty-first century literature.Exotic and esoteric, The Weird plunges you into dark domains and brings you face to face with surreal monstrosities. You won't find any elves or wizards here... but you will find the biggest, boldest, and downright most peculiar stories from the last hundred years bound together in the biggest Weird collection ever assembled. The Weird features 110 stories by an all-star cast, from literary legends to international bestsellers to Booker Prize winners: including William Gibson, George R. R. Martin, Stephen King, Angela Carter, Kelly Link, Franz Kafka, China Miéville, Clive Barker, Haruki Murakami, M. R. James, Neil Gaiman, Mervyn Peake, and Michael Chabon.

    P. Lovecraft, Peter Straub, and Thomas Ligotti. His stories have garnered critical acclaim and have been reprinted in numerous year’s best anthologies and nominated for multiple awards, including the Crawford, International Horror Guild, Shirley Jackson, Theodore Sturgeon, and World Fantasy awards. His debut collection, The Imago Sequence and Other Stories, was the inaugural winner of the Shirley Jackson Award.He returns with his second collection, Occultation. Pitting ordinary men and women against a carnivorous, chaotic cosmos, Occultation’s nine tales of terror (two published here for the first time) were nominated for just as many Shirley Jackson awards, winning for the novella “Mysterium Tremendum” and the collection as a whole. Occultation brings more of the spine-chillingly sublime cosmic horror Laird Barron’s fans have come to expect. Skyhorse Publishing, under our Night Shade and Talos imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of titles for readers interested in science fiction (space opera, time travel, hard SF, alien invasion, near-future dystopia), fantasy (grimdark, sword and sorcery, contemporary urban fantasy, steampunk, alternative history), and horror (zombies, vampires, and the occult and supernatural), and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller, a national bestseller, or a Hugo or Nebula award-winner, we are committed to publishing quality books from a diverse group of authors.

    The characters in these stories live as interlopers in a world shaped by mysterious disappearances and unfathomable discrepancies between the real and imagined. Brian Evenson, master of literary horror, presents his most far-ranging collection to date, exploring how humans can persist in an increasingly unreal world. Haunting, gripping, and psychologically fierce, these tales illuminate a dark and unsettling side of humanity.Praised by Peter Straub for going "furthest out on the sheerest, least sheltered narrative precipice," Brian Evenson is the author of ten books of fiction. He has been a finalist for the Edgar Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the World Fantasy Award, and the winner of the International Horror Guild Award, and the American Library Association's award for Best Horror Novel. Fugue State was named one of Time Out New York's Best Books of 2009. The recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and three O. Henry Prizes, including one for the title story in "Windeye," Evenson lives in Providence, Rhode Island, where he directs Brown University's Literary Arts Department.

    Includes an active table of contents for easy navigationNovelsJimboThe Human ChordThe CentaurThe Extra DayShort StoriesThe Insanity of JonesThe Man Who Found OutThe Glamour of the SnowSandMay Day EveThe DamnedThe Empty HouseA Haunted IslandA Case of EavesdroppingKeeping His PromiseWith Intent to StealThe Wood of the DeadSmith: An Episode in A Lodging-HouseA Suspicious GiftThe Strange Adventures of A Private Secretary in New YorkSkeleton Lake: An Episode in CampThe Garden of SurvivalThe ListenerThe Man Whom the Trees LovedThe OliveThe WendigoThe WillowsA Psychical InvasionAncient SorceriesThe Nemesis of FireSecret WorshipThe Camp of the DogA Victim of Higher Space

    Cisco's prose, by turns phantasmagorical and exhilarating (reminiscent one moment of Robbe-Grillet, the next of Artaud, with a tinge of Thomas Ligotti, the imaginative virtuosity of Gene Wolfe or M. John Harrison), is like a stark sequence of strong iron bars, brimming with dark ambiance. Combining unmatched craft with masterful storytelling, this is literate fantasy unlike any other, intricate as the most elaborate dream, in which the narrator himself is the most ambiguous thing of all.

