Living Shadows: Stories: New & Preowned - Softcover

Shirley, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 080955786X ISBN 13: 9780809557868

Publisher: Prime Books, 2007

Synopsis

• One of the darkest, edgiest, boldest writers around, John Shirley lays down an adrenalized yet artful prose that fairly skids across the page, dragging the reader along into shadowed corners of terror and desire. Yet while it's thrilling, there's psychological depth, too, as Shirley bores into the brains of his characters, revealing the motivations of those who walk on the wild side. Many writers extrapolate from peripheral observation and research, but John Shirley's stories come from personal experience with extreme people and extreme mental states, and his struggle with the seductions of addiction. On the streets, in the midst of darkest suburbia, or just beyond consensus reality - Shirley brings the shadows to vivid life.

About this title

About the Author

John Shirley has written more than thirty novels, a work of nonfiction, and many, many short stories. A previous collection of his short work, the award-winning Black Butterflies, was named one of Publishers Weekly's Best Books of the Year. Shirley's also fronted punk bands and written lyrics for his own music, as well as for Blue Oyster Cult and other bands. A principal screenwriter for The Crow, Shirley has written extensively for television and film. He lives in the San Francisco Bay area.

Reviews

In this collection of new and reprinted stories, Blue Öyster Cult songwriter and cyberpunk pioneer Shirley (The Other End) demonstrates his talent for blurring genre boundaries. The first section contains nonfantastic accounts of the darker side of humanity, including the quietly creepy The Sewing Room, in which a woman discovers that her husband is a serial killer and is tormented by her conflicting responsibilities to her family and to justice, and Seven Knives, a brutal tale born from the author's experiences of moral bankruptcy and narcissism in Hollywood. In the second section are stories with fantastic elements, including Blind Eye, a continuation of a Poe fragment in which a lighthouse lamp reveals the hidden sins of the villagers living below, and the Lovecraftian novelette Buried in the Sky, about a skyscraper complex built upon a pre-Aztec foundation. In Shirley's world, solitary characters go to desperate means to connect with others, never quite succeeding but still recognizable and poignant in their humanity. (July)
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There's really just one new (i.e., previously unpublished) story in this collection, but not to quibble. Shirley is an effective, craftsmanly producer of first-rate chillers, who doesn't need monsters or ultraviolence to creep us out. Take the new story, "The Sewing Room," in which, finally, nothing blatantly horrifying happens, which is the most shocking possible development. It is one of a dozen stories in the book's first section of nonsupernatural stories. The eight in the second section do employ the supernatural, but conservatively. If Thomas A. Harris, of Hannibal Lecter fame, ever wrote short stories, they might resemble Shirley's. But would they be as good? Olson, Ray
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Prime Books
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 080955786X
• ISBN 13: 9780809557868
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352