Home Page
News
Titles In Print
Ordering
Information
Guide to 1st Ed.
Prices
Wormwood
Out Of Print
Titles
Bibliography
Tartarus Book
Design
Submissions
Links
-
|
 Cold to the Touch
-
- by Simon Strantzas
-
- Reality
is a thin translucent membrane that separates this world
from the one beyond, and that membrane bends and buckles
as we thrust ourselves against it. Through the barrier we
see distorted visions, the merest glimpse of which is
enough to infect our minds. . . .
-
- Thirteen
tales of strangeness and surrealism await the reader of
this book; stories of loss, despair, and what happens
when those without hope meet that which they cannot
understand.
-
- Two
women vacationing far away encounter the mysteries of
island life. . . . A trip north of the city to woods and
a lake and a sky hungry for more. . . . Snow is falling,
reminding the dying of all they've lost, or the young of
all they have yet to lose. . . .
-
- The
other world, it awaits you in the dark, cold to the
touch.
-
- Contents: 'Under the Overpass', 'The
Other Village', 'The Uninvited Guest', 'A Seed on Barren
Ground', 'Writing on the Wall', 'A Chorus of Yesterdays',
'The Sweetest Song', 'Pinholes in Black Muslin', 'Fading
Light', 'Poor Stephanie', 'Like Falling Snow', 'Here’s to
the Good Life', 'Cold to the Touch, and
'Afterword'.
-
- ISBN
978-1-905784-15-8
-
- Cold
to the Touch is a sewn hardback of 212 pages.
-
- Limited
to 300 copies.
-
- Price
£25/$45 inc. p&p.
-
- Reviews:
-
- "[O]ne of the best
volumes of weird fiction to surface in recent years, and
essential reading for all . . ." - Black Static
-
- "Readers who prefer
subtlety to shocks and suggestion over explicitness in
horror fiction will find much to enjoy" - Publishers
Weekly
-
- "...Strantzas succeeds
in imbuing his strange tales with the sense of
intellectual fear...", Dead Reckonings 6
-
- "Dark but with frequent
glimpses of light and beauty creating a dazzling mix of
heady highs and tragic lows. . . . A work of great
quality." - Tales
from the Black Abyss
-
- "An impressive
collection of stories that subtly unsettles." -
Flux
magazine.
-
- "This exceptional
collection is highly recommended." - Grim
Rictus Reviews
-
- "Overall, the thirteen
stories in this collection offer the reader strange
rewards. There are no easy explanations, which is realism
of a sort. There are no simple payoffs or cheap twists.
There are shadows everywhere, and few signposts that can
be trusted. But there are moments of humour and humanity
amid the darkness and decay. " - David Longhorn,
Supernatural Tales
16
-
- "Mr. Strantzas is an
amazing writer . . . Cold to the Touch is easily one of the best books I have read
this year. Rating: 10/10" - The
Speculative Fiction Junkie
-
- "Cold to the Touch is a formidable gift to the field
of weird literature." - The Grim Blogger, Grim
Reviews
-
- "One thing is certain,
Mr. Strantzas ripped out a bit of his soul and threw it
onto the page with a violent beauty. Such stories could
come from no other place. This collection is evocative,
endearing, strange and horrifying all at once. . . All of
the stories in this collection are delightfully dark and
wonderfully weird. - Sarah L. Gerhardt, She
Never Slept
-
- "Say hello to a new and
important voice in the canon of weird fiction." - Michael
Kelly, FearZone.
-
- "An excellent writer who
likes to deal with the weirdest and more mysterious
aspects of human condition, who likes to disturb and
upset and manages to do that very effectively by
emphasizing the dark shades lurking behind the light of
everyday reality."
Mario Guslandi at
The
Short Review.
-
- "In his stories, Simon
Strantzas skilfully marries ordinary social anxieties
with the inexplicable weirdness that may lie in the
darkness beyond. The 'strange story' may be one of the
most difficult to define – and write well -- in the whole
horror/dark fantasy field, but with Cold to the Touch
Simon Strantzas displays a gift for evoking disturbing
atmospheres and creating odd, frightening encounters with
the uncanny that puts him right into the arena with
Robert Aickman, Joel Lane, and Ramsey Campbell. An
impressive collection." - Lisa Tuttle
-
- "Simon Strantzas is an
important new writer of weird fiction, a position
solidified by the release of his new collection,
Cold to the
Touch, from
Tartarus Press. What I admired most about this
collection, besides the fine writing, is how these
stories defy a simply summarization. This fiction goes
far beyond the simple scares of most horror. A mystery
defying the usual explication of plot lies at the heart
of each one, giving us much to chew on long after the
story has ended. Cold to the Touch is a great reading experience." -
Steve Rasnic
Tem
-
- "Cold to the Touch is a delightfully chilling
gallery of the ghoulish, the nightmarish, and the weird.
With this follow-up to the excellent Beneath the
Surface,
Strantzas continues to impress." - Laird Barron, author of The Imago Sequence and Occultation.
-
- Cold to the
Touch has been
the subject of a Weirdmonger "real-time" review by Des Lewis.
-
- Read "Pinholes in Black
Muslin" from Cold
to the Touch as a
pdf here
- 1st February: An audio
version of "Fading Light" by Simon Strantzas is available
at pseudopod.
 
Page updated
10th April 2010
|