    Contents: 'Introduction' by Mark Valentine, 'The Effigies', 'After the Darkness', 'The Paravine Cries', 'Pale Roses', 'In Violet Veils', 'The Lost Moon', 'Café Lucifer', 'The Craft of Arioch', 'The Secret Stars', 'The Hesperian Dragon', 'The Lighting of the Vial', 'The Nephoseum', 'Sea Citadels', 'The Prince of Barlocco', 'The Black Eros', 'Mad Lutanist', 'The Mist on the Mere', 'The White Solander', 'The Last Archipelago', 'The Rite of Trebizond', 'The Serpent, Unfallen', 'The Temple of Time', 'The Descent of the Fire'.Following in the footsteps of M.P. Shiel's exotic savant Prince Zaleski and Arthur Machen's Mr Dyson, Mark Valentine and John Howard's The Connoisseur - aesthetical detective extraordinaire - unravels a cornucopia of arcane mysteries in these twenty-three tantalising tales. Collecting together all the adventures in previous Tartarus volumes In Violet Veils and Masques and Citadels, along with four further tales published elsewhere, this volume provides the lover of esoteric mystery and adventure fiction with the complete Connoisseur casebook.Venturing from his fire-lit study in an English cathedral city, The Connoisseur encounters, among other phenomena, strange masquerades in country houses; a Scottish island whose Prince may not be named; a poignant relic from the Black Sea region, sought after by a ruthless order; a secret account of the first crossing of an Arctic land and an Art Deco cinema which may retain resonances of its mysterious former occupants. From your own fireside, follow The Connoisseur into the delicate shading between this world and other realms of wonder, tragedy and trepidation.

    Exotic beasts and improbable travelers roam restlessly through these darkly diverting and finely honed tales.In “The Situation,” a beleaguered office worker creates a child-swallowing manta-ray to be used for educational purposes (once described as Dilbert meets Gormenghast). In “Three Days in a Border Town,” a sharpshooter seeks the truth about her husband in an elusive floating city beyond a far-future horizon; “Errata” follows an oddly familiar writer who has marshaled a penguin, a shaman, and two pearl-handled pistols with which to plot the end of the world. Also included are two stories original to this collection, including “The Quickening,” in which a lonely child is torn between familial obligation and loyalty to a maligned talking rabbit.Chimerical and hypnotic, VanderMeer leads readers through the postmodern into a new literature of the imagination.

    The German theologian Rudolf Otto located the origin of human religiosity in an ancient experience of "daemonic dread." American horror writer H.P. Lovecraft asserted that weird supernatural horror fiction arose from a fundamental human psychological pattern that is "coeval with the religious feeling and closely related to many aspects of it." The American psychologist William James wrote in his classic study The Varieties of Religious Experience that the "real core of the religious problem" lies in an overwhelming experience of cosmic horror born out of abject despair at life's incontrovertible hideousness. In Dark Awakenings, author and scholar Matt Cardin explores this ancient intersection between religion and horror in seven stories and three academic papers that pose a series of disturbing questions: What if the spiritual awakening coveted by so many religious seekers is in fact the ultimate doom? What if the object of religious longing might prove to be the very heart of horror? Could salvation, liberation, enlightenment then be achieved only by identifying with that apotheosis of metaphysical loathing? This volume collects nearly all of Cardin's uncollected fiction, including his 2004 novella "The God of Foulness." It contains extensive revisions and expansions of his popular stories "Teeth" and "The Devil and One Lump," and features one previously unpublished story and two unpublished papers, the first exploring a possible spiritual use of George Romero's Living Dead films and the second offering a horrific reading of the biblical Book of Isaiah. At over 300 pages and nearly 120,000 words, it offers a substantial exploration of the religious implications of horror and the horrific implications of religion. "In Dark Awakenings, Cardin proves himself to be an adept in the fullest sense of the word. To both the morbid and the cosmically minded, who may be one and the same, he delivers his visions and nightmares in a master's prose. In the tradition of Poe and Lovecraft, Cardin's accomplishments as a writer are paralleled by his expertise as a literary critic and theorist, as readers can witness in this volume. His analyses of supernatural horror and its practitioners are also dark awakenings in the dual manner of his stories, with one eye on the black abyss and the other on an enlightened transcendence without denomination. Again, this quality of Cardin's work can be seen in the writings of Poe and Lovecraft, two other felicitous freaks who merged the antagonistisms of their imagination into a chimera as awful as it is awe-striking." -Thomas Ligotti, author of Teatro Grottesco and The Nightmare Factory. "Matt Cardin channels visions of dark, maniacal intensity. His otherworldly divinations will have you lying awake in the dark, counting stars in that most pitiless gulf that yawns above us all. A master of terror and dread, he ranks among the foremost authors of contemporary American horror." -Laird Barron, author of The Imago Sequence & Other Stories. "Dark Awakenings offers the dream imagery of the best weird fiction but goes even further beyond the ordinary thanks to Matt Cardin's fierce intellect. Haunting stories and insightful essays. This is mandatory reading to prepare for the doom to come." -Nick Mamatas, author of Move Under Ground.

