Michael Marshall Smith

Secret cults, forbidden knowledge, and cryptic prophecies await in this companion collection to Shadows Over Innsmouth, containing 12 more short stories inspired by the legendary horror writer H. P. Lovecraft. Featuring stories from some of the biggest names in horror fiction, including H. P. Lovecraft, Ramsey Campbell, Kim Newman, Caitlin R. Kiernan, and many more. This newly redesigned edition also includes a revised and updated Introduction and Contributor Notes, along with additional artwork exclusive to this printing. In this companion to the acclaimed anthology Shadows Over Innsmouth, World Fantasy Award-winning editor Stephen Jones assembles some of today's most talented horror authors-the finest of the modern Lovecraftian acolytes. Return to Innsmouth with these 12 haunting horror stories and encounter a scientist who stumbles upon a secret cult, a thief whose heist goes horrifically awry, and a magician who usurps a prophecy only to bring about something much, much worse-plus H. P. Lovecraft's previously discarded draft of 'The Shadow Over Innsmouth'! This newly redesigned edition also includes a revised and updated Introduction and Contributor Notes, along with additional artwork exclusive to this printing. Featuring stories from: H. P. Lovecraft Ramsey Campbell Hugh B. Cave Basil Copper John Glasby Caitlin R. Kiernan Brian Lumley Richard A. Lupoff Paul McAuley Kim Newman Michael Marshall Smith Steve Rasnic Tem

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.

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.

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.

Children are supposed to be all sugar and spice and everything nice... but we know that’s not the truth. Dark tales of wicked tykes and dangerous kids playing vicious games that lead adults — sometimes their own parents — to their demise are a staple of frightening fiction. Beware the schoolyards and playgrounds, even the sanctity of the familial home, especially after dark. And don’t be fooled by a trickle of tears or tiny hands reaching for you. These youngsters do not want to love or comfort — only to inflict pain! Bad Seeds: Evil Progeny offers twenty-seven tales of terrifying offspring by both masters of the genre and imaginative newcomers.

For more than 80 years H.P. Lovecraft has inspired writers of supernatural fiction, artists, musicians, filmmakers, and gaming. His themes of cosmic indifference, the utter insignificance of humankind, minds invaded by the alien, and the horrors of history — written with a pervasive atmosphere of unexplainable dread — remain not only viable motifs, but are more relevant than ever as we explore the mysteries of a universe in which our planet is infinitesimal and climatic change is overwhelming it. In the first decade of the twenty-first century the best supernatural writers no longer imitate Lovecraft, but they are profoundly influenced by the genre and the mythos he created. New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird presents some of the best of this new Lovecraftian fiction — bizarre, subtle, atmospheric, metaphysical, psychological, filled with strange creatures and stranger characters — eldritch, unsettling, evocative, and darkly appealing.

You can't kill the dead! Like any good monster, the zombie has proven to be ever-evolving, monumentally mutable, and open to seemingly endless imaginative interpretations: the thralls of voodoo sorcerers, George Romero's living dead, societal symbols, dancing thrillers, viral victims, reanimated ramblers, video gaming targets, post-apocalyptic permutations, shuffling sidekicks, literary mash-ups, the comedic, and, yes, even the romantic. Evidently, we have an enduring hunger for this infinite onslaught of the ever-hungry dead. Hoards of readers are now devouring zombie fiction faster than armies of the undead could chow down their brains. It's a sick job, but somebody had to do it: explore the innumerable necrotic nightmares of the latest, greatest, most fervent devotion in the history of humankind and ferret out the best of new millenial zombie stories: Zombies: The Recent Dead.

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...

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.

Michael Marshall Smith has written a tale that from page one hurtles us only forward in this unsettling, suspenseful, and wildly imaginative novel 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."Shocking, moving, and surreal . . . It offers us a journey from which we return both shaken and exhilarated. . . . Extraordinary."--Clive Barker

Michael Smith's first short story, "The Man Who Drew Cats", is included here along with some unpublished stories. His genre is that of the slightly surreal, such as the tale of the actual finding of God, who works in an electrical store on Kentish Town Road and he's not getting many customers?

Talking fridges, human clone farms, flying shopping malls â?? we must be in the Michael Marshall Smith zone. A world all too close to our ownâ?¦

Stark lives in Colour, a neighbourhood whose inhabitants like to be co-ordinated with their surroundings. Then there's Red close by: 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.