You never know when you'll find yourself falling through one of the cracks in the world....

Two of today's brightest stars of dark fantasy combine their award-winning, critically acclaimed talents in this spellbinding new tale of magic, terror, and adventure that begins when a young woman slips through the space between our everyday world and the one hiding just beneath it.

Always assume there's someone after you. That was the paranoid wisdom her mother had hardwired into Jasmine Towne ever since she was a little girl. Now, suddenly on her own, Jazz is going to need every skill she has ever been taught to survive enemies both seen and unseen. For her mother had given Jazz one last invaluable piece of advice, written in her own blood.

Jazz Hide Forever

All her life Jazz has known them only as the "Uncles," and her mother seemed to fear them as much as depend on them. Now these enigmatic, black-clad strangers are after Jazz for reasons she can't fathom, and her only escape is to slip into the forgotten tunnels of London's vast underground. Here she will meet a tribe of survivors calling themselves the United Kingdom and begin an adventure that links her to the ghosts of a city long past, a father she never knew, and a destiny she fears only slightly less than the relentless killers who'd commit any crime under heaven or earth to prevent her from fulfilling it.

"A dark urban fantasy that posits a world of multiple Londons, some real and some ghostly, an ancient legacy of magic, and a secret war between those who seek power to control it and those who seek to free it." - Library Journal, starred review.

From award-winning author Tim Lebbon comes this harrowing tale of an epic journey, crossing the forbidden boundary separating us from all we fear the most...

To the unknown corners of Noreela, the Voyagers have traveled, returning with fantastic tales of their journeys and discoveries. But no one has ever returned from the Great Divide: a sheer cliff soaring miles above the clouds and rumored to be the end of the world. Until now.

Voyagers Nomi Hyden and Ramus Rheel would be mortal enemies if their lives and fates weren't so closely entwined. But now the unlikely pair are brought together for what will be their greatest -- and perhaps final -- journey. When a grim wanderer named Ten arrives with an ancient parchment he claims to have brought back from the Divide, its arcane glyphs hint at the existence of a realm most consider a myth...and at something amazing sleeping there.

Accompanied by the warrior Beko and his band of armed Serians, Nomi and Ramus set out to discover the truth behind the legends. But soon ambition drives them apart, this epic Voyage becomes a race...and each Voyager is faced with a choice that may alter the history of Noreela forever.

"Dark and memorable.... Lebbon creates vivid and convincing major and minor characters, places, and creatures." - Publishers Weekly, starred review.

In the Hell of World War Two, in the grisly chaos and ruin of Singapore, Gabriel at last sees a chance to discover more about the origins of Temple, and the demon's sinister purpose...and perhaps a way to finally put an end to Temple's existence and the carnage that follows him like a shadow.

But Fate is a playful watcher, and war has always been Temple's playground.

As Gabriel and Temple face each other once again, this time in the sweltering Asian jungles that drip pain and blood, a weary soldier finds himself the pawn in their endless game of death. What he knows and does may change the teetering balance of their timeless conflict...and the fate of the whole world.

"... it's done what all great stories should: transported you for that small amount of time out of your everyday world and into a place where anything can happen. Lebbon's work is, more often than not, that escape readers long for. And A Whisper of Southern Lights is just more proof that he's an author worth paying attention to." - SF Reader.

Subterranean Press is proud to present two novellas set in Tim Lebbon's signature world of Noreela.

Vale of Blood Roses

A mercenary should be allowed to quit. That's what Jakk thinks. But his companions don't want to quit. As the Cataclysmic War ends they enter a valley that should not exist, see machines that should be dead, and interrupt something that should be left alone. There's regret, but some actions can't be undone. There's hope, but it's so obviously false. And there's revenge.

The Bajuman

Korrin is a Bajuman, vilified for some vague wrongdoing in his people's past. He's also a hunter, making his living tracking down lost people, forgotten things. Charged with finding a missing fodder - member of an ancient race originally bred for food - he soon realises a painful truth. In Noreela City, still recovering from the Great Plagues, everyone is lost.