    There he begins to remember the strange world of childhood and comes to realise that the adult world is equally as strange. At the centre of everyday life he discovers a nightmarish game of power and manipulation and is forced to choose sides. He is about to receive the ultimate object lesson in human cruelty. From the author of Morbid Tales, Shrike, and All God's Angels, Beware , "Remember You're a One-Ball " is - in its recognition of the suffering of outcasts, of the ugly and the forgotten - a work of great compassion.

    Black-Winged Angels is a collection of 10 incredible contemporary retellings of fairy tales, featuring an introduction by multiple award-winning author Juliet Marillier, and illustrations by multiple World Fantasy Award nominee Kathleen Jennings.

    This book presents a selection of Saeki's previously unseen works.

    Edition limited to strictly 150 copies.Whether it be recalling the fading entertainments of the British seaside and the infant graves of a forgotten Welsh lead-mining town, or conjuring a troupe of fantastical travelling players that divert a mediocre Soviet official, the tales gathered in An Emporium of Automata embrace collectors and obsessives whose passions corrode even the narratives that enact them. History and storytelling collide in these peculiar literary manifestations, often interrupted by a vengeful narrator intent on disturbing both story and reader.An Emporium of Automata draws together stories spanning a decade of writing. From the incredible clockwork mechanisms of ‘Erbach’s Emporium of Automata’ to the disturbing images on a grainy reel of film in ‘Dr Dapertutto’s Saturnalia’, section I: Phantasmagorical Instruments unearths the magical transformations of matter and the desperation of memory. The determinations of the book enthusiast are revealed in ‘Of Those Who Follow Emile Bilonche’. The cunning rituals of an ancient tradition offer a destitute woman otherworldly hope in ‘They Dwell in Ystumtuen’. And ‘The Butcher’s Daughter’ continues the family business in a fashion most unwelcome to the new tenants of her old home. The pomposity of a fading traditionalist is mirrored in the fate of a left-wing radical in ‘Room 89’. ‘The Condition’ finds the destiny of culture to be somewhat other than one might expect.The five stories collected in section II: Genealogical Devices circle around a curiously ordinary femme fatale, Roberta Reid, whose quiet mystery captivates those who encounter her. But is her past as certain as it appears? Under the watchful gaze of a powerful, and decadent, landowner these characters reveal a local conspiracy that undermines the very tales themselves.Section III: Ex Nihilo begins with two tales from beyond, erupting from the authors’ lives they were written against. The stories continue bookish themes as an academic encounters a living archive hungry for knowledge in ‘Bibliophobia’. ‘1 = 0’ find the perpetual battle between theology and philosophy enacted between father and son, with unfortunate consequences. An ageing collector has a few surprises for his dubious visitor in ‘Memento Mori’. ‘The Comrade’ gives a bereaved and broken man a new direction in life following the teachings of his new companions. We end with a tortured fable of power and madness in ‘The Tyrant’.So, roll up! Roll up! And witness this phantasmagoria of metempsychosis. Stick a penny in the slot and marvel as these mechanical tableaux come to life; be careful though that their covetous gaze does not finally come to rest upon you, for the hollow eyes of toys and dolls are nothing less than visions of our own decrepit souls.D.P.Watt is a writer living in the bowels of England. He balances his time between lecturing in drama and devising new ‘creative recipes’, ‘illegal’ and ‘heretical’ methods to resurrect a world of awful literary wonder. His first fiction collection, Pieces for Puppets and Other Cadavers (InkerMen Press) was published in 2006.Contents:I: Phantasmagorical InstrumentsErbach’s Emporium of AutomataOf Those Who Follow Emile BiloncheThey Dwell in YstumtuenThe Butcher’s DaughterRoom 89The ConditionDr Dapertutto’s SaturnaliaII: Genealogical DevicesTelling TalesMaking HistoryStrategiesZarathustra’s Drive InnThe ArchitectIII: Ex NihiloArchaic Artificial SunsPulvis Lunaris, or, The Coagulation of WoodBibliophobia1=0Memento MoriThe ComradeThe TyrantFirst Editions: An AfterwordsAcknowledgements

