Bøker utgitt av Eibonvale Press

Allen Ashley (The Elastic Book of Numbers, Subtle Edens, Catastrophia) returns to the anthology format with an ambitious themed collection of stories based on the idea that the world we live in is still something of an unknown planet, with spectacular encounters, adventures and mysteries still very much possible. The result is a collection of tales of urban decay and angst - jaunts to unexpected and unexplained kingdoms - holidays and excursions to strange and unnerving destinations. A familiar earth that's slightly skewed - or maybe never was. This is a collection of journeys of the imagination from some of the best authors in modern Slipstream, SF, Fantasy and Horror.

Bloody War. Always on the news, from somewhere around the world. War seems to be something humanity just cannot get out of its system. And yet, for most of us here in the UK, war is little more than a spectacle where we sit comfortably, tut-tutting over horrors taking place in far off and unknown lands, before returning to our grumbles about the spending cuts or immigration or whatever else it is that sets you off. That's as far as it goes, save maybe for memories and stories of the dark days of WWII. But just suppose that all-out war was to come to Great Britain again? War where fire and death rain down from the skies again and where cities are reduced to corpse-strewn rubble? War against the ghosts of an unknown assailant and where patriotic media-induced insanity takes over our entire consciousness. Just remember how the Falklands War gave us a "Gotcha!" as the Belgrano sank, or how Gulf War Two hung upon a certain dodgy weapons dossier, before you get too comfy on your sofa. This dark, bloody and very British apocalyptic novel explores just this idea, and with terrifying plausibility. Simultaneously a thrilling page-turner and a tough and painful read filled with horrifically recognizable imagery and characters, this book paints a picture of England at war with an unknown assailant and the dark and dirty depths that lurk behind that. But this is no mere rehash of WWII madness. This war is modern - contemporary. War in the age of stealth fighter drones and advanced surveillance technology. War in the age of media paranoia and modern conspiracy theory. Imagine George Orwell's 1984 updated for 2011, with the focus on family, character and relationships rather than political ideology, and you might have the measure of Bloody War. This book, like our society, is one where politics has become an opaque and distant game, and where most people can see no further than their own living rooms. If we are not careful then the price for such false comfort, Terry Grimwood seems to suggest, may one day be terrible indeed.

In this, his extraordinary debut novel, Jet McDonald has created a heady brew of volatile cocktail ingredients. Madcap surreal hu-mour blends with vicious parody of the world of work, the vanity of "Creative" types, the torments of unrequited love, animal cruelty and the excesses of consumer society. Words and sentences undergo some kind of alchemy under McDonald's reckless stewardship, he whips them up into little frenzies like performing pooches and makes them jump through the burning hoops of our open mouths and frazzled brains. Not so much a breath of fresh air as a snort of something industrial, read this book and become initiated into a rebellion of the mind that will leave you inspired and laughing with exhilaration.

In this, his extraordinary debut novel, Jet McDonald has created a heady brew of volatile cocktail ingredients. Madcap surreal hu-mour blends with vicious parody of the world of work, the vanity of "Creative" types, the torments of unrequited love, animal cruelty and the excesses of consumer society. Words and sentences undergo some kind of alchemy under McDonald's reckless stewardship, he whips them up into little frenzies like performing pooches and makes them jump through the burning hoops of our open mouths and frazzled brains. Not so much a breath of fresh air as a snort of something industrial, read this book and become initiated into a rebellion of the mind that will leave you inspired and laughing with exhilaration.

Welsh writer Rhys Hughes regards this as his favourite book, and with good reason. It is one of the funniest and most intelligent books from the lighter side of macabre writing I have ever seen. It clamours with a cast of pirates, floppy-wristed welsh bards, explorers and inventors, imps, squonks, moving public houses, M R Jamesian revenants, M R Jamesian punctuation, blueberry pies, trousers, noses, clocks, carrots . . . I cant list them all here, there isn't room. Like all the best books, this quirky and surreal collection is hard to classify, but it lies in that region where the macabre and eerie worlds of classic horror and fantasy become a basis for something else - for a dark and original sense of humour filled with unexpected cross-references, homages, satires and black comedy. What makes this collection remarkable is not just the delightfully murky and skewed tales themselves, but the complex and ingenious way they all lock together and interrelate. I was going to say 'tessellate' but if this is a tessellation then it is filled with impossible-sided polygons, non-Euclidean three-dimensional geometry, unexpurgated curves and cracks from which blueberry-scented steam emerges with a screaming hiss. But what is without doubt is that 'The Smell of Telescopes' is a magnificent book and a cornerstone of the rather oddly shaped corner of literature that it occupies. Since the first edition went out of print, the unavailability of this book has been a great crime of literature. And Eibonvale Press is, as always, dedicated to the righting of the world's more substantial wrongs.