Böcker av Simon Bestwick

"Roth-Steyr, the story of Valerie Varden (or to use her full name, Countess Valerie Elisabeth Franzsiska von Bradenstein-Vr¿ovci, reluctant immortal and former assassin of the Habsburg Empire) wasn't quite like anything I'd written before. And almost as soon as I'd finished it, I knew Val had more to say. So I picked up her trail again, and found her making her way across a darkening Europe, hunted by a shadowy foe. Someone wants her dead: to find out who Val will need to remember everything she tried to forget. She must become, once more, an assassin. A killer. A Jaeger."

"You never know which ideas will stick in your mind, let alone where they''ll go. Roth-Steyr began with an interest in the odd designs and names of early automatic pistols, and the decision to use one of them as a story title. What started out as an oddball short piece became a much longer and darker tale about how easily a familiar world can fall apart, how old convictions vanish or change, and why no one should want to live forever.It''s also about my obsession with history, in particular the chaotic upheavals that plagued the first half of the twentieth century and that are waking up again. Another ''long dark night of the European soul'' feels very close today. So here''s the story of Valerie Varden. And her Roth-Steyr."

"One of the most accomplished and eloquent British horror writers is Simon Bestwick, and here is a feast of his work." --Ramsey Campbell Funny, frightening and moving, the stories in Simon Bestwick's new collection explore how our childhoods mark us, our regrets haunt us, and how our innocence is sometimes lost--and sometimes taken away. A young policewoman is drawn into a dreadful bargain. Murdered girls walk the streets of Manchester beside their still-living friends. Tormented children call on an urban legend for help, and the events of a long-ago summer and first love return with lethal consequences for four childhood friends. All this and more besides, in these seventeen short stories and novelettes from the author of The Faceless and The Feast of All Souls.

A series of micro-collections featuring a selection of peculiar tales from the best in horror and speculative fiction.From Black Shuck Books and Simon Bestwick comes Singing Back the Dark, the eighth in the Black Shuck SHADOWS series.