James P. Blaylock

Two thousand years ago there lived a man who sold some valuable information for a fee of 30 silver coins....

Life as a man of leisure was becoming a bit dull for Jonathan Bing, Master Cheeser, so he welcomed Professor Wurzle's invitation to visit the empty castle of Selznak, the Evil Dwarf....

Trading with the elves used to be so simple. Every year Master Cheeser Jonathan Bing would send his very best cheeses downriver to traders who would eventually return with Elfin wonders for the people of Twombly Town....

Jerry Larkin discovers an age-old secret buried beneath the foundation of the house that he and his wife Jane, an avid reader of ghost stories, bought six months ago in the idyllic town of Old Orange in Southern California....

In 1870s London, a city of contradictions and improbabilities, a dead man pilots an airship and living men are willing to risk all to steal a carp....

Grieving over his wife's death, Phil Ainsworth is further shaken by his sister's death and the arrival of his niece Betsy....

The 12-year solstice has come. And with it, a sinister carnival brings a new sense of terror and wonder to a small coastal town....

A strange man (named Howard) on a strange quest (for a Paper Grail) in a strange land (California)... A lot of fuss for a folded scrap of paper....

Calvin Bryson has hidden himself away from the world, losing himself in his work and his collection of rare and quirky books....

A suddenly appearing curiosity shop owned by a small man who might, or might not, be the Man in the Moon;....

Theophile Escargot, cast out of Twombly Town for the crime of stealing his own pie, bade a midnight farewell to his unfeeling neighbours and set out on a journey to fabled Balumnia....

In Victorian London, Alice, the wife of scientist-explorer Langdon St. Ives, is murdered by his arch-nemesis, the hunchback Dr. Ignacio Narbondo....

Southern California - sunny days, blue skies, neighbours on flying bicycles....

The collapse of the Victoria Embankment uncovers a passage to an unknown realm beneath the city....

A skeletal hand clutching an iron key lies hidden within a mermaid's wooden sarcophagus....

Walt runs a small catalogue business out of his garage, and he has no notion of a demonic presence in his town until a package is mistakenly delivered to him....

A strange message summons Langdon St. Ives and his companions to the Half Toad Inn in Smithfield, London, and along with the eccentric but fabulously wealthy Gilbert Frobisher, they set out for an uncharted island in the Caribbean....

A skeletal hand clutching an iron key lies hidden within a mermaid's wooden sarcophagus....

An outbreak of violent madness at the Explorers Club, the coincidental murders of a recluse scientist in North Kent and a lighthouse keeper on the chalk cliffs below Brighton....

This mesmerising collection from World Fantasy Award-winner James P. Blaylock offers seven brilliant excursions into one of the most idiosyncratic imaginations of our time....