"Readers who have enjoyed other books in the Noreela series will find these tales a tide-me-over until the next full-length novel." - Publisher's Weekly

"Lebbon's postapocalyptic fantasy world is a bleak one, and his strong, descriptive writing and sympathetic characters make its horrors all too visible." - Booklist

"If you're new to Noreela, these stories will please you, give you a taste of what Lebbon's writing is like, and perhaps send you to the bookstore searching for Dusk and Dawn." - Fantasy Magazine.

In the sleepy and secluded town of Barrow, Alaska - the northernmost settlement in North America - its citizens are preparing for the annual coming of the Dark, when the sun will set for more than thirty consecutive days and nights.

But this year, the Dark will bring something else.

From across the frozen wasteland, a horrifying evil descends upon Barrow, mercilessly besieging its residents with unrelenting terror and swift death. And as the darkness continues and the thirty days of night seemingly have no end in sight, Barrow's only remaining hope lies with Sheriff Eben Oleson and Deputy Stella Oleson, a husband and wife who are torn between saving the town they love and their own survival...

30 years ago...

Sixteen-year-old Scott sees his first ghost.

Where is the Chord of Souls? it demands, then abruptly flees, leaving the horror of that fateful day indelibly tattooed on his Scott's young mind.

He will never forget that day. Because the ghost was his grandfather's friend... and his grandfather had murdered his friend just ten days before.

Now...

Thirty years after his grandfather's suicide, Scott is stunned to suddenly receive a letter from the old man which talks of an ancient book of apocalyptic power: The Chord of Souls.

The letter's arrival quickly heralds a deluge of supernatural events that has Scott teetering on the precipice of sanity and salvation: his wife is kidnapped, ghosts besiege his home and his mind, and immortality dons the guise of a beautiful woman...

Scott embarks upon a perilous journey to save his wife, one fraught with horrific danger and soul-shattering temptation. After all, who would not be tempted by the promise of powers beyond understanding... knowledge beyond comprehension... and life everlasting?

Noreela teeters on the brink of annihilation, but its last survivors will not go quietly into the never-ending darkness. The final battle for the land has begun.

"dark, twisted and visceral" - Mark Chadbourn

Hellboy, a blood-red, cloven-hoofed demon raised by the United States government, is a top field agent for the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense.

He questions the unknown - then beats it into submission.

A dragon is seen perching on the statue of Christ the Redeemer overlooking Rio de Janeiro...

A werewolf stalks the streets of Baltimore...

A griffin slaughters a herd of horses in Madrid...

Weird sightings of cryptozoological and mythological creatures abound around the globe. Sometimes the creatures simply appear and then vanish again, content merely to put in an appearance. Other times they make themselves known to entire cities, and leave their mark. Damaged buildings. Scars on the landscape. The occasional death.

Then suddenly, the death toll escalates. One by one Hellboy and his friends at the BPRD are dispatched to avert disaster. Hellboy encounters a dragon in Brazil. Abe Sapien tackles a giant alligator in Venice. Liz Sherman faces off against a phoenix in the Mediterranean.

But in dawning horror they realize it's all a distraction - heralding nothing so much as an event of apocalyptic proportions...

To Follow...

Tom's son died ten years ago... so they say. Killed in a military training accident on Salisbury Plain and sent home in a sealed coffin. But when Tom gets wind that there was more to the accident than was first revealed, his suspicions are aroused once more.

There are no such things as monsters... so they say. Why then, when Tom finds and excavates a mass grave on the Plain, does he find skeletons that are far from human? Headless, distorted ... and chained together.

Death is the end... so they say. But 'they' so often lie. And when one of these strange chained skeletons - a child - grabs hold of his arm, his world suddenly changes. Because death is not the end. Sometimes, it's just the beginning.

"Berserk is a mysterious and moody novel that packs a hell of an emotional wallop. Murder, monsters, and mayhem - Lebbon takes them all to the max! Lebbon is one of the most compulsively readable writers working in the dark fantasy field today." - Tom Piccirilli

"Tim Lebbon is a master of fantasy and horror, and his visions make for disturbing and compelling reading." - Douglas Clegg

"An absolutely thrilling read that hurtles along at a breakneck and terrifying speed. Beserk is everything the title promises it to be. This is can't-put-down fiction at it's best." - Brian Keene

Dusk is set in the fading world of Noreela, where magic has withdrawn and nature itself is winding down. Machines lay dead and rotting across the landscape, crops fail, and the people of Noreela are mostly apathetic and accepting of their lot.

