Joel Lane

Martin Swann moves into an old house and finds a box of video cassettes in the garden shed. One of them is a bootleg copy of a morbid and disturbing film by little-known French director, Jean Rien. Martin begins a search for the director's other films, and for a way to understand Rien's filmography, drawing him away from his home and his lover into a shadowy realm of secrets, rituals and creeping decay. An encounter with a crazed film journalist in Gravesend leads to drug-fuelled visions in Paris - and finally to the Mexican desert where a grim revelation awaits.

The Witnesses are Gone

Allyson Bird

'Never Again' is an attempt to voice the collective revulsion of writers in the weird fiction genre against political attitudes that stifle compassion and deny our collective human inheritance. The imagination is crucial to an understanding both of human diversity and human ground.

Never Again

"As feverishly romantic as a piece of fan mail."--Dennis Cooper.

From Blue to Black

In midwinter, an aspiring politician finds himself suddenly deprived of human contact. Newcomers to a town are strangely reminiscent of people lost in a recent flood. Demonstrators on a peace march see the faces of sleeping children in the snow. A failed musician meets his own ancestors getting off a midnight train. The Terrible Changes is a journey through the shadow-realm between reality and dream, between clarity and madness, between the living and the dead. In Joel Lane's fiction, the weird is a symbolic language expressing the chilling beauty, sadness and mystery of real life, combining the supernatural with themes of human loss, passion, solitude and despair, in the tradition of Robert Aickman, John Ramsey Campbell, and M. John Harrison. From 'The Brand' (1983) to 'Alouette' (2008), these stories span a quarter-century of writing: urban horror tales, elegiac ghost stories, erotic reveries and psychological fugues. Long unavailable, The Terrible Changes is now back in print for a new audience, adding to Joel Lane's legacy as a true master of the weird.

The Terrible Changes

'A masterwork of paranoid, destabilizing weird fiction.' – Paul Tremblay, author of The Pallbearers Club 'A poet of misfits, outsiders and the forsaken, his empathy for their suffering ever poignant.' – Adam Nevill, author of The Ritual 'Stark and thrumming with a forbidden, eldritch energy.' – Matt Wesolowski, author of Demon

The Witnesses Are Gone

'A poet of misfits, outsiders and the forsaken, his empathy for their suffering ever poignant.' – Adam Nevill, author of The Ritual Joel Lane (1963-2013) was one of the UK's foremost writers of dark, unsettling fiction, a frank explorer of sexuality and the transgressive aspects of human nature. With a tight focus on the post-industrial Black Country and his home city of Birmingham, he created a distinct form of British urban weird fiction. His debut collection, The Earth Wire was first published in 1994 by Egerton Press and is reissued in paperback by Influx Press for the first time in over twenty-five years. Love and death. Sex and despair. The Earth Wire is a thrilling, disturbing examination of the means and the cost of survival. WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY NINA ALLAN

The Earth Wire

Tony Lucas

Robin Lindsay Wilson

Private Cities

A collection of fantastic and horrific stories that deal thematically address the core relationships of ones life, be they parental, first loves, best friends, or lovers (of both the hetero and homosexual variety). The decaying industrial backdrop of England's midlands provides a working class context that is both uniquely English, but universally accessible. 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 Lost District

A new collection from one of the most powerful voices in in slipstream and horror writing is a significant event. This collection of twenty two stories was one of the last that Joel Lane put together before his death in 2013. Frequently taking the form of urban fantasy, with his home city of Birmingham as their nucleus, these are intense and often painful stories that linger in the mind for a long time. This book also contains a substantial essay by Nina Allan examining Joel; Lane's 'Blue' trilogy of novels.

Scar City (Paperback)

Birmingham, early 1990s. Triangle are a cult act on the post-punk scene, led by brilliant and troubled vocalist Karl - a man haunted by past violence and present danger, torn between fame and oblivion, men and women, music and silence. Triangle's bass player, David, is struggling to make sense of Karl's reality as the band start to make waves in the music scene and Karl starts to come apart in a blur of sex and drinking.

Neil is a student at Birmingham University. He looks like a cross between Morrissey and Johnny Marr ? equally attractive to girls and men. Gigs, clubs, politics, sex. Typical student, really. One night, after a row with his lover, Neil follows a stranger onto a canal towpath. The stranger turns on him and attacks. He viciously carves up Neil?s face leaving him mutilated beyond recognition. Neil?s recovery is a journey through surgical reconstruction and sexual alienation. His attempt to track down his mysterious attacker is a search for his own hidden, destructive self ? a search that leads him to question values he had always taken for granted. The Blue Mask is a hardcore emotional trip that explores the trauma of change and the nature of violence and of love. It confirms Joel Lane?s place in the pantheon of rising stars of British fiction.

The Blue Mask

Laird Barron

Stephen Graham Jones

Conrad Williams

Leena Likitalo

Richard Kirk

Evan J. Peterson

Tom Underberg

Weird Tales 359 presents interviews with Laird Barron and Richard Kirk, features on books and weird music, and short stories by Stephen Graham Jones, Evan J. Peterson, Tom Underberg, Leena Likitalo, Joel Lane, and Conrad Williams -- plus poetry and the usual features.

Weird Tales 359

Steve Bishop

Dark-toned urban thrillers that combine graphic realism with emotional poignancy, steeped in the noir spirit of James Ellroy From hazardous towpaths to love on an orange summer's night, and from cut-throat gangsters in a Little Moscow bar to childhood ghosts igniting the terrors of today, the darkness of pain, brightness of anger, and hard music of a society in transition are the spine tingling themes rampant in this new collection of urban thrillers. Perfect for enthusiasts of crime fiction everywhere, this anthology will entice and chill even the most seasoned murder mystery aficionado. The book showcases stories from John Harvey—author of the best-selling Resnick novels—and acclaimed novelist Nicholas Royle. Also included are the distinctive voices of Wayne Dean-Richards, Simon Avery, John Dalton—and many more, as life in the second city take a dark and violent turn.

Birmingham Noir

The Earth Wire and Other Stories

Kit de Waal

Bobby Nayyar

C.D. Rose

Sharon Duggal

Jendella Benson

Balvinder Banga

Alan Beard

Malachi McIntosh

Sibyl Ruth

Few cities have undergone such a radical transformation over the last few decades as Birmingham. Culturally and architecturally, it has been in a state of perpetual flux and regeneration, with new communities moving in, then out, and iconic post-war landmarks making way for brighter-coloured, 21st century flourishes. Much like the city itself, the characters in the stories gathered here are often living through moments of profound change, closing in on a personal or societal turning point, that carries as much threat as it does promise. Set against key moments of history – from Malcolm X’s visit to Smethwick in 1965, to the Handsworth riots two decades later, from the demise of the city’s manufacturing in the 70s and 80s, to the on-going tensions between communities in recent years – these stories celebrate the cultural dynamism that makes this complex, often divided ‘second city’ far more than just the sum of its parts.

Joel Lane

Books

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