Two dozen dark tales from one of Australia's finest genre writers.
Drawing on inspiration from such diverse sources as Japanese mythology, European folklore, modern urban legends, and ancient native Australian and American traditions, as well as the literature of Shakespeare, T.S. Eliot, Bram Stoker, Lewis Carroll, and Edgar Allan Poe -- the author tells stories of humanity's deepest desires and most dreadful nightmares. Dedman journeys into the past, present, and future...to the jungles of Malaysia, outback ghost towns, and modern metropolises...to places both too familiar and unfamiliar to give comfort.
An accomplished storyteller, Dedman re-imagines supernatural entities like vampires, succubi, and ghosts and combines them with modern terrors such as ecological and scientific horrors and the eternal evils of the political and the rperverse. His stories are disturbing, erotic, or amusing -- or any combination of the three.
With one original story and several never published in the United States or the United Kingdom, Never Seen by Waking Eyes will serve as an apt introduction for many to the darker short works of Stephen Dedman.
Contents
A Single Shadow
Probable Cause
The Lady of Situations
Waste Land
Watch
Beholder
A Sentiment Open to Doubt
Salvation
What You Wish For
The Completist
The Dance that Everyone Must Do
Honest Ghosts
The Ghoul Goes West
'Til Human Voices Wake Us
Heir of the Wolf
The Wind Sall Blow for Ever Mair
Double Action
The Facts in Dr Van Helsing's Case
Madly
Nothing Like the Sun
Upon the Midnight Clear
The Pillar
Reveille
Never Seen by Waking Eyes
