From the Foreword by Mark Morris:

“Short stories are the lifeblood of the horror genre. I grew up reading the Pan and Fontana books of horror and ghost stories, the Armada books of ghost, monster and SF stories, numerous anthologies edited by the prolific Peter Haining, John Burke’s wonderful Tales of Unease collections, and many more. I still adore unearthing obscure anthologies, particularly if they contain unread stories by favourite authors. And it still gives me a huge kick whenever I sell one of my own stories to an anthology, because by doing so I feel as though, in my own small way, I’m contributing to a rich, proud and long-standing genre tradition.

The stories in Long Shadows, Nightmare Light span a period of eighteen years. Most have been published before – in anthologies, magazines and online – though a couple have been written specifically for this collection. One of the things I love about old anthologies is the one-line teaser trailers you often get for some of the stories – so here are mine.

Within these pages you’ll encounter: an amnesiac man who finds himself alone in a mysterious town… a world in which seemingly bottomless holes appear in busy city streets… a pair of lost dogs that return after nine years, having not aged a day… the Christmas haunting of a heavily-pregnant woman…”

Close to the Bone: eleven carefully-crafted masterpieces, each of which guarantees a shudder and perhaps a sleepless night. The Schizophrenic held prisoner by his own psyche - the man whose aversion to a certain colour leads to violence and death - the gang forced to relive, year after year, a childhood tragedy: these are tales of obsession, of human despair, of a world gone mad. So what makes you afraid? Whatever it is, you'll find it here.

Foreword by Ramsey Campbell.