But then the spark of magic appears again in a young farm boy, and he becomes the centre of attention for people - and things - that desperately want this new magic for themselves.

"A Riveting Work of Staggering Imagination." - F. Paul Wilson

"An exquisitely written, unique world is revealed in this novel, a world inhabited by flesh and blood people rendered with often brutal honesty and clarity of vision. It's rare indeed to witness the conventions of fantasy so thoroughly grabbed by the throat and shaken awake the way Tim Lebbon has done with Dusk. Even more enticing, this first novel in the series concludes with a jaw-dropping finale, and for what it's worth, such a reaction from me is not a common occurrence." - Steven Erikson

"Dusk is a deliciously dark and daring fantasy novel, proof of a startling imagination at work. Lebbon's writing is a twisted spiral of cunning, compassion, and cruelty." - Christopher Golden

"Dusk is dark, twisted and visceral, with a very shocking sting in the tail - the perfect jolt for anyone jaded by the creaking shelves of cuddly, rent-an-elf fantasy. Tim Lebbon is an important new voice in the fantasy field. Bring on the night!' - Mark Chadbourn

"Tim Lebbon writes with a pen dipped in the dark stuff of nightmare. The world he creates is eerie, brutal and complex, and the story abounds with action and menace." - K.J. Bishop

"A wonderful fusion of horror, fantasy, and near-SF ingredients." - Tom Piccirilli.

"...the world of Deadwood seems well-invoked, and the characters play their roles with the resounding gravity of Fate and Destiny and the Plans of Unknown Architects. In other words, it's pretty damn fun to make Temple's acquaintance!' - William D Gagliani

"Lebbon marvelously captures the feel of the Old West, yet injects it with his own unique blend of twisted reality that brings it to life like no writer before." - Joseph Nassise, author of Riverwatch

"Dead Man’s Hand, a magnificent gem from one of the rising greats, is not meant to be passed up" - Jonathan Reitan, Shocklines

During the London Blitz, a veteran from World War One goes in search of the author Arthur Machen. He has some questions to ask Machen...

"What did I really see in the trenches?"

"Were those angels?"

"Who am I?"

The answers, when they come, challenge everything he has ever believed to be true.

"...gripping and imaginative. Clark and Lebbon explore the power of stories that pass from fiction, to myth, to truth. Their styles mesh so well you'll never be able to guess which author wrote which parts. Without a doubt, Simon Clark and Tim Lebbon are the two most exciting horror writers to emerge from the United Kingdom since Clive Barker." - Garrett Peck

"A major triumph... [it] admirably retains Machen's sense of dark revelation and mystical transcendence... a piece that is sure to earn both authors the support and acclaim of readers appreciative of dark miracles." - Hellnotes

This is my first mass market paperback, and something I'm extremely proud of. There are several instances in my writing career that I can point at and say "There, that's where it changed," but the publication of this book from Leisure is just about the most important and exciting step I've taken so far. The Prime edition is wonderful too, and as fate would have it I received my first copy of each edition on the same day! Yes... yes, I got drunk.

Reaction so far has been thrilling, and it's already picking up Stoker Award recommendations.

The Nature of Balance is a large scale end-of-the-world novel, set in a world where nature has gone askew and where humankind has been all but wiped out by a night of terrible dreams. There are a few survivors … and the book follows one group who are more inextricably bound in what is happening than they can possibly imagine.

A hardback short story collection. Contains over 90,000 words of fiction, much of it original, including a novella "The Unfortunate". Also has an introduction by Ramsey Campbell and a cover by Alan M Clark.

I met Jason Williams at the 2000 World Horror Convention in Denver. We were soon onto the subject of collections and I came away pleased that Jason seemed quite interested in seeing some of my work. Five days later he rang me and insisted on seeing some, and that's how this collection came about.

