This ultra-limited hardback book — only 65 copies in existence — captures the very best of Knack Publishing’s stories from this year, signed by all contributing authors and illustrator Grubby Fingers. Alongside the acclaimed tales of horror, fantasy, and science fiction, this book features four exclusive, never-before-seen stories that will never be published elsewhere. Crafted for readers who crave the rare and the uncanny, this edition preserves worlds that exist only within these fifty copies, making it an essential treasure for devoted genre fans.
Garrett learned early that straightness was a lie. In the seventies, before the tobacco stains on his fingers had become permanent - before the old skin smell, he sat in a student flat where the curtains were never fully open and argued about the shape of the world with a fellow student. “Nothing’s truly straight,” Simon said, voice flattened by smoke. “You draw, you zoom in, and there are burrs. A laser? Dust and air make it dance.” He traced an imaginary ruler-line in…
Garrison’s mother had always said he wasted too much time and far too much money on “pointless contraptions.” She said this often, especially during dinner, and especially louder when the bills arrived. So naturally, the moment Garrison completed excavation of what he insisted was a “cosmic telephone” from deep beneath the Skeleton Coast, he did what any self-respecting futurist would do: he tried to make a call and spoke a call destination into the container. The first successful connection was to the man who…
Karen flipped through the smudged pages of the Farneholme Gazette with the grace of someone rifling through garbage. The paper, much like the village itself, offered nothing but petty crime, damp politics, and obituary columns. She’d once cared - once fought - but the creeping disillusionment that had infected Farneholme’s older folk had finally reached her too. Whatever fire she’d held for saving this place had gone out. Yobs, druggies, council rot . . . they could all have it. She raised her chipped…
Percy had been waking to vomit every night at 2:30 a.m. for six long weeks, the bucket on his bedside table as much a fixture in the bedroom as the snoring colossus he called “dear”, sleeping next to him. Despite Margaret’s attempts to find him a solution, even with all the back-patting and gentle nursing, Percy suspected her of foul play. Evidence did not align with his suspicions; he had never caught her in the act of imperilment, and through various hospital and specialist…
London was under siege. Its people were stooped - eyes firmly on the stone bricks, lifting their heads only to gauge the next ten steps. There was no danger of bumping into one another. They dared not touch. Most did not leave their homes. The Black Death could not sympathise with the repercussions of its presence - it knew nothing of clemency. It thrived in the weakened human spirit, the pessimism working as fuel in the body for its abduction of it. The plague…
