Philip Morahan is a great pianist who can no longer play the piano. At fifty-two he is childless, single, and utterly used up by music. His desperate attempt to retrieve a lost personal life at the expense of his career leads to a roller-coaster of crises and confrontations - with ex-girlfriends, ironic protégés, record magnates and his exquisitely sympathetic new agent. For if Philip is to recover his talent and the power to love he must face his own nature dead on, and then the tragedy that haunts him.

In Michael Lear's opinion, James Hilldyard is the master of the contemporary novel. Travelling to this genius's home in Italy, Michael is disappointed when Hilldyard turns down the TV profile he wants to produce, but is bafflingly offered a job as the great man's literary secretary instead. This peaceful break from his failing London media career seems just what Michael needs - until beautiful actress Adela Fairfax comes to town, followed by a pack of Hollywood hounds sniffing at her heels, all trying to buy the film rights on Hilldyard's as yet unpublished novel. Hilldyard believes 'adaptation of any decent novel is vandalism' but the truth is that there is a terrible secret about himself contained in it. However, Adela is convinced that she can get the rights, and will stop at nothing to secure them. Who or what are destroyed on the way are of no relevance where the Hollywood system is involved. SEX AND GENIUS is set on that high plane where creative genius and big business...

It's four months on from the events of Dust and Desire... Joel Sorrell has recovered from the injuries he sustained in his fight with The Four-Year-Old. A body has been found, sealed into the dead space behind a false wall in a flat in Muswell Hill. Beheaded and surrounded by bloodstained pages of typewritten text, it is the third such murder committed by a killer known as The Hack. And it may be linked to his daughter's disappearance.

    David has been summoned to Morecambe, a place he hoped he'd never see again.     It's winter and the English seaside town is dead. David knows exactly how it feels. Empty for as long as he can remember, he depends too much on a past filled with the excitements of drink, drugs and cold sex. The friends that sustained him then-Helen and Seamus-are here now and together they aim to pinpoint the source of the violence that has suddenly exploded into their lives.     The friends drive each other further into a territory of fear, suspicion and threat as old bitternesses are rekindled, ancient haunts are revisited.     The phantoms of the past are coalescing and something is coming home to roost…      ***          From Kirkus Reviews     A debut novel that progresses like crisscross dreams in a damaged head, by a young Englishman whose work has appeared largely in horror and fantasy anthologies. Narrator David Munro, a second-rate painter, has not seen his college roomie Seamus 'Shay' Cope since he threw a teacup at him three years ago. But now their shared companion, Helen Soper, has called David to the English seaside town of Morecambe to help revive the unlovable Seamus, who's now suffering some mystery malaise that affects Helen as wellsomething shapeless and ugly that is unfolding and that David has begun to feel as well. It's winter and something cryptic is exploding within them. Odd figures spur childhood memories; as in a dream, a strange woman in a car slowly parts the skin of David's cheek with her fingernail. Memories filter back: Had Seamus and their schoolmate Dando tried to drown a dog, then tie up David, nearly drown him in mud, and start to bugger him? Seamus tells David about a caving tragedy in New Mexico when his fellow caver got stuck and died of cold which reminds David of Seamus nearly drowning him in mud. Bad karma comes twisting around David in the form of a murdered girl. Did MacCreadle, a horrible figure from their childhood, do it? Helen explains to David that they're being stalked. But by whom? The three friends slowly form their own vocabulary to describe the events befalling them. And so they stumble vaguely on, David and Seamus with dreams of suffocation. It's as if, Seamus says, we've opened up our heads and nailed them together so that we're all sharing the same Widescreen movie. By novel's end, their worst secrets have fountained upward in a collective dawning and bloodletting. The spine of this waking nightmare is a sad, gasping loneliness, into which any bad thought can fall and spear you. The family love that at last fills this vacancy is quite moving.      ***          'I loved it. His portraits of everyday loneliness are brilliant. Altogether I thought it one of the finest and most haunting modern spectral novels I've read.'     -Ramsey Campbell          'Conrad Williams is a demon-Spirit, weaving beautiful nests of tight prose, hatching spectacular nightmares out of love, guilt, remorse and unreliable memory. The flights of his fiction are dazzling and dangerous.'     -Graham Joyce

Sean Redman is a failed policeman who cannot escape the job. Will Lacey is a husband who witnesses the birth of a monster. Cheke is a killing machine programmed to erase every trace of an experiment gone horribly wrong... These strands all come together in this dark and visceral fantasy. Decay Inevitable charts the badlands of horrifying dreams and demons, where a black market in unspeakable goods is discovered. A race is on to unearth the secrets of the soul... secrets woven into the fabric of death itself.

AN EXTRAORDINARY KILLER HAS ARRIVED IN LONDON, HELL-BENT ON DESTRUCTION Joel Sorrell, a bruised, bad-mouthed PI, is a sucker for missing person cases. And not just because he's searching for his daughter, who vanished five years after his wife was murdered. Joel feels a kinship with the desperate and the damned. He feels, somehow, responsible. So when the mysterious Kara Geenan begs him to find her missing brother, Joel agrees. Then an attempt is made on his life, and Kara vanishes... A vicious serial killer is on the hunt, and as those close to Joel are sucked into his nightmare, he suspects that answers may lie in his own hellish past.

Private Investigator Joel Sorrell is exhausted and drinking hard, sustained only by a hopeful yet baffling note from his estranged daughter, Sarah. An SOS from an old flame whose child has been kidnapped gives him welcomed distraction, but the investigation raises more questions than answers. Then comes the news that his greatest enemy has escaped from prison with a score to settle. With Joel's life and the remnants of his family at stake, any chance of peace depends on the silencing of his nemesis once and for all. But an unexpected obstacle stands in his way...

The Unblemished artfully interweaves the stories of a serial killer who believes he is the rightful son and heir to an ancient dynasty of flesh-eating monsters, and a mother determined to protect her only daughter from the stuff of nightmares. The fate of each of them and the survival of the entire human race depends on one man, Bo Mulvey, who possesses the ancient wisdom the blood thirsty evil needs to achieve its full and horrifying potential.

The Dead Letters Office: the final repository of the undelivered. Love missives unread, gifts unreceived, lost in postal limbo. Dead Letters: An Anthology features new stories from the masters of horror, fantasy and speculative fiction, each inspired by object from the Dead Letters Office. Featuring original stories by:Joanne Harris * Maria Dahvana Headley & China Miéville * Michael Marshall Smith * Lisa Tuttle * Ramsey Campbell * Pat Cadigan * Steven Hall * Alison Moore * Adam LG Nevill * Nina Allan * Christopher Fowler * Muriel Gray * Andrew Lane * Angela Slatter * Claire Dean * Nicholas Royle * Kirsten Kaschock