    It includes six interior illustrations from artist Wayne Miller.All new tales of William Hope Hodgson's Carnacki.Meet an Edwardian occult detective who goes where no other gentleman will dare. Nine stories and a novella that take Carnacki deep into neolithic barrows, into the crypts of ancient cathedrals and see him fighting the elemental powers of darkness on his own terms.The Blooded Iklwa: A malevolent spirit is intent on blood. Can Carnacki identify the source of the attacks and stop the Zulu blade from its nightly haunting? Or will his client be forced to suffer a death of a thousand cuts?The Larkhill Barrow: A pounding terror has been called up out of Salisbury Plain; an ancient darkness that will haunt your dreams.The Sisters of Mercy: Battle hardened old soldiers lie sick abed in fear for their souls. Only someone with intimate knowledge of the powers of darkness can help them.The Hellfire Mirror: The rituals of an infamous club have left their mark on a mirror, leading Carnacki into a fight to stop his own home from being overrun with the forces of darkness.The Beast of Glamys: Danger to the daughter of a Scottish Lord leads Carnacki to a remote castle, and the uncovering of the secret behind a legend that has persisted for centuries.The Tomb of Pygea: Something serpentine whispers in the dark under Admiralty Arch, and only Carnacki has the skills, and the nerve, to descend, and to listen.The Lusitania: A cruise ship is berthed in Liverpool, deserted by passengers and crew, stuck in port until Carnacki can remove the cause of their terror; apparitions of disaster and shipwreckThe Haunted Oak: Ghosts of the recent dead walk beneath its spreading boughs and the Church needs Carnacki's expertise. But some things are best left to take their course -- natural, or supernatural.The Shoreditch Worm: When one of the churches of London changes its chimes, something old starts to wake. Can Carnacki stop it before it is too late?The Dark Island: Carnacki uncovers a gateway to a dark realm of magic and myth, where the far future of our planet can be touched and seen, if a man has the stomach for it.Meet Carnacki: Ghosthunter.

    

    Pugmire, a highly regarded author of Lovecraftian fiction. Loaded with color and black and white illustrations, including many in color by famed symbolist Jean Delville, it also includes a new introduction by weird fiction scholar S. T. Joshi. Presented in a narrow format and beautifully designed, the book measures 6.5 x 11 inches. Each book is signed by Pugmire and Joshi.

    His stories are powerfully charged explorations of psychical violence, their effects heightened by detailed character studies graced with a powerful poetic elegance. In simple terms Oliver Onions goes for the cerebral rather than the jugular. However, make no mistake, his ghost stories achieve the desired effect. They draw you in, enmeshing you in their unnerving and disturbing narratives.This collection contains such masterpieces as The Rosewood Door, The Ascending Dream, The Painted Face and The Beckoning Fair One, a story which both Algernon Blackwood and H. P. Lovecraft regarded as one of the most effective and subtle ghost stories in all literature. Long out of print, these classic tales are a treasure trove of nightmarish gems.

    . . full of menace, thrills, and growing terror (Mario Guslandi, The Short Review). TRAGIC LIFE STORIES demonstrates all these qualities, bringing the classic ghost-story up-to-date in a way that is as unsettling as it is terrifying. In these nine stories, nothing is what it seems, no one is safe, and there is absolutely nowhere to hide.Steve Duffy lives in North Wales. Since the mid-1990s his stories have been published in numerous magazines and anthologies in Europe and North America. Several of them have appeared in Ellen Datlow's annual Year's Best Fantasy and Horror anthologies, and in that series' successor title Best Horror of the Year. Ash-Tree Press has published two previous collections of Steve's work, both solo (The Night Comes On) and in collaboration with Ian Rodwell (The Five Quarters). His next collection, The Moment of Panic, is scheduled to appear in 2011, and will include his International Horror Guild award-winning short story from 2000, 'The Rag-and-Bone Men'.CONTENTS: Introduction by Barbara Roden; Tragic Life Stories; Tantara; Certain Death for a Known Person; The Fabric of Things; Nightmare Farm; Someone Across the Way; Only Passing Through Here; Numbers; The First Time; Story Notes.