All but two of the stories were already written, although several of them were still originals. The novella in this collection, 'The Unfortunate', was written specially for this volume. It's one of the darker pieces of writing I've ever attempted (and those who know my work will understand this to mean it's as grim as Hell), but I also think it's one of the best tales I've ever written. It's nasty, but it's my exploration of the idea that bad, bad things happen to essentially good people all the time.

A novel written in collaboration with Gavin Williams. This started life as a wide-ranging Lovecraftian horror novel, but it took on much more besides. The Matrix meets The X-Files with a bit of H.P. thrown into the mix; it's a fast-moving action-horror-love-science fiction novel. There, all bases covered there I think.

The collaborating process was very interesting ... I'd written short stories before but never a novel, and I didn't know what to expect. It was certainly a different way of working. I never usually plan my work in great detail, but the first couple of months working on Hush were almost entirely planning. We both had to know where we were going with this … although truth be told, we did divert from the plan in places. What emerged was something quite unlike anything either of us had written before.

A novella that was published in limited hardback and paperback formats, with an introduction by Steve Rasnic Tem and a wonderful cover by Alan M Clark. This is the first in a series of four linked novellas from PS.

Pete Crowther asked me to try a novella for his PS imprint. I already had a vague story in mind, of a family having to cross a changing and increasingly inimical landscape to reach an estranged family member. That landscape became the British countryside, and the thing threatening everything emerged as the living dead. But I wanted to take this far past the usual zombie-fest. Why can't grass be living dead, I figured, and trees, and foxes and badgers and anything that was once alive? So, for a while, it was.

The 'naming of parts' referred to in the title is the main protagonist's way of confronting his fears by naming them, analysing them, laying them out to view. After writing the novella I tried this when I visited the dentist. It worked. Sort of. I suppose some fears are beyond naming...

A novella. Winner of the British Fantasy Award 2000 for Best Short Fiction, shortlisted for an International Horror Guild Award. The original chapbook is pretty hard to find, but the novella was reprinted in Year's Best Fantasy & Horror: Volume 13 and The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 11.

White came into being because Andy Fairclough asked me for a novella. Andy ran the Masters of Terror website, and when he decided to dip his hand into publishing he approached me to write his launch title. Again, this is a novella that seemed to come out of nowhere. I'd always wanted to write a siege story, but not just a simple one where the monsters are recognisible, the landscape familiar, the victims simply unfortunates thrown together be circumstance. And so White grew out of this idea, a siege novella where the 'monsters' are very unclear, where the conflicts inside the house are potentially as harmful as the things outside, and where the landscape is a desolate, deadly snowfield. A cross between The Thing and Assault on Precinct 13.

A volume of two novellas: The First Law and From Bad Flesh. Runner-up in the Best Collection category of the British Fantasy Awards 1999.

From Bad Flesh is still the most intense writing experience of my life. I started it on a Thursday evening and finished it on the Saturday evening, and I still have no idea where it came from. Unplanned, unplotted (some would say it shows), if ever I have to chose something of my own that "wrote itself", this is it.

The First Law, in contrast, is something I'd been wanting to write for quite some time. The story of an island that is totally alien, utterly removed from the rest of the world, dismissive of man's influence and Godless … and what happens when some people are shipwrecked on its shores. It's not a nice place, believe me. The island doesn't want them there.

My first novel, shortlisted for a British Fantasy Award for Best Novel (losing out to Chaz Brenchley). No longer very easy to get hold of...

The inspiration for this book came from a news story about a woman in Italy who was charging people admission to her kitchen. And they were paying. Reason being, the faces of dead folk were supposedly manifesting in the flagstone floor, appearing as patches in the stone, very recognisible, very definite. This gave me a brief but vivid image of a wall containing lost souls, souls torn unwillingly from their host bodies, kept in the wall like a sort of ethereal prison, faces pressing out in an eternally doomed escape attempt...

This image appears in Mesmer, and the rest of the story built up from there. The idea of the dispossessed really did come to me at a motorway service station, and I like the fact that they're not totally explained. Are they ghosts, are they alive, are they dead?