"Strantzas deftly establishes ordinary and seemingly innocuous situations that spin out of the characters' control and always end with an uneasy sense of menace, even when their resolution is ambiguous or cryptic." - Publishers Weekly " - Lisa Tuttle "He does not show you the gate to this new Golden Age of weird fiction that is upon us, but leads you through it." - Joseph S. "Simon Strantzas displays a gift for evoking disturbing atmospheres and creating odd, frightening encounters with the uncanny. Strantzas demonstrates once again why he is so highly regarded amongst connoisseurs of the macabre and the fantastic." - Laird Barron In the Nightingale, Waiting for the Curtain to Rise, an Introduction by John Langan Because, for you, it is already too late. Like a siren, the nightingale sings them onward to face their end. From the shores of a remote oil-stained sound to deep within the familiar heart of suburbia, these are the songs of broken people who cannot find a way to fix themselves, who must search the dark for salvation. Simon Strantzas, master of the subtle and the bizarre, returns with a dozen strange tales and eerie mysteries. In the dead of night, the nightingale sings. In the dead of night, you hear a discordant tune. In the dead of night, your past mistakes will haunt you. His shadowy office and aloof drones conceal a nastier secret, one on par with other workplace demons summoned by Thomas Ligotti and Mark Samuels.In the dead of night, there are footsteps in the hall. Strantzas manages to put an original spin on a niche within weird fiction that's beginning to grow crowded. A wage slave finds much more to deal with than crabby co-workers and pompous supervisors after his company undergoes restructuring. “Behind Glass” echoes Ligotti's corporate horror. Simon Strantzas seems to share Thomas Ligotti's obsession with a sham world, where the day to day splendors and terrors are mere trapping for an overwhelming existential blackness – the true form hiding beneath many costumes. Mannequins crop up again in “Thoughtless,” where a woman undergoes a psychological experiment conducive to piercing reality's many disguises. It quickly becomes apparent that the dolls have a bizarre connection with the urban explorer, sweeping him into fate's grasp. In “You Are Here,” Strantzas guides readers into an underworld seething with dereliction and populated by mannequins.
While urban horror writhes within nearly every story, several mix it with strong, unabashed Ligottian elements.
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