    Includes the Aurealis Award-winning stories "The Grinding House", "Fresh Young Widow" and "A Positive".

    Zombies, robots, and dragons, oh my! A collection of strange, surreal, and magical short fiction from Cate Gardner.

    . . " -Henry JamesThis first collection of tales by Rosalie Parker contains eight stories that explore the uncanny in the modern world. As Glen Cavaliero observes in his introduction, "like all good stories of the preternatural, these in The Old Knowledge have a subversive effect." In them, "the world of logical, predictable reality is seen to be at risk from rejected modes of knowledge which can thwart the materialist and victimise those innocents who stumble into another order of reality."In "The Rain", Geraldine heads to the North for a holiday she hopes will provide a welcome break from her busy city life, only to suffer a complicated and enigmatic distortion of her usual world-view. The narrator of "In the Garden" strays into new pastures while explaining her theory of gardening. In "Chanctonbury Ring", the well-meaning protagonist, helping a lady in distress, gets rather more than he bargained for. The temporary schoolteacher in "The Supply-Teacher" elicits altruism from her class, whilst, in "The Old Knowledge", a group of archaeologists called in to excavate a prehistoric round barrow have to negotiate local interventions. In "The Cook's Story" a Gothic country house provides the setting for a modern tale of mystery.Do not expect blood-and-guts, wraiths or revenants: these stories hold a different kind of terror. "Their unostentatious magic is of an insidious kind; and like the protagonist of the title story, is liable to exert itself in disconcerting ways."ContentsIntroduction by Glen CavalieroThe RainSpirit SolutionsIn the GardenChanctonbury RingThe Supply TeacherThe Old KnowledgeThe Cook's StoryThe PictureAcknowledgementsRosalie Parker was born and grew up on a farm in Buckinghamshire, but has lived subsequently in Stockholm, Oxford, Dorset, Somerset, Sheffield and Sussex. She took degrees in English Literature and History, and Archaeology, working first as an archaeologist before returning to her first love of books. Rosalie is co-proprietor and editor of the independent publishing house, Tartarus Press, and lives in the Yorkshire Dales with her partner, the writer and publisher Ray Russell, their son and two cats. Visit her website at: www.tartaruspress.com/rmp1.htm

    "Holiday," a story of all holidays for a dead girl and the man who sees her, is followed by New Year’s Day and "Memoir of a Deer Woman," a woman’s transformation into a deer leaves her husband desperate for her words. Valentine’s Day is celebrated with "Journey into the Kingdom," winner of the World Fantasy Award, where a young girl falls in love with a ghost. A May Day wedding in "The Machine" is a tale of innocence lost and terrible revenge, a story not for the faint of heart. Mother’s Day brings us a future where women who have had abortions are punished in "Evidence of Love in a Case of Abandonment: One Daughter’s Personal Account." Father’s Day is marked by asking what is lost forever when a stolen boy returns, in "Don't Ask." In a story for Independence Day, a nine-year-old girl’s first act of independence is also an act of revenge, in "Traitor." Not all anniversaries are happy occasions and in "Was She Wicked? Was She Good?" one family copes with the damage that remains after being victims of a home invasion. A surreal Halloween story, "You Have Never Been Here," asks if the body is the mask we all wear. A Veteran’s day story, "War is Beautiful," features a soldier in the Vietnam War who befriends a local girl — or is she a ghost? The collection ends with a Halloween to Christmas tale, "The Christmas Witch," where a lonely, little girl struggles to survive in a town of children that collect bones.Holidays are days of honor. These eleven tales, eerie, mysterious, and creepy, honor the human experience of death and redemption. They might keep you up at night, but why not extend the celebration?

    He is assigned to capture the essence of the mountain towns of eastern North Carolina for a series of travel books no one believes will ever be published. There, among writers and cheats, arsonists and Reconstructionists, blind and deaf children and disease-ridden Senators, Paul will meet the love of his life and her lover, witness the awakening of one great novelist and the possible resurrection of another, discover more than one America that could have been, and confront the truth about his relationship with his unpredictable, brilliant, and Machiavellian older brother. There are echoes here of Laurel and Hardy, Bonnie and Clyde, Powell and Loy, Cain and Abel. It s a book of bunk, in other words. A collection of lies. A creation myth about a vanished country that may or may not have existed, and the very real, conflicted nation that has sprung from it. THE BOOK OF BUNK is the latest unclassifiable explosion of storytelling from Glen Hirshberg, the Shirley Jackson and International Horror Guild Award winning author of AMERICAN MORONS, THE TWO SAMS, and THE SNOWMAN'S CHILDREN.

