Description

Winner of the Aurealis Award for Best Collected Work
Finalist - Aurealis Awards - Best Horror Novella - 'Rat's Alley'
Finalist - Aurealis Awards - Best Fantasy Short Story - 'The Hidden'
Finalist - Imadjinn Awards - Best Short Story - 'The Leper's Garden'

'Nothing short of brilliant. The best book I've read all year.' – S.E. Howard, author of 'The Vessel' and 'What Lies Unseen'

These eleven tales of dark romance and horror will transport you back to the hardship and colonial decadence of the nineteenth and early twentieth-centuries. You'll be guided through the teeming streets and markets of old Hong Kong, the listless heat of French Senegal and the fog of Victorian London. Step inside circus tents, penny arcades, shadow theatres and freak shows.

These are tales dreamt in the dark, touched by madness and the caress of demons. They whisper of grief and loss, of old curses from the Inquisition, of bad bargains struck in haste and fear on the battlefields of the Great War. Of children's games that end in bittersweet tragedy. You'll experience the bloody beginnings of one of the world's best-loved fairy tales and find yourself held in the spell of the witch-hare legend.

Be warned. There is contagion here.

These stories will infect you.

And know there is no cure.