    Here, from Mark Samuels, the author of Glyphotech and Other Macabre Processes and modern exemplar of mystical horror, is a collection of tales that forms a veritable Rosetta Stone for scholars of cosmic wonder and terror.

    There's a humanity to this work that makes its macabre twists all the crueler. (Rob Shearman, 2008 World Fantasy Award Winner)Vivid and creepily effective, these are gripping tales of the relentlessly pursued, twisting shadows, half-seen shapes, the goodbye kiss of a ghost, and the terror of imaginary beings. With the rustling pungence of M. R. James and the claustrophobic interiority of Ramsey Campbell, Simon Kurt Unsworth gear-shifts from innocuous to disturbing deftly enough to give the most hardened of us nightmares. (Stephen Vok, BAFTA Award-winning author of GHOSTWATCH)Simon Unsworth possesses that elusive gift they call 'storytelling'. His main strength is that he knows intuitively how to structure a tale to keep you reading right till the end, even when that end is less than happy for his characters. Here is a writer who knows the value of his craft and he's damn well going to use it, no matter who gets hurt in the process. (Gary McMahon)Rather than providing comfort, the soul rending humanity and beguiling sense of nostalgia which permeate these stories ultimately serve only to impenetrably blacken their dark and unforgiving hearts. An emotionally devastating debut collection from a powerful new voice in horror. (Mark Morris)The most impressive debut from any horror writer that I have seen in a very long time. From the terrifying 'Old Man's Pantry' to the sublimely chilling 'Church on the Island' (which was rightly nominated for the World Fantasy Award), Simon Kurt Unsworth's debut collection delivers the goods in every respect. Frightening, evocative, and highly recommended! (Lawrence C. Connolly)SIMON KURT UNSWORTH was born in 1972 and lives in the north of England, somewhere between Lancaster and Morecambe, with his gorgeous wife, exuberant son, and two dogs rescued from the local dogs' home. By profession he works for a charity as a trainer, working across the whole of the U.K., which gives him plenty of time on trains to write stories. His work has previously been published by the BBC, by Ash-Tree Press in their anthologies At Ease with the Dead and Shades of Darkness, in Gaslight Grotesque: Nightmare Tales of Sherlock Holmes, and in Ellen Datlow's anthology Lovecraft Unbound. His story from At Ease with the Dead, 'The Church on the Island', was reprinted in Stephen Jones's Mammoth Book of Best New Horror #19 and was a 2008 World Fantasy Award nominee for Best Short Story. It has also been selected for inclusion in the Very Best of Best New Horror. This is his first collection.CONTENTS: Introduction by Barbara Roden; A Different Morecambe; Haunting Marley; The Derwentwater Shark; When the World Goes Quiet; Old Man's Pantry; Scucca; Flappy the Bat; A Meeting of Gemmologists; Where Cats Go; The Baking of Cakes; The Lemon in the Pool; Stevie's Duck; Forest Lodge; The Station Waiting Room; The Animal Game; An Afternoon with Danny; The Pennine-Tower Restaurant; The Church on the Island; Endword/Story Notes.

    What was once objectively familiar is tainted by uncertainty, and soon everything becomes subtly and terrifyingly altered. In "Loup-garou" a young man watches his own past re-enacted as an avante-garde French film. In "Llanfihangel" memories of the past are shown to be incorrect and misinterpreted. In Russell's stories even the present appears to be open to misunderstanding.When those around you insist that they see the world differently at least you can argue with them. But when you realise that you cannot rely on your own senses then the world becomes a terrifying place indeed.

    Armed with a satchel of yellowed notebooks containing the fragile memories of five murdered children, he is determined to track down and confront their killer. Lumsden, accompanied by a stranger, begins a long journey to the vast City of Steps where he is forced to confront the horrors of the past and present.

    And Dave Duncan seems to be next on the list. Can he figure out how to stop her? Or will he have to pay for the sins of his father?